[tirsales]

Appologies in advance for the length of this posting.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Well, silly me... I guess there are no copyright concerns that e-publishing has to overcome. So, what were we talking about?

I appologize for apparently crudly misphrasing what I meant and for annoying you. It wasn't my intention.

Were we talking about why publishers and authors are afraid to release their material electronically, because of the number of people who post their material illegally and cost them a significant part of their income, in clear violation of their copyrights?
Or were we just talking about how great the darknet is for making everyone loads of money? Pogue's article failed to mention all the income he's made from people who downloaded his books from the darknet, then went out and purchased all of his other material... but I guess the omission is understandable.

As far as I understoof we were talking about possible new marketing strategies, changes to the law or to business models to
a) keep people from costing publishers significant part of their income with illegal downloads
b) keep creatives to create content
c) make everbody happy
One of the problems I try to communicate is: Not using new techniques (e.g. e-publishing) wont keep people from loading your work into the darknet. Not using something doesnt make it go away.

@Steve Jordan: I do know that you have a very nice e-publishing. Usable, cheap, nice formats, etc - Thanks for that.
You said that you know of at least two of your books in the darknet. But I firmly believe that they would be present wether you published e-books or only p-books.

So my point is: Publishers/Authors have no influence wether their work is in the darknet. They have no influence wether they participate in the e-market or not, so to speak. But they have influence wether they participate in earning money with it. Or, to put it otherwise, not publishing e-books costs you money, e-publishing makes you money.

I agree - the details of the law, the business models, the marketing strategies, etc - will have to be worked out. Have to be worked out, so that the publishers and creatives make the most money, the lowest possible number of creation is stolen via the darknet, and the customers are as satisfied as possible. But I dont think that is such a big issue. I dont see a reason for those very pessimistic approaches - see previous posting in this thread, stating the end of copyright, the depletion of authors, the end of publishing, etc.

So yes. Yes the darknet can be a problem. You can lower this problem by making it easier to buy a book then to download it. Even so people will share your books over the darknet - but you simply cannot avoid the darknet, I am sorry.
You can just try to keep as many people as possible from using the darknet. The copyright law (as it exists) can help you with this, as can service, support, etc, stuff like watermarks, ....

Yes, The darknet can actually cost money - real money.
But - and I will stand to this position: It is not as much as most people assume. It is simply not true that every single book downloaded from the darknet would otherwise have been bought. From experience with acquaintance, having a look at sales-figures, etc I would guess that far less then 5% of the people downloading something from the darknet actually would have bought it. And a number of those will buy the product. I guess - and I really believe this - it evens up, a black zero.
The problem is, that you simply cannot tell what would have happened without the darknet, so neither side has figures to prove their beliefes. But you can have a look at marketing evolutions (e.g. the amount of bought songs from legal shops, etc) - and they are rising. The amount of music available in the darknet is not lowering itself, but the number of users is. The way I see this is: People are more and more switching to legal services, paying money. The "hardcore" of the darknet-users will always stay there. A number of people will occassionally stroll in, test it, download some content. But the even so - the greater amount of people is using legal shops and is using them more and more. Occasional users switch back to legal services.

The principal idea of copyright is not changing just because the medium is changing. I believe most people respect this basic idea - as most people keep to the law. As soon as a real e-book-market is established, the format-war fought and so on - people will be really using those services.

Anyway, I am going to back slowly away from this sub-thread, with my hands in clear view. Sorry for making such a fuss, Sheriff... I'll see myself out.

Please dont.

@Ralph: Yes, but the basic idea behind copyright and patents is the same. Patents protect the creative (or technical) work behind a product, copyright protects the content itself. So abolishing the idea of copyright means abolishing patents. Or something like that crossed my mind

PS I am not using the darknet, just to avoid further misunderstandings.