Massive wave of ebook piracy?

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

And thus marks the breakdown of society.

"What is easiest for them" is NEVER what counts. That's the logic of the rats in the alleys and the flies on a carcass, not of humans in civilization. No one lives in isolation; it's time everyone on this planet--and especially those who take advantage of technology others provided for them and plug into these stoopid tubes--accepted that they are part of a society, and in a society, there are rules to follow.

Don't want to be part of society? Fine. But society is kinda tight, so give all our stuff back...



Exactly... that's the way people in a society do it.

I would argue that if your definition of society is following all the rules then you live if a very lonely society. I live a block from a school so I can't walk out my door before I see people breaking rules. Jaywalking because it's easiest for them. It's no wonder because their parents (the rats in the alleys and flies on the carcass) are illegally parking when they drop off their kids and then speeding on their way to work.

Rules that are most important to you as an author are not the rules that are most important to society in general. I would argue that jaywalking is a much more serious violation of the law then downloading an ebook but most people don't even know what it is. People rationalize all the time about which rules to follow.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Barcey

....
Rules that are most important to you as an author are not the rules that are most important to society in general. I would argue that jaywalking is a much more serious violation of the law then downloading an ebook but most people don't even know what it is. People rationalize all the time about which rules to follow.

True, until it begins to affect them.

It's the old freedom to swing my fist thing.....

If there are no professional authors you get what you pay for....

[John F]

Originally Posted by toddos

...

In other words, there are plenty of ways to reduce bitrates without sacrificing much (or any) quality. The 14.2GB 1080p video we calculated above could be as little as 3.6GB using 3500kbps 720p video and 640kbps AC3 audio. You could watch over 70 of those before reaching the 250GB cap.

You had me until the bolded statement.

I do think your right, a loss of quality will become/is the norm. But if your 720P becomes the norm, Blu Ray will remain a strong niche format because people will want the better quality.

... Many blu-ray movies will use an uncompressed audio track, but again that's just a factor of having space to burn. ...

Just about every recent Blu Ray is using compressed audio. Maybe you mean lossless?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Barcey

I would argue that if your definition of society is following all the rules then you live if a very lonely society.

Really? Refraining from jaywalking makes me lonely? Funny... I thought it kept me alive and vital. I know of no one more lonely than a person in an intensive care ward after a car-strike. Except maybe the person in the ground after a car-strike...

Originally Posted by Barcey

Rules that are most important to you as an author are not the rules that are most important to society in general... People rationalize all the time about which rules to follow.

That actually might make sense... if we were talking about people who steal to feed their families. But we're talking about ebooks, a product no one needs, no one will starve without, and no one will be denied a room at the inn for being without. But the products can put food on the table for those who write and sell them, and to some degree, they are directly impacted by those stealing their work instead of paying for it.

There is simply no valid rationalization for stealing something no one needs, but a creator can potentially profit from. Which is why the idea of rationalizing a reason for pirating ebooks is morally bankrupt.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I don't think people who borrow from libraries care much whether licenses were purchased or not. In the UK, writers get a few pence every time one of their books is borrowed, but that wouldn't sway my decision whether I read it in the library or take it home to read. For a lot of people the internet has replaced libraries for research/reference, so it is no surprise that they would turn to it for fiction too. If writers are happy with the few pence they get from library loans they will be just as happy with a few pence every time one of their books is downloaded.

1. Writer's (actually, copyright owners; the twain are not always synonymous) would not receive the "few pence" for illegal downloads.

2. People not caring if licenses were purchased or not is justification?

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Then I will rephrase it. What is easiest for them is what they will do. As an asside, I think we lost our society in the 80s when everyone was encouraged to be greedy...

That I will agree with.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by tompe

Copyright infringement is still not theft (see other threads).

The argument that it is wrong just because it is illegal seems strange. With that reasoning if I had to choose between "buying 200000 paper copies of a book and illegally downloading one electronic copy of the book" and "doing nothing" the right thing would be "doing nothing". I do not think the publishers or author would be happy with me doing the right thing.

And the rationalization goes on. Legal semantics do not change whether something is wrong or not.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Really? Refraining from jaywalking makes me lonely?...

Methinks you missed Mr. Jordon's point. I understood him to say (and agree with) that your concept of society being law abiding just doesn't exist and only way you could observe such a thing is if your society just didn't exist which would make you very lonely since it would exist in your mind only. Loke Mr. Jordon, I see rules and laws broken daily because people find it more convenient for them to so so. It's more convenient to throw that piece of litter on the ground than to find a proper place for it. It's more convenient to jaywalk than it is to walk to a crosswalk and wait for the light. It's more convenient to park illegally (such as by a red curb) while running a quick errand than to take the time to find a proper parking place and walk the extra distance. When people who can't be bothered to obey simple rules and laws because "it's too inconvenient" and find it's easy to get away with it (mostly because other people either are too afraid or can't be bothered to call them on it), they often move up to more serious offenses. At best, they quit caring about other people altogether and think only of themselves. Even worse, their children learn this inconsiderate behavior from their parents, take it to the next level, pass that along to their children, so on and so forth.

