eBooks and Piracy: A thought experiment

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eBooks and Piracy: A thought experiment

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1timspalding
dec 3, 2010, 10:20 am

How fast will ebooks take off, not against paper, but against piracy? If piracy takes off too fast, will publishers pull back on ebooks?

A thought experiment: In the real world the history CD and computer technology worked such that when CDs came out their DRM-less digital nature didn't immediately lead to copying. CDs were ubiquitous (and profitable) years before Napster and CD-ROM came on the scene and cut the market in half or more.

But what if things had been different? What if computers with CD-ROM drives, MP3 converters and connections to a robust internet were ubiquitous before CDs came out, such that on day one of CDs everything sold on a CD was instantly, globally available as a pirated product?

My guess is that labels would have pulled back on CDs.

So, will piracy pick up speed quickly or slowly? How will publishers react if they see that every five-point gain in ebook market, in addition to being largely cannibalized from the print market, takes another 2-3 percent away from the market entirely?

2_Zoe_
dec 3, 2010, 10:29 am

My initial thought was that people would generally prefer to get legal copies of books, if the price were reasonable. If publishers are going to crack down on libraries, though, I'd say that means war and I'd have no qualms about pirating.

I don't think publishers will cut back on ebooks, though. Despite what everyone says, I haven't found it entirely trivial to get pirated copies of the books I want, though admittedly I haven't yet tried very hard.

I'm even sure that piracy will cut into sales, though. I read ebooks if I consider the books disposable; if I found an author I liked and expected to read their books again, I would buy paper copies. It's possible that pirated ebooks will help people discover new authors and will actually lead to an increase in sales; I think it was Cory Doctorow who said that if someone isn't buying his book, it's more likely that the person hasn't heard of it than that they've read a free copy. So I could see this going either way.

3southernbooklady
dec 3, 2010, 11:00 am

If I were a publisher worried about piracy I'd contract out with the lawyers for Disney. That would nip any potential piracy issues right in the bud. In fact, I'm pretty sure the reason Pluto is no longer a planet is because Disney owns the copyright.

but all joking aside, I don't know what's going to replace the right of first sale in the ebook market, and it pains me that piracy isn't considered a big deal--is, in fact, almost considered a right by the consumer.

4_Zoe_
dec 3, 2010, 11:09 am

I don't consider piracy a right, but I do think first sale is an important. If publishers are going to stealthily take away our rights (note that booksellers still refer to ebook "purchasing" rather than "licensing"), they shouldn't expect consumers to play fair either.

I think the publishing industry was working fine. I buy the books I want most, I borrow others from the library, I can sell or give away books when I'm done with them. If publishers wanted to stick with the current model, I would continue to obtain all my books legally. But they've decided to change the rules to their advantage. They're cracking down on library borrowing and misleading us into thinking we've made "purchases" when in fact we don't own anything. Why should they expect us to grin and bear it? Consumers can change the rules for their own benefit too.

5VisibleGhost
dec 3, 2010, 11:42 am

Most readers have a price point that they feel comfortable with when it comes to ebooks. It's different with each reader. There is a price point when some readers will feel the publisher is gouging and justify their piracy with what they consider tit-for-tat righteousness, like those who steal bibles because they think it's a sin for others to sell and profit from them. Justified theft, in their minds.

The Ants ebook is priced at $112 for one popular ereader while new hardcover copies can be had for around $100. I can imagine certain readers that want an airplane copy might check around to see if pirated ebook copies exist. Publishers are doing research to find that price point for the majority of their readers. It's probably going to be a bit lower than the publishers like and a bit higher than readers like.

6urania1
Bewerkt: dec 3, 2010, 12:14 pm

Check out Small Beer Press and the Consortium it has just formed with indy presses of like-mind. This offshoot is called Weightless Books. You buy them; they are not dram-protected, are available in a variety of ebook formats, and sell at a reasonable price. Small Beer has been pretty innovative. It has a loyal core of customers who will purchase its books. Will people pirate these books? Yes. Will the pirating bite into their bottom line . . . probably not. They are already a small niche press. The niche buyers will buy. Under the current model, Small Beer is not going to sell any more books than they would have sold the conventional way. However, with Weightless Books, they can cut Amazon out of the loop altogether. Right now you can still buy their older ebooks on Amazon, but I noticed that the most recent books do not show up at Amazon. They've cut out the middle man. The pirates may spread the books, and may in consequence attract an additional market. Writer Cory Doctorow is another good example. All of his works get released for free under a Creative Commons License. His work is also available in a lot of bookstores from the Borders, Barnes and Nobel types to small local bookstores and published by the standard big presses. His stance? "Go ahead and take the book for free. I make little in royalties even though I have a goodly-sized hardback/paperback readership. I make most of my money from speaking engagements, so pirate, pass me along, let all your friends know. I am laughing all the way to the bank." It works for him.

7thorold
dec 4, 2010, 2:34 am

I imagine that, as in music, piracy will be a big issue in the area where the customers are young and computer-literate and the profits are high. It will hit the big publishers who sell popular books about wizards and vampires, and might make that a much less interesting market to get into, but it won't have much effect on niche publishers who struggle along on small profit margins.
The question really to ask is "can we get along without big publishers?" Obviously, that's a scary question if you're a publisher, but what about the rest of us? In an ebook world, what useful service does a Random House or Doubleday provide to the author and the reader?

8SimonW11
Bewerkt: dec 4, 2010, 10:06 am

Baen have been selling their Books in Multiple e formats for yeas now never protecting them and it works for them. I suspect there are few fiction markets more computer literate than SF fans.
what stops them well self respect, and peer pressure to name two. do you slip a a bar of chocolate into your pocket when you are wandering the aisles in supermarkets?

9majkia
dec 4, 2010, 7:41 am

Just this week I have looked for four ebooks. Either the books aren't available in my ebook format, or they are not available to ME. Other friends who read ebooks are in the same boat. Either not correct format, or not in ebook format at all, or region locked.

It is stupid and piracy will prevail so long as they refuse to sell books to the people who are willing to buy them. See http://lostbooksales.com/help-us/submit-a-lost-sale/

Not saying that will end piracy but they are forcing more people to use the option by their truculence and foolish thinking that region locking (especially where paperback or hardback versions are available) is sane.

10Phocion
dec 4, 2010, 2:55 pm

It boils down to inflated senses of entitlement and instant gratification. People from Western nations are spoiled; they want something and they want it now. How dare someone try to withhold something from them? Well, they'll learn a lesson about stepping on that sense of entitlement.

It's really more pathetic than anything else.

11lilithcat
Bewerkt: dec 4, 2010, 3:19 pm

> 2

My initial thought was that people would generally prefer to get legal copies of books, if the price were reasonable.

Really? You have more faith in people than I do. Considering the fact that so many people can't wrap their minds around the fact that it's illegal to download pirated software/music/films, and, when they are told that it is, just don't care, I see no reason to assume that they'll be more honest when it comes to books.

And your next sentence (If publishers are going to crack down on libraries, though, I'd say that means war and I'd have no qualms about pirating.) suggests that you also believe that it's okay to steal, if you decide the owner of the property somehow "deserves" it.

12_Zoe_
dec 4, 2010, 3:54 pm

>11 lilithcat: Sure, you can say I'm a bad person if you want. I do think it's more important to ensure that lower-income people have reasonable access to books than it is to protect corporate profits.

I'm a jay-walker, too.

13lkernagh
dec 4, 2010, 3:57 pm

The Ants ebook is priced at $112 for one popular ereader while new hardcover copies can be had for around $100.

I have an issue with ebooks costing more than the hardcover version, especially considering ebooks do not have the extra costs on the publisher's end that printed books have - no huge print runs in anticipation of consumer demand, no warehouse space to store said stockpile, no transportation fees related to distribution of said stockpile - I could go on an on.....

IMO, ebooks should be hugely discounted compared to their print versions. I am concerned that more and more books may start coming out in only ebook format and then publishers will be in a position to increase the cost/ and their profit margin, at the expense of consumers.

Digital locks are also a contentious issue and a concern IMO. Right now in Canada, the federal government is attempting, for the third time, to amend the Copyright Act The proposed changes to the legislation this time, which is currently undergoing a legislative committee review, would allow digital locks to trump allowed 'fair dealings' uses (Canada's version of 'fair use' in the US).

14lilithcat
dec 4, 2010, 4:06 pm

> 12

Basically, you are advocating every person's right to break any law if they feel that it's appropriate to do so. When someone breaks into your home and steals your valuables because they they desperately need the money, can I assume that you won't call the police?

How is your theft of a book "ensur{ing} that lower-income people have reasonable access to books", anyway? What you are doing is threatening the existence of publishers and depriving the authors of their royalties.

15_Zoe_
dec 4, 2010, 4:22 pm

>14 lilithcat: There's a difference between the letter and the spirit of the law. Technology is changing a lot of things, and the laws aren't always keeping up appropriately.

Do you think it's immoral to use a library? That's equally threatening the existence of publishers and depriving authors of their royalties, right?

I propose to continue reading books exactly as I do now. I'll buy the ones that I want to own, and I'll read others without purchasing them.

