10-08-2012, 02:11 PM | #16 |
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You say it: CDs DVDs... etc.
I always said that it 'd be a good idea to sell ebooks on media too. Repeatedly and ad nauseam. |
10-08-2012, 03:38 PM | #17 | ||
Bookmaker & Cat Slave
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Also, the DWA's statistics--garnered by answers from users of digital material--actually indicate that between deliberate taking and "casual" theft, nearly 4 out of 5 users are helping themselves to material for which they've not paid. Thus, the argument that the "vast majority of people are honest" isn't borne out. I used to believe that. I don't now. If you don't work in, or own, an environment in which you have to deal with theft daily, impacting your own livelihood, or ability to pay your own employees, it's nice to hold on to the idea that "most people are honest," but I wish I could still believe it. Anyone who wants an inside look at MY books, when I allowed clients to "pay upon completion" (no longer allowed) is welcome to the very ugly snapshot of humanity I can show them. Technically, people who ripped me off, by taking their completed books and not paying me, aren't "thieves" either; they, too, have "only" violated contract law. They "only" didn't pay me for our work, just like an author or publisher not being paid for his/hers by infringement. Funnily enough, I don't feel one iota less ripped-off, and calling the theft something else doesn't help me pay my vendors, employees and bills. (Dang...I did get into the semantics, more or less.) @cybmole: I guess my 50+ years of buying books for my own private library, for my own enjoyment, makes me think that people who want to read can bloody well pay for THEIR private copies. If they want to borrow a book, there are plenty of mechanisms by which they can do that, both digitally and in DT versions. I can understand people stealing food, or medicine. Other vital necessities. Can't quite wrap my head around the idea of being "forced" to steal entertainment. Hitch |
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10-08-2012, 03:56 PM | #18 |
Wizard
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I sympathise , but let's face it - you are in an endangered trade.
Amazon give away for free more e- books than I could ever hope to read, & faster than you could ever code; and as for authors - unless you are J.K. Rowling or lucky enough to write over-hyped trash like 50 shades... better keep the day job. PS "the casual vacancy" is also overhyped trash, IMHO. PPS - yours is not the only endangered trade. I play guitar - rather well IMHO - but my days of being paid for doing so are long gone. I do, OTOH, get a decent income from one-to-one tuition. Last edited by cybmole; 10-08-2012 at 04:00 PM. |
10-08-2012, 04:31 PM | #19 | |
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Perhaps you can elucidate? ETA: Let's just drop it, please. I'm not good at being okay with people stealing from me or my crew, no matter how well rationalized, justified or argued. It would be one thing if it was over the quality of the work, but it's not; it's over their ability to get away without consequences. So, respectfully, I'd like to drop it, thank you. Hitch Last edited by Hitch; 10-08-2012 at 07:10 PM. Reason: ETA: Would rather drop it. |
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10-09-2012, 01:35 AM | #20 |
Wizard
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consider it dropped -
but here's another passing thought on permissions. an epub is basically a zip, and zips can be locked + password protected. One of my shareware programs is sent to me like that for each update. the pdf format also supports password locking, at 2 levels - you can lock just to prevent alterations ( that one is reasonably easy to remove) or you can lock to prevent unauthorised opening - & that requires a brute force crack AFAIK does/could the epub spec support password protection ? I realise that the current reader devices won't so it's not a full-on practical solution but in the future maybe ( & you could then block the kids from reading 50 shades of porn ! ) |
10-09-2012, 04:04 AM | #21 |
frumious Bandersnatch
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I don't think the current ePUB standard allows for passwords. But let's assume it will someday.
You protect your book with a password, John Doe buys it, he has the password and can read the book, he gives the book to his daughter, along with the password so she can read it too. But the daughter's ebook reader does not work fine with passwords, so she extracts the files from the epub file (which is a zip) and packs them in a new epub, with no password. Then she shares the now unprotected file with her husband and brother-in-law... and the snow ball keeps rolling. |
10-09-2012, 10:11 AM | #22 |
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Wow, I'm amazed at this feedback! Thank you all very much; I'm used to getting little input on other forums (about other matters, mind you). I'm going to read all of this verrry slowly --- clearly there are a lot of aspects to my question that I hadn't considered. Thanks again!
