Week 12 - Security and Economics

Arms - Economic and Legal Issues

This article captures the crux of digital information's economics from this quote:

With digital information, . . . once the first copy has been mounted online, the distribution costs are tiny. In economic terms, the cost is almost entirely fixed cost. The marginal cost is near zero. As a result, once sales of a digital produce reach the level that covers the costs of creation, all additional sales are pure profit [emphasis mine].

This made me think of all the profit that Apple is making from selling music and videos through ITunes! When the content is good, and the interface is popular, people are willing to pay =) .

Arms - Implementing Policies for Access Management

I really enjoyed this piece's explanation of security and implementation. It gave a very good piece of "design best practice" for user interface authentications embodied in this quote:

The least intrusive situation is when authentication is keyed to some hidden information, such as the IP address of the user's computer, or where the user logs in once and an authentication token is passed onto other computers[.]

I also found the illustrations showing particular roles and attributes for users and institutions to be very helpful.

Lesk - Economics

I greatly appreciated the reference to work done on library ROIs by Jose-Marie Griffifths and Don King - However, because this work is a little old, 2003, I would like to know -->

Muddiest Point:  Has there been more recent work on a library's return on investment, which give librarians strategies on showing their worth to their home institution?

Second - I believe there has been more recent work done on how administrative costs of OA journals can be borne by the authors, and not by the users. This may be a better model:  the prestige of having one's article accepted by a prestigious OA journal is greater than the small minimal cost of $2.99 for submission.

Kohl - Safeguarding Digital Library Contents and Users

Finally, I have a clear understanding on how encryption and decryption keys work in the digital world! These public and private key relationships were explained very clearly.