Is ebook piracy on the rise?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Format C:

So please be patient and say whether you believe there's a limit to the money anyone can make for a single book or not.

I'm not putting a limit myself.
I'm not saying in any way how much you deserve. I'm just asking you how much YOU think you deserve.
And I won't never judge that amount. I wont never say if it's too much, or too little. I will never call you "greedy" wherever that limit is.

If you're asking what I personally feel I deserve for my books: I feel I deserve exactly what I ask to be paid for one book. And I ask for $2.50 per book. Whether that is for one book sold, or a million... all I ask is $2.50 per book. In fact, if you want to buy more than one book, I ask for less per book. And I do not feel that I'm being unfair in asking that... especially since no one is being forced to buy my books.

(And I'm still trying to figure out how I can scale that price for economies that are further out of sync with U.S./European currency, such as the Third World. Anyone's cost should be roughly analogous to a cup of coffee.)

Since writing is a hobby of mine, I am not trying to make my living at this... I am not trying to make enough to retire, to buy a boat, or a new house. So I do not have a dollar figure that I am hoping to earn from this venture. I just want what I consider to be a fair price per book, and I'm satisfied.

[acidzebra]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

we just know there's a live cell or two in there somewhere, and we keep hoping and praying someday it will actually twitch.

...because your views are fundamentally right by default and anyone who disagrees is wrong, not to mention their brains don't work? Ha ha funny.

[ebookpirate]

Originally Posted by acidzebra

No, it is not dancing around the real issue. All these issues are interconnected. Copyright and length thereof. Content owners and content creators. Digital media. Our common culture.



There is no real way to stop it save for shutting down the entire internet, every computer connected to it, and destroying all the digital media out there. The genie is out of the bottle, and calling people thieves and blathering on about the moral issue - that is dancing around the real issues. People who try to take our common culture and try to lock it up behind steel gates - those are the real thieves.

Thank you, so much, acidzebra for your thoughts. Memorable nic, by the way!

I wish I possessed your written “oratory, elocution” and comprehension skills. Your thoughts are as refreshing as the thoughts of Aristotle and Thucydides.

I always wondered (when reading slashdot.org) about the fact that digital items were an infinite source but couldn’t connect how they applied to big corporations and “creators” taking away our FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO SHARE as human beings. Yes, you’re right. Now I understand that most of us, or at least I, would willingly tax myself for the use of such digital items as ebooks. It is because I as well as others like me are GENEROUS to such “creators.”

But in no way do I feel an OBLIGATION to do so since CIVILIZATION since FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS DID NOT PAY for such items AS COPYRIGHT AND PATENTS. FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS from Ancient Babylon to Egypt and Ancient China to the Fall of Rome, ideas were just that, ideas, nothing more and nothing less. If a chariot maker had great ideas to make certain chariot structures, ANYONE in society could use that idea and not have to pay said chariot maker.

FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, NO ONE HAD TO PAY ANY “HOMERIAN AUTHOR” FOR THE STORIES OF THE ILIAD. Any storytelling singer who sang the Homer tales of the Iliad was paid based on their ORAL ENTERTAINMENT abilities towards the Ancient Kings and nobles The king only pays you if you’re able to entertain him and his court. The better the TELLING of the story, the more surer there would be payment in the end and the HIGHER THE PAYMENT!! SO BASICALLY ANY STORYTELLING SINGER COULD RETELL THE ILIAD AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN ANYWHERE ANYTIME FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS WITHOUT HAVING TO PAY A CENT TO THE “ORIGINAL AUTHOR.”

It’s only in the last few hundreds of years of Europe that “ephemeral items” like stories in the PUBLIC DOMAIN are laid on the masses as something they can’t share because of its GREED-CENTERED CAPITALISTIC “ownership” which is enforced by “society’s Overlords” aka the government. You’re right. The true thieves are those who try to put a yokel on the necks of the masses, strangling and feeding off of them like a LARGE PARASITIC TAPEWORM.

I would have just given up on this thread since it looked like the masses were buying the “creators/publishers are being ripped off by web pirates and the only way to be law-abiding, moral, ethical is for EVERY BODY ON EARTH to buy our pbooks at $30 or whatever at a pop otherwise you’re riff-raffing scum!!” media propaganda, but I’m glad I kept reading this thread, otherwise I would have missed your posts. Your thoughts cleared my mind and were ON TARGET, refreshing and compelling.

I strongly encourage you to write an ebook of your thoughts on copyright and digital distribution and to distribute it thru digital downloads and the torrents and p2p for the WORLD’S masses like me to read and learn and understand (in open source multiple e-formats without drm, of courseJ ). It would be one of the most valuable ebooks online!! I know there are other books that discuss the same things you post but the WAY YOU EXPRESS your thoughts is one of a kind!! Your words will indeed be as enduring as those of Shakespeare and Homer.

