Massive wave of ebook piracy?

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by TGS

Does anybody actually use Google to find anything on Rapidshare or Megaupload? There are for more effective search methods.

If you mean specialized search engines like filestube, I believe Google still gives more results, if searching for rare material. Perhaps I don't have enough experience searching to know about more effective methods though.

[craig8128]

What an interesting (and really long) thread!

I'm almost afraid to post anything here, because maybe I'm just repeating an argument that happened on (say) page 14 of this thread. But I have a few semi-random comments ...

It seems to me that, pragmatically, the ebook sellers need to figure out the "sweet spot" in pricing for an ebook -- where that's a price plus ease-of-process that (for most people) beats searching for a pirated version. This "spot" won't be the same for everyone, but if you can come up with something that works for 80% of the population, you've really got something. I think iTunes got it right pricing songs at ~99cents.

Looking at ebook prices on Amazon, B&N, and elsewhere -- I gotta tellya, $10.99 is *not* the "sweet spot". Not in this economy. But -- $4.99? With no shipping, direct download of a quality edition? That might be more realistic.

Also -- I hate DRM, but I could probably learn to live with it if I got a DRMed ebook with my purchase of the paper book. My biggest issue with DRM is that it's practically a guarantee that the book will be unreadable 5+ years down the road. I sometimes wonder about "time-lock" DRM: the book is DRMed for 3 years, and then it automatically opens itself up. Given the average lifespan of books in bookstores -- would that be so bad?

I think that the ebook sellers should emphasize that they're providing a quality product. I don't know how many of you have actually *looked* at any of the ebooks that're out there in torrent-land, but a surprising number of them are junk: no formatting, or OCR'ed by someone who never bothered to inspect the output. Or just irritating formatting that would take hours to fix. The publishers have a definite edge here, and I think they should exploit it.

I really do think that copyright law in the USA is broken badly. IMHO, copyright should last until the author's death.

And finally -- something that I think gets overlooked when talking about piracy is that many people, once they have a shiny new ebook reader in their hands, immediately want to go out and fill it with electronic books that they already own and enjoy in paper. This in mind, I think that many "pirates" are simply people who don't feel that they need to pay twice for the same book. And you even have people like Randy Cohen, the author of the NYT's column "The Ethicist", saying that it's okay to do this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/ma...thicist-t.html

Okay, I'm done. I hope you had as much fun reading this rant as I had writing it.

Craig

[Doug Huffman]

My first post here.

Napster was the music market telling RIAA that their product is worth only stealing. So I signed up for BB-Napster for $100/year and learned that that 'service' is no more valuable than the product they push.

Amazon, take a lesson!

[jhempel24]

I do download books, I don't have any guilt regarding that because I do buy alot too...and it's given me access to authors that I wouldn't even come close to buying. And end up buying because I enjoyed it that much.

I think that .99 iTunes that was stated above is a good spot, but obviously you can't do that with books...I DO think it's fair that perhaps you pay maybe .99 per 125 pages or so = the paper book up to 1,000 pages or whatever. That way authors can't go crazy with eBook fonts to pad their page count, and the publishers won't publish in paper format something that is crazy font wise because of production costs.

That way if you are paying $5 for a 400 page book, or for a longer book you are paying more because it takes a little more work to create, so it would be like $12-$13 for a 1,000+ page book. And I'm talking new releases here, so after a bit I would expect them to go down.

In that instance I think that I would buy it because it's more convenient to just search and download and then format the book because it's been formatted crappy.

I will say that there are alot of people that are upping bought books, and stripping DRM, or checking them out from the library and stripping DRM etc. The quality is getting better, but I would rather pay a little for a book for the convenience sake.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by craig8128

I think that the ebook sellers should emphasize that they're providing a quality product. I don't know how many of you have actually *looked* at any of the ebooks that're out there in torrent-land, but a surprising number of them are junk: no formatting, or OCR'ed by someone who never bothered to inspect the output. Or just irritating formatting that would take hours to fix. The publishers have a definite edge here, and I think they should exploit it.

