Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenophon
On the copied software front, the issue is this: As a software producer living in the US, I must charge enough money to meet my expenses here in the US market. If I lower my prices in SE Asia, how do I ensure that I still make enough sales in the developed world to make ends meet? Won't the inexpensive SE Asian version simply be re-exported to the developed countries? I could lower my prices world-wide, but I'd have to sell many times more units to bring in the same revenue -- 37x more, in my Prague example above. Alternatively, I can decide that "piracy"* in the SE Asian market doesn't matter to me so long as I can make enough revenue in the developed world. Or, I can try to find some other business model.
But no matter how you slice and dice the business issues, I must still make enough money to support myself and my family. And if widespread copying wipes out my income, I'll wind up supporting myself some other way.
To connect all of the above back to eBooks, consider this: On the one hand, I have no inherent right to make a living in any particular fashion. Not via writing software, or writing books, or whatever. On the other hand, you have no inherent right to the results of my labor whether those results are a physical object, some easily copied patterns of electric charges (i.e. software or eBooks), or some dirty marks on a piece of paper. And if you (collectively) don't pay enough to make it worth my while, I'll stop producing software/eBooks/Literature/whatever and do something else instead. I rather expect that most authors have the same attitude. They might still write for fun (and I would certainly still program for fun), but the time and energy available for that activity will be strictly limited by the need to make a living doing some other thing.
No one in this thread has yet proposed a better model than copyright and monetary payment for managing the competing desires from the above paragraph. I certainly think that the particular implementation of copyright that we have today (in the US) is quite far from achieving its goals as stated in the US Constitution. That's not an indictment of the idea of copyright, but rather of the form it has taken by way of lobbyists and the gang of 535 (a.k.a the US Congress).
Xenophon
* I put "piracy" in quotes because I agree that it's really the wrong description. But I used it anyway, because I don't have a pithy term that fits the facts better. Ideas, anyone?
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In the cases you have referred to above *Piracy* is exactly the correct term to use. Organised software/entertainment copying in SE asia is run by criminal gangs and solely for profit. As a business you could lower your prices, set up all kinds of incentives and it still wouldn't make a difference in those instances.
Where 'file-sharing' differs is that profit is not an incentive, nor is it tolerated amongst file-sharers. In point of fact in most releases you will see something along the lines of this added to an .nfo file -- IF YOU LIKE THIS THEN BUY A COPY. Add to this that 'filehsarers' often buy the products they 'share' and we're talking about two very different things. We have plenty of examples of product given away for free and then monetized in some other way. Cory Doctorow being the prime example of digital sharing leading to a rise in pbook sales.
I don't think anyone with a semblance of honesty would argue that real *Piracy* should be tolerated in any form. In nearby Chinatown area of Liverpool, and if you know where to go, you can pick up any number of illegal Blu-Ray copies (AVHCD on Dual Layer DVD that play back in PS3's and Blu-Ray players. Full 1080p and AC3 sound), but this is not the domain of the *filesharer*. This is the domain of organised crime. The two shouldn't be confused.
EDIT: and a lot of filesharers work on the Wimpy Principal. That is "they will gladly pay you Tuesday for a Hamburger today".
EDIT 2: And as to your if I don't get paid enough I'll stop producing line, well there's plenty of people out there who would create if there wasn't ANY money to begin with. Recompense for efforts whether creative or anything else is not only measured in dollars and cents. The Open Source movement, Free Software, CC licensed music, books, movies, games....there are countless examples of creation for creation's sake.