Quote:
Originally Posted by Moejoe
Please back this claim up. And please state what you mean by 'deprivation'. Monetary deprivation? Deprivation of control? The statement you made is vague at best, and based upon what? Your own personal feelings? If you care to look at the countless examples of the benefits of file-sharing I posted earlier in this thread, you would see that not only is there negligible effects on sales because of file sharing, but in many cases file-sharing is a boon to sales.
A phantom sale is not a sale, you cannot deprive an artist of something when there is nothing taken away.
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Deprivation of control for starters. Deprivation of money for seconds.
Yes, a phantom sale is not a sale but saying it is not depriving an author because "I would never have bought the book anyway" is, again, a specious argument. If you would never have bought the book anyway then why did you download it? Obviously you did want it, you just didn't want to pay for it. So if you were completely unable to file-share it then you may have bought it. You claim you would "never have bought it anyway" simply because it is so easy to acquire it without paying. I guess it's not wrong to go steal a ferrari because I would never buy one to begin with so I'm not really depriving them of a sale am I? And before you say that I'm depriving them of physical materials etc, there are costs involved in ebook publishing, so illegally downloading a copy is depriving the publishers and author of something.
As for file-sharing leading to more sales, I did say that I agreed it very well might lead to an increase in exposure and eventual sales for the author. However the decision to partake of this method of marketing(for want of a better word) should be left in the authors hands. If they want to give away their first book and let everyone file-share to their hearts content then that is their perogative. On the other hand, if they want to go the more traditional route then disrepecting their choice by file-sharing, whether it leads to an eventual rise in sales or not, is, in my opinion, wrong.
While on that topic, lets be perfectly honest, the percentage of file-sharers that go and donate money to the author after file-sharing a book is extremely small. The ones that go and legally obtain a copy of the book or another book by the same author is a little bigger but not much. The type of file sharing that leads to increased sales is small time sharing between friends or by legit copies being distributed by the author/publisher and not by people jumping on the net and downloading a book through a torrent. The vast vast vast majority that do that have no intention of ever paying for something they can get for free.
Where things might change in the future is if the publishing world goes the way of the music world and makes it easy and cost effective to download legal copies. Then maybe people who file share as a way of sampling something might be encouraged to simply buy the book to begin with.
All my 2 cent of course.
Cheers,
PKFFW