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A legal scam

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Christophe:

--- Quote from: pwhodges on 15 Jul 2010, 12:37 ---"the Internet in print"

--- End quote ---


This is about a few good steps down from 619 scams. For an indication of just how fucking retarded this all is, here's a quote from a guy defending the practice (in what I surmise to be copypasta from someone involved with this whole thing):


--- Quote from: Some idiot ---Nearly all media worldwide -- such as newspapers, magazines, TV -- use internet for their researches and as a basis for their texts. This is exactly what Alphascript publishing does. And we go even further: with the Wikipedia-texts at free disposal we create books on interesting topics.
There is hardly another platform for quick and better processing of information than by Wikipedia -- and this is too for the benefit of the Alphascript publishing-readers who want to be informed on a specific subject. Of course you can have online everything free of charge, but for good reason you have decided for a book. Alphascript publishing is internet in form of a book. There can hardly be a faster process.
--- End quote ---

Internet in form of a book. What a novel fucking process. Of course, if you have the ability to access Amazon.com you probably have the means to access Wikipedia, which would be a hell of a lot faster than FUCKING ORDERING IT FROM AMAZON AND WAITING SEVERAL DAYS FOR SOMETHING YOU COULD HAVE FOUND FROM THE INTERWEBS ABLOOBLOOBLOOBLOOBLOOBLOOO

forgive my vitriol, but it's been a while since I've seen something so massively stupid as this. God forbid anyone actually buying one of these.

Ladybug:
Well, a lot of people still prefer reading actual books, and will pay money to get the same information they can find on screen for free or cheaper in the form of a bounded book. I wouldn't, but I know many people who would if it was something they were actually interested in. So the concept isn't too bad, I think, but the execution in this case is pretty awful, with the lack of proof reading, steep prices, too much automation involved (and while as much automation as possible in computer systems is usually a good thing, when the source material isn't guaranteed to be correct, it will often fail), lack of information about the sources on product pages and the whole company just seems sort of shady.

But I wouldn't call it a scam if someone actually did a decent job of collecting free material into books as long as they actually, you know, ran a decent business and let buyers know what they were doing.

Jimor:
Yeah, I heard about this a while back as part of the general interest in Print on Demand as a technology and a business model on some of the publishing forums I frequent. Legal scam is a good phrase for it. Very little added value, and the biggest loss of value is being able to follow the citation links back to their sources.

I could imagine a good product stemming from this approach on some specific topics, but that takes work, and any work at all kills the profit margin for what these guys are doing.

Barmymoo:
But I already had the "print on demand" option for that information, I could just... print it. It is instant and free! Whut.

Emaline:
I guess, I'm in the boat of "whatever. Good way to make money I guess. Nothing wrong with that."

Yeah, people are dumb if they buy it, but I could say them same for a snuggie.

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