Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
LOL yeah  Same with protection against printing more than once, for example with many sheet music services.
Yes, you can print only once, after you bought the piece, but pray tell, what holds me back from copying that piece 50.000 times, or scan it back into the computer and then printing that new PDF a bazillion times or mailing it around to all of my friends?
So many things mean nothing in the digital realm. |
Right. We put all files, for quoting, into a Dropbox, which runs under a company account. Everybody here has access to the Dropbox, although, obviously, not all folders therein. The relevant bookmaker may look at the file(s), which means it synchs to his/her Dropbox, on his/her system/terminal/computer. (We have
thousands of folders. No exaggeration.). So, when a book moves into production, either the client a) sends the files directly to the project, using a dedicated unique "mailto" address, for that project, which is backed up on Amazon S-3's, or, b) sends us the final production files through our corporate Hightail account, which--you guessed it--keeps the copy for X period of time. THEN the prod. files go into our PM system, which is (again) on S3s.
Meanwhile, the quoting files are still in the Dropbox. Even deleted, of course, they would be recoverable therefrom. The final production files, recoverable from either Hightail or Teamworks (the PM system we use). I mean..I'd practically have to scour the entire system, to delete the accursed thing. AND the bookmakers' computers, and the Hightail, and....
{SIGH}. These things can be difficult to explain to someone who doesn't even read two paragraphs in an email (yes, yes, you
snide people, even very short un-Hitch-like paragraphs, not compound, using no commas, semi-colons, etc.), and clearly has some difficulty in "technical stuff."
Spoiler:
You may recall: this was the same person who told me that s/he was too busy to read our Terms and Conditions, and could I just send him/her the relevant parts in a summary? I don't know if I said this here already, but...really? What, you think I just sent you all this irrelevant s**t for fun? To see if I could torture you into reading it? URGHGHGHGHGH! At first, I almost thought it was funny--right? I mean...the whole idea that I sent this big long T&C, but I could summarize the "relevant"parts? That feeling, of course, was before I knew that this was a symptom of a much larger problem. FWIW, our "T&C" contains very specific information, of things like "what we are obligated to do," "what you(client) are obligated to do," "what happens if you've sent us the wrong file to produce, and you don't figure it out until we send it to you for review," "What constitutes a single edit," or "what happens if you suddenly decide that you have a deadline you forgot to tell us about," etc.
This no doubt sounds anal-retentive, right, but trust me--I answer these same questions 10, 20 times a week, or more. This business is all about the details, including things like "what constitutes a single edit?" They (by and large) wouldn't read this crap, or use my FAQ, when I was trying to not overwhelm them, and drip-feed it to them, but as they didn't, I put it in the T&C, and now make them SIGN a document saying that they've read it. ENOUGH with me being constantly barraged with the same damn questions over and over, or people saying "well, you didn't TELL me that an entire page of replacement text isn't a single edit," or so on.
This horrible document is a whopping 12 pages long, 4,755 words. I put in an almost by-paragraph/topic TOC, with informational titles, fully linked. Two of the pages are the title page and the "How To Use This Document" page, which consists of an informal, friendly letter, explaining WHY you need to read it. Two more pages are the TOC. Thus, the HORRIFIC T&C is, in actuality, 7 pages of Calibri 11pt font, with 1.5 line spacing. Hanging indented paras, wth a line of whitespace separating them. 4,280 words of content.
Yeah, I'm an ogre.
Hitch