Quote:
Originally Posted by Ilkyway
Well, but if you compare one has a venyl and downloads a copy of mp3 seems a very different case for me. It maybe because I am expereanced in making anything that has a sound and that I owe into mp3. But I have no clue how to turn a book that I own in an ebook. As far as I understand the process of making an ebook there is much more work to do. And the original might get hurt in the process, or am I wrong here?
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It's not difficult, but it does require hardware that's not standard for computers--you need a scanner. Sometimes, depending on the original, you need to cut the spine off it so you can scan it; that destroys the original as a book.
Ripped MP3s are common because computers come with a CD player, and there's plenty of free software for making MP3s from audio CDs. If computers came with a scanner & free OCR software, ripping books would be common.
They don't, and aren't going to, although a lot of printers now have copy/scan abilities, and free scan-to-PDF software. But as hardware gets cheaper, both digital camera and page-scanner ebooks are going to be more common.
It's *NEVER* going to be harder to copy things than it is right now. It will never be more difficult to create & share digital files, nor more difficult to remove anti-copy protections. A hundred years ago, if you wanted a copy of an out-of-print book, you had to sit down with a typewriter. Fifty years ago, you could hold it down to a xerox machine. Now, you can take pictures of the pages with a $20 camera, and convert it to a PDF with free software.
Right now, this is considered complicated and troublesome. It will get easier (in part, because legitimate businesses need to do things very much like this, and they will find ways to make it easier), and digital copies of printed material will be made & shared much like MP3s are now.
Publishers & authors who don't want their materials copied are going to be upset. If they want to *continue making money* at their craft, they'll have to figure out how to get people to buy what they could get for free, not fret over who's not paying for it.
It's not impossible. It's not even difficult. ITunes is raking in money for songs that are widely available on torrents. And bottled water is a billion-dollar industry, despite almost everyone having access to water just as good from their local taps. Many people are willing to pay for what they could get for free; the publishing industry needs to find them & market to them, not spend millions trying to prevent the digital equivalent of used ebook stores and private lending libraries.