eBook piracy, how common is it?

[ruskie]

One thing that I do not do is give away or even share my ebooks with anyone else. I do not believe that is right. I would not want everyone to have my property with out paying for it. To me that is the same as breaking into a persons home and taking what they own.

As I tend to be totally disassociated with reality this might be jumbled up.

Sharing is up to each individual. I share pbooks, backup music cds and so on. I even do bookcrossing so I can share with the world.

With ebooks sharing just becomes easier since you don't need to worry if you will get your book back. But that's the point you should still apply the same norms to sharing ebooks. Who do you trust. If you don't trust people to share a pbook with then the same applies to an ebook.

Sharing among friends isn't a bad thing like most RIAA/MPAA and similar want to make it. It helps to expand the limits of what is possible.

Initially the copyright was written to allow authors to get reimbursed for what the printers were doing. That is copies without the authors consent. Nowadays it just goes higher and higher and higher... The initial term of the protection was 14 years now it's 50-100 it means really that nobody will really be able to use much of the work for a long long time.

I agree there should be copyright, there should be protection but it should be changed.

Set copyright to 25 years, and for any publisher to make a very serious effort to promote the work in that time. After the 25 years if the author NOT the publisher wishes to he can extend the copyright for another 25 years.

Non-persons(corporations governments and so on) should net be able to hold copyright. There are contracts and other ways of protecting their work.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

Piracy is the wrong world altogether. It's an emotionally charged word used to virtually tar-and-feather those who share with each other.

There's a huge difference between "sharing" with a friend (which pretty much all DRM schemes will permit you to do) and uploading a copyrighted work to the internet, from where it can be downloaded all over the world. I'm sure you'd accept that?

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There's a huge difference between "sharing" with a friend (which pretty much all DRM schemes will permit you to do) and uploading a copyrighted work to the internet, from where it can be downloaded all over the world. I'm sure you'd accept that?

Theft? Come on, you're actually serious? Theft? How can you call something theft when nothing is taken away?

[LazyScot]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

Theft? Come on, you're actually serious? Theft? How can you call something theft when nothing is taken away?

If I was your employer and declined to pay you for a day's work you have done, have I taken anything away from you?

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There's a huge difference between "sharing" with a friend (which pretty much all DRM schemes will permit you to do) and uploading a copyrighted work to the internet, from where it can be downloaded all over the world. I'm sure you'd accept that?

Actually, no, I don't agree with that. Copyright is useless, it's owned and controlled by corporations who treat their 'artists' badly for the most part (except when those artists are cash cows), and treat the consumers even worse. I read an article recently (I'll try and find the source) that every book is read 6 times in its lifetime but only purchased once. So 5 people get to read that particular book for free. Is this theft? Is this copyright infringement? Does the number matter of consequent readers who don't pay?

And we return to the argument of those who download and don't pay anything. Roughly divided into three camps of downloaders - Those who will never Pay, Those who can't pay, and those who will pay at some time in the future. Two out of those three can't be lost sales by definition, the third is a possible sale. Even the second might be a future sale when they have the money. Time and again we see that P2P sharing not only boosts recognition, but increases sales.

[kwjones]

I've been tempted to download some pirated books from P2P, but I won't do it. I already own the pbooks, and I tend to think of ebooks the same as pbooks. Just becuase I own the hardcover, I don't have the right to walk into a bookstore and take a paperback version for free.

With the amount of books that I've downloaded from the library here, there really isn't a need for me to buy any ebooks in the near future, let alone download pirated books, unless one of my favorite authors decides to release an entire series in ebook.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by LazyScot

If I was your employer and declined to pay you for a day's work you have done, have I taken anything away from you?

Totally agree. It is pure sophistry to try to pretend that taking away an author's income is anything other than theft, regardless of what the law might choose to call it.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by LazyScot

If I was your employer and declined to pay you for a day's work you have done, have I taken anything away from you?

