Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
That is understandable and noble. But authors have to eat, too. They have bills to pay. Of course, if an author feels he is rich enough and wants to give everything away for free, fine. It should be entirely up to him or her, that is all I am saying.
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Was it ever proved conclusively that unauthorized copying of author's works has a negative effect on the amount of money he makes? Or is it just a myth?
Some likely points (most of them summaries of earlier discussions on MobileRead, none of them really proven):
1. There's little correlation between the amount of copies found on the Net, and the amount of money lost by author, because almost all people doing the copying are collectors, who don't have time to read, count their collections in thousands of volumes, would never buy the book, and author's name is just a bunch of letters to them. What's important to the authors are people who would browse those collections, available on the Net, looking for books to read.
2. Competition between various works is high on the digital market, each book competes with a high number of freebies legally available, and public domain books (some of the greatest mystery stories are in public domain, some of the first SF/F. It's not just classics anymore). People are more likely to get a book by the author whose style they know and like, so authors need to become known to compete with freebies. In fact, that's why many authors give away short stories for free.
3. Unauthorized reading of books has two aspects. One, a book is read, no money is paid, it's a net loss for the author. Two, a book is read, possibly author becomes known and liked to the person who read it, it's more likely this person will look for more books by the author.
Now, which aspect wins (positive: more people know author and buy next books, or negative: some books are read without paying) depends on many factors: the language the works are published in, distribution of digital rights causing aritficial geographic restrictions on book availability, the way in which books are sold, formats they are sold in, availability of previous and next volumes in series.
To analyze those factors more in-depth:
4. Unauthorized copying will always be around in the digital age. New books can be scanned from paper books, all DRMs can be broken, the only reason that some haven't been is that no one really tried. It's been shown, I think beyond doubt, that even with lots of restrictions and high penalties collections of thousands of ebooks can be and would be distributed and shared by means of flash cards sent by snail mail.
5. Let's assume that once a book has been written, it will be available both through legal and illegal channels. It's crucial that legal access to the book and the whole experience of reading it should be more convenient through legal channel. Which one wins the comparison is decided by following factors:
- Amount of money that needs to be paid (illegal/free wins, of course),
- The ease of process of paying the money (illegal/free wins again),
- The availability of the book in your country (usually illegal/free wins, ie. more volumes of the book series are available illegaly worldwide than legally),
- The availability of book in language you want to read it in (currently when it comes to ebooks, illegal/free wins in many languages),
- The availability of the book in the format you can easily read in, or ease of conversion to format you can read in (illegal/free again wins),
- The standarization of the process of obtaining the book (macdonaldisation) (here free loses in that the initial learning curve of obtaining illegal books is a bit steeper than the legal ways - but once a person learned, it's as easy as legal ways),
- The feeling of being if possession of ebook (free wins hand down, as many publishers will only "licence" you the legal book, and then shut their servers down, depriving you of access to the work you bought),
- The ability to read excerpt from author's work to decide if you like it (illegal/free wins, though many authors/stores provide excerpts and whole volumes for free as well)
- Moral high ground (legal obviously wins in most democratic countries).
Non-factors:
- legal penalties for getting ebooks illegally? There are none I know of, laws are rarely dangerous for people getting ebooks to read, aren't enforced even on digital collectors, and digital collectors interest us only in the aspect of providing the illegal ways of getting ebooks - which they do well.
- reading/comparing reviews - people can do it on Amazon or Fantastic Fiction and then go to legal of illegal channel to get the book.
So about the only reason people would choose to buy legal books is a moral one (do not steal). I suppose it's lucky that this is still the only angle new and Internet-illiterate readers come from.
Why the damn big publishing companies can't throw all their precious digital rights over all countries to one big basket and pick them back from it, so all digital rights to a book series, in all countries, belongs to a single company? They're doing that for new books, but majority of the books read is still years old. They're squabbling over peanuts, and losing time and business...at least the geographical restrictions issue would be gone.
Why the ebook reader devices/programs manufacturers can't agree on one format to read them all, without any need for conversion? They almost did with ePub, and now they're insisting on bringing in their custom DRM that gets them nothing but losses.
Why can't they get rid of DRM altogether? This would eliminate the danger of some server being turned off and your books being denied to you.
Why can't they put more effort into editing those legal ebooks so they look nicer than "pirated" releases, which usually are proofread many times by many people and it's easy (at least for me) to find a free edition with less errors than in many legally available ebooks?
Why can't big publishers expand into more countries? Start selling ebooks in languages other than english? Illegal ones are already there, and the only companies I see trying to sell ebooks in other languages are newly-formed ones.
If they did that, unauthorized copying would probably be much more profitable for authors than it is now.
A side-note about ethics and copyright
So about the only reason people would choose to buy legal books is a moral one (do not steal).
Society's ethics and morality bend with time, adapt to the Things That Work. Feelings are transformed into words, discussions, rationalization of reality. Distinction between theft and unauthorized copying, debated in many topics, becomes bigger and more meaningful to more people as years pass, its moral meaning changes.
Thomas Babbington Macaulay stated in a speech in UK parliament
in 1841:
Quote:
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I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which the House has listened to me, that I will not detain you longer. I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living.
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Sources:
http://baens-universe.com/articles/McCauley_copyright
http://www.baen.com/library/palaver4.htm
Please notice how it was envisioned by Macaulay 170 years ago that the law and morality will render themselves a public enemy, and how his words reflect today's affairs.
And he was talking about extension (tiny by today's standards) of term of copyright - which I didn't even mention up to now. Because what he predicted came to pass, and how long the copyright stays becomes more and more irrelevant, as the copyright is on the way of becoming a dead law, never taken into account in ethics, useful only in big legal battles. Publishers and authors can't afford to build their business on the model of copyright and legality anymore.