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Old 03-28-2008, 03:36 AM   #16
Gudy
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As far as I know, the truth is NOTHING will deter anyone who just wants to take your stuff.
That's not quite correct: a high risk of being caught is a good, and in fact the only known effective, deterrent. Which suggests a completely different approach to preventing piracy: watermarking each file you sell to someone, be it an mp3 or an e-book, with the identity of the buyer. This works reasonably well with music, AFAIK. I'm not quite sure how you'd implement effective watermarking (i.e. one that is hard or impossible to remove) on a text file, though.
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Old 03-28-2008, 06:10 AM   #17
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I agree with everything you said, except, unfortunately, this. The impression I've gotten (especially from the many threads on this site) is that "social DRM" and guilt trips simply don't work to deter anyone who just wants to take your stuff.
You need to do real studies. The people you are interested in influencing is the people that want to read a book and then downloads it illegally for convenience reasons or other for them reasonable reasons.
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Old 03-28-2008, 07:01 AM   #18
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You need to do real studies. The people you are interested in influencing is the people that want to read a book and then downloads it illegally for convenience reasons or other for them reasonable reasons.
That may be so, but when I offer a book for a third or less what the average paperback book costs... when it can be downloaded from my site, in 6 different formats, the moment it is purchased... and consumers still post my books on Darknet and others take them... how much more "convenient" or "reasonable" do you want it to be? 'Cause I'm not taking them door-to-door.

Since I'm one guy in the suburbs who works for a living, my studies are here: Initiating, participating in, and taking information from websites like this, and people like you. The message I'm getting from my "studies" is pretty clear, too: Unless I become blisteringly famous and can wrangle a deal with some big-name advertiser, this field will never make me more than lunch money, and eventually, I will give it up when I need to get a job that does pay.

Because, between people who want a free ride, people who like defying authority, and people who are just plain crooks, this field will never amount to anything for most of the guys outside of the publishing castle... they'll be hacked to bits unless they can get on the inside track. I have yet to see or hear anything to convince me otherwise, nor have I heard much encouragement that there is a way that works, other than "just being reeeally, reeeealllly nice to us."

Meh.

We're all trying to find a way to help this market grow and prosper. So far, nothing we're doing is doing much good. Amazon's done more with one device than all of our posts and threads, multiplied by the number of other sites that engage in similar discussions, combined.

I hope that worries some of you as much as it worries me. Of course, I know it doesn't worry some of you at all... so be it. But it's worth thinking about if we're accomplishing anything other than to hear ourselves talk.

And speaking of which: Rant over. I guess there's no more to be learned from this discussion, anyway.
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Old 03-28-2008, 07:19 AM   #19
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That may be so, but when I offer a book for a third or less what the average paperback book costs... when it can be downloaded from my site, in 6 different formats, the moment it is purchased... and consumers still post my books on Darknet and others take them... how much more "convenient" or "reasonable" do you want it to be? 'Cause I'm not taking them door-to-door.
I think you missed the point. Why do you think that people getting your books from Darknet want to read them? As has been pointed ot people collects book and there is a gift economy were people seems to give big collections to each other. Nothing indicates that people actually read most of the books in these huge collections.

You have to distinguish between collectors of data files like books and actual readers.
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Old 03-28-2008, 07:21 AM   #20
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ISPs are not police and should not be expected to perform that role.
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Old 03-28-2008, 08:59 AM   #21
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Nothing indicates that people actually read most of the books in these huge collections.
Hmm... so untold numbers of pirates are spending time copying and OCR'ing books, being downloaded by untold internet users, none of which are actually read?

Why would anyone give gifts no one wants, asks for, or uses? Even for this situation, that's phenomenally stupid. So I'd suggest there's a problem with this assumption... the fact that you have no hard data on reading means nothing, since no one's gathering data in the Darknet. Statements like that are anecdotal, but otherwise useless.

If it could be ascertained that the Darknet held no threat, by sheer reliable data, publishers would not try to protect their content to keep it off of the Darknet. QED.

We need more than beliefs that "I'm missing the point."
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Old 03-28-2008, 09:04 AM   #22
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Originally Posted by Dajala View Post
ISPs are not police and should not be expected to perform that role.
Anyone... everyone... should consider it their duty as a citizen to uphold the law. Even if that only means dialing 911 when they see someone else being hurt.

No business is above the law, and if they can take steps where they have influence to cut back on illegal activities, there's no reason why they shouldn't.

I wasn't suggesting the ISPs would become the arm of the Justice Department... just that they should be willing to mitigate illegal activities that take place on their networks, and to alert authorities to activities they are aware of.

(Cue "Big Brother" responses now.)
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Old 03-28-2008, 09:28 AM   #23
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Hmm... so untold numbers of pirates are spending time copying and OCR'ing books, being downloaded by untold internet users, none of which are actually read?
Well, yes. A collection can contain thousands of book. Every person downloading a collection will only read a handfull of these books if they read them at all. I have downloaded some science fiction collections but have not yet read any books from these collections. I am mostly interested in having searchable text of books I have paper copies of.

