Warning : another Callomon rant follows.
 
The recent flurry of mail surrounding the unauthorised use on someone's
website of pictures from a book we recently published has highlighted the
existence of a number of differing opinions concerning the re-use of
published material. I have weathered a storm of mail on the subject, and
(this being a discussion forum) thought I would ask Conch-L people for
their views on the following :
 
Shell book publication is often a marginal business. In an ideal case, a
book for which there is sufficient demand can be reprinted several times
without revision and eventually start turning a profit for its publishers -
and through them, its authors. Abbott's compendia and American Seashells
are examples which spring to mind. Such cases are quite rare, however, and
normally concern large illustrated works which collectors can use to
identify and label shells in many different families (There is another kind
of shell book - the 'coffee-table' or 'pretty pictures' book - which often
turns a profit, but these are of less interest to serious collectors than
to the general public).
The vast majority of shell books are loss-makers, however. Their authors
charge nothing for their time (often years spent in research and
photography), and often make the initial investment from their own pockets.
They are rewarded, depending on the quality of their work, with a certain
fame or notoriety among shell people - but little else.
The Internet represents a new and deadly threat to marginal publishing
enterprises like those specialising in shell books. While we all appreciate
the convenience of e-mail - and it has undoubtedly done a lot of good for
the shell world in general, at least among those who have it - the reverse
of that particular coin is the ease with which copyright material can be
pirated in cyberspace.
When a shell book is drafted, its authors have to consider what is to be
its USP (Unique Selling Point, a splendid bit of sales jargon). Why, in
other words, can we expect someone to shell out a hundred bucks for this?
There is only one thing which can be more or less relied on for healthy
sales - to have as many species figured and identified as possible, whether
correctly or not. If the book is a monograph, it had better be of a family
popular with collectors (such as the Cypraeidae or Muricidae) or cheap
enough to be purchased on impulse. To monograph an obscure family - even a
massive one like the Pyramidellidae - with good pictures and text is
economically unviable. Of course, if the work is to be published by an
institution or museum, then economics don't matter so much as it's
taxpayers' money; on the other hand, the number of such monographs is not
great, they are invariably expensive and usually go into far more detail
than the average book-buying collector needs.
So it is that there are any number of collector-level reference books on
the Cypraeidae, of varying quality, but only one so far on the
Pleurotomariidae and none on the Rissoidae, Pyramidellidae, Pupidae and any
number of large, interesting but unglamorous families.
The danger as I see it is that although few people would be prepared to pay
for a book on these families, many still want to label their specimens and
will eagerly download images which have been pirated from whatever papers
and magazine articles exist on the subject. Thus the incentive to research,
compile and publish a good book on any of these families will disappear
altogether if authors feel that as soon as a copy falls into the hands of
someone with a website, that person will distribute key images for free.
A few years ago, everyone was talking about books on CD-ROM. Cheaper than
paper to print, light and easy to send - the advantages seemed endless.
Ever seen one? Most of the early enthusiasts for this format soon figured
out the single huge disadvantage - anyone able to read a CD can copy any or
all of the data from it at original quality with no extra machinery. With
JAZ, Zip and DVD decks now as cheap as floppy drives, duplication is a
breeze.
In a further blow to small publishers, scanners have also become very cheap
and this is leading to increased lifting and unauthorised distribution of
images from copyright works. How far this will go remains to be seen, but
at the present rate it could spell the death of paper publications on
minority-interest subjects (not just shells, by any means; a friend of mine
who put on his website some rare pictures of Soviet fighter plane cockpits
he had taken in Moscow at huge personal expense has since found them on
sites all over the place), except at magazine level (people who would never
pay $150 for a shell book will still subscribe to magazines at $10 a copy,
despite the cumulative cost over the years. One of the odder quirks of
consumer psychology).
The ascendence of web publishing would then mean not only that anyone
without a computer by their side would be at a disadvantage but (far more
seriously) that an increasing amount of the literature in use would have
originated in an ephemeral medium. The ease with which sites can be
created, updated and removed would render the whole business of scientific
publication so chaotic as to be ungovernable. Imagine citing something like
this :
 
Conus daucus sensu Zimmerman : website page, third link from top;
downloaded third of March 1999 at 10 : 08 pm but since updated.
 
With no hard copies to put in libraries, no publication dates and no ISBN
numbers to trace them by, are websites really publications?  Yes or no, if
you can download and print out their images, they are certainly competition
for books.
Do we want to face the consequences of the gradual undermining of
conventional publication by websites? If this seem like overreaction, mull
this over : a website can only be traced if its publisher wants it to be.
What's to stop someone putting the entire contents of, say, Roeckel, Korn
and Kohn's Conus book on a website without any contact address?
Confidentiality rules on servers in many places mean there would be no way
of finding out who was responsible - and in any case, software is evolving
so that the day is fast approaching when everyone can be their own server
and total anarchy will rule. Can you put your hand on your heart and say
you would never download any of those images on principle?
 
Enough ranting. Conch-L must be rueing the day I showed up. Nevertheless,
these are the questions we must ask ourselves, shell people. The shelling
community at present supports minority publishers by buying their shell
books, but for how much longer?