Tuesday, August 20, 2002

The cost of information Aspen Publishing's Federal Judiciary Library Online (pointer by Ernie) is being offered for $1,900.  No doubt this is a premium product commanding a premium price.  But Aspen is clueless about pricing of internet-accessible material.  It would be able to sell fifty times the number of subscriptions if the price were $400, and a thousand times the number if the price were $200.  With an online product, the marginal cost of additional access is precisely zero, assuming sufficient bandwidth to handle the additional online customers.  Some years ago, Red Street Consulting did a mammoth survey of law firm web sites and published its results in book format, which it sought to sell via Amazon for $2,500 per copy.  (IANMTU.)  I suspect it sold about two.  Red Street also did not have a clue, and it did not survive.  Had it sold its book for $75 per copy (a hefty price in the book publishing biz) it probably would be in business today.   Why it did not sell its results via internet access for $49 per year will always remain a mystery. The company which intuited these realities early and remained consistent is the publisher of Quicken. 5:51:57 PM    comment [] Cradle to grave care One of the predictions made by some dark-minded commentators was that assisted suicide would be enthusiastically adopted by HMOs as a cost-saving measure.  Now National Review Online has submitted "Doctors of Death - Kaiser solicits its doctors to kill", suggesting that there is some fire there.  An excerpt: "But now, Kaiser isn't merely permitting doctors to assist in patient suicides, it is actively soliciting its doctors to participate in the deadly practice. As revealed by the anti-assisted-suicide medical group Physicians for Compassionate Care, a Kaiser executive recently e-mailed a memo to more than 800 Kaiser doctors soliciting PAS-doctor volunteers. "The memo reveals that to the apparent chagrin of Kaiser, to their credit, few plan doctors are willing to participate in the killing of their own patients. Hence, the executive urges any Kaiser doctor willing to 'act as Attending Physician under the [assisted suicide] law for YOUR patients' and doctors 'willing to act as 'Attending Physician under the law for members who ARE NOT your patients' to contact 'Marcia L. Liberson or Robert H. Richardson, MD, KPNW Ethics Services.' (Emphasis in the memo.) Since 'attending physicians' write the lethal prescriptions under the Oregon law, Kaiser is apparently willing to permit its doctors to write lethal prescriptions for patients they have not treated." The author reveals that one of the early advocates of PAS is getting more explicit about money as a motivation: "Specifically, in his most recent book Freedom to Die, co-authored with Mary Clement, [Derek Humprhy writes] that 'the hastened demise of people with only a short time to left would free resources for others,' an amount they predict could run into the 'hundreds of billions of dollars.' Moreover, the authors claim that 'economic necessity' is the ultimate force driving the assisted-suicide movement, to the point that it 'is the main answer to the question [about legalizing PAS], 'Why Now?'" 8:23:38 AM    comment [] Crypto resurrection We previously lamented the departure of PGP as a commercial product.  We now have learned that it will be back.  The website of PGP Corporation provides details.  We are very glad to see that pricing for the commercial version (warning - it takes a lot of clicks and at least one 404 to find the price list) will be about $45-70 per seat.  7:30:02 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2002 Franco Castalone. Last update: 9/1/2002; 7:11:09 PM.