ebook piracy numbers

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Nathanael

Well, there is this:



Every pbook I own contains a statement similar to that, generally on the copyright page.

And fair use under US copyright law generally allows one to copy only a portion of the work (generally understood as up to ten percent or one thousand words, whichever is less). Courts, I believe, generally allow a bit more for educational purposes, a bit less for commercial.

So, yes, slapping a book on your scanner and scanning it in its entirety is illegal.

Not illegal. THERE IS NO U.S. LAW with those words.

Breech of contract, Maybe.
Copyright infringement, Maybe.

Most "shrink wrap" EULA's have been ruled un-enforceable as written. Many clauses will stand, but others are pure rubbish.

You need to defend yourself with a a good contracts Lawyer handy if it ever went to court.
Most claims will not stick with any competent defense council.
They know that. They are tossin' scare words around.

[corona]

I buy books only very rarely. Before e-reading, I checked them out of the library or borrowed them from friends. I still do a lot of that, but also get some e-books from the dark side. Same with music. I'd like to say that I read a sketchily-obtained e-book and then run out and buy a copy, or that music I get p2p induces me to buy concert tickets. Well, neither, because I can't afford it.

My practice of "piracy" definitely involves me more in mass culture, which is probably not a bad thing for the record companies etc. But in terms of piracy's effect on actually taking out my wallet, the effect is really zilch.

[Hellmark]

If you give people a easy, affordable way to purchase things legally, they'll do it more often than not. The ones who won't typically are ones who would have never bought it if piracy were not an option. Those are ones you cannot honestly count in with the loss figures. Can you get a number on who or how many there are in that class, not really, best you can do is to make it as easy as possible for people to be legit. The media corporations, of software, music, movie and text, all fail to understand this.

Have I pirated? Yes, mostly when I was younger. Did I later go out and buy copies of what I pirated? Most of it. Some of it I thought sucked, and usually just deleted it before finishing. Some artists I found out about only because of piracy. For instance, the Reverend Horton Heat I discovered through piracy, and afterwards went out and bought all of his albums, went to see in concert now three times, and buy his other merch.

Now I don't pirate much. Things are easier to get, legally. The only time in recent memory that I have gone to the darknet is to find out of print, not available as ebook, works. If it was available to buy, I'd have gladly bought it.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Nathanael

Well, there is this:

Every pbook I own contains a statement similar to that, generally on the copyright page.

And fair use under US copyright law generally allows one to copy only a portion of the work (generally understood as up to ten percent or one thousand words, whichever is less). Courts, I believe, generally allow a bit more for educational purposes, a bit less for commercial.

So, yes, slapping a book on your scanner and scanning it in its entirety is illegal.

Copying an entire TV program in order to watch it at a different time was ruled fair use. Copying an entire book, in order to read it on a different device, should follow the same guideline. (I believe music format-shifting has been ruled legal; there just haven't been lawsuits about ebooks yet.)

Fair use, in the US, has no specific limit. It's not 10%; it's not a page count. In one case, using four notes of a song was ruled *not* fair use; in another, printing 39 words of a book was not fair use. (The book was unpublished, and an advance review leaked critical details.) However, use of an entire tune was considered not infringing in several cases;

However, copyright law specifically allows for "multiple copies for classroom use"--which implies entire works, not fragments. (There's been a case that indicates otherwise, but it involved several works at once--and profit for the copiers; the case wasn't against a teacher.) Deciding whether use is fair requires consideration of four factors, including the type of intended use, the nature of the original (fiction, nonfic, published or not, etc.), how much is used, and the effect on the market. No one of these overrides the others and creates a binary is/is not infringement condition.

Noncommercial use is a big matter... making copies for personal use (or even group use) is much less likely to be infringing if nobody's making money from it.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Copying an entire TV program in order to watch it at a different time was ruled fair use. Copying an entire book, in order to read it on a different device, should follow the same guideline. (I believe music format-shifting has been ruled legal; there just haven't been lawsuits about ebooks yet.)

Yes, provided you can do that without circumventing DRM or breaking other laws...

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Yes, provided you can do that without circumventing DRM or breaking other laws...

Theoretically, cracking DRM to make a personal copy is legal, because you're not cracking it for the purpose of violating copyright. (Arguing that distribution of DRM-cracking scripts is for the purpose of format shifting should also be possible. I heartily recommend it. To someone with a really strong team of lawyers, and citizenship in a country with no US extradition treaty.)

But since this was about scanning books you own to make ebooks, DRM doesn't enter the picture. (Yet. Until some publisher's lawyer decides to claim that Rowling's "DRM" is "not making them digitally available at all" and goes after file-sharers for DMCA violations instead of normal copyright violations.)

[ficbot]

But if you are destroying the original book in order to scan it, you are not making a 'copy' since you'll still have only one version. You are making a format-shift

On the other hand, there is the education business model. My school uses a curriculum program that has many clunky binders accompanying each story-based unit. I am, as the legally hired and paid for employee of the purchasing school, permitted to copy away for my own use with the enrolled students of said school. I even scanned the binders into PDF for ease of printing, said so on their message boards when several teachers were sharing tips, and had an admin from their company compliment me on my ingenuity and use of 'technology in the classroom.' The catch? Each books costs a thousand bucks

My view for regular books is, if the folks at Big Five want this to be a 'license' (with corresponding powers to them to limit or restrict my use) and not a 'sale' (where I own the book and can do as I please with it, including re-selling and loaning) then they need to charge a rental or license type price and not a full-on hardback price. $2 a book and it expires after a month? Fine. $20 a book and they can decide to remove it from my Fictionwise bookshelf if they don't want to sell it anymore? Not fine at all. And if that's how they are going to play it, they really can't blame people like us for trying to work around it.