The sad fact is society as we have it today is the sick image of rats and flies that you said it couldn't be.

[fjtorres]

Hmm, we're drifting a bit towards the old sinkhole...

In the meantime, I ran into this one. An honest man wanted to pay Penguin for John LeCarre ebooks:
http://www.ricday.net/blog/108-tryin...-le-carre.html

Great line in there: "How honest do you feel today?"

Rationalization aside (as Heinlein said/quoted; "Humans aren't a rational species, they're a rationalizing one.") people will do as they want unless other people convince/compel them (one way or another) to do otherwise. (That's what societies do, after all.)

The challenge facing the publishing industry is how to (at best) *minimize* piracy at a time when their actions actively incentivize and *reward* such behavior without providing a compelling argument against it.

Most people *know* piracy is wrong.
Many (most?) refrain from it just on principle. (yay!)
Some indulge with gusto. (Unavoidable: the tech community has long had a minority that believes that might is right and being able to do something is all the justification they need to do it.)
The majority, though, lives in the gray area of temptation and are constantly forced to choose to be ethical/moral/social or not.

The BPHs just aren't helping themselves with their narrowminded obsession on maximizing control and protecting the past.

The link above? Mike Cane, in his blog, got curious:
http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2010/...ks-and-itself/

*He* deleted the pirate editions.
Most people who "get curious" or frustrated won't.
Talking about the ethics and morality and rationalization and choosing sides isn't going to change things significantly on the ground. For things to change, the drivers that push the middle-grounders towards piracy need to be addressed.
And of those drivers, pricing is going to be tough; the BPHs have their lavish lifestyle to uphold, after all, and a business model built on presumtive "bestsellers" showered by monster advances rather than the long tail of the midlist isn't something they'll readily concede is dated and obsolete in a commodity marketplace.
But one of the drivers, georestrictions, is frakking *easy* to fix.
Not trivial, mind you, but easy; it can be solved in a year or so.
All it takes is a simple license database that online retailers can plug into that lists who owns the rights for a given book in a given region and what the terms of sale are for that region. Pretty much the same thing retailers are now doing to *deny* sales based on regional location, no? The difference being, of course, that this Universal Rights Database would be used to enable any online retailer to sell any ebook to anybody that wants it and then forward the appropriate funds to the rightsholder.
Are there issues with this model? Sure. It's just a patch on the 19th-century system we now have that will eventually need to be replaced with a system most likely based on non-exclusive world language rights.
But its a step forward.
And it reduces the need for people to constantly have to decide how badly they want to read a specific volume.

Humans are what they are; neither saints nor sinners, but a bit of each.
Rational people and systems design for it and try to maximize "virtue" and minimize temptation.

Which brings us back to the question of when the BPHs will realze how counterproductive and self-desructive their recent policies have become.

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

And the rationalization goes on. Legal semantics do not change whether something is wrong or not.

Whether it's wrong for you, you'd need to add to have any meaningful conversation. As it's clear some things wrong to you aren't wrong to other people.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by toddos

Actually, 250GB is quite a lot. Note that I'm not necessarily supportive of any cap, but as far as caps go 250GB is a good number to choose.

I don't stream Blu-ray, but do stream lots of other stuff. I usually use between 120-140 GB per month. I'm thinking about ditching my cable, so those figures will go even higher if I do.

I'm not too thrilled with Comcast wanting to buy a majority stake in NBC Universal (which is part owner of Hulu). Controlling pipes and content is not good.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

Whether it's wrong for you, you'd need to add to have any meaningful conversation. As it's clear some things wrong to you aren't wrong to other people.

Ohmigosh, it keeps getting better. So we get to pick and choose what is right or wrong while living in a society?

[MovieBird]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

And thus marks the breakdown of society.

"What is easiest for them" is NEVER what counts. That's the logic of the rats in the alleys and the flies on a carcass, not of humans in civilization. No one lives in isolation; it's time everyone on this planet--and especially those who take advantage of technology others provided for them and plug into these stoopid tubes--accepted that they are part of a society, and in a society, there are rules to follow.

Originally Posted by The Wealth of Nations

[E]very individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

As with anyone, Adam Smith got many things wrong. However, his way of economic thinking sure seems to have helped improve every industrialized country in the world.

And it's in direct opposition to your stated definition of society, above. People do what will benefit them the most, rules and laws be damned, in aggregate. The correct way to handle piracy is not to whine about moral turpitude, but to make it worth their while to purchase a legal copy. Incentivize, as fjtorres said.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by kennyc

If there are no professional authors you get what you pay for....

Works for me. I'm into classic literature.

[ManosHandsOfFate]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Nope because it is stealing plain and simple. Anyone with half a brain knows this.
Do whatever it is that you do, but don't try to gain respect by justifying it.

Whoa! It's the "half a brain" argument!