Yes, because my work is, and probably most work is done physically and involves time and labour. I am not a product that is infinitely reproduceable, nor is my time or my labour. Now, if they could clone me, or make a robot copy, then we'd have another argument altogether.

The argument always seems to get confused when analogies are made that don't fit the digital age.

What I think you're driving at is the work put into the writing of the book, creation of the work and the recompense that's warranted because of this. But, as I've said earlier, you can't lose a sale if there is no sale. If somebody reads your book without paying, you haven't lost anything, because they didn't pay in the first instance, or more likely, wouldn't have paid anyway. But what you might get is someone reading for free and then paying in the future. You might gain a devoted fan who then passes on your work to somebody else who then in turn buys your book. Its win-win for the author.

[lilac_jive]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Totally agree. It is pure sophistry to try to pretend that taking away an author's income is anything other than theft, regardless of what the law might choose to call it.

I agree. I even feel bad getting books from the library from some of the smaller authors I read, since I want them to get paid for the books I buy.

[lilac_jive]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

Yes, because my work is, and probably most work is done physically and involves time and labour. I am not a product that is infinitely reproduceable, nor is my time or my labour. Now, if they could clone me, or make a robot copy, then we'd have another argument altogether.

The argument always seems to get confused when analogies are made that don't fit the digital age.

What I think you're driving at is the work put into the writing of the book, creation of the work and the recompense that's warranted because of this. But, as I've said earlier, you can't lose a sale if there is no sale. If somebody reads your book without paying, you haven't lost anything, because they didn't pay in the first instance, or more likely, wouldn't have paid anyway. But what you might get is someone reading for free and then paying in the future. You might gain a devoted fan who then passes on your work to somebody else who then in turn buys your book. Its win-win for the author.

But that should be up to the author. If the author doesn't want to use that tactic, then that is their choice.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Totally agree. It is pure sophistry to try to pretend that taking away an author's income is anything other than theft, regardless of what the law might choose to call it.

And it's also logically ridiculous to assume that someone reading for free is depriving an author of income. Should every loaned book by a friend now be considered a lost sale, theft? Every mixtape, TV show recorded, song listened to on the radio or played on your guitar is also depriving an artist of income.

[weateallthepies]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Totally agree. It is pure sophistry to try to pretend that taking away an author's income is anything other than theft, regardless of what the law might choose to call it.

....and home taping is killing music.

That is slightly oversimplifying things though. Calling copyright infringement theft assumes that those people would have paid for a copy were it not available for free which is often not the case.

I don't know what the answer is yet but file sharing for good or bad is here to stay, any industry based on selling something which can be shared digitally will have to adapt.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Totally agree. It is pure sophistry to try to pretend that taking away an author's income is anything other than theft, regardless of what the law might choose to call it.

Lending a book to a mate is theft?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

And it's also logically ridiculous to assume that someone reading for free is depriving an author of income. Should every loaned book by a friend now be considered a lost sale, theft? Every mixtape, TV show recorded, song listened to on the radio or played on your guitar is also depriving an artist of income.

Radio stations pay for the right to broadcast music. TV stations buy the programmes that they broadcast. In both cases, the creator is being recompensed for their work. As we've discussed earlier in this thread, authors even get paid a small amount if you borrow their book from the library (and libraries are a major source of book sales in the first place).

What I don't "get" is the attitude that it is somehow "acceptable" to consume a service without paying for it merely because it's technically possible to do so. The excuse "but I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so nobody's lost anything" is morally bankrupt, IMHO. It's no different from travelling on a train without a ticket and saying that "it's OK because the train was making the journey anyway and there were empty seats".

Sorry, but I cannot and will never accept the argument that "piracy is OK if you wouldn't have bought the item". I do accept, by the way, that it's morally (but not legally) OK to buy a book and then scan it for one's personal use, if a commercial eBook is not commercially available - in that scenario, the author is being correctly recompensed.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sorry, but I cannot and will never accept the argument that "piracy is OK if you wouldn't have bought the item".

That's not an opinion I share, but I have no objection to you having it.