I think it's important for people who could afford to do without public libraries to say that they still matter. If you accept that the ability to borrow books isn't necessary, and proclaim that you're willing to pay the publishers for every book that you read, it will only hasten the demise of libraries. And other people will be the ones to suffer most for it.

16lilithcat
dec 4, 2010, 4:24 pm

We weren't talking about libraries. We were talking about piracy.

17_Zoe_
dec 4, 2010, 4:34 pm

>16 lilithcat: When were we not talking about libraries? I specifically said in #2 that I would support piracy if publishers cracked down on libraries, and that's the line you quoted in your #11.

18majkia
dec 4, 2010, 4:35 pm

It might do a bit of good to remember some fairly recent history.

When VCRs first came out, lawsuits were filed to block them, claiming that it was illegal to copy a movie off a network, even when you were copying it just to watch it yourself at a different time.

As with most things, big corporations want to protect their power. Eventually, I expect/hope, sanity will win out.

19barney67
dec 4, 2010, 4:46 pm

I'm in agreement with 10, 11, and 14.

20Thrin
dec 4, 2010, 6:11 pm

Just an aside re public libraries. Does the USA not have some sort of Public Lending Rights legislation whereby authors/publishers(?) are recompensed for their books that are held and lent by libraries?

21SimonW11
dec 4, 2010, 10:34 pm

20> no they do not.

22staffordcastle
dec 4, 2010, 10:55 pm

Thrin, do they have a thing like that in Australia?

23auntSteelbreaker
dec 5, 2010, 12:20 am

10

You are right but you are missing the main point. Consumers want thing right away but that is also the reason we consume, thus generate profit, thus make the economic system go round. So piracy is actually just the logical consequence of consumerism. Middle aged people generally just consume, to young people consumption is often not a choice but a necessity. It's the way the world and life works, and guess whose commercialism taught them... the modern economic system doesn't "want" to be controlled and whether you like it or not, piracy is an outcome and a part of the system. If you try to block it out of the system you cripple the system, if you try to let your business flow through and around it and find new ways to make profit the system will keep going smoothly. It is really up to the same people who use advertising to brainwash kids into consumers as early as possible.

Speaking from a sociological point of view, that is. Since moralizing seems even more off topic I'm gonna leave that to other people.

24Phocion
dec 5, 2010, 12:34 am

23: I'm just as much a capitalist, albeit anti-laissez-faire, as the next person, and I learned a little thing called "restraint." But, then again, honest people do finish last, so perhaps they know something I don't.

25Thrin
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2010, 2:48 am

>22 staffordcastle: staffordcastle

Yes there's something like that here in Australia. I've no idea how it works though. Probably devlishly complicated! I'll try to find some info and post a link.
(Maybe someone else with some experience of the Public Lending Rights here can explain it meantime.)

Edited to add link. (It looks as if this applies only to Australian authors and publishers.)

http://www.arts.gov.au/books/lending_rights

26auntSteelbreaker
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2010, 1:58 am

24 It's more about statistics than your personal life style. People of today don't lack the concept of restraint, it's just that they are more hurried and eager to consume than before which is the driving force behind both present economic growth AND piracy. The technology and culture of late modernity are redefining the concept of goods, which in turn means we will have to redefine the concept of theft. (At least if the object is to keep up with the development so far.)

If you like to believe that your restraint from pirating is a sign of your honesty you just go ahead (you're obviously not alone) but to get back to the topic: if publishers share the view that this is simply a question of being good and bad, about traditional laws being applied or not they are most likely not going to develop good and consumer-friendly deals. Or to rephrase it, if the issue at hand is about innovation and new markets the industry should be able to find new digital paths to the future. If it is all about morality and the preservation of previous ways to do business it will probably make them hesitate. On the other hand, if that hesitation will hand the initiative to smaller publishers they might actually innovate even more.

27SimonW11
dec 5, 2010, 5:40 am

Do we all agree that the restraint of trade in ebooks inevitably leads to copyright infringement?

28Musereader
dec 5, 2010, 6:57 am

I don't have an ereader nevertheless I find it grates that there are geographical restrictions on ebooks. I expect that that would be something to do with the author's contract with the publisher. I find it very frustrating when I can't get hold of a DVD in the right region and I usually find some other way of seeing it, sometimes that involves piracy.

Does anybody know how the rights in the music industry work? because they seem to have a worldwide distribution thing going. Heck I have 4 Australian and a Japanese 'expanded' editon of some of the CDs I have, which were bought from UK retailers and I'm just wondering how that works? Maybe publishers should have a go at trying to model that?

29Nicole_VanK
dec 5, 2010, 7:42 am

> 17: You mean that on your side of the pond libraries don't have to pay publishers (and authors)? Interesting.

30DevourerOfBooks
dec 5, 2010, 9:10 am

>29 Nicole_VanK:
In the US the author and publisher just get paid when the library buys the book, no royalties per check out or anything like that.

31majkia
dec 5, 2010, 9:17 am

I've seen an article or two that publishers consider the idea of libraries in the US loaning ebooks as piracy because of #30.

32Nicole_VanK
dec 5, 2010, 9:27 am

> 30: Fascinating. They do here - on a system much like record companies and musicians getting paid by radio stations.

33_Zoe_
dec 5, 2010, 9:43 am

I've actually seen a library promoting piracy, which seemed counterproductive. They posted a link to an article about which ereader was best, where the conclusion was Kindle. When I pointed out that the Kindle couldn't deal with DRM epub books, they said that people could just break the DRM and then use Calibre to convert to a Kindle format.

34AlanPoulter
dec 5, 2010, 10:34 am


>33 _Zoe_: The Kindle azw format uses DRM. Removing DRM can be seen as a sensible step for a purchaser of an ebook to take, since it maximises the portability and longevity of digital book files for that purchaser. As a long term purchaser of ebooks, I have only bought ebooks in non-DRM'd formats. Since I do not engage in file sharing or piracy, I see DRM as an unwelcome impediment that runs roughshod over my rights as a consumer to own and use as I wish products that I legitimately purchase.

35_Zoe_
dec 5, 2010, 10:37 am

>34 AlanPoulter: It's one thing if you're purchasing the book, but what if it's a library book DRMed to expire after a few weeks?

Yes, libraries could encourage people to remove the DRM to maximize the portability and longevity of the books. And shortly thereafter publishers would stop providing ebooks to libraries altogether. So it seems like a short-sighted move on the part of the libraries.

36AlanPoulter
dec 5, 2010, 3:47 pm

>35 _Zoe_: I would hope that librarians could expound the pros and cons of ebooks to the public. With the current proliferation of readers and formats somebody needs to.

My guess that ebooks will completely bypass libraries as a distribution point and that DRM will have an important role in combating piracy as an enabler of a Spotify-like ebook service, where *all* books are available, either for free but with advertising, or for a flat fee subscription. With everything on your virtual shelf, why bother copying?

37timspalding
dec 5, 2010, 4:42 pm

Publishers don't regard ebooks in libraries as piracy because publishers have complete control over it. Ebooks are licensed goods, so you can only legally do with them what the publisher and seller say. This is why libraries can't legally lend Kindle or Nook ebooks—although have indeed played with it.

38PaulFoley
dec 5, 2010, 9:22 pm

do you slip a a bar of chocolate into your pocket when you are wandering the aisles in supermarkets?

Better question: if you could slip that bar of chocolate into your pocket without reducing the number of bars of chocolate remaining on the shelf, would anyone in their right mind consider it stealing? Duh!

Really? You have more faith in people than I do. Considering the fact that so many people can't wrap their minds around the fact that it's illegal to download pirated software/music/films, and, when they are told that it is, just don't care.

I don't know if that's true, but if so it gives me some hope for humanity. People shouldn't care about or respect immoral laws. Most do, though.

39_Zoe_
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2010, 9:27 pm

do you slip a a bar of chocolate into your pocket when you are wandering the aisles in supermarkets?

Better question: if you could slip that bar of chocolate into your pocket without reducing the number of bars of chocolate remaining on the shelf, would anyone in their right mind consider it stealing? Duh!


Taking ebooks does potentially reduce the number of books on the shelf, though; authors won't write more if no one is paying for their work.

40Phocion
dec 5, 2010, 9:38 pm

Heh. Immoral laws. I'm sure real pirates thought of themselves as self-righteousness, too.

41PaulFoley
dec 5, 2010, 9:45 pm

Real pirates stole property and murdered people. Who cares what they thought of themselves: they were (are) criminals. Copyright "pirates" are neither stealing anything nor murdering anyone, nor committing any crime against real, objective law; only breaching stupid and immoral legislation. German citizens who hid Jews from the Nazis were "criminals", too.

42Phocion
dec 5, 2010, 9:49 pm

Yes, you actually are stealing something. And invoking Godwin's Law already, are we?

43PaulFoley
dec 5, 2010, 9:51 pm

What do you think is being stolen?

44SimonW11
dec 5, 2010, 9:52 pm

41> I disagree with what you are saying but i will defend to the death your right to be an idiot.

45Phocion
dec 5, 2010, 9:53 pm

When you download ebooks that were neither paid for nor handed out for free, that's called stealing. Most people learn this by age three.

46PaulFoley
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2010, 9:58 pm

44: go on, then :)

45: If you don't know what "stealing" is, it's no wonder you're confused.

