Question

Explain why Xerox would choose to lease copiers in 1960 rather than sell them.

Answer 1

Reason for the following are:

COPYRIGHT ISSUES

Photocopying material that is subject to copyright (such as books or scientific papers) is subject to restrictions in most countries. This is common practice, as the cost of purchasing a book for the sake of one article or a few pages can be excessive. The principle of fair use (in the United States) or fair dealing (in other berne convention countries) allows copying for certain specified purposes.

In certain countries, such as canada, some universities pay royalties from each photocopy made at university copy machines and copy centers to copyright collective out of the revenues from the photocopying, and these collectives distribute resulting funds to various scholarly publishers. In the United States, photocopied compilations of articles, handouts, graphics, and other information called readers are often required texts for college classes. Either the instructor or the copy center is responsible for clearing copyright for every article in the reader, and attribution information must be clearly included in the reader.

COUNTERFEITING

To counter the risk of people using color copiers to create counterfeit copies of paper currency, some countries have incorporated anti-counterfeiting technologies into their currency. These include watermarks, microprinting, holograms, tiny security strips made of plastic (or other material), and ink that appears to change color as the currency is viewed at an angle. Some photocopying machines contain special software that can prevent copying currency that contains a special pattern.

Color copying also raises concerns regarding the copying and/or forging of other documents as well, such as driver's licenses and university degrees and transcripts. Some driver's licenses are made with embedded holograms so that a police officer can detect a fake copy. Some university and college transcripts have special anti-copying watermarks in the background. If a copy is made, the watermarks will become highly visible, which allows the recipient to determine that they have a copy rather than a genuine original transcript.

HEALTH ISSUES

Exposure to ultraviolet light is a concern. In the early days of photocopiers, the sensitizing light source was filtered green to match the optimal sensitivity of the photoconductive surface. This filtering conveniently removed all ultraviolet. Currently, a variety of light sources are used. As glass transmits ultraviolet rays between 325 and 400 nanometers, copiers with ultraviolet-producing lights such as fluorescent, tungsten halogen, or xenon flash, expose documents to some ultraviolet.

Concerns about emissions from photocopy machines have been expressed by some in connection with the use of selenium and emissions of ozone and fumes from heated toner.

FORENSIC IDENTIFICATION

Similar to forensic identification of typewriters, cpmputer printers and copiers can be traced by imperfections in their output. The mechanical tolerances of the toner and paper feed mechanisms cause banding, which can reveal information about the individual device's mechanical properties. It is often possible to identify the manufacturer and brand, and, in some cases, the individual printer can be identified from a set of known printers by comparing their outputs.

Some high-quality color printers and copiers steganographically embed their identification code into the printed pages, as fine and almost invisible patterns of yellow dots. Some sources identify xerox and canon as companies doing this. The electronic frontier foundation (EFF) has investigated this issue and documented how the Xerox DocuColor printer's serial number, as well as the date and time of the printout, are encoded in a repeating 8×15 dot pattern in the yellow channel. EFF is working to reverse engineer additional printers. The EFF also reports that the US government has asked these companies to implement such a tracking scheme, so that counterfeiting can be traced. The EFF has filed a freedom of information act request in order to look into privacy implications of this tracking.