Piracy vs Bookstores

[tompe]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

PD has to do with the country in question. So when you download a PD eBook here,

So it is PD event if it is not stated? I can take for example all HarryT:s book that is based on PD books and repost at other places?

People have said before that this actual version is copyrighted by the person that has done it so I had assumed that if nothing else was said that holds. Glad I am wrong.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by tompe

So it is PD event if it is not stated? I can take for example all HarryT:s book that is based on PD books and repost at other places?

People have said before that this actual version is copyrighted by the person that has done it so I had assumed that if nothing else was said that holds. Glad I am wrong.

It is possible for the specific conversion to be copyrighted by the person who did the conversion. But the actual book is not. So basically, if you were to download an eBook from here, you'd need to maybe convert it again. Not sure really. The best idea is to ask the person who did the conversion if it is OK to repost just in case.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by tompe

So is all books here based on PD book released under PD? I thought that was not the case.

Creative commons is not PD nor is permission from the author. In both cases the author retains copyright. What caused you to think that Mobile Read was posting illegal books?

Dale

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Puddytat purr

What exactly is DRM, what's it do?

Check the wiki for DRM and then if you still have questions ask.

Dale

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tompe

So it is PD event if it is not stated? I can take for example all HarryT:s book that is based on PD books and repost at other places?

Sure, go ahead. I'd have absolutely no objection to you doing so. They are there to be read, and the more places they're posted the more people will read them.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Creative commons is not PD nor is permission from the author. In both cases the author retains copyright. What caused you to think that Mobile Read was posting illegal books?

I did not think that. There was a claim here that all books where either PD, CC or posted with permission of author. But it was my understanding that some of the actual files posted here also is copyrighted by the person posting them. I have in other places argued for that people posting books here should explicitly state if the version they are posting is in the PD or not. I think it is bad that you do not know what you can do with a book posted here.

[mores]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It seems that publishers do stupid things these days like put out the latest book in a series as an eBook but forget about the book(s) that come before. if you find this to be true with something you want to read, would you download the book(s) that come before and purchase the new one or would you just read the pBook editions and then the latest one as an eBook?

Oh how true this is. Man, I hate it.
And I start up my colloquy IRC client and to some pinging and searching and !ing and /me ing and try to find the stuff that's missing.
Because I refuse to buy another paper book for myself. I mail the author, I post in the author's blog / forum, I email the publisher ... but if they say "oh, ebooks are not interesting to us" the I use the darknet versions I find and spend hours deciphering the crappy OCR.

Oh, and I am in a constant state of broke-ness (what with my start-up and all), so I can't afford to buy $25 ebooks to "send a message" to authors and publishers. I'd really like to help the cause, but helping costs money, and if it#s a choice between buying the latest novel, or buying a week's worth of lunch, then lunch it is.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by tompe

I did not think that. There was a claim here that all books where either PD, CC or posted with permission of author. But it was my understanding that some of the actual files posted here also is copyrighted by the person posting them. I have in other places argued for that people posting books here should explicitly state if the version they are posting is in the PD or not. I think it is bad that you do not know what you can do with a book posted here.

I think that might be a good idea to post what you can do with it, but I would expect that this is an arguable topic. The content is PD or has permission to post but the actual conversion and changes made is automatically copyrighted by the author. The rules I believe are that they can be downloaded for non-commercial use but you cannot sell them. You can give them to your friends under the same terms or tell them where they can download the latest version.

Note that a translated eBook has a whole new copyright based on the translation date so the translator, in effect, becomes the author. Similarly other changes and portions of a book can be construed as being under copyright. Copyright is a complicated subject and it is concerned more with the presentation than the content is most cases. For example you cannot copyright the contents of a telephone book but you can copyright the book itself.

Dale

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by Puddytat purr

Interesting, I've actually been battling with this myself over the past few weeks of owning my cybook.

I did download a load of pirated stuff and I've bought a grand total of...one e-book

I did actually mention in another thread somewhere about how great it would be if we could get a discount on an electronic version of books we already own.

I have discovered that I am having to go through the books I have downloaded and format them all correctly - so that the lines flow rather
than ending
up
with something that looks like this!

I'm beginning to wonder with the £ - $ exchange rate whether it's worth it and should I just buy the damn things anyway!

I think what I'm gonna end up doing is deleting all the e-books I've downloaded (mainly because my laptop is screaming about the amount of space it doesn't have anymore), to give the laptop some space, to hope that buying them means they'll be formatted properly and the way I shall pay for them is by selling their hardcopy versions to my friend!

I don't think you should, currently, expect the books you paid for to be better formatted than the pirated one. I don't have much experience with books I need to pay for to read, but I read lots of posts here on badly formatted books people bought (especially from Sony bookstore).

On the other hand, I've never seen a book pirated with the intent of making money from it. In consequence, to some degree it's certaily a work of love. I either see books with (scanned, not proofread) in title - or v1.0, v1.1, v1.2, denoting proofreading and fixing by various people. Pirated books don't have much OCR errors left. They're rarely at the level of beautifully formatted books on this site (with illustrations etc.), but all blocks of texts are nicely formatted.

Also, from Sony, Amazon or any paid store you get one version of a book. When that's badly formatted, there's nothing you can do besides writing to publisher. With pirated books which are popular you can find sometimes even hundreds of various versions, made wholly independently of each other. Chances are one of them will be formatted just like you like it.

