John, thank you for faxing me this morning the full memorandum that
Christopher Wren and Jill Wren wrote the the Board of Governors of the
State Bar of Wisconsin opposing a proposal for alternative system of
citations.
The Wrens did not do their homework ... the 1993 review of
HyperLaw's Federal Appeals on Disc CD-ROM was incorrect. We advised Mr.
Bayer who wrote the article that West publishes over 30 volumes of the
Federal Reporter each year, not fifteen, thus making his statements
grossly erroneous. Mr. Bayer acknowledged the mistake to me, but a
formal retraction was not printed. Of course, Mr. Bayer is not a law
librarian -- he is a lawyer who does computer reviews. The Wrens should
have known better, and should have used their self-advertised contacts
with West to check the facts, or talk to any law librarian, or they could
have even contacted me who they know and attacked two months ago in
another similarly inaccurate missive on this forum which I chose to ignore.
In addition, had the Wren's contacted me, they would have been advised of
HyperLaw's current pricing of a single CD-ROM which is $150 (currently
including decisions also appearing in over 40 volumes of the Federal
Reporter plus unpublished decisions from four circuits).
Also, I do not actually understand the point they were trying to make ...
and it seemed a little gratuitious to me.
The Wrens memorandum in arguing against the citation system also make other
interesting observations such as:
"Despite the widespread and relatively inexpensive availability
of public-domain versions of federal primary law"....
I guess the Wren's never paid for research time on Lexis or Westlaw to
access decisions of the federal district and bankruptcy courts, or never
paid for a Federal Supplement subscription.
I do not understand their objections to a public domain citation
system. It seems to me that the State Bar in Wisconsin is on the right
track.
I also publicly ask the Wren's to do me the courtesy of
contacting me prior to attributing comments, information, and positions
of either me or HyperLaw. The uncorrected Bayer article in 1993 shows
the problem of failure to correct factual errors. One year later this is still
plaguing us, and, even repeated by those who should know better. Better
to get it right the first time.
Alan D. Sugarman
HyperLaw
212-873-1371
On Tue, 14 Jun 1994, John Lederer wrote:
> In a memorandum regarding the Wisconsin citation system, Chris Wren stated in
> support of their being little difference in the cost of CD-Rom products and
> printed products the following:
>
> "A review in the July 1993 issue of Law Office Technology Review of a CD-Rom
> version of federal appellate decisions shows a similar pattern even between
> competing publishers. The review compared the cost of a West's Federal
> Reporter with the cost of the Cd-Rom product published by HyperLaw... Federal
> Reporter costs $632.50 per year (based on an average of 15 print volumes per
> year at $28.50 per volume, plus $205.00 for an annual subscription to the
> advance sheets). A subscription to four quarterly discs of the CD-Rom
> product costs $650.00. Thus, as with Wisconsin statutes, the cost of even
> the least expensive version of this Cd-Rom product exceeded the cost of its
> closest print counterpart."
>
> Are these prices correct? I checked the HyperLaw price ($650 is the
> multi-user price, $450 single user), but the Federal Reporter price seems low.
>
> The Wisconsin Statutes are priced the same on Cd-Rom and in paper because of the
> legislatively directed formula for pricing (which makes no distinction on
> media).
>
> Is it also generally the rule that CD-Rom products are priced at the same
> price as printed products? I can see that when the same publisher publishes
> both, the publisher might be concerned about protecting his print market, but
> I wonder if the general proposition holds true for products in general.
>
>
> My impression is that at least the raw physical media production cost for
> CD-Rom is two orders of magnitude lower than printing. I note that the
> United States Code from the GPO is $34 on disk and about $1700 in paper.
>
> Any comments?
>
> Regards
> John
> CIS: 74020,210
>
>
>
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