Start here: http://www.mises.org/books/against.pdf.

47SimonW11
Bewerkt: dec 5, 2010, 10:23 pm

pause a moment and consider. Harlan Ellison

On April 24, 2000 Ellison sued Stephen Robertson for posting four stories to the newsgroup "alt.binaries.e-book" without authorization. The other defendants were AOL and RemarQ, internet service providers whose only involvement was running servers hosting the newsgroup. Ellison claimed that they had failed to stop the alleged copyright infringement in accordance with the "Notice and Takedown Procedure" outlined in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Robertson and RemarQ first settled with Ellison, then with AOL in June 2004 under conditions that were not made public. Since those settlements Ellison has initiated legal action and/or takedown notices against more than 240 people who have distributed his writings on the Internet, saying, "If you put your hand in my pocket, you’ll drag back six inches of bloody stump"

to quote Wikipedia

Ellison's work is available for sale in electronic format without DRM. you want to buy it he will sell it. Deny him the right to being paid for his work. and it is another matter. Slaveowners thieves and copyright violators. these are the people who take anothers work without paying.
you do not sell it

48PaulFoley
dec 5, 2010, 10:23 pm

47: I could well imagine a slave-owning farmer in the slave-era US saying the exact same thing about someone helping his slaves escape. Does that make him right?

49Phocion
dec 5, 2010, 10:37 pm

47: Copyright pirates seem to be under the unfortunate delusion that authors write out of the goodness of their hearts and not with the intention of at least making a little cash. The sense of entitlement is quite amazing. I can only imagine they really do leave their doors opened for thieves, because actually having ownership of the fruit of one's labors doesn't quite stick it to The Man.

50WalkerMedia
dec 5, 2010, 10:41 pm

I find it disturbing that anyone, much less a libertarian, would advocate depriving someone of the fruits of his labor just because it is intellectual rather than physical. This amounts to seizing the fruits of intellectual labor for society, demanding slavery of scholars and inventors in the name of the common good. First occupancy is a thin basis for ownership...it amounts to a toddler's "I seized it first" mentality and fully only applies to a frontier scenario when abundance of physical resources quickly turns to scarcity. We are long past those days. The real frontiers now are not in mining and seizing physical resources, but in creating new intellectual products and services out of nothing but their own mental resources. Ah, but there it is...mental resources are also scarce. If they were infinitely abundant, you could merely find them floating in the frontier waiting to be occupied.

Do you pay for air to breathe? Of course not, because it's so abundant as to have little value. You breathe it in, and then let it out when you are done using it. If intellectual creations were created effortlessly, then they would be free to all just like the air we breathe. To some, creation is virtually effortless and they find sustenance through other means; for them creation is rewarding in itself, and they give their creations to the world for free. For others, perhaps the mental material they work with isn't particularly stunning, of common abundance. Most opinions on the internet are of this sort, of little value to others and exchanged for free. Some work ostensibly donated (such as in open-source efforts) is actually an investment toward one's own career or social development; although money isn't exchanged payment is received in other currency. But some opinions and some creations are built from scarcer stuff and/or stronger effort, and those creations are of such rarity that others demand them and are willing to exchange the fruits of their own labor for access to them. There are fixed costs (due to opportunity costs as well as prototype production/distribution) that must be paid regardless of a small digital incremental cost (per copy.) To assert that there is no theft of music or software or literature or scientific knowledge is to essentially to assert such products are worthless, but if they have no value, why does everyone covet them so?

51SimonW11
dec 5, 2010, 10:41 pm

Dit bericht wordt niet meer getoond omdat het door verschillende gebruikers is aangemerkt als misbruik. (Tonen)
hey guys I just want you all to know that PaulFoley has the right to be an idiot. anyone who disagrees answers to me.

52Nicole_VanK
dec 6, 2010, 5:48 am

Copyright "pirates" are neither stealing anything nor murdering anyone

Actually many forms of copyright piracy are big business. Trafic in illegal DVD's, fake Rolex watches, etc. is mostly in the hands of organized crime, and those people do kill to protect their interests.

53reading_fox
dec 6, 2010, 6:31 am

#9 is vital in my mind. Publishers have a narrow indow of opportunity - already closing fast - to train customers how to legalyl obtain ebooks, and compensate authors. But in order to instill some kind of expectation that readers will pay for ebooks, they have to make those ebooks easily available. I will gladly pay authors for their efforts. But so far this frequently takes more effort than finding a 'free' copy. This is not how to do it. The music industry doesn't suffer from vast piracy problems, because the legal options are simple and cheap. Ebook publishers and authors need to learn this lesson quickly. Once piracy become established, it will be impossible to stuff it back into the bottle.

Although be very wary of industry claims about the scale of the problem. A lot of people who download free books would never do so if there was any charge for them - hence these are not 'lost sales' because they would never have been sales.

54andyl
dec 6, 2010, 10:26 am

The problem is that "pirate" and "theft" are emotive words. Both are criminal acts. Breach of copyright is most usually dealt with under civil law.

Also it is difficult because every non-authorised 'copy' on a person's machine doesn't mean that a sale has been left. This has been true for computer game software in the 80s, music in the 80s, and music now. Also there has been some in the industry that estimate each book has on average 4 readers in its lifetime.

Finally when we examine some of the types of users I think we see some interesting usage patterns.

The hoarder. This is the kind of person who just wants a big collection of stuff. They do not even read/consume most of the stuff they have. Interestingly it seems that reasonably priced, non-DRM'd, ebooks are less well represented on the sharing sites.

The try before you buyer. If they like the author they often buy the same or future books. Often the 'try before you buyer' is very price-conscious and their behaviour is linked to risk of wasting their money.

The person who wants to read a book which no publisher is currently willing to sell him/her.

In general I believe that the number of people who want to "rip-off" authors and publishers and just get the books they want for free is a reasonably low number. I think it is a low enough number that with reasonably priced, non-DRM'd ebooks publishers can and will survive and do well.

55AlanPoulter
dec 11, 2010, 5:16 am


>54 andyl: The person who wants to read a book which no publisher is currently willing to sell him/her.

This is me with back issues of magazines and short stories and books published by pricey small presses. Surely e-publishing means that everything can be legally available to purchase, at a reasonable price?

56AlanPoulter
Bewerkt: dec 11, 2010, 6:58 am

>54 andyl: "In general I believe that the number of people who want to "rip-off" authors and publishers and just get the books they want for free is a reasonably low number. I think it is a low enough number that with reasonably priced, non-DRM'd ebooks publishers can and will survive and do well."

Absolutely agree. Whereas DRM can allow publishers make available for free the first chapter of every book and the first page of every short story/article as hooks to get readers/customers or allow customers to rent for a low monthly fee access to all books in a fiction genre/subject area in a publisher's catalogue plus with an allowance of say 5 books a month outside their chosen genre/subject area.

57SimonW11
dec 11, 2010, 6:44 pm



"Surely e-publishing means that everything can be legally available to purchase, at a reasonable price?"

Economies of scale are still relevant in the ebook world. writing, editing and publicity costs are still pretty constant we might be in a Print on demand age but we are not on in a publish on demand age. There is fall in costs and a fall in perceived value. the market is still unstable.

58Musereader
Bewerkt: dec 11, 2010, 7:43 pm

But It's a very good way back catalogue that has bought-out already (or even nearly) to be avalible since you can pay for the conversion, upload and computer storage costs with a very resonable fee. One of the most common reasons for me to not be able to get something is out of print and not avalible second hand.

eta Plus putting something that is OOP but not bought-out yet online means that I can pay the publisher for it instead of buying the secondhand copy which doesn't help in buying out.

59timspalding
dec 12, 2010, 7:09 pm

Real pirates stole property and murdered people. Who cares what they thought of themselves: they were (are) criminals. Copyright "pirates" are neither stealing anything nor murdering anyone, nor committing any crime against real, objective law; only breaching stupid and immoral legislation.

Book stealing has always been about the intellectual property, not the atoms involved. If you steal thousands of copies of a book and sell them you reduce the market for the book and take money out of the pocket of the author. The same applies if the atoms never leave the warehouse. The author has sold something. You are stealing it.

The notion that "stealing" requires physical items to be removed is very appealing to digital thieves. In reality both the law and common parlance apply "stealing" to a much wider set of actions. You can, for example, "steal" an identity. By your screwy logic we should all scream "THAT'S NOT THEFT!" whenever the phrase "identity theft" is used. (And then we should compare identity thiefs to people who shelter Jews.)

I could well imagine a slave-owning farmer in the slave-era US saying the exact same thing about someone helping his slaves escape. Does that make him right?

German citizens who hid Jews from the Nazis were "criminals", too.

There are two problems with this sort of rhetoric. First, I think you're on the wrong side of the moral question. But more importantly you are taking highly consequent moral actions and comparing them to absurdly trivial acts. Neither stealing music or bravely copying that Lada Gaga CD are going to make you Oscar Schindler.

60southernbooklady
dec 12, 2010, 7:24 pm

I'd be curious to know how many people who think they are justified in drm-stripping of ebooks (or digital music files) are willing to pay for other kinds of digital content--say, games. Or professional software like Adobe's Creative Suite.