Craig

The commercial publishers aren't immune from those sort of mistakes either. A lot of it is down to using PDF as the source format. And I don't think even print publishers use proofreaders any more, judging by the number of mistakes in new hardbacks.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by craig8128

It seems to me that, pragmatically, the ebook sellers need to figure out the "sweet spot" in pricing for an ebook -- where that's a price plus ease-of-process that (for most people) beats searching for a pirated version. This "spot" won't be the same for everyone, but if you can come up with something that works for 80% of the population, you've really got something.

Though your point seems logical... I've sold ebooks at $2- $3, and they've still ended up in torrent lists. The fact is, actual price doesn't matter... it seems any price at all is enough reason for someone, somewhere, to torrent a book.

Originally Posted by craig8128

I think that the ebook sellers should emphasize that they're providing a quality product. I don't know how many of you have actually *looked* at any of the ebooks that're out there in torrent-land, but a surprising number of them are junk: no formatting, or OCR'ed by someone who never bothered to inspect the output.

Some of the worse formatting errors you've described have turned up in backlist ebooks sold by major publishers, who farm out scan-and-OCR of old books and don't bother proofing (or maybe proof only the first 1/4 - 1/3 of a book, making it look good in previews). I've sent 3 books back for refunds, and got them, as the shoddy condition of the book was obvious. If the major publishers want to fight the public's use of torrents, they need to do more than say they sell a quality product... they have to actually sell a quality ebook product.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Though your point seems logical... I've sold ebooks at $2- $3, and they've still ended up in torrent lists. The fact is, actual price doesn't matter... it seems any price at all is enough reason for someone, somewhere, to torrent a book.

There is an element of that, though the people who will actually go looking for a $2 ebook to download for free were never going to buy it anyway. Mostly it is down to convenience and awareness of the product itself. I think Amazon has got this about right, but so have a lot of the unauthorised content providers, and they have already had years to build up their userbase.

If/when ebook readers become mainstream, most of the new users will turn to Amazon or similar for their content, just like the late adopters of mp3 players turned to Itunes. It doesn't really matter what everyone else does.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by craig8128

What an interesting (and really long) thread!

I'm almost afraid to post anything here, because maybe I'm just repeating an argument that happened on (say) page 14 of this thread. But I have a few semi-random comments ...

It seems to me that, pragmatically, the ebook sellers need to figure out the "sweet spot" in pricing for an ebook -- where that's a price plus ease-of-process that (for most people) beats searching for a pirated version. This "spot" won't be the same for everyone, but if you can come up with something that works for 80% of the population, you've really got something. I think iTunes got it right pricing songs at ~99cents.

Looking at ebook prices on Amazon, B&N, and elsewhere -- I gotta tellya, $10.99 is *not* the "sweet spot". Not in this economy. But -- $4.99? With no shipping, direct download of a quality edition? That might be more realistic.

Itunes charges $9.99 for an album. Which, probably not coincidentally, was Amazon's pre-Agency price for new books on Kindle. And I think that that probably is the "sweet spot" for hardback equivalents from traditional publishers. Based in part by people's reactions when publishers went above that amount.

If the only price that publishers could get for new e-books was $4.99, they would stop producing e-books. And it's hard to take seriously complaints about "this economy" by people who are using e-book readers (including iPads).

And I do think it's kind of cute how everyone now goes on and on about how ebooks should be so much cheaper than paper books because of the $2 or so that publishers don't have to spend on ink and paper and shipping - when the difference between hardback and paperback prices has always been much greater than the difference in the cost of materials.

Also -- I hate DRM, but I could probably learn to live with it if I got a DRMed ebook with my purchase of the paper book. My biggest issue with DRM is that it's practically a guarantee that the book will be unreadable 5+ years down the road. I sometimes wonder about "time-lock" DRM: the book is DRMed for 3 years, and then it automatically opens itself up. Given the average lifespan of books in bookstores -- would that be so bad?

That's a concern, although so far DRM (or different formats, even) has not presented much of a challenge for people wanting to remove it, AFAICT.

[snip]
I really do think that copyright law in the USA is broken badly. IMHO, copyright should last until the author's death.

