You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You

[HarryT]

I suggest you ask Kindle CS; they're the ones who can give you a definitive answer. All that anyone else can do is speculate.

[Piper_]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

Copyright deals with the right to reproduce a work, rather than the right to lend or resell a work. The issue is that we are now dealing with technologies that creates a copy of a work in the process of transferring it. Unfortunately, this has allowed rights holders to interpret copyright in ways that would have been considered as inexcusable in the past.

The problem isn't so much copyright as how rights holders are abusing copyright to sway the old balance into their (almost exclusive) favour.

Spot on. :thumbup:

Thank you. I wish this and a couple of elf's posts could be stickied for easy linkage.

TBH, it ruffles my feathers to be told I should be ashamed for sending, e.g., my mother a copy of an ebook (but it's cool for a pbook) because of such technicalities.

We are ethical people, and several times have bought "our own" copies when the books have been good enough to be keepers, same for library or kindle lending books we really liked.

Add to that, the related argument that it's wrong to do A because it opens the door for you to do B is also annoying. Heck, if it were, then borrowing Amazon lendable books would be unethical, since you could strip and keep them.

For that matter, if we're going to be technical, we shouldn't even buy Amazon books, because we could strip them, which is against the licence, and we could pass them around to thousands, intentionally or unintentionally.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I suggest you ask Kindle CS; they're the ones who can give you a definitive answer. All that anyone else can do is speculate.

I may have to do just that--I always thought that I was against "piracy" and would never consider uploading a book/song/movie to a torrent site, or even emailing one to a friend. I do, however, share my Kindle account with my mother and cousin--we all buy books and read them on our various devices that are all tied to my account. According to what you are saying, though, this is considered piracy, and is against Amazon's terms of service. (Even though Amazon appears to condone it when you look at the guidance on the "Manage Your Kindle" page.) I wonder if our resident Ninja Lawyer will chime in with his thoughts?

Shari

[Piper_]

Originally Posted by shalym

I may have to do just that--I always thought that I was against "piracy" and would never consider uploading a book/song/movie to a torrent site, or even emailing one to a friend.

Same here, except I've emailed a few to a friend. None of the ebooks I've bought have been given to more than a single person other than the one it was purchased for. The only time my books come close to using all of the 6 simultaneous copies we're allowed, is when I have one going on all my devices.

Stealing from someone is something I couldn't do and,sleep well at night. I've driven back to stores to pay for things that got through (usually toddlers with candy, once a pair of sunglasses I walked out with on my head. Drove 25 miles back, while on a long road trip to return those. )

It just bugs me to see things get stretched so far that honest people are lumped in with pirates. I don't think it's fair or will get good results for sellers, just as overly suspicious or strict parenting tends to backfire.

Originally Posted by shalym

I do, however, share my Kindle account with my mother and cousin--we all buy books and read them on our various devices that are all tied to my account. According to what you are saying, though, this is considered piracy, and is against Amazon's terms of service. (Even though Amazon appears to condone it when you look at the guidance on the "Manage Your Kindle" page.) I wonder if our resident Ninja Lawyer will chime in with his thoughts?

Shari

I'd guess retailers like Amazon see it rationally enough to think it's a good way to keep sharing at a healthy limit, as in between people you are close enough to to let into your account.* They might not be able to publicly condone it, for fear of the publishers, who apparently want a purchase for every person.

*I started out using that method with my mother, sis, friend, but after awhile, i just used email for simplicity.

[Jozawun]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

I think you are misunderstanding the network, we don't have to give anything to anyone, we simply have to allow access to everything by everyone.

Does an open server constitute piracy? If it does I do not advocate the practice.

Good save, digger.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Those aren't the ones driving the ebook revolution. As much money as they have, they don't have *time* to read as fast as books are selling. The 1% of the population with 43% of the wealth are not going to read 43% of the ebooks, even though the marketing is aimed at them.

The ones driving the switch are the former buyers of thrift-store romances and used-book-shop SF novels, who are willing to pay $2 per book to buy and read 10 books a week--if they can find 10 new books a week to read. Those people, who are students and housewives than any other categories, have mostly been invisible to publishers' marketing campaigns; their voracious reading habits were considered irrelevant because they didn't feed into the royalty stream.

They're also the ones supporting the darknet filesharing, because they come from a background that assumes that resources of any sort are expected to be shared. When they're done with a book, they hand it along to someone else who hasn't read it. Anything else feels like sending used books into a paper shredder in order to force future readers to buy a new copy.

Ending the commercial threat of piracy will take acknowledging those readers and finding a way to convince them not to distribute their files widely. That's probably going to require a way to legitimately distribute to family and close friends, because right now, there's no legal difference between "email an ebook to your aunt in another state" and "upload the ebook to megafileshare and PM the link to your aunt... and if she shares the link around, well, so what?"

I agree that the 1% of the people with the most wealth do not drive ebook sales.