By the way, DRM-supporters could wonder how many of those versions were obtained by breaking the DRM of a published book, and how many were OCR-ed from paper versions. And if the DRM was unbreakable, would that stop Darknet? DRM-ing a book is a waste of time when the book has been pirated, as everyone who would be able to break the DRM will look for the book on Darknet first.

I judge that if I could be sure that after I bought the book:

1) I could read it anywhere (no DRM).
2) It would be nicely formatted, nicely released, with original cover and illustrations inside.
3) I could pay for it without losing half a day of time filling forms, or getting myself special credits card, preferably with one click.

The store would be the first place I'd go to.

Don't expect the people, staticstically, to be led by morals in life - when were they ever? It's ease of getting the book and usability of what you bought that will decide for majority.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

I think that might be a good idea to post what you can do with it, but I would expect that this is an arguable topic. The content is PD or has permission to post but the actual conversion and changes made is automatically copyrighted by the author. The rules I believe are that they can be downloaded for non-commercial use but you cannot sell them. You can give them to your friends under the same terms or tell them where they can download the latest version.

I really think you're wrong on this point. I have purchased several ebooks that I knew were in the public domain. I bought them because it was the only way I could find a copy. I have looked at the copyright pages of these ebooks. The publisher made no claim of copyright on the PD material, only on the parts added (like introduction, footnotes, pictures). Let me provide a similar example:

I printed it on paper. Anyone who photocopies and distributes what I printed on the paper is violating my copyright.

Does this make any sense?

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I really think you're wrong on this point. I have purchased several ebooks that I knew were in the public domain. I bought them because it was the only way I could find a copy. I have looked at the copyright pages of these ebooks. The publisher made no claim of copyright on the PD material, only on the parts added (like introduction, footnotes, pictures). Let me provide a similar example:



Does this make any sense?

Which point was I wrong on? Certainly what you posted made sense with regard to my point I believe. The contents was still public domain but the added text was copyrighted. How is that different from what I said?

Dale

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Which point was I wrong on? Certainly what you posted made sense with regard to my point I believe. The contents was still public domain but the added text was copyrighted. How is that different from what I said?

Dale

I think I may haver misunderstood your earlier post. I thought you were saying that converting a work to PRC, LRF, etc copyrights it.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I think I may haver misunderstood your earlier post. I thought you were saying that converting a work to PRC, LRF, etc copyrights it.

No, that was not what I was saying. Just doing a format conversion does not automatically copyright it. For example saving a JPG as a PNG does not copyright a picture.

Dale

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

No, that was not what I was saying. Just doing a format conversion does not automatically copyright it. For example saving a JPG as a PNG does not copyright a picture.

Dale

Oops. Sorry about that.

[llasram]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I am very disappointed to read this thread. People must make these decisions for themselves, of course, but personally I would hope that anyone who wishes to make eBooks a success would indicate that fact by going out and buying them from those publishers who are producing them.

I’ve spent several hundred dollars on e-books (both DRMed and not). I’ve written to publishers who aren’t selling e-books or who are selling only in limited venues. But there are still many books I want to read which aren’t in e-book form. In at least a few of those cases I’ve bought the p-book and downloaded the pirated e-book. I have a hard time seeing how I should lose much sleep over this.

Originally Posted by HarryT

Illegally downloading them sends all the wrong signals to publishers and only confirms the frequently-encountered view that DRM is required because there are so many people who break the law.

I wonder how many publishers have thought about what they’re really attempting to achieve with DRM. I see it being targeted at three distinct groups:

1. Market-economy pirates
2. Gift-economy pirates
3. Customers

Market-economy pirates are the ones turning a profit on the distribution of ill-gotten content. Although there seems to be some amount of this happening with films, it seems unlikely that anyone is currently making a profit with pirated e-books.

Gift-economy pirates give it away, forming “darknet(s)” of freely distributed illegal content. The MS LIT DRM has been broken for literally years. Any pirate worth his sea-salt could buy an MS LIT format book, strip the DRM, and toss it on the darknet. So do they?

Hardly scientific, but I downloaded the torrents for a handful of fairly large pirated e-book libraries. All the broken DRM e-book formats are HTML-based, so I extracted just the HTML books (had ‘htm|HTM’ in the filename). From that set I took a random sample of 100 which I individually examined to see if there was any evidence they had been derived from pirating the e-book edition of the work. And the number derived from pirated e-books...

None. Every single one was obviously made via scanning and OCRisg.

My theory is that pirating books via DRM-stripping the e-book edition is literally too easy. In gift economies people gain status based upon the value of what they contribute and the effort involved in the contribution. There’s no status gained from contributing a DRM-stripped book because it requires no effort or skill. Scanning, OCRing, and proofreading is how one gains status in the e-book piracy community, so that’s how books get pirated.

So that leaves customers, the broad majority of whom do not know how to strip a book of DRM even for already-broken systems. For them any DRM scheme, no matter how trivial, will prevent their lending the book to a friend, re-reading it in future years, or re-selling it – freedoms customers take for granted about p-books.

I wonder how many publishers recognize that these are the only uses DRM impacts?

Whew, ok – rant over