[jakewastaken]

Before anyone gets their panties in a twist, this is another lighthearted joke. I love this forum

[nekokami]

Ok, are we going to descend into a flamewar about capitalism vs. socialism now, or are we going to go back to ebooks and how they might fit into the world the way it is at the moment?

Kudos to Steve Jordan for trying to think of how to provide alternate pricing to different economies. That's a tough one.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I don't worry about that too much, because the people being targeted and prosecuted are extremes... the Jammie Thomases are more akin to the guy mass-printing tapes in his basement and selling them on the street, not the average user who burns for himself and maybe a friend or two. Really, few people have much sympathy for someone who so blatantly and clumsily violates the system and gets caught. (Except for those who are also doing it.)

Besides, there are other lessons for the book industry to learn from music and movies, such as what those industries are doing to win the public over... for instance, the introduction of product placement that simultaneously dulls the impact of ad material, makes it harder to divorce the product from the content (think a bottle of Smirnoff in a James Bond movie), and allows a lesser cost for content to consumer.

Here's another: You may or may not remember that when VHS tapes were first introduced, block-buster movies could cost up to $100USD each. One of the first VHS tapes to introduce advertisements to the content--a Coke ad--was Batman (Keaton/Nicholson), and it retailed for an unheard-of $25. Although people railed against an ad on their tape (shown before the movie, of course), they also bought those videos like there was no tomorrow, and ushered in an era of affordable video content thanks to advertiser subsidies.

I already mentioned how TV ads pay for the content we watch. And I guarantee you music videos are a great source of product placement revenue (every time you see a luxury car in a video, for example, you know the car maker paid for that exposure, and hence brought down the cost of producing the video).

These are lessons that the publishing industry has largely not applied to itself, and I think it's high time they did (with some adjustments to cater to the differences of the media). Such methods (and possibly combined with others) can lower the cost to consumer, or even replace it with other revenue, allowing e-books to be cheap-to-free, and reducing the amount (and penalty) of pirating. In a medium and market where sellers cannot justify high costs of "electronic product" to consumers, it behooves them to investigate other ways of making that money.

But what we have now are adverts on DVD that we cannot skip past due to the way the DVD tells the player not to allow us to. So every time we start one of those DVDs, we have to wait till the adverts are over before we get to the main menu.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by axel77

No, I'm still strictly against product placement in books. Okay it works with fiction that plays in the "now-time". But what about a story that plays in the age of romans? How do you place products there? So what happens nobody is going to write that kind of stories anymore. And then we already have it, we have advertisment taking seriously influence on the content, going as far to determine what is going to be written and what isn't.

The stuff gets even more troublesome when doing non-fiction. Say I write a book about the life of may beetles? Do I have to mention a hummer there too? And yet a step worser, say I write a book about the history of cars. When making money from product placement, doesn't it make my effort look really hypocritical?

The best movie with a product placement is Demolition Man. It has Taco Bell as the last chain to survive the chain wars. And they did it quite well that it doesn't seem foreced in and fits in quote well with the movie. Which I do think is quite good as well.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I realized something while reading this thread. I achieved insight into the ethics of piracy. Here it is:

It is no more right nor wrong to use the darknet than it is to use the public library.

Most everyone has agreed that there is nothing wrong in using a library.But it occurred to me that most have never really considered the ethics of it; they accept it because that was what they were taught at a young age.

Let's consider the library and the darknet. According to the accepted wisdom, the following is true:

Bob buys a book, and puts it in the library. A hundred people read it. This is good.

Bob buys a book, and puts it on the darknet. A hundred people read it. This is bad.

I would argue that the two situations are functionally the same. Let's dissect the ways they might not be.

Some major ways they are different...
1. When you download the eBook, you have a copy. You now can do with that copy what you like. When you have a library book, it belongs to the library. You have to give it back. if you lose it or damage it, you have to pay for it.
2. When 100 people read the library copy that gets taken down so the library may then purchase more books from this author. Bob's eBook may be the only copy of that author's work you'll find on the Darknet.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Ok, are we going to descend into a flamewar about capitalism vs. socialism now, or are we going to go back to ebooks and how they might fit into the world the way it is at the moment?

Kudos to Steve Jordan for trying to think of how to provide alternate pricing to different economies. That's a tough one.

Thanks for the kind words. But I suppose we can stick a fork in this little thread, now that the nazi pictures and all-cap tirades are here. (Oh, yeah... to Jake and acidzebra: "Ha.")

So... I'll be waaaay over there, tinkering with my site and my books. You guys feel free to keep up the mayhem, though. Let me know if anyone posts some good war corpses. Ta.