I was trying to refer to the segment of the population whose income is in the range of $70,000 - $200,000 a year. This could include, most professionals, many tradespeople, successful salespeople, many service professionals such as servers, bartenders and taxi drivers, union truck drivers, and busdrivers among many others. As well as their dependents. MAybe students and non-working housewives out number them, maybe not.

I have never seen a plumber with an ebook reader that I am aware of, but I am sure they exist. I have seen many travelling people such as consultants, salespeople, and even truckdrivers pull out an ebook reader at breakfast.

Still maybe you are correct and the biggest market is students and housewives. Perhaps the are as a group, spending megabucks on ebooks. I would think that distractions such as studying and keeping keeping control of the children might slow them down a bit but who knows for sure.

Helen

[Gardenman]

I wonder how many of the downloads that are called Piracy and lost sales are from people who have already bought the paper book. They have payed the author by their purchase. Now want the book in ebook format. They might be using the pirate site download as their way to format shift.

I also wonder how many are from people who would buy the book if it was not
geo restricted?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by shalym

I may have to do just that--I always thought that I was against "piracy" and would never consider uploading a book/song/movie to a torrent site, or even emailing one to a friend. I do, however, share my Kindle account with my mother and cousin--we all buy books and read them on our various devices that are all tied to my account. According to what you are saying, though, this is considered piracy, and is against Amazon's terms of service. (Even though Amazon appears to condone it when you look at the guidance on the "Manage Your Kindle" page.) I wonder if our resident Ninja Lawyer will chime in with his thoughts?

Shari

I believe that what Amazon are intending is that sharing books within a household is fine, but wider-spread distribution is not permitted. But that's just my opinion; you need to ask CS.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by shalym

I do, however, share my Kindle account with my mother and cousin--we all buy books and read them on our various devices that are all tied to my account. According to what you are saying, though, this is considered piracy, and is against Amazon's terms of service. (Even though Amazon appears to condone it when you look at the guidance on the "Manage Your Kindle" page.) I wonder if our resident Ninja Lawyer will chime in with his thoughts?

This is not a legal issue; it's a TOS issue. Amazon has conflicting information--in one area, they claim ebooks are for "personal use only" of the account holder; in other areas, they instruct people how to share their ebooks with multiple people using the same account.

At one point, Amazon claimed it was a EULA violation for libraries to loan out Kindles; at some later point, they backed off from that (possibly because there is no difference in the EULA terms between "loan out this Kindle to random library patrons" and "hand this Kindle to my husband"). They've never clarified what they think is acceptable.

I believe they don't want to--they want the terms to be contradictory, so they can cut people off with no warning if they feel like it, but can encourage people to share a little bit because they know if they insisted on and tried to enforce "you can NEVER share this book with anyone, at all, not even in your own household"--sales would plummet. So instead, they tacitly allow limited sharing (multiple people on an account), while the EULA clearly says that's not permitted.

[shalym]

Also, with the introduction of "parental controls", this brings the "personal use" into further question, since they are admitting that the accounts/devices are designed to be shared with others.

Shari

[Dylan Tomorrow]

Oh, silly American copyright! In the German equivalent of coyright, Urheberrecht, there is the right to a Privatkopie, private copy, which has been defined over the years to include all personal backups and up to 7 copies of a work shared with close family and friends, whether in the same household or not. For this purpose, it is even perfectly legal to break any DRM (§108b UrhG).

Germans copyright critics keep complaining they don't have fair use, but in this case, fair use seems just plain dumb complained to the practical Privatkopie.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Dylan Tomorrow

Oh, silly American copyright! In the German equivalent of coyright, Urheberrecht, there is the right to a Privatkopie, private copy . . .

A German eBook is thus worth more, so it's fair that they cost more.

[Fluribus]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Certainly. Take a look at the "Use of Kindle Content" section of the Kindle Store Terms of Use:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...deId=201014950

Notice that it says that content is licensed for your personal use only. I very much doubt that this includes buying 20 Kindles and lending them to all and sundry. Do you think it covers that?

My understanding is that the legal definition of "personal use" is "use for non-business purposes" rather than "used solely by you".

[Dylan Tomorrow]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

A German eBook is thus worth more, so it's fair that they cost more.

No it is not, because we already pay a private copying levy for every storage medium – hard drive, SSD, USB stick, rewritable optical disk etc. – and any other device which can produce or display/play copies to make up for private copies.

German books and ebooks are actually more expensive because of the fixed book prices law. Which means book sellers cannot compete via lowering book prices, yet another stupid anti-competetive law.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Fluribus

My understanding is that the legal definition of "personal use" is "use for non-business purposes" rather than "used solely by you".

If that were true, distributing books through torrent networks would be entirely legal. And so would transferring ownership of ebooks (and music, and video games).

I assure you that a major percentage of commercial media companies don't believe that "non-business" use is the same as "personal" use.