Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
I agree that the beneficial argument is garbage and in no way justifies piracy. Where it should be relevant is in evaluating the effects of piracy, informing public policy and future legislation and informing decisions by content providers. I will also say that I tend to doubt the efficacy of this argument in any event. Whilst it may well be true in some cases I really doubt that the number of such cases are significant.
|
I would think that when trying to judge the effects of "piracy", then you need a little finer distinction. Some guy or group selling the latest best sellers from some site in Russia is one level of piracy. This is what most think of when people talk about piracy and what law enforcement tends to focus on. I would also lump those who post books they don't own on Amazon or iTunes in this group, basically it's anyone trying to make a buck on someone else's copyright.
A group of individual posting ebooks for free via various onlne services is a different level of piracy and has different effects.
A group of friends and family trading ebooks is a different level of piracy and has different effects and is something that I suspect most don't really consider piracy.
The first, I suspect, has the most economic effect. The second is probably has negligible effect and is where one sees scanned books for things like orphaned works, and the third is what people are use to doing with paper books and what DRM is designed to prevent.
My personal guess is that piracy has not much effect within the US (I don't really have a good feel for what is going on in various other nations, but I suspect places like Great Britain and it's former colonies are fairly similar). Note, I'm purely talking about ebooks. Pirated movies likely has a much bigger effect.
When people trying to lump all copyrighted material together or all types of copyright violation together under one big piracy banner, then piracy looks a lot worse than when you look at at each category on it's own.