The Windows version of Australia On Disc _ a directory of every residential and business phone in the country _ is being launched this week.
A Windows version of The Green Pages is also due out shortly.
While having obvious environmental benefits, there are equally obvious privacy implications.
The Green Pages are two CDs, one residential and one business. The residential one contains the 5 and a half million entries in the White Pages with some extra information. Suburb names are spelt out and postcodes added, so you can print address labels.
The business CD contains the one million entries in the Yellow Pages, without the display advertisements.
These and Australia On Disc are produced by Brylar Pty Ltd (Phone 02 7874255; fax 02 7873539). The disks have been around for several years, but to date their price and the price and rarity of CD drives have put them out of widespread use.
Now they are available to small business for targeted marketing campaigns. At the same time we are seeing the costs and convenience of CD matching the paper versions. So as the environmental benefit increases, so do the privacy concerns.
The Green Pages are $99. To have the paper versions of the White Pages and Yellow Pages for the whole 55 districts of Australia would cost about the same. The books cost 80 cents each plus $5 delivery for any number. Metropolitan districts have separate Yellow Pages and some have two books for each, so there are about 70 books.
The books weigh about 30 kilograms. The picture shows an approximately complete set.
The environmental saving is obvious, and in the SOHO (small office, home office) environment the space saving is important, too.
There is a time saving, too. Searching the CD is far quick than waiting for Telecom’s directory assistance. The Green Pages are updated every six months. Basically, you update as often as you need, with the update costing the same as a new version. Brylar has some cunning software to stop people giving their old versions away. More on that later.
Australia On Disc is more expensive at $350 for one or $550 for both.
Both prices have been substantially cut. Australia On Disc is down from $1650 for both. The result has been a massive increase in purchases.
As well as ordinary single searches, both will enable searches along the lines of all Smiths in Watson or all plumbers in Canberra. The difference is that with the Green Pages you can only print (to paper or file) one address at the time, though the search results appear on the screen. With Australia On Disc you can print (to paper or file) a whole list resulting from a search. The company is Australian-owned and the software developed in Australia.
That brings us to the privacy implications.
Brylar’s chief executive, Steve Butcher, says his company is very conscious of the privacy issues, especially with the residential disk.
The residential disks of both the Green Pages and Australia On Disc will not permit reverse searching. That is if you just have a phone number, you cannot search to find who is owns it. All searches on the residential disk require at least a surname.
Arguably that satisfies the basic privacy requirement that information is used only for the purpose for which it is given. People give their name, address and phone number so that people who know them can find their phone number.
However, other questions remain.
People give their information to Telecom, not to Brylar. And it is given for publication in book form or through Directory Assistance, not for a CD that enables geographic sorting and for combining with post codes to generate individually addressed marketing letters for certain areas and targeted phone marketing. I would certainly not put a fax number in the book; it could get swamped with junk faxes.
People in the book obviously have to cop random phone marketing.
Butcher says, probably correctly, that there is no copyright in the raw data, only in the way it is presented. Further, the information is in the public domain.
People, of course, have the option to have a silent number to exclude the marketers, but that is inconvenient for friends and acquaintances.
It seems the technology has excluded the middle option. You either go into the book and cop targeted marketing, or you go silent with its attendant inconvenience.
The question is whether the environmental saving which comes from more widespread use of the CD outweighs the loss of the middle option.
Telecom does not do the White Pages on disk because it has a stricter view of the privacy guidelines. Its electronic White Pages are done via modem. You need an IBM compatible and a modem and you can buy searches in 500 batches for 50 cents each or have monthly charge of 55c a minute plus 10c a call with a minimum of $50 a month.
It does the Yellow Pages on CD for $2000 Australia wide or $1000 for NSW and ACT. It is upgraded free six months later, then $750 a year for an upgrade or $295 for NSW and the ACT. It allows reverse searching, which is fair enough; people put their business in the Yellow Pages for marketing purposes.
Lastly, to Brylar’s anti-piracy program.
The CDs come with floppies which contain the software. When you load the software it reaches out for one of thousands of random numbers. Then you have to ring Brylar for its match before the program will work. The program senses when it is moved to another computer or is reloaded on to a new computer it once again reaches out for the random number and will lock up without a match. Brylar can tell from the number which version it is and will not give the match for a version which has already been updated.
This is good stuff. The more people who buy legitimately the lower the price will be.