Why copyright and not other forms of property? By this logic, we might as well say that when you die, all of your property goes to the state rather than to your heirs. Aside from which, copyright needs to have a predictable termination point so that companies are willing to buy it in the first place. Why would anyone pay millions of dollars for the rights to make a movie of, say, Harry Potter, when those rights could be obtained for free if Rowlings were hit by a bus? The period should also be long enough that the author can get a good price for selling the copyrighted work (meaning that he is selling the rights for a long enough period of time for someone to want to pay a lot of money for it). Having said that, death + 70 years may be too long.

And finally -- something that I think gets overlooked when talking about piracy is that many people, once they have a shiny new ebook reader in their hands, immediately want to go out and fill it with electronic books that they already own and enjoy in paper. This in mind, I think that many "pirates" are simply people who don't feel that they need to pay twice for the same book. And you even have people like Randy Cohen, the author of the NYT's column "The Ethicist", saying that it's okay to do this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/ma...thicist-t.html

Okay, I'm done. I hope you had as much fun reading this rant as I had writing it.

Craig

I'm sure that some piracy is ethically harmless, and some is the equivalent of stealing.

Although I do wonder if e-book piracy will ever be as widespread as music piracy, simply due to the inconvenience of making the copies and the inconvenience of obtaining the copies. (Particularly if you have become accustomed to Amazon's free 3G delivery).

[craig8128]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Though your point seems logical... I've sold ebooks at $2- $3, and they've still ended up in torrent lists. The fact is, actual price doesn't matter... it seems any price at all is enough reason for someone, somewhere, to torrent a book.

I think that you'll always be able to find someone who's willing to pirate a copy, regardless of price. The point I was trying to make is that ebook publishers need to find the price-point where the majority of people would rather buy than pirate.

Some of the worse formatting errors you've described have turned up in backlist ebooks sold by major publishers, who farm out scan-and-OCR of old books and don't bother proofing (or maybe proof only the first 1/4 - 1/3 of a book, making it look good in previews). I've sent 3 books back for refunds, and got them, as the shoddy condition of the book was obvious. If the major publishers want to fight the public's use of torrents, they need to do more than say they sell a quality product... they have to actually sell a quality ebook product.

*sigh* that is sad to hear. I would think that publishers would take this more seriously.

Craig

[bobcdy]

I was curious about how rampant piracy really is, so I searched for popular fiction torrents. I was really shocked. For science fiction/fantasy I could have downloaded at least 15,000 different books and short stories. I had more difficulty finding other types of fiction; for example, although I could find all of Agatha Christie's stories, I could not find many Rex Stout's Nero Wolf books, and I couldn't find any works by many popular mystery writers. Of course these are almost entirely pdf files, but I think they are text, not image pdf's and so can easily be converted to other formats.

I guess my point is that with so many, many pirate ebooks available they must affect the profits of their authors. I don't see how anyone can defend this on legal or ethical grounds.

[craig8128]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Why copyright and not other forms of property? By this logic, we might as well say that when you die, all of your property goes to the state rather than to your heirs.

There are people who would indeed argue that that's how it should work. I'm personally not that hard-core. But also I don't think I need to repeat all the arguments about the original intent of copyright (and IP in general), and how current laws that seem to lock up copyright forever aren't in the public interest. Having said that ....

Aside from which, copyright needs to have a predictable termination point so that companies are willing to buy it in the first place. Why would anyone pay millions of dollars for the rights to make a movie of, say, Harry Potter, when those rights could be obtained for free if Rowlings were hit by a bus? The period should also be long enough that the author can get a good price for selling the copyrighted work (meaning that he is selling the rights for a long enough period of time for someone to want to pay a lot of money for it).

.... I'll concede your point: there should be a predictable termination. I don't know what kind of duration is fair and makes sense; perhaps something like "15 years or the author's death, whichever is longer"? But yes, you're absolutely right.

Craig

[sunnysmiles]

I bought some books from a well known store a few months ago . I downloaded them . I changed my book reader and my laptop so had no copy of these three books. Went in to my account at the bookstore and found that the link to the URL FOR These books are no longer valid . So Basically I would have lost these books even through I paid for them and had not read two of them. I think I would morally have the right to download them if I came across them in the ether otherwise I feel I have been cheated of my rights.

[craig8128]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

If the only price that publishers could get for new e-books was $4.99, they would stop producing e-books. And it's hard to take seriously complaints about "this economy" by people who are using e-book readers (including iPads).

