Because I don't post to this list very often, I feel I should introduce myself. My name is John Jones and I am the Chair of the American Iris Society Electronic Services Committee. I am the one who conceived the Irisregister.com project for the AIS.
There are a few things that you either are not aware of, or choose to ignore.
First: the ICRA (International Cultivar Registration Authority) is the organization under which the AIS holds the registration authority for non-bulbous iris. The ICRA REQUIRES that the iris Registrar publish all registrations IN PRINTED HARDCOPY. This of course is a costly process and the requirement is met with the annual publication of the Registrations and Introductions booklets. Also, although not required to do so, the Register publishes a decade Check List - a compendium of the previous ten yearS R&I's including any corrections that have been made to the previous publications.
It is not unreasonable, and it is permitted by the ICRA, to charge a fee for the R&I's to offset the costs of printing.
Additionally, the Registrar has operational costs: computers, printers, postage costs etc. that are covered by the registration fees.
Irisregister.com, the online database of registrations, is a separate entity. It is a service provided by AIS for people who want a faster, easier way to research iris names, parentage, hybridizer's introductions and other information. Users often copy descriptions out of irisregister to make lists for their gardens, shows and fundraising sales. That saves them from having to type out all those descriptions.
All the same information in Irisregister is available in the R&I's. So, Irisregister is a service that is a benefit to people in terms of saving them time. No one has to use it. If one wants to register a particular name, one simply fills out the registration form with the name and alternatives and mails it to the Registrar. The Registrar will vett the name and respond with approval or disapproval as appropriate. All it costs you is a stamp (plus of course the registration fee if your name is granted). You realize of course that the Registrar does not currently receive a fee for most non-US registrations. Individual country Associate Registrars may charge a fee, but the registrar is funded almost exclusively by North American registrations.
Irisregister, aside from making the selection of a name easier, provides a much broader capability that saves people time. Much of the same information is being integrated into the Iris Encyclopedia, a wiki environment, that is available to anyone for free. The IE is not complete and will never be as up to date (in terms of registration information) as the R&I's and Irisregister just because of the time lag in getting the information into the IE. Irisregister also provided a much more robust search capability than that available in the Iris Encyclopedia.
Irisregister is not a free service for a couple of reasons. First because we have to pay for the internet hosting service. They after all have to buy the hardware and software and pay connection fees and people to service the system and are in business to make a profit on their investment. Second: We had to pay a programming service to develop the irisregister service, database, web interface etc. So there were some implementation costs as well as ongoing maintenance and hosting costs. Hard money expenditures that are not funded by the registration fees.
The Registrar periodically sends me updates to the database that I upload to the online data. Aside from that, I spend a great deal of personal, volunteer time servicing irisregister and subscriptions to the service.
$10.00 a year is not an exorbitant fee. There are still, even after 7 years of irisregister, many individuals who want the hard copy R&I's. I have no doubt that more and more people will give up hard copy for electronic versions as time goes by, but irisregister provides a valuable time saving service.
There is always the hue and cry that everything on the web should be free, but the internet costs money. Backbones, servers, fiber optic cable, satellites, routers, software and maintenance, and people to run and manage them all cost money.
We all want people to register their irises. Most hybridizers want to know the parentage of cultivars before they use them in their breeding programs. A wonderful plant is not a candidate for awards unless it is registered (and introduced). If you name is not unique, someone may buy a different cultivar with the same name than yours. I understand that it costs to register an iris and that is a personal decision driven by your own priorities but that has little to do with irisregister.
John
On Dec 8, 2010, at 12:49 PM, JamieV. wrote:
It was not my intent to anger you, if I have.
As I see it, paying for the information is not the reason to collect it in the first place. Even with a 'nominal' fee. That one does not gain a financial profit is not the point. Why bother with a registry, if it is not freely available to all who may require it? This sound elitist to me. We are talking about a bisic reference that should be planned to collect registration information and make it abailable to any that may wish to access it. Registering a cultivar is a personal decision, but if one cannot research previous cultivars through such a registry, I see no reason to take part in it. And I am not alone in this thought. I have spent many years attempting to get Europeans to register their cultivars and many don't, as they feel this brings them no benefit. I tend to agree with them, especially when they then need to pay to access this information. Even then, there are many people who would like access to such information for research and they are certainly not interested in yet another expense. It simply becomes too expensive.
Although I hybridize Iris, Hemerocallis and a few other genera, I am not a large scale producer and see no reason to compete on that level. If I would like to do a name check, and then find out this will simply cost me money, I would tend to just use the name of choice and forget any controls or registration. After all, if I'm selling only a few dozen plants, I am certainly going to keep my costs low. Why should I care about some registry that hides itself from the general public and only opens its portals for those that wish to purchase rights to use it. I have to applaud the American Hemerocallis Society for keeping its registry open to all who may wish to peruse it. I feel this has increased the awareness of registrations and their purpose and the price of registration is still affordable for the hobbyist, as well as the big producer. Mistakes and duplications are much easier to identify and control. There are winners all around.