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Why would anyone give gifts no one wants, asks for, or uses? Even for this situation, that's phenomenally stupid. So I'd suggest there's a problem with this assumption... the fact that you have no hard data on reading means nothing, since no one's gathering data in the Darknet. Statements like that are anecdotal, but otherwise useless.
Well, maybe. But you statements in these questions is also anecdotal and therefore useless.

One obvious use is that you want to search the book. And of course you can use the collection to combine it with other books and make an even better collection that you can give away.

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If it could be ascertained that the Darknet held no threat, by sheer reliable data, publishers would not try to protect their content to keep it off of the Darknet. QED.

We need more than beliefs that "I'm missing the point."
Well, some publisher does not protect there data. Also during the weekend I heard a Tor editor say that the darknet was not a threat now. He said that he was happy if one more person read the book since that would generate more sale.
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Old 03-28-2008, 09:57 AM   #24
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Well, some publisher does not protect there data. Also during the weekend I heard a Tor editor say that the darknet was not a threat now. He said that he was happy if one more person read the book since that would generate more sale.
A statement that, in itself, makes little sense, since someone who reads the e-book doesn't necessarily go out and buy the print version of the book. It's also no help to those authors who only release e-books, and do not (like Tor) consider e-books as mere advertising tools... not many people are going to read a free e-book, then go out and buy the same e-book.

So, our discussions of the Darknet essentially cancel each other out, like matter and anti-matter, eh? (I won't get into which is which... ) It makes little difference, if the publishers feel that the Darknet is a threat. And if publishers don't want to release e-books without DRM, they're obviously threatened by something, real or perceived.
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Old 03-28-2008, 10:28 AM   #25
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At the risk of introducing some humor and lightness into the discussion, I read a comic who's strips for the last several days seem eerily relevant, though it doesn't become obvious how, until today's strip.

Starting here, and running through today. Past experience suggests that the cartoonist isn't done with the topic yet.
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Old 03-28-2008, 12:33 PM   #26
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A statement that, in itself, makes little sense, since someone who reads the e-book doesn't necessarily go out and buy the print version of the book. It's also no help to those authors who only release e-books, and do not (like Tor) consider e-books as mere advertising tools... not many people are going to read a free e-book, then go out and buy the same e-book.
The reasoning was that one reader will talk with other readers that will buy the book. So it made perfect sense. And it would be true for e-books also because most people want to pay for things.
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Old 03-28-2008, 12:47 PM   #27
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The reasoning was that one reader will talk with other readers that will buy the book. So it made perfect sense.
As reasoning goes, it's a multiple-supposition: That the person who pirated a book will like it enough to recommend it to a friend, AND that the friend will then want the book, AND that they will be willing to go out and pay for it (as opposed to just asking the pirate where he got his, or accepting a copy of the illicit file... as has been pointed out, pirates think nothing of making those files available to others).

This has proven a workable model for TV and radio advertisers, but so far, it has not been demonstrated as successful for e-books.

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And it would be true for e-books also because most people want to pay for things.
I think we've already established that this is not necessarily the case, with e-books, and with a lot of other things. People pay when they figure they have to, but they'll also take what they can get without paying. Nothing moves a product faster than 2 words associated with it: "Free sample."

Oh, by the way Natch: I laughed. On the inside.
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Old 03-28-2008, 01:54 PM   #28
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I think at least some of the differences of opinion in this thread can be ascribed to different people having different priorities. When dealing with the darknet we have three basic options: 1) attempt to minimize infringement and downloading at all costs. 2) accept that it exists and attempt to monetize as many downloads as possible. 3) work for some sort of balance between 1 and 2.

My personal opinion is that it's better to focus on converting downloads to sales and increasing monetization than on simply stopping illegal downloading. Among other things I think this is a more realizable goal in the relatively near term.

I think the truth of the darknet is that not all downloads are lost sales. Some are simply people trying to amass the biggest collection of "free" stuff they can. They download what' there and ignore what's not. While an annoyance they aren't really a lost sale because they weren't going to buy anything anyway. I think of them as "indiscriminate" downloaders.

The next category are what I think of as "discriminate" downloaders. They're looking for a specific book and some are lost sales and some aren't. If they're looking for something that's unavailable they are not a lost sale because there's nothing to sell. This is where people like J.K. Rowling seem to miss the boat. By not providing an electronic copy that's legally available they've guaranteed that no one who reads an electronic version of any Harry Potter book will have paid for it.

Finding the balance is going to be hard, and I don't think anyone has worked out all the kinks yet. I think Baen has come closer than most and while I think Tor could follow their model quite successfully I don't know that it would work for everyone. (It might, but there's no way to tell).
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Old 03-28-2008, 08:39 PM   #29
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Oh, by the way Natch: I laughed. On the inside.
I'm afraid I'm always torn between laughing and wincing when he touches on this sort of topic.
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Old 03-28-2008, 08:41 PM   #30
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People tend to (more so) give away things they've had to break the DRM on then things that are user friendly like Baen's eBooks.
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