eBook piracy, how common is it?

[HarryT]

Baen have always been the "good guys" of the eBook world. Are you only just realising that?

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

mine too. if only they would publish mysteries !!

They do publish some mysteries. For example, the Detective Inspector Chen books are a fascinating hybrid SF/Fantasy/Mystery series set in a near-future "Singapore 5" (a franchise city based off of Singapore). Inspector Chen serves as the Police Department's main liaison with Heaven and Hell, and gets stuck with investigating all cases with supernatural connections. The "Heaven and Hell" in question are the traditional Chinese versions, complete with the Imperial Personage who is in charge of Heaven and the various bureaucracies that run things in Hell.

The cases are interesting mysteries that "play fair" with the reader by presenting all necessary evidence before Chen solves the case. They're also quite charming SF/Fantasy -- Chen's wife is a demon, he winds up with a sidekick who works for Hell's Vice Squad (as in Vice, promotion of), his colleagues are thoroughly wierded out by his celestial and infernal connections, and on and on.

Highly recommended.

Similarly, some of the various SF books that Baen publishes are also quality mysteries. It's just that mystery isn't their specialty.

Xenophon

[phenomshel]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

mine too. if only they would publish mysteries !!

Agreed. You seriously can't argue with their business model, but I'm with you, I wish they published mysteries!
I got a graphic demonstration that my tastes, that I had considered mainstream enough up til yesterday, are evidently fairly unusual. I sent the link to my Google Notebook list of authors to a few friends - and promptly was accused of making them up, no one I sent it to had heard of more than half of them. My friends aren't illiterate, either -but I guess we don't read the same genre!

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

mine too. if only they would publish mysteries !!

One more Fantasy/Mystery published by Baen is Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy stories, taking place in an analog of Earth where magic developed and science didn't (much).

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

So I think what taosaur was saying is, concentrate on how it really works, and not on the smoke screen.

Originally Posted by Sparrow

It was the approach Pitt the Younger took to deal with smuggling when he was Prime Minister.

Sparrow's example is apt; P2P sharing of copyrighted works operates as a black market, and its prevalence depends not upon the measures taken against it, but the available alternatives. If your aim is to strike a noble and upright pose, by all means continue the crusade against filesharing. If your aim is to be a profitable content creator or publisher, I suggest another approach.

[Paradoxikon]

Interesting question and I do not think that that you be able to understanding the answer that you will get. A bit too much black and white.

I have bought Ebooks, many audible.
Others that I have acquire through P2P, and by the way does not means it is illegal because it is P2P.
Some of those, I already have the print version. And some ??? whitout incriminating myself.

So before you say : YEAH YEAH
We just finish the inventory of the books in my house, we have over 2500 books, without counting magazines. I have not done the music and movies yet.

I will take for example, a certain famous wizard from England, I have a hardbook. Yes I have also took these from P2P. Why, because I like to read in many places, and I prefer to read it on the go. Evryone else in my family, read the paper version and think I am crazy. :-) And may be they are right.

The point is that the paper is not important, the story is. That is what I paid for.
Nevertheless, the writers, still do not all make a decent living, with a few exception like the lady of the wizard.

A long time ago (about 30years ), I had to made a decision to buy story, not paper.
To buy music, not plastic.
So once it is bought, the way I transfer to my brain should not be the concern of the publisher, neither the government.

The concern of the publisher and the govenment should to find way to make this happen in a way to paid a fair share to the artist and personnaly i do not consider 10% to be a fair share in the electronic world.
Another concern should also be the concern of the client. As one of the client, I am saying to you : How are you going to make this happen.

DRM is not a solution, it is the beginning of the end for the flow of information, which is the cornerstone of knowledge, invention etc..

Just think a little while, if DRM is the solution, than I want everything I said, you said on this forum, or anywhere for that matter to be encrypted in such that it can not be use by anyone unless we are paid. I am sure that you are just like me, you all need the money.
And also everything that has been acquire illegally should be punishable, not in the last ten years, but the last 500 years. Most of the idea are not new, most were stolen, copy, taken from others. That is the way we better ourselves, by sharing information.
You want to fight stupid law, use the same right for yourself in all situation. That will help to bring the world to a slower pace, because right now these law only want something for the rich.

Now, that is one of the reason I beleive we must find another way together.

The end of my raving :-)

And no, I did not answer the poll, for the answer demanded is a bit too much white and black for my taste. The stake for us and the next generation are too high to answer in this way.

You think otherwise, I will still continue to think the same.
Stop and calculate how much I have spent in books before answering. And I still continue buying. Now that I have upgraded from my Ebookman to the Ereader, I will probably buy less paper one, but no DRM ( that is for the publisher) and how i transfer it to my brain, (PDF, TXT, EPUB, RTF or any other that will be invented in the future) that is none of you business. I own it once I buy.

[amgoforth]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sorry, Sparrow, but when I was a teenager in the 1970s, we all used to save up our pocketmoney to buy "45" records; we didn't expect to be able to get it "for free". There really IS a different attitude towards it these days. I don't know whose "fault" it is, but the fact that the attitude exists is undeniable.

Boy when we finally got it we cherished it to. Easy come easy go seams to be the way things go today. I was also a teenager in the 70s.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Ebook & other digital entertainment content publishers have decided to claim they have the right to insist on "one purchase, one user," rather than "one purchase, one copy."

