MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You

Dylan Tomorrow · 10-08-2012, 09:27 AM

Copyright is a government-authorised monopoly, piracy is simply outlawed competition. Thus copyright legislation is just anti-competitive and leads to inferior products (overpriced, DRMed, wrong/missing/low-quality formats/media, delayed release dates, shitty DVD transfers, holding back soft-cover books for months etc.)

I am for the abolition of copyright law. If that won't happen, at least make it stop at a sensible time, say 5—10 years maximum after the death of the creator(s) and legalize noncommercial filesharing. Anything less just won't work.

I also like to buy digital music and ebooks, when they are priced right and the service is good. Thus I buy Kindle books (in spite of the DRM) and Amazon MP3s, particularly because of the Cloud backup, the ability to use the files on all devices I want to use them on, and the knowing that the creators get their fair share.

Unfortunately, there is no such service for movies yet. I live in Europe, so no Netflix or Amazon VOD. I use Linux, so iTunes does not work. Thus I am only left with DVDs and going to the cinema which I won't bother with unless I really (think I will) love a movie alot.

One of the websites where I have bought probably the most digital books and audio is a very small niche publisher who never used DRM and always offered cloud storage of my files bought there, all the way back to 2006. As far as I know, that publisher started out by selling their ebooks as unprotected .doc Microsoft Word files back in 1998 and it certainly worked for them ever since (They later moved on to PDF and now MOBI and EPUB). They did not even sell physical books till years later. Amazon has caught up to them with audio, but not with books yet. Goes to show how inflexible big corporations are.

10-08-2012, 09:27 AM	#100
Dylan Tomorrow Connoisseur Posts: 62 Karma: 640495 Join Date: Jul 2012 Location: Germany Device: Kindle Touch, Android smartphone w/ FBReader	Copyright is a government-authorised monopoly, piracy is simply outlawed competition. Thus copyright legislation is just anti-competitive and leads to inferior products (overpriced, DRMed, wrong/missing/low-quality formats/media, delayed release dates, shitty DVD transfers, holding back soft-cover books for months etc.) I am for the abolition of copyright law. If that won't happen, at least make it stop at a sensible time, say 5—10 years maximum after the death of the creator(s) and legalize noncommercial filesharing. Anything less just won't work. I also like to buy digital music and ebooks, when they are priced right and the service is good. Thus I buy Kindle books (in spite of the DRM) and Amazon MP3s, particularly because of the Cloud backup, the ability to use the files on all devices I want to use them on, and the knowing that the creators get their fair share. Unfortunately, there is no such service for movies yet. I live in Europe, so no Netflix or Amazon VOD. I use Linux, so iTunes does not work. Thus I am only left with DVDs and going to the cinema which I won't bother with unless I really (think I will) love a movie alot. One of the websites where I have bought probably the most digital books and audio is a very small niche publisher who never used DRM and always offered cloud storage of my files bought there, all the way back to 2006. As far as I know, that publisher started out by selling their ebooks as unprotected .doc Microsoft Word files back in 1998 and it certainly worked for them ever since (They later moved on to PDF and now MOBI and EPUB). They did not even sell physical books till years later. Amazon has caught up to them with audio, but not with books yet. Goes to show how inflexible big corporations are. Last edited by Dylan Tomorrow; 10-08-2012 at 09:46 AM.