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10-09-2012, 03:47 PM | #23 | |
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@cybmole: With regard to the casual theft numbers, by the way--the numbers I cited were from the Digital Watermarking Alliance, which based that "nearly 4-out-of-5 figure" NOT on retailer estimates, or anything like that, but on the responses provided by those users/consumers taking the poll, about their own level of legal and illegal usage. If the numbers are bollocks, then it means that people exaggerated their own level of casual and piratical theft. Given people's ability to rationalize ripping other people off, I'd be surprised if that were the case; 99 times out of a hundred, someone is rationalizing how what they're doing is NOT theft; not overstating how much of it they do. The whitepaper is still on their site, I believe. I can find the link if you'd like. My experience (and I've discussed this with other paid bookmakers of any size; their experience is identical, mind you) tells me that theft is FAR MORE RAMPANT, not less, than extrapolated by those purveying digital goods. If you think I'm angry about this topic, I am. It's not "victimless," which you're free to verify with the guy I nearly had to lay off the first quarter of this year because "authors" routinely walked away without paying their edits to the tune of his monthly salary, until I put my foot down and turned into a harridan about it, forcing everyone to pay for their edits before we made them. I see no bloody difference between the position I'm in (I make a digital product and people don't pay my contract, thus "not-stealing" the money from me, for having made it; it's not "theft," it's "breach of contract") that that of an author or publisher (who makes a book, puts it in digital form, and people "infringe" his copyright, thus "not-stealing" the money from him for having written and published it; it's not "theft," it's "copyright infringement," right?). It's a nice, victimless "crime" if you don't happen to be the one from which the money is being STOLEN. Anyone who wants to argue with me that it's not THEFT is welcome to try. Cute semantic argument if you're not the one who has to pay the salary of the guys making the books. But, hey? So what if that guy HAD lost his job? It's not THEFT, right? Noooooooo, it's just "breach of contract," and it's a victimless crime, just like copyright infringement. Nobody gets hurt, right? People will rationalize ANYTHING. And now, I really am done on this topic, because I know that my belief that copyright infringement = theft is not a popular one on this particular set of forums, and people will continue to tell themselves that they are not thieves for so long as it's not their money. Hitch |
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10-09-2012, 05:24 PM | #24 | |
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Semantics are actually important, words have meanings. "Theft" is a loaded term, originally introduced by big content in order to elicit an emotional responce. Theft is a term "everyone" is familiar with, infringement is not. If you call it theft and John Doe feels that you're spouting nonsense, you have a problem. No, it's not OK. No, it's not theft. In a lot of cases it's more serious, according to law, than simple theft. In most people's opinion it's not equal to theft. That last point is important, because you muddle the point seriously when you scream (yes, you used some capitals there...) theft. The points you raise are serious, but you actually damage our case when you deliberately misuse terms. People need to learn that infringing by copying books is bad (which they might not think too much about), not that it's theft (which they rightly feel it isn't, even the USSC, for instance, hasn't changed its stance on this). If you want to argue this further I suggest that you start a new thread in an appropriate forum (General Discussion, maybe?). Feel free to drop me a PM if you do. Now, let's give this a rest here and let the original poster have his thread back in case he wondered more about feasible ways of adding DRM Last edited by Man Eating Duck; 10-09-2012 at 05:29 PM. |
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10-09-2012, 06:12 PM | #25 | |
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I don't disagree that Semantics are important. I don't disagree that "screaming" muddies the argument--but I do get very, very sick and tired of the semantic distinction that 'copyright infringement' is somehow significantly different than theft. And, yes, thank you, I've read the SC Case, and pretty much all the other relevant cases on the issue, back to the earliest. My entire point was: a) the DWA statistics are not, as more-than-implied, grossly overstated, unless the "pirates" and casual (what, infringers?) deliberately overstated how much they're infringing, and b) "copyright infringement" is, from my perspective, no different than "breach of contract." Both things sound like "Not Theft." My explanation was to demonstrate that one may call it anything you like: but the end result is still that money my company rightfully earned was removed from my pocket. Now, to me, it's bloody hair-splitting to limit the "theft" part to someone physically dipping their hand in my pocket AFTER I've put the money there versus simply not paying me in the first place. The end result is precisely the same, and continuing to use decriminalized terms simply makes it more acceptable than it already is. Using the terms of "pirate" and (yes, legally-acceptable) "copyright infringement" is, to my mind, nothing more than a form of misdirection and verbal prestidigitation. In this matter, as in few others, the Court has made the use of proper semantics MORE muddying, not less. And, FWIW, @cybmole did say: "PS I maybe need some mental re-programming, but 50 years of reading books for free, via public libraries, makes it hard to grasp that e-books should be paid for, especially as they are now also slowly making their way into libraries worldwide. " (underline emphasis added), which I think clearly imputed a discussion about whether or not copyrighted books should be paid for. In my opinion, I'm not "deliberately misusing terms." I'm trying to get people to actually think about what a casual term like "copyright infringement" means, when it applies to real live people, with real live incomes and real live consequences. I think my own business is a perfect parallel; legally, nobody "stole" from me, under any definition in any statute. Just like "copyright infringement" isn't theft under the law, but has precisely the same consequence and outcome, to the person being stolen FROM. I don't see what's wrong with trying to draw an illustrative parallel, when I rather explicitly stated that that was precisely what I was doing. I wouldn't insult the members of MR by thinking that they actually misunderstood what I said. Done now. I have ZERO interest in discussing this further, as the problem is never going to be resolved, or even agreed upon, particularly here. Hitch |
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10-09-2012, 11:33 PM | #26 |
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10-10-2012, 01:12 AM | #27 |
Wizard
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my final comment - I agree that discussion should be put to bed. When I read a "free" book from a public library it had been paid for ( .i.e someone had bought it & put it on the shelf ). it just was not paid for by me.
what I was getting at in my earlier post was that I was brought up to think that books were something you borrowed from a library and read for free. & that only very rich people went to bookshops & bought the things. I read voraciously in childhood & teenage years. must have gone thru the entire SF shelf. It never felt like "stealing" in my ideal world there'd be living grants for creativity & the output would be free to all. Get rid of the competitive world of publishers in which most creatives starve & a very few have far too much money. just let the folks who create art, be it poems, paintings, stories, music have enough money ( from state funds) to ba able to focus on their art. Last edited by cybmole; 10-10-2012 at 01:15 AM. |
10-10-2012, 03:36 AM | #28 |
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