Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic
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A judge can make whatever ruling he likes. The question is exactly
how RapidShare is expected to do this.
RapidShare is a file sharing service. Users can upload anything they desire. If I want to share material where doing so would be considered theft, I wrap it in an password protected archive under a misleading name. I then post the RapidShare link in a forum where folks interested in what I'm offering hang out, along with the password to extract the content from the archive. Precisely how is RapidShare supposed to police that? The old story of King Canute trying to order the tide not to roll in comes to mind.
This is a tempest in a teapot. Yes, we can assume there is piracy of ebooks. But how much? We have no way to tell.
If I'm an author, with ebooks on the market, I frankly don't
care about things like bit torrent files for downloading a thousand ebooks. Mere downloads are irrelevant My concern will be ebooks which are downloaded illegally, and read
instead of buying a legitimate copy from which I'll get revenue. But even then, I have
no way to determine how much of a problem it
is, let alone any way of preventing it.
Given that, I have three concerns:
1. Writing the best stuff I can, to give people books they will want to read.
2. Doing everything possible to let people who might be interested in what I write know that I exist and have books available they might like.
3. Make it as easy as possible for people aware of me to find my books and give me money.
People will pay for value if you
provide value at a fair price, and make it
convenient for them. Can I find illicit copies of particular books? Probably. But it will take time and effort. I pay for convenience all the time. Ebooks will be no different.
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Dennis