You nailed it.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by taosaur:

Harping on filesharing and viewing it as lost income misses the forest for the trees. When content providers focus more on the DRM arms race than on the quality and accessibility of their product, they actively alienate people from their brand. The people seeking out your work on P2P networks like your work. They want it. Quit slapping their hands and focus on getting products in front of them that they're willing to pay for.

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sorry, but that's a ridulous argument. It's like say "Stop punishing car thieves - the fact that they steal your cars mean that they like them. Why don't you stop developing security systems and concentrate on making cheaper cars so that people will buy them rather than steal them?"

Actually, taosaur's argument is a respectable one. It has a history dating back to the very beginning of the invention of electronic products, like word processing programs.

The assumption underlining the "anti-piracy" position is that every pirated file is a lost sale. That assumption is valid so long as everyone who downloads a pirated program would, in fact, pay to buy one if he didn't have the option to download a free copy.

The validity of that assumption probably varies from product to product, based on price point. I have never seen anything testing that assumption, though.

I think that taosaurs argument works for the creative artist (writer, musician) but not for the middleman (publisher, producer.)

The example of the music industry seems to show that the middleman is driven out of the market by open distribution policies. The creative artist, OTOH, is empowered, in part because he doesn't have to rely on the middleman anymore, and in part because filesharing turns into a kind of advertising for the artist, which seems to increase sales in some instances (Radiohead & Wilco have provided examples) and in any event, allows the artist to increase his take from concerts and the sale of paraphernalia.

The third member of the traditional sales model, the seller, doesn't seem to be impacted directly by filesharing. But it does appear to have to change its business model away from bricks & mortar, to the internet warehouse model if it wants to survive.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I wasn't referring to that aspect of it (which I entirely agree with, BTW). I was referring to taosaur's comment that p2p downloads show that someone likes your product, so you should stop trying to protect it and concentrate on making it cheaper. That argument could equally be applied to cars as to music tracks, and I'm afraid that I think it's rather silly .

But maybe you are comparing apples and oranges, because cars are so much more expensive than files. At some price point, it becomes a waste of time to steal something, because a new one can be had for very little more.

Cars will never get there. But with files, you are dealing with things which, at a certain price point, are just easier to buy than to fool around with Bittorrent. Amazon provides a good example for a place where the ease of purchase is a big factor. I've bought things at Amazon that cost me MORE simply because it's so darned easy. No entering this number, no typing in my address, no concern about how long delivery might take, or what happens if there's something wrong with the product.

When it comes to audiofiles, it's easy to get free music files. I listen to Coverville and often hear a song I would like to hear again. I could use AudioHijack to capture a streaming file, but the Coverville web site has a link to every song the host, Brian Ibbot, plays, available on Amazon or iTunes. So it's a whole lot easier to just buy the song. I remember when Brian started Coverville, and the RIAA lowered the boom on him, & refused to sell him a license to play their songs. But in a very short time, they wised up to the fact that Brian was advertising the songs, and [I]selling[I] them.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard a song on Coverville, went to iTunes, and wound up buying more than one track by the same artist, or went to Amazon and bought the whole CD.

The point of all this is that when you are dealing with files which have a relatively low price, people's behavior is different than at the much higher price point that is represented by a car.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

There's a problem with your analogy. Developing security systems actually makes the cars harder to steal, while DRM doesn't make the ebooks less accessible on the darknet. No sense in going into details, as that's been explained time and again in multiple threads in the past. The bottom line is - if the book has been written, you can get it for free, so only quality of the ebook, ease of getting it, and morals influence which of the available versions will be popular. If the benefits of getting the commercial version ( quality, ease of use, feeling of doing the right thing ) outweigh the fact that additional money needs to be paid for it, then the commerical books will sell. Otherwise they won't. DRM as it is now is not a protection measure, it's just an ornament, a conversation topic.

So I think what taosaur was saying is, concentrate on how it really works, and not on the smoke screen.

There's one other thing about ebooks that might impact the bottom line, and that is reader loyalty or feeling of connection to a particular writer. In some genres, at least, that seems to be a factor that could affect buyer behavior.

[sabredog]

A workmate and I have a great system purchasing books from Baen. We share the cost of the monthly webscriptions, plus any one-off purchases, ie the next volume of an ongoing series.

This works really well indeed and only successful due to the non DRM attitude of Baen

Cheers

Mike

[gouzos]

Originally Posted by sabredog

A workmate and I have a great system purchasing books from Baen. We share the cost of the monthly webscriptions, plus any one-off purchases, ie the next volume of an ongoing series.

This works really well indeed and only successful due to the non DRM attitude of Baen

Cheers

Mike

Then you are a criminal!
Yes, I am being sarcastic.

[taosaur]

All the mentions of Baen got me over there, and if you read Eric Flint's Introduction to their free library, he's arguing the same points I've been making and then some, from a professional writer's perspective and with the blessing of his publisher.

[Good Old Neon]

I like how many in the pro-filing sharing camp continue to claim that sharing has very little to no impact on the bottom-line of publishers, etc, but then go on to say that if they don’t evolve, their bottom-lines will suffer as a result of file-sharing (though of course they continue to claim folks will be forced into doing so) – the sheer amount of cognitive dissonance that results from harboring such contradictions must be deafening.