61timspalding
dec 12, 2010, 8:12 pm

In my experience people feel more justified the longer the practice has been in place. So, for example, a close friend of mine recently started pirating music, but he says he'll never pirate a book. Movies are in an in-between state, also delayed by the relative size of the files, in both transfer and storage.

I saw a statistic that stand-alone video games are pirated 10/1 now. But games have a safe harbor--by moving core pieces of the product into the cloud, from which they are doled out as needed. Obviously any multi-player game has the same dynamic. Nobody can really "pirate" World of Warcraft. A core piece of software runs on servers, and you need to pay a monthly fee to play it. This isn't a path books can follow.

Professional software is an interesting case because the companies have historically encouraged a certainly amount of piracy. Programs like Photoshop and Dreamweaver tend to get learned by art and design students, who simply don't have the money to plunk down for everything they have to learn. To prevent actual piracy, however, you can now get "student" versions of all these products for very cheap prices. The only difference is the license.

What makes it work is the fact that employers are in an exposed position. Laws against software piracy hit companies hard and trade organizations like the "Business Software Alliance" will pay up to $200,000 for employees to rat out their bosses. The situation has largely driven pirated software from US business. Pirated software is still ubiquitous in many second- and third-world countries.

62TineOliver
Bewerkt: dec 12, 2010, 8:16 pm

60: For me, drm stripping for ebooks, videos and in previous times music (most music is now drm free) is about format shift. If I buy a kindle book, I don't want to read it either on a kindle or using the kindle software for my device (because there are much better software alternatives). But at the moment (until google books gets going in my country), Amazon has the greatest availablility of the copyrighted works I'm likely to want (most stuff I read is public domain). I have no quams about paying a (reasonable) price for an ebook, film or mp3, but why should I be locked to the sellers device? (which echos back to the early days of mp3 downloading).

Games are a different story - there is (sometimes) a significant amount of coding to port a game from say, PS3 to Wii, I'm happy to pay for that.

Surely e-publishing means that everything can be legally available to purchase, at a reasonable price?

Try finding some of the older, "classic" but not public domain works. It's been a few months, but last time I looked for Hemingway (I can't remember which of his works it was), the Amazon version wasn't available for download in my country, and the only version that I could find was US$14.99. Although I did have to pay for shipping, I bought (in hardcover) an anthology of four of his works for the same price.

Can I just say, I hate the word 'pirate' for individual copyright infringement - I'm fine with theft (although from a legal perspective, this is not technically accurate) as a general expression, as there are similar motives and consequences, but piracy? Really?

63timspalding
dec 12, 2010, 8:23 pm

I think SBL meant more than just DRM stripping. I have no strong moral problem with DRM stripping, if you're doing it on something you bought. Getting your Kindle book to work on your Nook? Whatever. That's not the same thing as piracy.

64southernbooklady
dec 12, 2010, 8:29 pm

I did mean more than DRM stripping. I think I really meant, DRM stripping and then sending copies to all and sundry for free. Anything that circumvents the recipient having to PAY for the file.

I had it drummed into me by my dad since I was a kid that with digital files you were allowed to make a copy ("for back up") and that was it. You absolutely were not to make copies of things for friends.

This was back in the days of our first computer, in the mid 80s, when the desk drawer was full of those giant floppy disks, all carefully labeled "filename.bak" ;-)

65AlanPoulter
dec 13, 2010, 2:33 am


>57 SimonW11:

'Back catalogue' items since word processing became ubiquitous (1990 on?) should be easy to make available for sale/rent in e-book form, surely? I agree that "the market is still unstable" but I am not seeing any new ventures from publishers floating new strategies for selling/renting e-books.

66AlanPoulter
dec 13, 2010, 2:43 am


>63 timspalding:

IANAL but I believe removing DRM itself is illegal. What the book industry needs is an equivalent to MP3 for legal downloads.

67andyl
dec 13, 2010, 4:04 am

#60

Your question is wrong in its assumptions.

I feel I am justified in stripping DRM off any content. I am also willing to pay for that (and other) content. I am more willing to pay for un-DRM'd content. I strip the DRM off for my convenience not so that I can distribute the content.

68southernbooklady
dec 13, 2010, 8:40 am

>67 andyl:

Not wrong within the context of this conversation, where we have been discussing people pirating digital content.

69anglemark
dec 13, 2010, 10:16 am

Well, of course I will strip off any crap the paranoid seller has put on ths stuff they sell, after I have bought it. When it's mine, it's mine to use as I please. Why would that mean that I want to distribute the file to all and sundry?

To try to reply to the question: I hate DRM but I respect the seller's requirement that I do not give away copies of his product for free.

70southernbooklady
dec 13, 2010, 10:33 am

Legally, a digital download is not "yours" the way a physical book or cd is. You haven't bought it, you have bought the right to access it under certain specific conditions.

How "fair" or "moral" that is, is of course the subject to great debate. But it's what you signed on for when you clicked "I agree to the terms of this purchase" before you downloaded the whatever you downloaded.

71anglemark
dec 13, 2010, 11:12 am

I have bought it. I don't care what ownership rights the seller thinks he has.

72southernbooklady
Bewerkt: dec 13, 2010, 11:30 am

>71 anglemark: I have bought it. I don't care what ownership rights the seller thinks he has.

Actually, the word you want there is "knows," -- what ownership rights the seller knows he has.

I hate the concept of DRM because it interferes with the single best way that books make their way into the reading public. That generous impulse of excitement that makes us want to share what we are reading and talk to people about the books we love. (The "you've got to read this" effect).

Anglemark's position brings the conversation back to Tim's original thought experiment, where there is a disconnect between what the seller thinks they are selling, and what the buyer thinks they are buying. DRM seems a poor way to bridge that disconnect, but what else is there?

73lilithcat
dec 13, 2010, 11:33 am

> 71

No, you have not. You haven't bought it anymore than signing a lease means you've bought an apartment.

74reading_fox
dec 13, 2010, 11:39 am

#72 - well no, it's not 'knows' yet. Because so far both the individuals and the companies have been very careful not to allow such a case to get to court. There is NO decision about whether you've bought an ebook or rented license to it. There has been a ruling that many/most End User License Agreements aren't worth the pixels they're displayed with.

#66 -In the US, but not yet everywhere else. One of the joys of ebooks is the complete absence of global standards. This leads to some extra complications that should be totally unnecessary in a digital world. Did music/MP3s ever have geo-restrictions?

75andyl
dec 13, 2010, 12:34 pm

#74

Circumventing DRM is probably also illegal in the UK - although it hasn't been tested in court.

However the presence of DRM may fall foul of UK law too. UK law forbids (or it did the last time I checked) DRM technologies from restricting legal uses (under fair dealing), but there was a very cumbersome complaints procedure. This hasn't been tested either AFAICR.

BTW - UK law also doesn't allow you to rip your CDs to mp3 to listen on your mp3 player.

76majkia
dec 13, 2010, 12:38 pm

BTW - UK law also doesn't allow you to rip your CDs to mp3 to listen on your mp3 player.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

77anglemark
dec 13, 2010, 1:23 pm

>72 southernbooklady:, 73: I know what the seller and many in the legal profession think. There is no need to inform me of the legal situation. I wanted to give southernbooklady the information that yes, I consider myself entitled to strip purchased products of their DRM crippleware, but no, I do not distribute digital content to other people against the copyright holder's wishes. I thought it might provide her with a data point.

If I was wrong, just disregard my message.

78Musereader
dec 13, 2010, 1:36 pm

#75, not that i ever heard.

79andyl
dec 13, 2010, 1:56 pm

#78
Which bit musereader? There were 3 claims in my post at #75.

80Musereader
Bewerkt: dec 13, 2010, 2:20 pm

Sorry, the CD to Mp3 being illegal.

Yeah I looked it up now, it really is, how did I miss that?

But apparently EU lawa says otherwise so any test case could be taken to the european courts.

It's stupid, I lkie buying the CDs for the book and being able to play it in a CD player, (when I have one, which i don't right now) I always buy cds and have only bought 2 digital Albums becuse it was that cheap and i didn't want them all that much

81PaulFoley
dec 13, 2010, 7:16 pm

If you steal thousands of copies of a book and sell them you reduce the market for the book and take money out of the pocket of the author.

If McDonalds opens a new restaurant in a town which only has a Pizza Hutt, Pizza Hutt will lose some business to McDonalds. They're taking money out the pocket of the Pizza Hutt owners(!) Is that stealing?

(Would it make a difference if it were Dominos instead of McDonalds? I.e., someone providing a similar, or even identical, product?)

But more importantly you are taking highly consequent moral actions and comparing them to absurdly trivial acts.

Yes...my problem is the double standard people have where they'll allow and even stridently support immoral legislation as long as it's only about "trivial" stuff (though a minute ago you were denying that "piracy" is trivial), but switch sides when it's something "important", even though the underlying morality is the same. If people are supposed to obey legislated law because "it's the law", with no regard to right and wrong, then you should support the slave-owner getting his runaway slaves back and the Jew-hider being shot: the fact that you don't happen to like the outcome (I assume) isn't an argument. If not, then who gets to make new laws, and under what circumstances can someone make a new law that infringes the prior rights of other people?

