Quote:
Originally Posted by b0rsuk
1. Assuming the book was ever published as a paper book. Admittedly, the vast majority of books currently are. But newer books are often written in a word processor, so no translation is needed. It's just a matter of contacting the author.
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I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. It's the author and/or publisher that would withdraw their support from e-books.
The vast majority of books, as far as I know, now originate as electronic files, but that doesn't mean that the author and/or the publisher
has to make these files available to consumers. That's what I'm talking about
: If it's not in their interest, they'll just continue to publish in paper, and forget about ebooks altogether.
Quote:
Originally Posted by b0rsuk
2. Hmm, let's see. Retyping paper books into digital format would require a lot of work. Almost as if, *gasp*, it could create new job opportunity. "It's beneath publishers to do that" ? Then people will have to do the work themselves, for free. If publishers don't want to participate (by creating incentives for well digitized books, paying for work etc), let them look like greedy bastards.
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Do you seriously believe that someone is going to sit there and manually type in the contents of a book from scratch? Not even the people at the Gutenberg Project do that. They, at least, use scanners. Not only that, but do you really want to
read a book that's been copied this way? You'd see the quality of the texts go down precipitously.
I'm not saying that you'd
never see books pirated the old-fashioned way. Certainly, there are some people who would sit there and scan page after page of a book. But the availability of books would go
way down.
Quote:
Originally Posted by b0rsuk
3. Profit from pirates by setting bounties for high quality ebooks, luring them out of the underground.
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Good luck with that. Only an
idiot would want to bring down the wrath of the government on them in that way. That's the kind of thing you see happen in foreign countries that are normally beyond the reach of U.S. law (until the F.B.I. gets cooperation from other countries).
Quote:
Originally Posted by b0rsuk
4. A lot of classic books are already digitized thanks to projects like Project Gutenberg.
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Sure. Those are out-of-copyright books that don't have legal issues. That project also has dedicated people who scan page after page of books into OCR software.