[jeffcobb]

First allow me to preface this with the fact that I searched this forum and did not turn up a conversation that addressed exactly this topic so.....if I missed something and am therefore addressing something already discussed, the kind reader has my profound apologies.

There are many kinds of piracy out there: movies, software, music, anything that can be digitized. And anything that *can* be digitized is "out there"; you just need to know where to look. We are all here because we are avid readers and personally I feel there is no correlation between how much something cost to make and its actual worth. For example less than 1 percent of the music I hear is worth the price of purchase and frankly not even worth stealing. Movies are almost moreso into this camp. Software is a completely different animal because in my case I use completely open source software which means it is all free which in turn means even if I were to avail myself of the wares out there they would be of no use (Linux is all I need but that is another discussion).

This leaves us with books. Books are interesting because for the a cost of a download of a single movie you can download almost a whole library of ebooks. It doesn't end there: say there is a series of books that you would love to read (or perhaps re-read if they are from your childhood); however these books are not deemed profitable therefore are not kept in any form by any reseller so they are by and large, unavailable at any price. You would need to be at the right place at the right time to find these gems and if not all are available at the same place/time, it would take years of search if they are ever all available at any price. Yet for the cost of a single search and download of a few hundred megabytes, Bobs your uncle and off you go to a corner by the fire to read something not available in dead-tree form at any price.It is right? No. Is it totally wrong? Not in my opinion; if an author/publisher who makes books for the sole purpose of them being read, no longer makes them available to anyone anywhere this is more like lending. Making the waters muddier yet is if you are like us, avid scifi and fantasy book readers and over a lifetime of living have bought and rebought many if not all of these volumes and lost them due to moves, divorces, etc and you come across something that you used to own, want to read again and could not give money to anyone to get an ebook version if you wanted to...

Even further making things difficult, as if the above were not enough, is the simple fact that a pirated book (or PD book from say Gutenberg) is usually less than a megabyte in size and provide hours of entertainment if not days, whereas the latest Britney Spears effort will weigh in at something like 4 megs, is effectively disposable and can really only be enjoyed (if at all but that is a matter of taste) for 3 minutes give or take. For the same amount of download time for say a movie you can download enough books that you like to entertain you for a lifetime. I know this to be true.

Am I saying this to advocate piracy? Absolutely not. No, I am not some high-and-mighty do-gooder and have always lived at the edges of what is legal and what is right. However as mentioned I am an avid reader and I would like to see my $$ go to what really, truly entertains and informs me. I have seen "amnesty" like programs for software (most of which was not worth a fart in a high wind), the movie industry just goes for the throat (look at the latest insanity the makers of The Hurt Locker are trying; effectively a scorched earth policy), the music industry is almost as bad with their gangster-like tactics (plus I pay for every bit of music I listen to, if for no other reason than to support the genre (the blues) so that there will be more of it) but for authors long out of print, where your only hope of finding a print of a particular volume is at a garage or yard sale (not sure what my British comrades call them across the pond but the idea is the same) I wish there was a program where if you "find" something that you had no hope of buying yet enjoyed very much you could contribute financially to the author or the authors family. If they are still alive and working, the money and many words of encouragement might be enough to motive them to write more. I don't know for sure and don't pretend to have the answers.

The bottom line is the instant a collection of books is out there on some server somewhere, it shall be available everywhere for free from now until doomsday. DRM is not the answer; the horses have left the barn. If there is even a single non-protected version out there, the DRM version is a lost cause and only adhered to by those falsely believe there is any real power in DRM. I know not everyone has the same attitude I do but I think there are enough of us where it could make a difference. Even if an ebook is given away for free, if I like a book (Like the FireFly book by Steven Brust) I still email to author to thank him for his hard work and comment on how much I liked it.

Digitized books are so different than any other medium (movies, etc) because the rest are so "disposable" they are like jokes; once told, the retelling rarely carries the same impact. One good thing about book piracy (not enough to say all books should be free) but the very nature of a digitized ebook in a format that can be read by anything says that the book will continue to be available to future generations. Some web pages are smaller than some of the best ebooks.

This subject seems to be the elephant in the room here so I thought to bring it out into the open. I would like to know what others think on this...