82southernbooklady
Bewerkt: dec 13, 2010, 7:29 pm

>81 PaulFoley: If McDonalds opens a new restaurant in a town which only has a Pizza Hutt, Pizza Hutt will lose some business to McDonalds. They're taking money out the pocket of the Pizza Hutt owners(!) Is that stealing?

It is if the burgers McDonald's is selling are made with the food stored in the Pizza Hut freezer

If people are supposed to obey legislated law because "it's the law", with no regard to right and wrong, then you should support the slave-owner getting his runaway slaves back and the Jew-hider being shot

I think these kinds of analogies are specious and don't do the arguer any favors.

Edited: I see you are responding to post 59

83PaulFoley
dec 13, 2010, 7:48 pm

It is if the burgers McDonald's is selling are made with the food stored in the Pizza Hut freezer.

That's truly a specious analogy.

I think these kinds of analogies are specious and don't do the arguer any favors.

There was no analogy in the text you quoted.

84Nicole_VanK
dec 13, 2010, 7:51 pm

Not that I mind, I like silly, but aren't we getting a bit too silly here?

85timspalding
dec 13, 2010, 8:19 pm

If McDonalds opens a new restaurant in a town which only has a Pizza Hutt, Pizza Hutt will lose some business to McDonalds. They're taking money out the pocket of the Pizza Hutt owners(!) Is that stealing?

No, because nobody has any right to stop others from opening a restaurant. A more bogus counter example couldn't be imagined, although I expect you to try.

A better example would be if I knew you had a lottery winner, so I made three duplicate lottery cards and submitted them along with yours, causing your money to be cut by 75%. I "stole" nothing from you, but I am still a thief. The person who pirates a book I wrote does nothing less than that.

Or take if I just locked you up for 20 years. I'd have stolen 20 years of your life from you, even if I didn't take a single "thing" from you.

It's remarkably how dunderheadedly "physical" the arguments for digital immorality can get.

86PaulFoley
dec 13, 2010, 8:50 pm

A more bogus counter example couldn't be imagined, although I expect you to try.

I don't think you understand what I was demonstrating with this example: you said "piracy" was clearly "theft" because it involves "taking money out of the pocket of ..." (the author. Assuming, arguendo, that it does any such thing). I provided an example of "taking money out of the pocket of ..." that I knew you'd agree wasn't theft. I.e., you don't even believe the definition you were using to make your case...and I'm the dunderhead? :) If you can't even decide what you mean by "theft", how can I figure it out well enough to be swayed by you?

87TheoClarke
dec 14, 2010, 2:57 pm

If, without your consent, I sell something that you own (even it is part of a larger something that you own) I am stealing from you because I take your property with no intention of returning it. You may argue that property can only be tangible but that would mean that the only valid commercial transactions are the sales of goods and I cannot accept that.

88PaulFoley
dec 14, 2010, 6:20 pm

Well, that's the question, isn't it?! Do you own it? And what exactly is it that you own? Nobody said property can only be tangible...or that "valid commercial transactions" have to involve property, either. (Did you read Against Intellectual Property?)

89JGKC
Bewerkt: dec 14, 2010, 7:37 pm

@ 59

How can you argue in favour of laws designed to prevent "absurdly trivial acts?"

Also, why should anyone care that you think PaulFoley is on wrong side the moral question? There are probably just as many people who think the opposite. Even still, wouldn't it be better if you actually had some kind of reasoning behind your statements?

90JGKC
dec 14, 2010, 7:51 pm

@ 70, 71

The real point to be made is that most people don't read legal disclaimers. And such disclaimers generally don't hold up very well, in a legal sense, when they go against what the average person could reasonable expect.

So actually, paying for an ebook really does mean that the book has been bought.

91JGKC
Bewerkt: dec 14, 2010, 8:14 pm

@ 85

In your example, the lottery winner won X amount of money and, by fraud, you took some of that guaranteed money.

Do you know what the key word there is? It's "guaranteed." There is no question that money has been lost. But that's not the case when it comes to piracy and most people who are against piracy refuse to acknowledge that somewhat large problem in their reasoning.

So, leaving aside questions of morality, how much money, if any, is lost when a book is pirated? It's a complex and important question yet I'd wager that most people haven't given it any real thought (andyl's post in 54 is a good starting point).

92inkdrinker
dec 14, 2010, 8:19 pm

While I do feel that authors, artists, musicians, and such do have rights and should be compensated for the use of their intellectual property, I also think that copy right laws have become absurd.

I have seen people mention the concept of public domain in this thread and I'm sure most of us know that almost anything created before 1923 is in the public domain. However, I'm not so sure how many people realize American law makes it nearly impossible for anything created after that date to ever fall into public domain again.

congress has changed the laws so that...

All limits on copy right are basically meaningless as copy right can now be extended again and again with almost no effort.

And

Anything (once it is created) is automatically protected by copy right.

These 2 changes alone are astonishing and will have crippling effects on creativity.

93Phocion
dec 14, 2010, 8:23 pm

Crippling effects on creativity? How? Because someone cannot be guaranteed a paycheck on their royalties for the rest of their life? I'll admit their descendants can be ridiculous with it, but I don't see how that stifles creativity.

95bestem
dec 15, 2010, 2:59 am

When I buy CDs, I copy the music files onto my computer as mp3s. If I'm using my computer, or mp3 player, I'll use the mp3 files to listen to my music. If I'm using a CD player or DVD player or something, I'll use the disc. I don't give the mp3s or the discs to anyone else (although, I might let one of the people in my household borrow a cd to listen to, assuming they'll give it back). When I buy software anywhere but on Steam, I find ISOs for the software online (all software purchases in the past few years have all had ISOs I can download from the publishers website). If something happens to the disc, I've got an ISO I can substitute for the disc, and I still use the original product key that came with the software I legally bought. Is it piracy to copy the data from my software or music onto my own computer for backup purposes? If I can find a better copy of the exact same thing as a torrent (ie, someone ripped the same mp3 I have at a better bitrate) is it piracy for me to download the torrent of a piece of music that I legally own?

If I buy a paperback or hardcover book, firsthand let's say, so I definitely paid the publisher and the author for the book in question, is it piracy if I find an ebook somewhere and download it? My paperbacks stand up to a lot of wear and tear, but I've got 3 to 5 of them in my backpack at any given time, and over time they do wear out more than I'd like. My 15 pound textbooks that I need to have with me in class, and also need at home for homework every day (sometimes 2 or 3 of the heavy textbooks) and I am constantly carting them back and forth right now, would be easier if I had e-versions at home I could reference without having the entire heavy books there. In my cooking classes, it might even be easier to have an e-book there, then one of my classmates wouldn't spill hot sugar on the side of the book, effectively gluing together 100 pages (not that melted sugar would be great for an e-reader either, but it might be covered under a warranty, which they don't sell on hundred dollar cooking textbooks). It's the same thing as the software or the music, a 'backup' of only the books that I already own legitimately, but without paying another 10 to 20 dollars to get the ebook version.

By the same token, if I bought an ebook but it was in a version incompatible with my e-reader, and found a torrent of the same book in a compatible version online, would it be piracy if I downloaded it?

I admit, it's dicier. With software I can buy the software from a retailer online, download it, burn a disc, and it's just like having gone to Target and bought the software. I might be paying 10 cents for the CD or DVD, but I'm saving that much and more on gas money. With books, though, there's already multiple formats. If I own a hardcover book, I can't just go to Barnes and Noble and pick the paperback for the same book off the shelf and say "I already own one version of this, but I need a backup so the hardcover I got signed doesn't get ruined," and expect to walk out of there without paying anything. If I buy a 300 page e-book, it could easily cost 100's of dollars in ink to print out. Office Depot or Staples could print it for closer to 30, but it'd be larger than a hardcover, even, less sturdy...oh, and they won't print it because of copyright laws.

It's interesting to think about, and I don't know what the legalities of it are, or if there even are legalities of it now. But if it is legal, I'd definitely like 'backups' of my books without paying 10 dollars or so a piece to buy e-book versions.

96southernbooklady
Bewerkt: dec 15, 2010, 8:27 am

>95 bestem:I'd definitely like 'backups' of my books without paying 10 dollars or so a piece to buy e-book versions.

You can spend some time in front of a copy machine.

It becomes piracy, bestem, when the transaction circumvents the author and publisher's right of first sale. A printed book is, in effect, a product without a backup system. In your scenario, if you made a copy for yourself on a copier, it would still be a copyright violation but an unenforceable one and not high on the publisher's hit list since the re-saleability of such a copy would be almost nil.

But what about my friend Lev Raphael, whose book My Germany he discovered one day had been scanned in its entirety and placed for download on Scribd.com? By the time he discovered it, the file had been downloaded more than 500 times. That was 500 cases of piracy, because the person who put it up there had no right to do so, and the people who downloaded it didn't have to pay for it. And now, presumably won't buy the book.

That's money directly out of the pocket of the author and the publisher.

So it really isn't about your intentions, benign or not. it's about controlling the distribution stream. Right now, the only feasible way to do that is to "tag" a product with DRM and assume that any removal of it represents a potential abuse. There are other possibilities, I suppose. Downloads could be "analyzed" by software for legitimacy. Digital files could be keyed not to work without a registration key only available from the supplier. Etc. Any number of possibilities.

