OT Re: SC - OED-Accessible only to the priveleged few

[Philip & Susan Troy]

LrdRas at aol.com wrote:
> 
> Yes. Apparently the OED company has dollar signs in their eyes instead of
> passing on knowledge and has organized the universities into a conglomeration
> that has agreed to prohibit public access to the OED over the Web. Unless you
> are a paying student at a university or a faculty member, you are denied
> access. This is not only appalling but shows the general state of decay and
> decadence our centers of learning are becoming, IMO.

Arrgghh!!! Snnarrrrllll!!! What _he_ said!

On the other hand, in the interest of fairness, try to put yourself in
the position of a network admin/Webmaster for a large university.
Probably due to some deal worked out between the publishers and the
university library staff, you have the means and permission to put the
OED (a copyrighted commercial venture, mind you: in other words,
someone's work and property) up on Web pages. Which of the following do
you do?

A) You put the dictionary on Web pages with unrestricted access, causing
the President of the University to grouse at you because it took eleven
minutes for a page to load when he was writing a dissertation on Social
Foiblinism (or doing the NY Times crossword puzzle, your choice),
inconveniencing students on the night before final exams, effectively
ending promising careers, and significantly affecting sales of the hard
copy of the OED (paper copies being to some extent redundant at this
point, since a significant portion, if not a majority, of people who
regularly consult the OED probably do have Web access), which in turn
makes it financially unfeasible to publish future editions and
supplements. Cultural decay is rapid, and within a generation we are
living in caves.

B) You don't put up the OED at all.

C) You put the OED on the Web under conditions of restricted access. 

If you chose option C), you may already have won the steak knives, and
you're also doing your job as a network admin/Webmaster for a large
university! Unfortunate but true.

Hey, don't get me wrong. I was always very pleased to use the OED when
it's been available online. It was a great privilege, but having lost
it, I'm no worse off than I was before I gained the privelege. And in
this case, I can say what was my privelege was never really my right. On
the other hand, my tax dollars do contribute to maintaining several (5
at last count) local public library systems, and most or all of them
have paper copies of the OED. Access to them, so far as I can determine,
is pretty much my right. I just have to get off my keister to get at them.

Adamantius
Østgardr, People's Republic of the East       
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================