E-Book Piracy: The Publishing Industry's Next Epic Saga?

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

The assertion, in most cases, isn't that the publishers' primary interest is to be unfair, but rather that fairness doesn't enter into their consideration at all.

Agreed. Very few companies will decide not to do something that increases their revenue/profit because they feel it's unfair to their customers. Money is their primary motivation. I'm not sure I would call it EVIL though. It's just the way business works.

[HarryT]

I don't know if it's the same in the US, but in the UK, the directors of a company have a legal duty to maximise the return for their shareholders. If they fail to do so, they can be taken to court.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

they need to figure out how to allow ebook sharing & resales.

This is what they really want to fight. Sharing and resale are both competition to new book sales.

Yep. They're looking at ebooks as a way to enforce "one purchase = one user." And for the most part, upper-class/wealthy people accept that as reasonable, and students and lower-class communities, who have always survived with a lot of sharing and resales, have outright rejected it.

Which is what happened with music & video games: the biggest market demographic utterly rejects the idea of one sale meaning one user, and the publishers had no plan in place to deal with anything else.

[Flub]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't know if it's the same in the US, but in the UK, the directors of a company have a legal duty to maximise the return for their shareholders. If they fail to do so, they can be taken to court.

I've always seen that particular kind of law and thinking as causing a lot of rather nasty short term decisions for immediate financial gain with no thought to the long term repercussions. Like thumbing your nose at a group of customers and saying "No. You get to wait 6 months" and even worse telling your content creators that you're reinterpreting their contracts to essentially steal the rights to older work.

In an industry suffering from less good times it's probably not the sanest type of thinking to be honest. You'd think the publishers would have paid attention to what worked and what didn't for the music industry.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't know if it's the same in the US, but in the UK, the directors of a company have a legal duty to maximise the return for their shareholders. If they fail to do so, they can be taken to court.

I believe it's the same in the US.

[Bremen Cole]

I for one do not think publishers are "evil" for wanting DRM on their books. The whole digital delivery system is still very new, and most of the heads of the music, movie and book industries are "old school" in their thinking. As years go by they will figure out that they simply have to rethink the way they do business. It just takes time for new ideas and methods to be implemented and accepted.

[Flub]

It is a bit tiresome for customers to watch the publishing industry reinvent the wheel the music industry have just spent years getting to.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Bremen Cole

I for one do not think publishers are "evil" for wanting DRM on their books. The whole digital delivery system is still very new, and most of the heads of the music, movie and book industries are "old school" in their thinking. As years go by they will figure out that they simply have to rethink the way they do business. It just takes time for new ideas and methods to be implemented and accepted.

I don't necessarily think it's evil either, but I'd have a lot more understanding for them if this were strictly a copyright issue. It's not though, and the industry is trying to use DRM in order to create more controls than they have had before. If it were merely an attempt to prevent the pendulum from swinging in the pirates direction, which is what they claim it's for, that's one thing. But when they're really using DRM to try to push the pendulum farther to their side, I have less tolerance for it. Not only are they resisting changes to their old business methods, they're trying to make them even more draconian.

[neilmarr]

Whilst appreciating your point, Harry, don't overlook the fact that this past decade has birthed a whole new generation of dedicated publishers who -- although they carry full legal and editorial responsibility -- have no 'shareholders' to account to other than themselves, their professional staff and their authors and readers. 'Independent' sometimes means what the word suggests and profit is not necessarily the driving force. Neil

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't know of anywhere that rebinding your own book is not legal - do you?

But you might be forbidden to resell the book after rebinding... a policy aimed at preventing the sale of 'returned' paperbacks, but which seems to catch any rebinding.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

'Independent' sometimes means what the word suggests and profit is not necessarily the driving force.

True, but it usually is the case with the larger/established members of the industry.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

But you might be forbidden to resell the book after rebinding... a policy aimed at preventing the sale of 'returned' paperbacks, but which seems to catch any rebinding.

I'm not sure how such a policy could be enforced. There might be something in the contract with a retailer along those lines, but that wouldn't apply to an end customer that is using their right of first sale. I can't think of any law off the top of my head that would prevent an individual from rebinding and then reselling a pBook.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't know if it's the same in the US, but in the UK, the directors of a company have a legal duty to maximise the return for their shareholders. If they fail to do so, they can be taken to court.

Misunderstanding, at least in the US. The directors' duty is to manage the company in the best interests of the stockholders. MBA's in particular tend to think that means maximizing return, but IMO that's because higher returns justify their over-compensation. Sometimes directors will choose a lower return if they feel it's safer-or even if they simply feel it will generate less backlash (which means higher returns in the long run, but if most companies looked at the long run we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place, right?)

Shaggy, I think the issue with selling a book without a cover (rebound or not) lies in the assumption that the book was most likely not purchased in the first place. Which, given the current culture (in the US, at least), has good odds of being true. The question is, how defensible is prosecution (if somebody prosecuted on this) based on an assumption rather than proof.

In some jurisdictions (and the US seems to be gradually turning into one of these) it would be up to the seller to prove that he'd bought the book. In others (the US I grew up in) it would be up to the prosecution to prove that the book was stolen. (Returned books are supposed to be destroyed. More often they're thrown out. There are differing ruling about claiming ownership of 'garbage'.)

So I don't know how the basic question would be answered-but also don't think it would ever be prosecuted.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't know of anywhere that rebinding your own book is not legal - do you?

You can make the hardback without rebinding. So then you still have the paperback and a new hardback.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by tompe

You can make the hardback without rebinding. So then you still have the paperback and a new hardback.

Which still falls under fair use, until you try and sell it.