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Originally Posted by ricdiogo
Yes, that's what I believe.
It's not that everyone is going to share the file. You only need, one person to do it.
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You only need one to
do it. But you need a
lot of others to reap the fruits of that labor rather than actually paying for it themselves for it to have the impact you envision. It's not just the copier in the loop -- it's everyone he shares with.
You are implicitly assuming the majority of folks out there are dishonest and will cheerfully receive stolen goods, even if they didn't do the actual theft.
Why?
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Even if a lot of people do actually pay for the book but we assume that some others (even if a minority) doesn't (and this is what already happens today), the copyright model is something different, because you don't have a 1-payment-per-book model as you used to. Even if this model can still support writers it'll be unstable and I believe that if authors want to be fully payed, they have to think of something else.
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I'm not sure I agree.
And even with physical objects, you still don't get the perfect "one payment per object" model. Retailers call the phenomenon "shrinkage" -- they have less stock on the selves than was actually bought and paid for. In other words, someone stole some of it. Retailers do their best to prevent that, and since they
are physical objects, they can precisely measure the lost sales. That's not possible with ebooks. Someone copies and illegally shares a title. How many folks got the illegally shared copy, and therefore didn't buy one of their own? There is no way to find out.
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If you live in the US and you buy from an American e-publisher you can easily judge the price in terms of "fair or not faire". But 1 USD has a completely different value in Washington or in Beijing. When you sell in the Internet you sell to the entire world. Are you sure someone from New Delhi will think of 1USD as a fair price for an ebook?
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I have no idea. Given the relative values of the dollar and the rupee, it will be a more expensive proposition for the person in New Delhi. Whether it's worth the money will depend upon what it is and how badly they want it, like any other question of value.
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Dennis