[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Happ

This is why I started by stating that the issue here is just economics. All else is a rhetoric and a waste of time. File sharing would not be economically a problem if you could only do it the way you lend a book to a friend: one at a time.

B&N came up with a way to do this--and promptly crippled it. And gave publishers the option not to participate.

The ebook publishers are not seeking ways to allow file transfers; they want every purchase to be limited to one user. I'd take the anti-privacy arguments more seriously if I saw publishers working to offer legal alternatives.

Once you can ‘share’ your files with millions of people that then do not have to buy them, you have a problem: how to pay the authors if no one will pay them?

And yet Baen makes a profit on ebooks. I suspect their entire collection is available in torrents--but they still make money. Most people *want* to pay for perceived value; they're just not willing to give up privacy and accept limitations on use in order to get that value.

And how can anyone argue that it is fair for 10% of people to pay for the other 80% to use?

But that's how books have always worked. Maybe not 10/80... but grade schools buy books that get used by several years' worth of students, libraries buy books for dozens of people to read; people loan books to friends and give them away when they're done. The majority of reading is not done by the original purchaser.

Do you believe every book should be read by exactly one person, and then destroyed? Do you think most authors would prefer that?

The problem with file sharers is that they have no clue as how to pay authors, how to make activities like writing software, music or books profitable enough so that you can make a living out of that. The model they have in mind is their own: someone working someplace else and then at weekends doing something creative.

When technology changes, how to make a living as a creative artist changes. There are photographers who lost their livelihoods when digital cameras became the norm.

I suspect we'll see a lot more paid serials--here's a chapter for free; throw some money in the PayPal and when it reaches a certain level, the author releases the next chapter. And yes, that means people who didn't pay get access to the book.

Linux distributions continue to make money, despite being open-source and freely available. Exclusive control of copies is not the only way to pay creators. I don't know what methods we can come up with that work with the internet--but some methods will be found. Some creators will make a living at their crafts, and some won't. It may be a different mix than currently manage it.

BTW, you certainly cannot take down the darkweb, but you can limit it and you can campaign against it. Likewise, you cannot put a stop to robbery, but you can do everything possible to discourage it.

But the darknet, unlike robbery, is not illegal. Some illegal activity takes place there, and plenty of legal activity as well. People seeking privacy are not always committing crimes. The torrent networks are used to distribute albums and movies with the blessings of the creators, who don't want to host them on their own servers, as well as bootleg songs and ebooks.