Quote:
Originally Posted by scrapking
I'm not sure I understand. How is it easier to read than pay? I find both insanely easy. I own an e-reader. It's tied to a store with millions of books. With a couple of clicks I have paid and am beginning to read.
I understand there's a big world out there of DRM-removing, side-loading, and the like. I've never investigated it simply because I've never wanted or needed to. I'm happy to pay for the content I want, my platform of choice has piles of content, and it's all seemless and easy.
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That paying part works very well if a book is available for your e-reader. If you have to get out of your way to get the book in the first place, through pirating (if that is the only thing available) then getting to pay for it is going out of your way again to find a place to pay for it.
Paul Coelho now claims that shortage of paper is the reason his book got pirated in the first place. And subsequent made him so popular that everybody wanted to pay for his book afterwards once it became available for sale. It is a supply and demand thing. And who is to say that each and every pirated copy ended up into a later sale of the book, because to him good content always gets paid for. He probably thinks that the pirating helped his book sales and is the only reason for it. Did he ever consider that the demand for his book was there to begin with, and that shortage of supply (paper) created a shortage for his book? That same demand probably caused interest in pirating the book in the first place, because it was in high demand. You cannot seriously expect every pirate copy to create extra income, even the ones that do get read and that the reader did enjoy.
If there was an e-book also available, then some of his normal paper sales might have ended up going to the ones that later got the paper anyway when it became available. According to Coelho's logic, if the e-book was for sale it would not have gotten pirated. If now it (surprise, surprise) it would have gotten pirated even with a e-book available then one might argue that the reason the e-book did not sell, because reading e-books is not as good as paper. At least that is what attitude I get out of Coelho when he talks about how technology is not there yet, but it is going to get there soon.
There will always be pirate copies in hands of people that never intent or cannot afford to pay. Some just might pirate because they believe information should be free in the first place. And those that don't plan on paying are probably the majority of pirates, no doubt. Plus include all the file-horders that only pirate to make the distribution easier.
Just my 2 cents why reading is easier than paying.