[Hitch]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Probably not. A more likely scenario is that someone buys a book and gives a copy of it to a couple of their friends. No harm in that, is there? Those friends in turn pass it on to their friends, and sooner or later it gets into the hands of someone who thinks it'd be cool to upload it to a newsgroup or torrent.

WARNING: BIG RANT.

As anyone knows who's read my rants on this topic--honesty, piracy, DRM, no DRM, thieves (I don't give a flying rats' ass what they are called--"pirates" is a term infused with romance, adventure and danger, and it's inappropriate to apply it to people who take what is not rightfully theirs), et al, this is exactly what happened to a client of ours with a YA book. 27K (yes: 27K) copies later, of a book priced MERELY at $0.99, he tried to prosecute the "helpful" boyfriend of the teenage girl that wanted to "just give a few copies to my friends," which snowballed. Now, given that the client was on the verge of losing his home, the idea that he lost possibly UP TO (not saying that all 27K would have bought) $8900 USD pissed him off, royally. And you know what else? He also didn't give a flying rats' about the "free publicity" it gave him.

The issue is--and I've asserted this time and again--so-called "casual theft." It's not the dedicated thief; it's the casual buddy. It's the friend, as shown by BearMountainBooks, above, who gives it to someone else without even thinking about it--for who knows if the friend is honest? Maybe she is, maybe she's an experienced torrenter. We don't KNOW.

I'm ALL FOR DRM. Period. (I should say: I'm all for ident-watermarking; in the interim, until Amazon, B&N, et al, implement that, I'm for DRM until watermarking is in place, AND the USGov't gets off its dead ass about prosecution, too.) Saying that DRM is like accusing the buyer of being a thief is indeed equivalent to saying that the stores' doors being locked at night, or your own, is like accusing the store's customers and your neighbors of being thieves. The idea that every purchaser out there is going to be honest is utterly deluded. Or even that a big piece of the majority will be. The Digital Watermarking Alliance's whitepaper on this: http://www.digitalwatermarkingallian...Deterrence.pdf has some pretty damn depressing numbers.

Anyone here who's read my complaints about this on the General Discussions, here and there, have seen my story about my own company, and outright theft of digital books we'd prepared for self-publishing authors and publishers. I was forced, after several years, to go to a "pay upfront" (for everything) policy. I had no choice.

In one year, we had a theft rate of 6%. That doesn't sound like much until you realize it's not 6% of the profits; it's 6% of the gross income that's being stolen. And, sure, you can't compare the theft of a $150 fee to at $0.99 book, but given how cavalier the Net seems to be about digital content, in general, I have no faith whatsoever in the "kindness of strangers" to ensure that an author or any other purveyor of any type of digital content will get PAID. And to put it in real, actual, hopefully-relatable terms: if that rate of theft had continued, a real, live person here would have lost their job, because I would not have been able to continue to pay him/her. That's not frivolous numbers--that's someone who would have become unemployed, due to theft.

Moreover, above and beyond the general sense, we see post after post, and thread after thread, with complaints by readers that "the copyright period is too long," that "passive income for authors by such long copyrights is WRONG;" we see posts about how OOP books should be simply digitized and taken. After all, who's it hurting? There is, and you all know it, a very cavalier disregard for the idea that an eBook is the same thing as a print book; there's a hefty sentiment that pricing eBooks should be dramatically lower than their print counterparts. There are numerous readers who seem to think that all their entertainment should be FREE. When 4 out of 5 people have downloaded illicitly--by their own admission--why do any of you think you'll be paid even 50% of what you're (rightfully) owed?

(n.b.: I don't disagree that a resellable, tangible print book has a different value than an intangible, not-resellable LICENSE to read entertainment. Nonetheless, there's a real disregard for the value of the author's efforts, and the value of the entertainment provided, even though the entertainment provided by one form [print] versus the other [digital] is identical. I've seen people on these very forums argue that "nobody is hurt" when books are pirated, because "it's NOT THEFT." The verbiage that our Congress determined to use, ironically, to give ADDED protection from theft to creators of artistic material, has, in turn, degraded the sense that anything is being thieved when "copyright is violated." Because, after all, it's JUST "copyright violation," right????)