I get the feeling you either miss my point, or simply believe everything must have a price attached. Just because it doesn't cost, doesn't mean it is not of worth. I don't feel we need to pursue this further. We simply differ in our viewpoints. Fine, and you present a good arguement. I simply don't agree. Were you in the debate team in school?
Jamie Vande
Cologne
Germany
Am 08.12.2010 00:57, schrieb C*@aol.com:
Actually, the point to which I responded was your inaccurate statement that one had to be a member of AIS to obtain access to the Registration information. I see you now wish to make some other points.
I have already spoken to the inaccurate notion that any charges are a fund-raising activity for AIS. AIS is by definition not in it for the money and the rules of the International Registrations scheme are clear as to what is permitted, and what is not.
The policy of the AIS to charge a nominal fee to registrants for registrations is one at which many people also balk, yet you suggest that the normal and expected expenses for running the office should be passed on to them as fees, as distinct from spreading the costs around to all who wish to enjoy access to the information. How, then, is that consistent with making the information available to everyone on an equitable basis? I find I am much attracted to the notion of people helping pick up the bill for that part of the process which benefits them directly.
That said, I think it is only a matter of time before you will get your wish, free electronic information, all you want, if, in fact, AIS survives. But even then there will be a lot of work to be done, and there will be no shortage of people making sure their voice is loudly heard about how best someone else should do it.
-----Original Message-----
From: JamieV. j*@freenet.de
To: i*@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tue, Dec 7, 2010 6:17 pm
Subject: Re: [iris-species] 'Gerald Darby': Seeds, Descriptions, Nomenclature
Actually, you have reinforced my point. The registries should be a part of public domain. Especially, today, with the internet, there is no reason to purchase a printed document to research names. As much as I love books, this is a waste of paper, IMO. Any costs involved in making this information available should be part of the registration costs in general. The idea of a registry is not to simply record the registrations, but to make this information available. In the past, when printed document was the only method of record transferal available, I understand the need to charge for documents. Today, I find this is no longer a factor. This new tradition of making information a financial good to raise funds is simply not forward thinking. There is already much too much important research locked behind internet portals, that could make life a lot more interesting and future research more relevant. I see no good reason why one should pay a fee for imformation that is intended for the public domain. The ASI needs to re-think this policy.
Jamie Vande
Cologne
Germany
Am 07.12.2010 22:35, schrieb C*@aol.com: " I wish more of them were available to the general public, which the Iris registry largely isn't. One must be an AIS member to access most of it. --"
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You do not have to be an AIS member to register an Iris name, or to obtain information about registered names or Irises.
The whole purpose of the registration system is to make information available to everyone, everwhere-- the nursery industry, gardeners, hybridizers, and the general public-- for everyone's common benefit and education.
The AIS publishes the registrations for each year as a booklet called "Registrations nd Introductions", and publishes a ten year compilation each decade called a Check List, and these records are available for purchase by anyone. The R&Is are available in the spring of the subsequent year. The AIS Storefront sells Check Lists for each decade back to the 1939 edition, and the prices are very modest. They make excellent gifts for libraries.
The team of proofreaders is working on a new ten year compilation as we speak. At this time, under the agreement by which AIS serves as ICRA for Iris cultivars of the non-bulbous kinds, the Society is mandated to continue to publish the registrations information in hard copy. This publication serves notice to the interested world of the registration or introduction of a unique new cultivar.
There is also an electronic edition of the Check Lists on line, by which I mean the internet, which includes several decades, with more information being added all the time. So far as I am aware, this resources is available to anyone anywhere who pays the small annual fee. If I err in this statement, someone who uses it will, I am sure, correct me. I prefer to use the paper copies, myself.
The fees for either the hard copy, or the electronic copy, are charged not to make profit for AIS, but to offset the expenses of the registration activity, and publishing the information to the world. This is not some shakedown racket AIS has cooked up, it is an honor accorded to it by the knowledgeable members of the international plant community, and, like many such honors, it boils down to a tremendous amount work.
I don't like to refer folks to my own essays since I figure that is sort of tacky, but if someone is interested in this subject, and does not understand how AIS came to be registrar in the first place, they might want to look at the second story down on this page.
AMW
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Jamie V.
_______________________
Köln (Cologne)
Germany
Zone 8
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Jamie V.
_______________________
Köln (Cologne)
Germany
Zone 8
