Analysis: Copyright and DRM

Digital Rights Management is the copyright rules developing around the use of digital publication. Because the distribution methods are still evolving the best practices are as well. Two of the upsides of this are that the original creators best interests are in mind and done right they can reach a larger audience faster and with less resources. These concepts really help fledgling writers and publishers get there work out to the people that want it. The cons are that reproduction of digital material is easy for anyone with the most basic computer skills and distribution is just as easy. This makes it harder for the publisher to control access and the creator to profit from their works.

Piracy is always a factor when you start leaning more heavily on the digital side. A few of the ways publishers are combating this are by making the legitimate copies attractive to consumers. This can be accomplished by making it easily accessible through multiple platforms and in multiple programs. Another tactic is to ensure reasonable pricing and ease of access to the information. Some publications don’t need to worry about piracy because they are free and intended to be spread as far and wide as possible, but even these could be subject to copyright infringement. A publication may have information or photos that are protected or owned by a company.

The tactics mention earlier is preventative and may not always work. The perks of extra material may not be enough to keep people honest. It a publisher finds that their intellectual property is being offered on a site they did not approve they have the right to request it be taken down. If the site does not comply there are authorities in place to handle the dispute. This doesn’t stop the data from staying in the hands of those that already downloaded it, but it does protect the data from further piracy.

With the amount of information and extra content that can be added to digital publications it is easy to link extras to can be lost in casual piracy. It is also possible to add content to digital copies after they have been purchased. This would be a good way to entice people to buy the legal copy and a way for publishers to get new information and content out to their consumers.

 As potential future digital publishers is it important to know about the challenges and advantages currently facing the field. Knowing different techniques to detour piracy is helpful.

Project: Create Digital Publication

The Assets included are in this order:

-                            -  Table of Contents

-                             - Business Proposal

o   Budget

-                          -History of the Area

-                         -Appendix

I am partial to apple so my target Publication will be iPad although I will try to make it as universal as possible. The Orientation is Portrait as I feel this is a comfortable way to read on any devise and translates well to web reading. And it is single page for the same reasons.

The “History of the Area” section is still in progress but coming along. I will be able to post some of this to this Blog when I get back to some better connectivity. Sorry for the delay is some of the recent Projects.

Thanks

Addicus

Analysis: XML and Metadata

                Extensible Mark-up Language or XML is a structure for digital data that allows the information to be output in several different formats. The structure is a sort of warehouse that holds the information and allows access to that information, the way it appears to the consumer is based on what medium they use to access it. This allows users from all different platforms to utilize the information without needing to store the data in a multitude of programs. The data is also searchable making it convenient to search engines.

                Metadata is the information about the information. The best example I read on this was about the library: the data is the title of the book and the metadata is the location of the book on the shelves. Many times the metadata is unseen by the end user, it is hidden data that is use to sort and find the desired information.

                Metadata helps when someone is searching for your book. Using a simple search engine you might have a hard time finding if you don’t know the title of author of the book, but if the publication has a decent amount of metadata you could find it with subject, keywords, era, or any other tags attached within the XML. The metadata can also be used to give the causal searcher more information about the publication. Such as short descriptions, awards cover photo, or anything that could help the consumer decide this is the information they need.

                The way the data is organized will determine how accessible the information is. The hierarchy of how the information is important because many different programs will be used to search and read the information and many of these programs will view it differently. The data could also be moved around from its original storage location to a new one. When these locations change the search paths could change if they are not set up carefully to begin with. All if this could affect how searchable or findable your information becomes.

                All this information is important when putting together our digital publication because we want our data to be used. If we go through the process of putting together a book we want that book to be used and people can use it if they can’t find it. This also saves people from needing to dig too deep into a publication to decide if it is what they are looking for.

AddicusPatton-MDP Submit Publication Proposal

I will be publishing a Professional Reference. I am going to be following up on my project form the Media Entrepreneurship class and making a proposal to Hunt Reality on why they might want to donate a specific piece of land to our Business. This will include a business plan on what we intend to do with the building, our Community Service plan for the area, and some history on the Kalaeloa (barber’s point) area.  The target audience is initially Hunt LLC (property owner), with the potential to expand the audience to other investors.