Edited for typo

97andyl
dec 15, 2010, 8:43 am

#96

Do you know if those 500 people had any interest in the book in the first place? Your friend hasn't necessarily lost 500 sales. If you read the newsgroups where such people hang out you will discover people who have tens of thousands of books which they never read. They have absolutely no interest in them as books. It is just a case of having large numbers about which they can boast.

All your suggestions are technically unworkable. DRM, downloads and registration keys can all be fairly easily worked round technically. However as you have seen with your friend - people also scan books. From what I have heard most of the ripped off stuff is scanned.

98reading_fox
dec 15, 2010, 8:51 am

#96 " it really isn't about your intentions, benign or not"

It IS all about your intentions and whether they are benign. If the publishers/authors can trust that they are benign then they don't need DRM et al. On the otherhand they can immidiately assume that all their customers are also potentional criminals just waiting to steal everything that isn't bolted down, and act accordingly. Unfortunetly, much like police tactics at a demo can provoke violence, so can this have the side effects of influencing more people to take what they can get for free.

If your friend had released the book as a DRMfree ebook without georestrictions at a 'sensible' price to start with, they may well have found that no-one bothered to pirate it.

99southernbooklady
dec 15, 2010, 9:27 am

>96 southernbooklady: Do you know if those 500 people had any interest in the book in the first place? Your friend hasn't necessarily lost 500 sales.

That's really beside the point. I don't buy original photography or art, but I have an interest in the photographs being shown down at my favorite coffee shop. They are gorgeous. They're also too expensive for me. Now I could go in, take a picture of the picture, so to speak. I could, since I know the photographer, make a copy of the original image file from his computer the next time I'm visiting him. I could download the version he has for sale online and wipe off the watermark. All of which would be piracy.

It's not that he didn't lose a sale because I wouldn't have paid for the picture anyway. It's simply that if I don't pay for it, I don't get to have it.

>98 reading_fox:
My friend did not release his book as an ebook at all, DRM or otherwise. (well, I take that back, I think he just made it available in Kindle format) What was made available on Scribd though was a pdf that someone had created by scanning every page of their copy of the printed book. EVEN the front matter with the copyright info. Blatant, egregious copyright violation. Scribd should never have allowed it to post, and anyone downloading it should have known better.

100anglemark
dec 15, 2010, 9:33 am

#96: "That's money directly out of the pocket of the author and the publisher."

I doubt you believe that yourself. Do you? Anyway, according to the research I've seen is that the most likely scenario is that if 500 people have downloaded a book illegally, the author has lost one or two sales because of that, and that the increased attention the book has received because it's been distributed much more than it otherwise would have been will have resulted in dozens of extra purchases. And many who download something digitally go on to buy the physical book.

So while I agree that distributing material against the permission of the copyright holder is wrong, the copyright holder in the case you describe is far more likely to have benefited from it financially than lost any money.

101majkia
dec 15, 2010, 9:51 am

until and unless 'the powers that be' find sense, there will be increasing amounts of piracy. I used to be able to find ebooks easily. Now suddenly a LOT of ebooks I want either are only in kindle format, or are region locked or are for other reasons not available.

They appear to NOT WANT to make money.

102andyl
dec 15, 2010, 9:52 am

#99

You can't have it both ways. You can't say "That's money directly out of the pocket of the author" and then claim that wasn't your point.

You have just switched from an economic argument to a moral argument in one hour. I am not interested in the moral arguments at this juncture. This topic is trying to second-guess the effect that copyright violation (as I said earlier piracy is far too emotive a term) will have on the publishing industry. Publishers will make decisions based on solid economic arguments - if it is financially viable for them to continue to publish books they will do so. That some people will read the content without paying, either morally or immorally, (either through libraries, reading it in bookshops, stealing it from bookshops or by copyright infringement) is really of secondary concern.

103beatlemoon
dec 15, 2010, 10:28 am

>101 majkia:

I think this hits the nail on the head in terms of what is driving book piracy/copyright violation.

It seems to me that consumers want what they want, in the format they want it in. If the rights holder doesn't make it available for purchase, they will find it elsewhere, for free. If the consumer wishes to juggle the book across their devices and find DRM in their way, they will strip it off.

I think if consumers found it easy to obtain what they wanted legally, and actually had some ownership over the item (i.e. able to share their e-book with two or three friends), they would be more than happy to pay up, and piracy would abate.

104Musereader
dec 15, 2010, 11:59 am

#95 I have on at least 4 occasions had trouble copying my CDs onto the computer, each time the digital copy was fuzzy and unlistenable so each time I downloaded .Rar files of the Albums because I want to listen to them on my computer and Ipod. i don't want to pay for what I already own.

Also downloaded media of whatever type doesn't mean lost sales, if i want something enough to pay money for it, i *will* pay for it eg downlading an album before release, and then buying the cd on the day of its release. I also read 2 different Mercedes Lackey books for free online (legal though, they were Bean Free library) and have since bought both of them. If I download something or borrow it, it's frequently because I would never buy it in the first place, I wish to 'try before I buy' so to speak and if I like enough I will be motivated to buy it and future releases. I have bought many books though sample chapters - both legal and Illegal - and also found (a lot less frequently) that books I was considering buying are not to my taste. But making trailers and tasters avalible in the US but not to me will frequntly put me off buying.

105timspalding
dec 15, 2010, 12:32 pm

>103 beatlemoon:

This argument looked really good five or ten years ago. I believed it. Maybe people were pirating music because it wasn't available for sale. So all the music went online. Then it was that it wasn't available without DRM. So Apple and others removed the DRM. None of this has made a bit of difference. iTunes has done little to lift lost recorded-music sales in the US, currently lower than half of their peak, lower than at any recorded numbers and on a sharp downward angle. In many foreign markets the situation is far worse. I believe the current defense is that if the labels had put all their music online earlier none of this would have happened.

It's clear to me that no evidence will ever convince these people that the cause is human greed unconstrained by fear of penalties. Cognitive dissonance is stubborn psychological effect.

106Suncat
dec 15, 2010, 12:42 pm

>105 timspalding:

I'm not saying you're wrong, Tim. But I wonder at why then the book publishers can't seem to learn from the music industry's lessons. This thread alone has had many mentions of people outside the US who don't have the eBooks available through legal channels, when the hardcopy books are.

I'm just curious as to your opinion here. What do you think would be the best move(s) for publishers now, to satisfy the customers, the authors and themselves?

107inkdrinker
dec 15, 2010, 12:44 pm

"Crippling effects on creativity? How? Because someone cannot be guaranteed a paycheck on their royalties for the rest of their life? I'll admit their descendants can be ridiculous with it, but I don't see how that stifles creativity."

I think you have misunderstood what I wrote or I wasn't clear about it

I do believe that the artists have right to their creation. I don't even have a problem with some of their decedents getting some royalties. However, the way it stands now the decedents can renew the copy right til the end of time.

Walt Disney is a great example. Walt practically built his success by blatantly using the ideas of others and he never paid a dime for the rights to use those stories... because all the stories he used were in the public domain... But the Disney family and company have been at the forefront of getting congress to change the public domain laws. As the laws stand now the Disneys will be able to keep Micky Mouse and all other Walt creations from ever entering public domain. So, no one in the future will be able to do exactly what Walt did. He mined our rich cultural heritage to create movies which are loved as new works of art all around the world.

I'm probably doing a hack job of explaining what I want to say.

If you want to get a much clearer picture you can read...

Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity by Lawrence Lessig

It and several other of his books are available for free via his website at...

http://lessig.org/

108southernbooklady
dec 15, 2010, 1:20 pm

>106 Suncat: What do you think would be the best move(s) for publishers now, to satisfy the customers, the authors and themselves?

Speaking as a consumer, I'd like to see something along the lines of LT's "work" concept. So that when you buy a piece of creative content we've been calling a book, you could choose which formats/languages/etc you wanted to have it in like an a la carte menu. Presumably, the more you added, the more expensive your final bill, like adding more and more features to your laptop when you order it.

109bestem
dec 15, 2010, 2:35 pm

>96 southernbooklady: It becomes piracy, bestem, when the transaction circumvents the author and publisher's right of first sale.

In my examples, they didn't, though. I went to Borders and bought your friends book. Then I thought about the abuse it would be getting as I read it over and over, and saw it on Scribd, and downloaded it. He got paid for the book that I bought, so I did not circumvent a thing by downloading it from another source.

In your scenario, if you made a copy for yourself on a copier, it would still be a copyright violation but an unenforceable one and not high on the publisher's hit list since the re-saleability of such a copy would be almost nil.

Until I toss the copyright page, from the stack of papers I copied. Then I can go to the copy center counter and get them to make copies or scan it. I work in a copy center, and if I don't see a copyright, I can't refuse to make copies of something, or scan it, even if I know it should have a copyright. If it does have a copyright, though, I can't even cut off the spine and rebind it, without making any copies.

I find it interesting that you suggest I do something that is clearly spelled out as illegal in the front of a book, while saying that if I do something that the legality of it isn't set yet, I'm stealing from the author and publisher.

