[spooky69]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Shyeah... I'll just put a banner on my site that says, "Hey, Pirates! Buy the next one, please!" And they'll all go, "Well, since he asked nicely..." And the next day, I'll be a millionaire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
You know your customers better than I do, but it seems like courting the pirate with a full wallet would involve offering buyers as many secondary services as you feel prudent, as a pirated e-book might be exactly the same as the one somebody would buy. This could come in the form of coupons for more books (once again, you'd have to decide how much is prudent), membership perks, or anything else that creates a sense of exclusivity. Though you might not like it, you're turning down money if you aren't kissing the ass of those people who pirate copyrighted materials but won't pay for it unless you make it worth they're while. Don't get me wrong, those type of people are mostly jerks, but I don't know many salesmen who won't sell to jerks.

Originally Posted by Olympus

IMHO your piracy (= "not paying for the service by each individual that receives the benefits of a service") is part of the calculation of each realistic business model.

Exactly, and piracy is a lot more complicated than "for every person who takes my product, I lose a sale."

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

As I said, there is no direct evidence that piracy leads to later purchases by pirates, or that pirates are effective promoters of material to paying customers.

You don't know that this is true, and I've clearly stated that I've heard several pirates say that they use piracy as a way of exploring how their money would be best spent. I know that's just anecdotal evidence, but claiming that there is no hard data to show that piracy leads to legitimate purchases just because you want that to be case doesn't make it true [I know this point was already made], and it goes against the common sense assumption that some pirates are obviously going to spend their money on things that they've already pirated. By that definition, pirates are pretty darn good at promoting material to other people who just might want to spend their money on it. Once again, I'm not arguing that piracy is somehow automatically beneficial to a publishing business, but the idea that piracy is wholly independent of the realm of legitimate purchases of media is ridiculous and willfully ignorant of the shades of gray that are a part of any human system, even an illegal one.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

In general, piracy leads to the promotion of material to other pirates, and most likely, more piracy. They simply amount to net loss, just like theft.

This is going to be true in the majority of the cases, but methods of distribution similar to piracy (giving something away for free, basically) have been used to generate significant profits for artists. The most prominent examples are the most recent Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails albums, both of which were offered up as a free download with the option to pay for the album if the listener was so inclined. Obviously, this is not a viable business model for everybody and was only so successful because of the previous notoriety of these bands, but it's good to remember that there's more than one way to look at somebody getting your product for free, since it's a legitimate form of distribution for many people.

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

In any case, those shows are pirated BECAUSE they are popular. They aren't popular BECAUSE they were pirated.

This just isn't correct, because it's not a one-way flow. Each viewer/pirate is different and there are so many different reasons for somebody to download a pirated copy that it's hard to link a TV show's popularity or financial success to piracy is a single proportionate way. For example, there could be somebody who doesn't get cable, but wants to watch BSG. They go and download it, and like it so much that they buy a DVD set later in order to have it in a higher quality and own it in a piece of physical media. Since this person would never have had the chance to watch the commercials on TV, this person represents a group of fans who wouldn't account for any of the advertising revenue of the show and yet still add to its financial viability. This is why it's hard to distinguish between piracy as a form of promotion and piracy as a dynamic of an existing fan base: every individual is different and has a different set of motivations for (and resultant actions from) pirating copyrighted material.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I know this has probably been said over and over, but do we have any sort of evidence that a download eBook from the darknet would have been purchased if it was not downloaded?

I can't say whether there is any data on this either way, but it's obvious (I hope we can agree) that there isn't a 1:1 loss of sales for each download. At the same time, it's just as obvious that some of those downloads (I'd guess significantly under 50%, probably much, much less) are going to be from people who would have purchased the product legally but pirated it because the illegal copy was available.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

On the other hand, imaginary or not, piracy is still a perceived issue with publishers and authors, an an issue that is holding them back from releasing old and new works to the consumer. Clearly the amount of discussion indicates that something is going on, but that no one can agree on exactly what that something is. If that something is not determined, how will it be dealt with (or, if it turns out to be nothing, how will we know we don't have to deal with it)?

So even these arguments/rantings/suppositions/threats/posturing/disagreeing, while divisive, should amount to an eventual understanding at some point. At heart, we all want to work this out, so we can have e-books and enjoy them. And after all, the best things are worth working for, aren't they?

In the meantime, I agree that these piracy arguments can be downright painful. Even so, they are worth having, because it's the only way we're going to come to an understanding, and only through understanding can we take positive steps and move on.

I'm with you pretty much 100% here (especially on the painfulness of the discussions, though I find them to be good mental exercise). There are still a lot of unknowns about piracy and its relation to business, and it's clearly still too novel and dynamic to come to any consensus about many of the points involved. There is at least one certainty, though, which is the existence of piracy and the near-inevitability that a copyright work will eventually be distributed illicitly. Publishers and artists need to accept this as the current reality and work a business model around the fact that the playing field is unfairly skewed against legitimate media purchases. So far, a large majority of the reaction to piracy has reflected that the sellers and artists aren't willing or able to face up to the basic principles of this new dynamic (remember the days when Metallica sued Napster to have searching for "metallica" disabled) and would rather find ways to prop up their traditional channels of revenue as long as possible. While I think it's incredibly lame for apologists use the music/movie/book industries' failings in that respect as a justification for piracy, I think that we all recognize that there are still a lot of things that have yet to settle into place and there isn't any single way for a company to be viable in the new market where almost anything can be obtained for free.

Something is still the same is that people want quality content, and a quality product that's properly promoted will usually generate more revenue than a complete piece of crap, and I hope that whatever shape these industries take in the future, it's a step toward a system that promotes a good balance between the quality of the products and profitability.