The original purchaser is much less likely to engage in the initial act of casual piracy (heck - they may not even realise that it is piracy) if they know that all subsequent copies of the book can be traced back to them. That's the purpose of watermarking - to give a gentle nudge to people who are fundamentally honest, but might to tempted to just give a copy to a friend - and say "don't do it".

Yes, and that's the issue, distilled. We'll never find a way to deter the big thieves, who are determined to damage someone else, to be "hackers" and bad-boys, to "free" content, (because of course, they've never had to pay a bill in their little lives), and to wreak havoc with other people's money, other people's livelihoods. The content isn't theirs to give away, but they have some brain-damaged idea that it is. They think they're "cool." Or, they're simply equally idiotic idealists who are the same sort of self-righteous idiots that police Wikipedia and take down perfectly useful reference articles because they're too "commercial." (e.g., the screen size/pixel dimensions article for various e-readers. Honestly, I wonder if some of them sit on their brains, rather than just merely peeing with them.)

So, do whatever you want. The vast majority of e-book buyers are NOT on MobileRead. They don't know how to remove DRM, and moreover, don't even care to; they don't own 10 different devices, and don't have smoke getting up their nose because they can't read the latest erotica on their Nook instead of their Kindle. To me, those are the folks that are both protected by, and from, when it comes to DRM. They can legally and without issue loan their books out, if they wish, to another person with a device. Hell, I wouldn't even care if they could loan it out 6-10 times.

What I would care about, were I a writer dependent on something ridiculous, like, GETTING MY ROYALTIES, would be not getting paid for, say, 5K copies. And, no, I don't think those downloaders should get the freebie, just because "they wouldn't pay for it, anyway." I have yet to see ONE SINGLE STORY about anyone, anywhere, actually making money--getting real, trackable, attributable sales--from stolen works. From the alleged "publicity" of the Darknet. I mean, who are those Darknetters publicizing a book to? OTHER Darknetters, not Jane Doe in her living room, who can't spell Darknet, much less find the damn thing.

I mean, hell, I can't afford a Rolls-Royce, so, what, I should just go take one, because "I'd never pay for it, anyway?" See, this is the problem--that people view digital products as "not-real." "Not-property." UN-property, so that the damage isn't "real." It doesn't matter. It's "not the same." It's the SAME. The same people who think it's okay to make off with digital products would NEVER walk into a bookshop and make off with a print copy, because there are consequences. But, for all intents and purposes, it's the SAME product, and the SAME author is getting supported by the SAME royalties. It's not one iota different. Same people get hurt in the exact-same way. LOTS o'same in there.

Until Watermarking comes--and it can't happen too soon, IMHO--DRM is the next-best thing. Those who are honest, and don't like DRM, will remove it--as all of you do. Those who are dishonest, and don't like DRM, will remove it, and distribute it-as hopefully none of you do. Those who are honest, and don't care, WON'T CARE. And they won't accidentally give away your groceries for December by giving it away to someone else, either, who in turn puts in on the bit-torrent sites.

I don't LIKE DRM. As a person, away from my business, I have a boatload of devices. Sure, I'd like to on rare occasion, x-fer a book from X to Y. (Rarely, to be honest; I have readers for my smartphones and tablets that don't hinder my reading.) The DRM-removal shtick, to me, is more about keeping a copy "somewhere" where a DRM schema can't subsequently hurt you, and that argument--and that one I respect, completely.

But until you've been hosed on digital products, I think it's very, very easy to dismiss the very real damages on digital books. You want to argue about how nobody really gets stolen from, or nobody really gets hurt, I'll be happy to let you talk to the person here who would have lost her job. She has no qualms about protecting digital content, because she's seen, up-close and personal, (as have I, to my shock) just HOW dishonest people really are.

Hitch