110bestem
Bewerkt: dec 15, 2010, 2:48 pm

>108 southernbooklady: So that when you buy a piece of creative content we've been calling a book, you could choose which formats/languages/etc you wanted to have it in like an a la carte menu

I think something like that would be great, actually. When I'm at Borders buying a book, they offer the e-book version of it to me for $1 if I'm buying the hardcover copy, or $2 if I'm buying the paperback version. If I'm only buying the e-book, it's normal price. I don't want to spend $10 on each e-book I get that I also have the paper version of, but I wouldn't mind spending an extra dollar or two to be able to get it.

The major booksellers and publishers all get together and make something like Steam, but for e-books. When you purchase the e-book you get a product key that you can go in and put in your account. Then you've got a copy of the e-book, forever, in whatever digital format you want. But only accessible when you're logged in to your account. If you want to read the e-book on another device, you log out of it in on the original device, and in to it on the second device. That way the device doesn't have to be constantly online. Add on something like the Zune had where you can share your books with friends accounts, and they can read them whenever they want for a month or so, before it's no longer in their account.

I doubt publishers and booksellers will do something like that, though.

111southernbooklady
dec 15, 2010, 3:13 pm

>109 bestem: you suggest I do something that is clearly spelled out as illegal in the front of a book,

Just to clarify, I was citing a hypothetical course of action, not advocating it. As must be clear from the way I recounted how this actually happened to a friend of mine, I don't "suggest" anyone do such a thing at all. I deplore it.

112JGKC
dec 15, 2010, 3:17 pm

@ 105

Have you even considered that there are reasons other than piracy behind the drop in music sales?

Music sales, at their peak, were artificially inflated by new formats. Records were replaced by cassettes which, in turn, were replaced by CDs and many music fans 'upgraded' their collections and bought the same music in multiple formats. Which leads to the first problem for the music industry - there is no upgrade from the CD. No upgrade means no ability to sell the same music over again and that equals a decrease in sales.

Another (self-inflicted) problem for the music industry is that the focus of music has been shifted from the album to the single. Consumers still buy music, it's just that they don't buy the whole album now that there's no need to.

Then there's things like inflated concert costs, supporting style over substance, and, yes, an unwillingness to listen to what consumers want.

So yeah, the real blame for the current state of the music industry rests, unsurprisingly, upon the shoulders of the music industry.

But the good news is that the book industry is a very different beast.

First of all, to generalize a little, the book industry is more interested in selling new content than repackaging old content. Secondly, moving into the digital domain shouldn't result in the same drop in revenue in books as in music. Simply put, even if it were possible, who would pick and choose chapters rather than buying the whole book? I'll grant that this might be a problem when it comes to anthologies but I tend to think that it won't be if the selections are made carefully and purposely. And finally, to echo what has already been said by many on this thread, give consumers what they want and expect - namely releasing works simultaneously worldwide (a global economy requires no less), in all available ebook formats, and at prices that are equal to or less than the physical editions.

113southernbooklady
dec 15, 2010, 3:24 pm

>112 JGKC: namely releasing works simultaneously worldwide (a global economy requires no less)

We may have global accessibility, but we don't have a global economy quite yet. Otherwise I'd be able to get a copy of the Ashes to Ashes DVD that would play on my American machine.

I blame the lawyers.

114reading_fox
Bewerkt: dec 16, 2010, 5:52 am

#105 " iTunes has done little to lift lost recorded-music sales in the US, currently lower than half of their peak, lower than at any recorded numbers and on a sharp downward angle"

As said above - yes sales are down. But assuming that they are down because of pricary isn't necessarily anywhere near true.

ETA - BBC STory on current numbers. Estimated at 1% of UK population have at some stage pirated content. Which is trivial. Or that 3/4 of music downloaded is illegal. Which isn't. Either way, legal sales are UP!

#99 "My friend did not release his book as an ebook at all," THAT was my point. People wanted an ecopy. As there wasn't one they made one. IF your friend had released the ebook, there would have been much less incentive to create the pirate version. Someone went to a lot of trouble to scan in each page. Why bother if there's a legal version already cheaply available?

115southernbooklady
dec 16, 2010, 9:00 am

>114 reading_fox: Why bother if there's a legal version already cheaply available?

Because you don't want to have to pay for it?

116anglemark
Bewerkt: dec 16, 2010, 10:58 am

For many, illegal downloading is much more about convenience than about pricing. A year ago, I downloaded the latest season of a BBC TV series I follow from a torrent tracker because I didn't want to wait for half a year until it was out on DVD. When it came out on DVD, I bought the box. I think that's pretty common behaviour, actually.

117reading_fox
dec 16, 2010, 10:34 am

#115- once it is available online sure. Then you'll get lots of people downloading it for free, just because its there. But going to the effort of scanning in each page, or hosting the file, or hacking the software - that can be a lot of effort for something that is readily available anyway, seldom worth the bother.

118jjwilson61
dec 16, 2010, 10:35 am

Dit bericht is door zijn auteur gewist.

119southernbooklady
jan 8, 2011, 10:33 am

From Publisher's Weekly's twitter today:

E-Piracy: The High Cost of Stolen Books

Lost book sales can't be quantified, making it impossible to calculate the full cost of e-piracy, but the sheer number of illegal copies available for download gives an idea of the scope of the problem. At one file-sharing website, users have uploaded 1,830 copies of three books by a popular young adult author. Just one of those copies has had 4,208 downloads. On the same site, 7,130 copies of the late Michael Crichton's novels have been uploaded, and the first 10 copies have been downloaded 15,174 times.

Even if only a fraction of the downloads from this and dozens of other file-sharing websites represent actual lost sales, they still translate into a staggering amount of royalties that have been stolen from authors.

120AlanPoulter
Bewerkt: jan 8, 2011, 1:01 pm

All these figures prove is that there are lots of files on the Internet and that these files are moved around a lot, not that files for books are read by anyone, or that any such reading results in lost sales. Surely the thousands of physical copies of Crichton's novels in charity shops and second-hand bookshops are the greatest stealer of sales of new novels? The best way to kill interest in book files floating about on the Internet (and cut interest in the second-hand stuff) is to make every book available as a DRM'd ebook, freely available via a single source, which is funded by ads, reader subscriptions, the value of data gathered on readers and individual sales of non-DRM'd ebooks which are ereader-device-agnostic, at prices comparable to print books.

121brightcopy
jan 8, 2011, 2:27 pm

What I'd love is for every printed book to come with a key for the downloadable version. There are some hurdles, but it would add far more value to buying a new copy (rather than used, which has to be a desirable thing for publishers). I still want the physical copy of the book, so I'd be all for this. It might even increase my purchases of new books.

122timspalding
jan 8, 2011, 2:54 pm

Yes. I don't see why this hasn't happened. It's pretty common in vinyl, I believe.

123bestem
Bewerkt: jan 8, 2011, 9:58 pm

What I'd love is for every printed book to come with a key for the downloadable version. There are some hurdles, but it would add far more value to buying a new copy (rather than used, which has to be a desirable thing for publishers). I still want the physical copy of the book, so I'd be all for this. It might even increase my purchases of new books.

I second that, wholeheartedly. In fact, it'd definitely increase my purchase of new books over used books, because of the value added factor. Right now, a 2 dollar used book that isn't falling apart yet, isn't any less attractive than the same book new, but if the new one had a digital download, it would be much much more attractive. I would even pay a little extra (like a dollar) to add on a digital version of a physical book that I'm purchasing. Or pay for the Borders or Barnes & Noble member programs if paying for them meant I could get digital versions of the physical books I buy from them, for free.

124SimonW11
jan 9, 2011, 12:57 am

As to why it has not happened I suspect there is a desire to profit from the costs of converting books to ebook formats, Bundling makes this non transparent and adds a significant up front cost for the systems to be put in place.

125kymethra
Bewerkt: jan 9, 2011, 5:52 am

I'd love to see digital copies packed with print eventually, I think it's a long time before it's going to happen though.

Reasons it hasn't happened? Mostly logistics and cost, I would suggest. What format would the download be in? Where would you download it from? How do you apply security to it? And so on.

126brightcopy
jan 9, 2011, 11:48 am

125> What I was thinking is that in the least desirable form (to me), when you bought it from Amazon you'd get the Kindle version, from B&N you'd get the Nook version, etc. As such, it'd just piggyback off that existing infrastructure. Sellers that don't have a reader/online store of their own could pair with one of those other sellers (yes, this has has downsides but they'd be forced into it to compete for those sales they would otherwise lose). But this should be highly desirable to the big booksellers as it'd give an actual differentiator ("Why should I buy this book from Amazon instead of Overstock.com? Oh, because I can get the ebook on my Kindle for 'free'? Sounds good.") They'd get more return on their investment in things like the Kindle and Nook, since it'd help drive sales of ALL books, rather than just ebooks.

Of course, MY ideal would be that they'd distribute a non-DRM version available in a variety of formats through their existing infrastructure. But, alas, that is unlikely.

127drwho
jan 13, 2011, 2:33 pm

62: The number of works in the public domain is beginning to decrease. Recent changes to copyright law made sure of that.