[Nathanael]

Originally Posted by theducks

Not illegal. THERE IS NO U.S. LAW with those words.

Breech of contract, Maybe.
Copyright infringement, Maybe.

Both of which, last time I checked, were illegal.

Most "shrink wrap" EULA's have been ruled un-enforceable as written....You need to defend yourself with a a good contracts Lawyer handy if it ever went to court.

Hmm... Good luck with that. Let me know how it works out for you.

[Penforhire]

The public library comparison confuses me. I know they pay a fee but it isn't the same as if I bought the book myself, is it? So that book I checked out and read is a lost sale, right? That circumstance maps oddly on e-books, which have only artificial scarcity. If I can borrow one e-book why can't I borrow any e-book whenever I want?

I'm not talking about entitlement, I think. But I see a discontinuity in how the ethics of public libraries map onto e-books.

I'd rather see a fee paid with every e-reader purchase that functions as a library fee does, to pay authors. And then allow me to borrow several e-books at a time, owning none. I don't have the same need to "own" an e-book as I did for p-books. You can't see them on your hard drive the same way you do on a bookshelf. I know some collectors or hoarders feel differently.

[Nathanael]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Copying an entire TV program in order to watch it at a different time was ruled fair use. Copying an entire book, in order to read it on a different device, should follow the same guideline.

Hope that works out for you.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Fair use, in the US, has no specific limit. It's not 10%; it's not a page count.

No, the 10% is not a strict limit, it's been, as I understand it, a general guideline courts have often followed. And yes, I'm aware of all four tests. I was addressing Derek's apparent claim that fair use by definition allows wholesale copying of entire works. Yes, there are cases in which it has proved true. But in general, the substantiality test says the more you copy, the less likely it is for the use to be fair.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

However, copyright law specifically allows for "multiple copies for classroom use"--which implies entire works

If Derek wants to claim his hard drive is a classroom, good luck to him.

[Nathanael]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

But since this was about scanning books you own

Umm, no. Derek was claiming he could copy borrowed library books.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Nathanael

Umm, no. Derek was claiming he could copy borrowed library books.

Much like recording TV shows, which is also content you don't own that you're making a personal copy of for use later. Scanning library books seems to be exactly the same, legally, as videotaping a TV show: I only have access to the original for a limited time, so I'm making a personal copy for later use.

[wgrimm]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

I wish some publisher would take up my ebooks-for-pbooks idea: you'd mail in your pbooks (or perhaps turn them in at some big chain bookstore that's a partner in the project) and get a code entitling you to a free ebook of that title. The pbooks would be marked so that they couldn't be turned in again and donated to schools, libraries, city reading programs, military bases, or any charity with a need for books -- there are plenty. The publishers would get a big tax write-off somehow (I'm sure their accountants could do something with the fact that they're swapping a $15-ish ebook for a $2.99 cover used paperback), the charities would get a windfall, the people those charities serve would be helped, and my bookshelves and floor joists would thank me.

Great idea, I just think it is far too advanced for any publishers to try. Most of those guys are clinging to hundred year old business models, and it is my guess that many will fail because they "just don't get it" when it comes to ebooks.

Another thing they might try is publishing books from their backlists that have been long out of print- making them available as ebooks for a few dollars or so. Pure profit for the most part, as costs were covered long ago. You know, I wanted to read one of Nevil Shute's books last week, but my library had nothing of his. Silly, but maybe I can find it in ebook format, but I doubt it....

[Nathanael]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

The public library comparison confuses me. I know they pay a fee but it isn't the same as if I bought the book myself, is it? So that book I checked out and read is a lost sale, right?

As could be borrowing from a friend, buying from a used bookstore or church rummage sale, or fishing an old book out of a garbage bin.

IANAL (nor is anyone else here, AFAIK), but I believe in the US (other jurisdictions, I don't know) library activities would fall under the doctrine of first sale.

Originally Posted by Penforhire

I'm not talking about entitlement, I think. But I see a discontinuity in how the ethics of public libraries map onto e-books.

Consider this: prior to the digital age, it was impossible to disseminate intellectual property (in our case, the contents of a book) apart from some physical medium. A pbook, thus, consists of two parts: the physical medium -- the pages, the binding, the cover, etc. -- and the intellectual content. When you buy a pbook, you are not buying the IP, only the physical medium. In effect, the book is "co-owned" by both you and the copyright holder.

Much of the resulting law has been a balancing act between the rights of the two owners. I own the physical book, so first sale doctrine says I'm allowed to dispose of it in any way I choose -- resell it, loan it out, give it away, burn it. I don't own the IP so I am not, unlike other items I may own, legally free to, say, photograph the book in its entirety.

The problem is, we have all become accustomed to having certain rights with respect to our books. But in fact all the rights we have apply to the physical medium only. About the only rights we've ever had with respect to the IP in our books are the right to keep a permanent copy (meaning the copy already in the book, not make a backup copy) and to dispose of that copy as we see fit. But in fact even those rights are derivative of the fact that the IP is inseparable from the medium.

Along comes the Digital (and, in particular, the Internet) Age. Suddenly it becomes possible to distribute intellectual property separate from any physical medium, and us ebook readers are screaming for all our old rights based on nothing at all. An ebook is pure, distilled IP, over which we have no rights, not rven of first sale.

[Nathanael]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Scanning library books seems to be exactly the same, legally, as videotaping a TV show: I only have access to the original for a limited time, so I'm making a personal copy for later use.

And, again, all I can say is I hope that works out for you and your lawyer.