FW: USA: Online book-sharing service for the blind borrows a page from Napster

[Janina Sajka]

Oh, I don't know, Gina. Maybe they could use a ten year old scanner, linux 
and sane and gocr, like I do.


On Fri, 15 Mar 2002, Georgina wrote:

> Hi
> 
> Please see my message on the cost of producing these books.  To say that 
> someone with low income can recooperate some or all of their costs is got to 
> be missleading.
> 
> As you already know my feelings on the cost of K1000 there's no need for me 
> to go into that but if someone can't afford a scanner and K1000 or even Open 
> Book Ruby, how are they going to recooperate some or all of the cost?
> 
> Surely, corretcing is out of the question too?  Firstly, they'd have to go 
> and buy the book and then be able to compare words and other symbols on the 
> screen with that on the printed pages of the book.
> 
> Furthermore, that's if they can afford to use Windows to use the above ocr 
> packages.  I understood that the image files were also required, thus only 
> Windows users might and I say might be the only ones to be able to submit 
> scanned material.  What is the required format?
> 
> It'll be very interesting to see how many people will be in a position to 
> submit material to the project.
> 
> Gena
> 
> 
> 
> >Actually, the cost is $50 per year.  First year there is a $25 setup fee.
> >But as stated, if you contribute by submitting books that you scan,
> >correct errors and do what they call Publish to submit books already
> >uploaded and/or do what is known as Basic Publish whereby you clean-up
> >their database to reflect appropriate information about the entried
> >therein, you earn fifty cents per title.  To download and correct a book,
> >you earn $2.50.  Do ten of those per year, you earn half of your annual
> >membership.
> >
> >So, there are ways that a person with limited income resources can benefit
> >and still use the service.
> >
> >Amanda Lee
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Speakup mailing list
> >Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> >http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina at afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175

Chair, Accessibility SIG
Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
http://www.openebook.org