Quote:
Originally Posted by Synamon
I don't see how not lending ebooks is going to have a positive impact on piracy; in fact, I see the exact opposite occurring. Most people who go looking for ebooks at the library aren't interested in buying a book, they want to borrow one for free (like they already have been doing with paper books, music, movies) and they are willing to wait their turn by placing a hold and putting up with a 2 or 3 week loan period in which to read the ebook. If all the publishers pull out of libraries, then people won't find anything to read there and it's a very short plank to a computer search that will introduce them to the wonders of piracy. Each library was buying the ebooks they loaned out, a single pirate can supply everyone on the internet with a book as it gets copied over and over.
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Exactly! All it takes is a simple search to find anything you want. I have friends that do it. I don't approve of it, and don't do it myself, but it is rather easy to do a google search for a title, and the more popular it is aka bestsellers that these publishers promote, the easier it is to get illegally. Heck I even was able to get a book that I really wanted but wasn't easily available because of geo restrictions, but I paid for it and got it legally. Doing a search for it, I also found it at several pirate sites. That was just putting the title and epub in to a google search, not even finding a specific pirate site. I say, that if the publishers want to have a sustaining business model, they need to allow readers to have access to a variety of books legally either through libraries as they do get paid, or for reasonable prices on the ebook stores. Plus have a well edited book, it is very frustrating to pay good money for a book so poorly edited, that it looks like it came from a pirate site.
If they do this, then I believe that people will pay for their books instead of go to those sites. Don't get me wrong, there are people out there that won't pay for anything, but even if you made a book 99 cents, they won't pay for it. That is how they are, but not the majority of people with ereaders are. If there is less honest availability, then the dark net is going to be more tempting. Believe me, there are a few books that aren't on kindle yet that I wish would show up.