The Publication is intended to get people interested in our business. It is a Homeschool Enrichment center and Children’s theater. We have plans to grow it into a community beautification project as well. The Kalaeloa area was once Barber’s Point Naval Air Station in Hawaii, but has been closed down. The US Navy has been parceling the land back to the Hawaiian Community, but the land and buildings need some restoration.  The publication will bring this to light and explain why our business would be great for this community.

Sample:

Executive Summary – Montessori Homeschoolers Enrichment Center will be a place where parents can bring their children for addition learning and socialization. It will also include a theater that will specialize in children’s productions. We looked at our competition and have assessed the needed for this center in the community. We will be targeting the homeschooling parents in the area and know a lot of this community is military. Our marketing campaign will rely heavily on Social Media and word of mouth. Our crowd sourcing campaign will be starting soon and will be followed up with a loan application to On Deck. We have a pretty solid group of teachers and parents interested in working to get the daily operations up and running.

Company Description – The Montessori Homeschoolers Enrichment Center will provide classes for home-schooled children to augment their education. One of the biggest hurdles with home schooling is the lack of social interaction with other children their own age. We are going to provide that in a Montessori rich environment where the students will learn what they want at their own pace. The Children’s

Theater will be an additional project that falls in line with the home school program.

• Mission – Or mission is to build a fun and educational community for homeschooling families and offer an empowering supplement to alternative education.

• Services – The school will offer two age groups (2-5 and 6-9) a program that will supplement the student’s home school education. This is intended to give the homeschool parents an opportunity for their children to socialize and receive lessons from another perspective. The Theater will prepare and perform a show every 6 weeks with 5-7 shows for each production.

• Development-to-Date – So far we have a location in mind, we are still working with the realtor to negotiate terms with the building owner. We have the basic \plan for schedule of both projects and are working on a financial plan.

• Legal Status and Ownership – We are going with a partnership because it is a small business and needs a simple start. Addicus and Jen Patton will be the co-owners.

Analysis: The Four Sectors

The developments of all the digital publishing sectors has some interesting growth points and are great for historical tracking of the market. I am most interested in the Professional Reference and Consumer Market. As a small business hopeful I can understand the need to get your product or service information to a mass of people in a format they will utilize. And as a reader I am very interested in the development of digital books and where they are going, I love the fact that I can carry hundreds of books in my tablet with all my computing capabilities.

The Professional Reference sectors grow form desire to get more product or service information out to potential customers. This started with the digitizing of catalogs and distribution through CD-ROMS. As this became less cost effective and online storage space became larger and more readily accessible that became the preferred method of distribution. These methods saved paper cost and distribution cost. The digital references give a lot of flexibility with searching documents that the paper copies did not have. This makes it easier and faster for customers to find what they are looking for and move on, making for happier customers. Adding embedded additional information is another strong point for digital documents. This allows retailers to add all sorts of extra information such as customer testimonials, product statistics, or pictures and video of the service.

I have been watching with excitement as the Consumer Market has grown and changed. It may have been the slowest of the four to gain traction but it has made some leaps and bounds to catch up.  It has changed the way we look at the value of some products. Books to ebooks are changing what we value in the product, is it the paper or the story printed on it? This change is pushing the E-Reader and Tablet market and causing some fast and fierce competition within the market. There are a lot of challenges in this field as well including pricing, which books to publish and security. A few of the other problems to consider are library loans, sharing a good book with a friend and what digital books will do to the second hand market.

There was a lot about the ebook development that was unaware of. The fact that publishers are staring to do there own ebooks with the hardcopy publication is an interesting development. Many third company ebook publishers came to fruition by publishing books that were popular in hardcopy and needed to be digitized, those options are being lost. That being said there is no shortage of opportunity in this field and it is growing. Amazon’s ebook sales are higher now then hardcopies.

Hall, F. (2013). Part II: Publishing sectors. In The business of digital publishing an introduction to the digital book and journal industries. New York: Routledge.