[jakewastaken]

I was clearly being over the top on purpose. I'm quite familiar with invoking godwin and all that

[ebookpirate]

Let me just say I didn't post to start a flame war. Many posters here are people whose posts I respect even if I disagree. I just think that the other side's ideas are not being well represented and well thought out and vocalized. Aren't we supposed to have a BALANCE of opinions? As far as capitals, I'm just a serious person who's capitalizing my words to emphasize certain words to "express" myself. I don't have a beef with anyone (well, yeah, I do, but i'll be polite not to mention their name and no, it's not steve jordan, a poster whose ideas i disagree with but who has a well thought out "cure" for darknet distribution nor the usual respectful resident posters.) Yes, i really do feel, acidzebra should write that ebook. Yes, I hate captalism and I'm really a socialist but that's life and hopefully in the future, everyone in the world will have enough to eat, let alone read ebooks.

(and anyone PM'ing me, please be aware I have an old browser which will not take your messages)

[acidzebra]

What, write a book and give away the fruits of my labor for free? Nevah! /sarcasm

I doubt I could add much to the discussion which smarter men (not to mention native English speakers) have not already said. If you are interested, read the work of Lawrence Lessig, especially Free Culture, Code, and the Future of Ideas (all under a CC license).

Here are some ideas I've been noodling around with:

For 90-95% of all content creators the problem is not piracy, it is obscurity. For the remaining 5-10%, the problem is obviously not piracy since they are getting paid, and paid well.

I'm pulling those figures out of my, well, you know - but I think I may even be lowballing it. And I do not think this is a new phenomenon. The unit of culture/story/idea that does not get transferred and replicated in some way is lost.

Here's another thought: The current generation has grown up with the implicit notion and constant reminders that their attention by itself is worth something. And no wonder - the content and marketing industry have been vying for their attention since they were born. Most of the ad/content models on the internet reflect this - you give us your attention, we give you this or that content.

And a final thought - Harry and Steve have consistently argued that the proper response to a perceived unjust content management/distribution system is abstinence - i.e. do not consume the materials offered. In the world of physical objects, that makes sense, because if you take a book without paying, you are depriving someone else of the opportunity to read that same book and the content owners of their income (whether or not you agree that the content owners are the ones that should be paid).

However, we have observed time and time again that digital media are not the same as physical objects in several ways - one of the core things is you can take a copy without depriving someone else of that same copy. And thus I argue - if you are not going to support the content owners because you think their price is too high or they are strangling the content creators or whatever, you might as well consume the 'pirated' version. In both cases (abstinence/piracy) the content owner is not going to get paid, but in the case of piracy the total amount of happiness and knowledge does increase - and you are sending out a message. Although I also think both the content owners and the moral absolutists will misinterpret the message.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by acidzebra

However, we have observed time and time again that digital media are not the same as physical objects in several ways. And thus I argue - if you are not going to support the content owners because you think their price is too high or they are strangling the content creators or whatever, you might as well consume the 'pirated' version. In both cases (abstinence/piracy) the content owner is not going to get paid, but in the case of piracy the total amount of happiness and knowledge does increase - and you are sending out a signal.

When you download a book illegally, are you saying that you contact the author or publisher and inform them that you have done so? If not, in what way are you "sending out a signal"?

[acidzebra]

Originally Posted by HarryT

When you download a book illegally, are you saying that you contact the author or publisher and inform them that you have done so? If not, in what way are you "sending out a signal"?

If Tom, Dick, and Harry can find their way to the piratebay, you can bet the content owners can (given their continued futile efforts to shut these operations down). Piracy on the internet is not exactly "underground". See also the hysterical (and unfounded) loss projections the movie and music industry come up with once in a while. In fact, piracy has become the ultimate scapegoat - are profits down? piracy!

It would be interesting if the people did have an anonymous way to voice their opinions, concerns and actions/reasons for actions to the content owners directly, but I think doing so in the current pirate-witchhunt climate will get you nailed to a tree and charged with a fine that is completely out of proportion.

But this is side-tracking - I would be interested in your ideas on the piracy vs obscurity argument, the attention is worth something argument, and the abstinence vs piracy argument.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by acidzebra

But this is side-tracking - I would be interested in your ideas on the piracy vs obscurity argument, the attention is worth something argument, and the abstinence vs piracy argument.

Certainly free distribution serves to bring authors to the attention of the buying public but, with the greatest respect, the decision to do that should be (and is, in the eyes of the law) vested in the author and/or publisher. Baen, for example, have used this technique to great effect with their "Free Library". I honestly do not believe, though, that this can be used as an excuse to "legitimize" piracy by saying that you're "helping" the author.

I'm afraid that, in my view, the argument that "I think a book is too expensive so I'm just going to take it anyway" is immoral in the extreme, and strikes me as just being a rather weak excuse for legitimizing piracy. As I've said before, it's not the act of downloading that I object to as much as the act of not compensating the author. I can accept the legitimacy of downloading an eBook if you've bought the paper book and there isn't a "legit" eBook commercially available. What I can't accept is the morality of downloading without appropriate compensation for the author.