Rationally, I completely understand what you're getting at. But ... "Penny-wise and pound-foolish" applies to a lot of people. You've got the same situation with people dropping hundreds or thousands of dollars on gaming / computer / home theatre systems ... and then they bitch about the high price of games and software and DVDs. I'm not saying it's right; but it's certainly human. And with e-reader devices getting cheaper and cheaper, the time is coming soon when -- like cell phones -- they won't be looked upon as luxury items anymore. Gee, I wonder what it would be like if the publishing industry tried to shift to a cellular services provider kind of business model for ebooks?

And I do think it's kind of cute how everyone now goes on and on about how ebooks should be so much cheaper than paper books because of the $2 or so that publishers don't have to spend on ink and paper and shipping - when the difference between hardback and paperback prices has always been much greater than the difference in the cost of materials.

Well ... there's no guarantee that a traditional business model is going to last forever. Sure, there are price and business realities in the publishing industry -- but I think that the entire ebook piracy issue is more a matter of public perception: "I mean, of course a hardback costs more than a paperback -- it weighs more, there must be more there! And an ebook - well, it's just a file, ferchrissake, how much do you expect me to spend for a copy of a file? I copy files alla time, it's easy! Why should I pay $X for a copy of a file that I don't even know if I'll like it or not?"

It strikes me that an advantage the publishing industry has over the film / television / music / game industry is the "personal" nature of the relationship between author and reader. Like it or not, people in general find it easier to rip off a billion dollar multinational than (say) the guy running an independent toy store down the street. I guess what I'm trying to say is: I think the publishing industry should really try to push the message that most writers are not Stephen King or J. K. Rowling, and that pirating an ebook is taking money out of an author's pocket. Yes, they've heard this message before from the film and music industry -- but it hits closer to the heart when the focus is on their favorite niche writer who they know is still working a day job as a tech writer while they crank out great (but largely unappreciated) literature every night.

Craig

[TGS]

Originally Posted by sunnysmiles

I bought some books from a well known store a few months ago . I downloaded them . I changed my book reader and my laptop so had no copy of these three books. Went in to my account at the bookstore and found that the link to the URL FOR These books are no longer valid . So Basically I would have lost these books even through I paid for them and had not read two of them. I think I would morally have the right to download them if I came across them in the ether otherwise I feel I have been cheated of my rights.

I guess a possible response to this, (though not one I necessarily agree with), is that if you went into Waterstones, bought three books, left two of them in the shop and went back a few months later to find they were not there, this would not justify you going and stealing copies of those books from somewhere.

[Xanthe]

I began to hate DRM when I had bought songs with them. I wound up subsequently getting a new computer, put my old hard drive in an external case and was able to access all of my files - except those DRM'd songs. They would not play on my new computer and I could not redownload them or get a new license for them from place I had bought them. Since that time, I will strip DRM off anything that I buy, or I won't buy it if it can't be stripped.

I used to pick up songs here and there years ago, especially when AudioGalaxy used to be what it was, not because they were free, but because I could find individual songs without having to buy an whole album, which was the only option open to me after 45rpm records became history. My rule of thumb for buying an album, cassette or CD has always been that I have to like at least 3 songs on it to justify the price. Once the 99-cent/song pricing came along, I started buying songs that way. Now, unless I'm buying a physical CD, I get my music via Amazon MP3 downloads, because the pricing is reasonable for the product I'm getting and I can find exactly what I want. I can also try new music without paying for an entire album and winding up hating all of the music on it.

If publishers put ebooks out there by the authors I read for $4.99, then I'm there. I want to support the authors I enjoy. I can see paying a higher price for an ebook if it has been specifically reformated to be readable on a 5" or 6" reader. I'm referring to non-fiction/technical/instructional books that are always put out in PDF format which makes them virtually unreadable on the smaller ereaders. But if a publisher is gouging the public by charging a hardcover or trade paperback price for an ebook (and yes, I do regard it as price-gouging) then I will give a thumb's up to anyone who puts that book up on the 'net. Charge us what the author would get paid for a mass market paperback sale, with a small handling fee; that way the author gets paid for the sale and the publisher gets a token for the virtual non-cost of a file transfer.