[Hitch]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

You are taking the liberty of rewriting what I said in order to exaggerate and be emotive. The case was not that "stealing books helps sell books" but that illicit downloading of books can result in sales of books (and that sales are a benefit to the author). Your "helps" turns what I actually said into sounding as if I condone illicit downloading, that misrepresentation seemingly done in order to meet some agenda you have.

I also did not anywhere say anything along the lines of your But it's "beneficial" so it's ok so if you were referring to me I suggest you take your crude attempt to insult by misrepresentation back.

You may wish to contend that illicit downloading does not result in the sales of books. In which case, for example, you would seem to believe that if one browses social media looking at reviews and recommendations of books, in order to make their purchasing decisions (as I do), such as the Reading Recommendations here or the likes of Goodreads, that none of the recommendations or reviews come from people who illicitly downloaded the book. Or, alternatively you believe that, in fact, recommendations or reviews are made by people who illicitly downloaded the books but people ignore those reviews (how do they know?) when deciding whether to buy the book or not. In either case I think you are mistaken.

Let's tackle this from a realistic standpoint. You brought up the possible additional sales, created by a possible pirate, with his/her possible friends. You're now saying that you didn't do that, to say it was beneficial; you were...what? Saying that if that ever occurs, the additional sales, which would only have existed through the illicit downloading of the pirate, might be a benefit to the author? If your point isn't that illicit downloading caused some benefit, then I don't see the point of the comment in the first place. However, moving along:

We can argue that pirates cost authors $X in presumed non-sales. We can argue that they cost publishers other amounts, as well, in our hypothetical scenarios, or that proposed piracy somehow benefits the publisher, under Scenario Zed. But what do we KNOW?

We know only that when someone pirates a book, they get it for nothing. Neither the author nor the publisher earns their due. Period. All the other hypotheses are nothing more than that. The lady with the sewing circle--we have ZERO data on how often something like that might occur, if ever. We don't know how much sharing--and thus, incremental damage--the pirate does, either. We don't know if the pirate's buddies buy the book, or pirate it as well, or if the pirate puts it on Pirate Bay, making it even more accessible to those who want to own the book sans payment. All those discussions are merely hypothetical.

So, what we know is, when a pirate downloads the book, they get the benefit of the book, without paying for it. That's it. That's every fact at our disposal. All else is surmise and fantasy.

Even the facts that you mentioned, in your prior post, about how your government argues that somehow, copyright costs society money and investment--those are all hypotheses, with pretty much zero factual backup. (Those whitepaper arguments are usually trying to conflate--on purpose--copyrights, patents, and monopolies. After all, how many investment funding opportunities are you aware of, dealing with copyrights, really? And what would those copyrights be "stifling," if you were an investor????)

So, we can all sit here and discuss "what if..." from now until hell freezes over. But the bottom line is, piracy is taking someone else's work, and not paying for it. You can call it infringement, you can call it "damaging" someone, and some call it theft. But the nuts and bolts are the same. Factually, the ONE thing we know is that the author and publisher are damaged. The pirate gets something for nothing.

There's zero evidence that any author or publisher has ever benefitted from piracy. There's zero evidence that any pirate's buddies ran out and bought a book. (And honestly, it seems highly far-fetched, given taht anyone who will help themselves to a book also seem likely to make copies for their friends, as well, wouldn't you think?) We don't know if some pirate posted a review, or not. I do know that when I ask people, casually, about how they weigh reviews, verified purchase reviews on Amazon seem to count more than those that aren't.

So, when we push blather and hypotheses with no factual basis aside, we're still left with simple stuff. Jane pirates Book X. That means she gets the benefit of Book x--the reading of it, or the research that went into it, etc.--for nothing. The people who did the work to bring Book X to fruition get nothing.

That's the one set of facts that's reliable and knowable, around this. Everything else is either "what if-isms" and rationalization, as there's no research, no factual basis for any of them. I can no more argue that Pirate X puts his copy on Pirate Bay's successor-in-interest, thus costing Author Y $Z, than someone else can claim that honest buyers are being brought to purchase the book by Pirate X's cooking circle. Neither is knowable and neither is provable. We should, then, stick to what IS provable and knowable, which is pretty simple.

Hitch