128staffordcastle
feb 11, 2011, 6:17 pm

Interesting statement from Neil Gaiman on piracy and books on the web:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qkyt1wXNlI&feature=player_embedded

129inkdrinker
feb 11, 2011, 8:18 pm

Nice Gaiman bit. Thanks.

130timspalding
Bewerkt: feb 12, 2011, 1:00 am

Neil Gaiman is one of the few authors who don't need the money. If 10% buy his books, he's still rich. So long as paper books still sell, he'll have that 10% and more. However, I am switching my attitude on his property. If he's willing to throw other, less popular authors under the bus, I'm not sure why anyone should care about his rights.

131SimonW11
feb 12, 2011, 3:03 am

130> I have no idea where you got the idea that he was " willing to throw other, less popular authors under the bus," What I heard was closer to "Piracy of my work does not bother me because I perceive it as increasing my sales."

132Musereader
feb 12, 2011, 7:30 am

#130 He's only restating the Baen free library ethos, I've bought books I've read there and further books by those authors.

133edwinbcn
feb 15, 2011, 9:13 pm

>125 kymethra: In my opinion ebooks should be sold as CDs, where people get something "physical" into their hands, which constitutes and "object" which can be owned, collected, presented (as a gift), sold (second-hand).

eBook sales will suffer from the fact that people will not give books for X-mas or birthdays, because people like to *give* something. Also, in a (paper) bookstore or CD shop, people will hoard a number of items into a basket before checkout, and put them on shelves, before reading /listening eventually. I do not see this happening with ebook.

Delivering / selling ebooks as files will lower the threshold for people to consider e.g. forwarding that email to a friend as piracy. If ebooks came on a different medium and not easily copied, that would make a big difference, just as with CDs.

Another thing is "reasonable" price. In China, where piracy is rampant, selling CDs and ebooks only happens if the price is so low that piracy seems too much trouble. The strategy of Hanvon (ereader) is to make a profit on the device, while their ebook store sells books at a price 90%-price reduced. For the latter, I do not think this is the way to go with book sales.

134brightcopy
feb 16, 2011, 12:44 am

133> The problem with most of your arguments is that they've already been disproven by what's happened with CDs and digital music in the last decade.

Also, China is notorious for not only copying content, but also copying entire devices.

135timspalding
Bewerkt: feb 16, 2011, 3:43 am

> that they've already been disproven by what's happened with CDs and digital music in the last decade

So, I don't think edwin's ideas will work. But I think your point is entirely wrong. The move from CDs to digital music, besides reducing the size of the market disastrously overall, has been especially hard on gifts. For whatever reason it's less satisfying to give someone an email from iTunes than a CD under the tree. I suspect the reason is partially about the physicality and partially about the fact that you aren't giving them the music, still less cluing them into new music by giving it to them, but merely giving them legal title to music they could easily both discover and get without you. Every time I try to give a friend music he tells me to tell him the name of the band, and he checks them out on YouTube (for free) before deciding whether to pirate the music (for free). I used to buy a lot of CDs as gifts. Not anymore. Statistically speaking, I am the trend here.

I think you're similarly wrong if you think the ease of piracy involved in a file hasn't lowered the threshold for people to consider it. Indeed, I'm not sure you meant your comment to refer to that but, if you did, I'm quite amazed.

136brightcopy
feb 16, 2011, 10:53 am

135> But I think your point is entirely wrong.

I hope not, as I believe we're essentially saying the same thing. :D

The argument is:

"If selling music as physical items worked for CDs, it will work for ebooks."

The problem I have is that I believe the premise to be faulty. Don't you?

I think you're similarly wrong if you think the ease of piracy involved in a file hasn't lowered the threshold for people to consider it. Indeed, I'm not sure you meant your comment to refer to that but, if you did, I'm quite amazed.

Not sure if this is directed at me or edwinbcn. I'll await clarification before responding.

137timspalding
Bewerkt: feb 16, 2011, 2:52 pm

I don't think we can "go back" to selling a physical version of digital items. CDs (and DVDs) were a sort of training wheels to a normal, internet-based digital distribution.

That said, digital distribution is not a normal "switch" of content-delivery methods. It comes with side effects--namely a spiral of lower prices, attempts at copying restrictions, increased piracy and declining ownership rights. I think it is a serious question whether people who sell content should embrace it, repudiate it or try to slow its adoption. It's commonly said that labels acted stupidly by trying to hold back digital distribution for a few years, suing their customers and so forth. As PR, this may be true. If the point of the business is to make money, they acted rationally. Digital distribution is a one-way elevator—the size of the market has shrunk and continues to shrink precipitously, making mincemeat of the notion that "new business models" would emerge to cover anything but a tiny fraction of the decline. Publishers and authors are now climbing on the sled at the top of the hill, and expecting the sled to turn into a helicopter.

138brightcopy
Bewerkt: feb 16, 2011, 2:58 pm

So.... no clarification on who that bit I quoted in 136 was directed at, then?

139brightcopy
Bewerkt: feb 16, 2011, 2:58 pm

And to follow up on your 137 (which doesn't seem to follow what I was talking about in 136, but is a separate point), I don't disagree. It's a bit of apples and oranges when compared to the music business, as CDs were already digital. A paper book isn't digital. So CDs were digital distributions to begin with, just on physical media. As such, the music industry never had a chance to actually stall digital distribution. Publishers, on the other hand, DO have the ability to block digital distribution of their content if they actually want to. Well, at least more of an ability. They're are people that actually scan and OCR books and distribute them to pirates. Against that, there is very little effective defense.

I think I'm often misunderstood as being one of the "new models will emerge" or "with greater exposure you'll get more customers and that will make up for piracy", etc. people. I'm not. I honestly know claim to be some sort of oracle who knows exactly whats going to happen. I often get misunderstood as being these people because I point out faulty reasoning, such as in 133. People assume if I'm not onboard with them, I must be against them. Mainly I'm just against making statements without actual supporting evidence that is applicable to the argument being made.

140timspalding
feb 16, 2011, 4:07 pm

>139 brightcopy:

Sorry. I was trying to restate what I think, rather than how you're wrong. I'm not sure what YOU meant by "The problem with most of your arguments is that they've already been disproven by what's happened with CDs and digital music in the last decade" but I thought you were referring to arguments like "people will not give books for X-mas or birthdays, because people like to *give* something." But I may have misunderstood, you may have misunderstood or—most likely—we both misunderstood, mis-expressed and misunderestimated! :)

141brightcopy
Bewerkt: feb 16, 2011, 4:33 pm

140> But I may have misunderstood, you may have misunderstood or—most likely—we both misunderstood, mis-expressed and misunderestimated! :)

The internet is composed of 20% misunderstanding, 10% trolling and and 69.999% LOLcats. There's not much room in there for useful discussions.

It would have helped if I had actually said what I meant, though. Basically, I'm just saying what you were - "who gives CDs as presents these days?" For whatever reasons - be it piracy or preference of actual paid sites like iTMS, the fact that a large portion of earlier cd sales were people re-buying old music they already had, the rise of other things to spend your time on other than obsessing over music (videogames, web surfing), etc., a CD just isn't the gift it used to be. When you get most people under the age of 60 a CD, what you're really getting them is a chore at best (ripping it so they can play it on their mp3 device).

So I just find the argument that uses reasoning such as "If ebooks came on a different medium and not easily copied, that would make a big difference, just as with CDs." to be problematic to begin with (no offense, edwin! - I just disagree with you). Maybe it would help to sell ebooks as only physical goods, not online. I honestly don't know that. I just don't think you can draw that conclusion from the premise of how well it works for CDs right now.

Now, on the tangent of giving people intangible gifts - I hate gift cards. Nothing is as soulless a gift as the gift card. Everyone says "it's the thought that counts", but most gift cards are the very essence of thoughtlessness. Why not just give cash? For most cases, it's the same thing. It means you simply could not think of something to buy a person and so you punted. This is especially true for things like gift cards for GROCERY stores, or WALMART for crying out loud.

And yet... I am not in the majority in the gift-giving groups I'm in. So many of them are perfectly happy with both giving and receiving gift cards. I honestly don't understand it.

142staffordcastle
feb 16, 2011, 4:40 pm

I don't mind getting gift cards; frankly, I'm hard to buy for. A gift card let's me choose for myself, and that's a gift too. I have friends who are newlyweds with a fixer-upper house; for them, a Home Depot gift card is a big help. For cousins who live far away, I don't know what they already have or what they need; a gift card gets around those problems.

143brightcopy
Bewerkt: feb 16, 2011, 4:50 pm

142> Yeah, I just honestly don't understand it. If I give you a $20 gift card to (wherever) and you give me a $20 gift card to Home Depot, can you remind me again what we've just done other than spend gas driving to a store to buy a piece of plastic that will require another trip to actually buy something with it?

Part of this may be that in my family, we have much less of an expectation of gifts. It's not mandatory. I have bought presents for my mother and brothers only a few Christmases in the last decade. If I saw something where I thought "wow, he would LOVE that!", then I got it. But I don't go out and just force myself to spend money on them if there's nothing I can think of they'd like. For us, Christmas is only mandatory when it comes to getting gifts for the children. For everyone else, just spending time together is the main point.

Or maybe it's just EOC (Early Onset Curmudgeonliness).