Could the Kindle spark book piracy?

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

However more people using readers means a greater number of pirates, assuming pirate-distribution is flat across all types of readers. (we need a pirate smiley)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I prefer the term copyright infringement. It is the mark.

I am tired of the misuse of the term piracy to describe what is, for the most part, petty theft.

Would you make any distinction between the "seriousness" of downloading a copy of a book without paying for it, and re-selling multiple copies of that book on eBay for cash?

I mentioned elsewhere that last year someone was selling duplicated CDs of my software on eBay. It wasn't only my software he was selling, it was all sorts of things - Microsoft, Adobe, Symantec, etc. In the previous month alone, from his past auction results I could see that he'd made over £2000 ($4000) from his auctions of illegal software.

To my mind, that is serious crime, not petty theft. Would you agree?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

(we need a pirate smiley)

(Sorry, Alex beat me to it.)

Maybe making a single copy of a protected work could be considered "petty theft," but the point is, when you can turn around and sell (or make available for free, denying sales to the owner) hundreds or thousands of the same copy, you are potentially moving past petty theft and into piracy.

[Penforhire]

Agreed. Anyone serving more than a few pirated titles should be hit with RIAA-like lawsuits. Of course first we need consistent worldwide IP-protection laws.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Would you make any distinction between the "seriousness" of downloading a copy of a book without paying for it, and re-selling multiple copies of that book on eBay for cash?

I mentioned elsewhere that last year someone was selling duplicated CDs of my software on eBay. It wasn't only my software he was selling, it was all sorts of things - Microsoft, Adobe, Symantec, etc. In the previous month alone, from his past auction results I could see that he'd made over £2000 ($4000) from his auctions of illegal software.

To my mind, that is serious crime, not petty theft. Would you agree?

I would also add uploaders to that. Just because they're not profiting doesn't mean they're not doing a lot of damage. If I copied your software and put it on a torrent site, you're still out the money. I might even move more units that way than the Ebay guy.

[Barcey]

Yes and car theft has gone through the roof since the 1900's. I think we should go back to the horse and buggy myself.

Just more articles focusing on the negative.

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by Alisa

I would also add uploaders to that. Just because they're not profiting doesn't mean they're not doing a lot of damage.

In Switzerland, it's the uploader they are after, not the downloader. In this country, downloading for personal consumption doesn't make it a crime:

One of the most important points of the new act is that downloads of works of art from the Internet for personal use remain legal (PDF file) without restriction. At the same time the law upholds the legal principle whereby technical means such as access and copy-protection measures must not be circumvented.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Barcey

Yes and car theft has gone through the roof since the 1900's. I think we should go back to the horse and buggy myself.

Horses are a good analogy... they wear blinders too, don't they?

(Hm. Must be something in my water. Maybe it's the bourbon.)

Seriously, I don't think piracy needs any help (or gets any hindrance) from Kindle... it's carrying on fine on its own. We need to focus on how to curtail piracy, whatever its format, not point fingers at certain platforms and devices.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Seriously, I don't think piracy needs any help (or gets any hindrance) from Kindle... it's carrying on fine on its own. We need to focus on how to curtail piracy, whatever its format, not point fingers at certain platforms and devices.

I agree. I didn't vote on this poll because it didn't have the option of "no change". I really don't think this will make much of a difference one way or the other. We'll have some more people with reading devices who might download some stuff from the darknets. We'll have more titles available legally so others may not be inclined to download illegally. I think it'll pretty much be a wash.

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by Alisa

I agree. I didn't vote on this poll because it didn't have the option of "no change".

Added.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by secretsubscribe

$0.10 per Whispernet file transfer aside, if (big if) we see the Kindle become the ereader of choice among the general population we might see a lot of sharing between friends, maybe even a few dark-Whispernet vendors selling their latest scanned book to whoever drop a few bucks in their paypal account.
But it seems a lot easier to format ebooks for kindle and share them back the old fashioned way.
Popularity of any ebook device might spark more piracy. Now sure Whispernet itself will spur that on.

The only way the Kindle could be the eReader of choice is if eReader is ported over to it and installed in a future firmware upgrade. The Kindle does not presently support eReader books. No eink device supports eReader (with DRM) format ebooks. eReader is a format developed for PDAs and cell phones. It has not really come out of that mode. So please do not confuse the Kindle with eReader.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Added.

Voted!

[nekokami]

I almost voted "no change," for the same reasons that Steve Jordan listed, but I decided on balance that I think there will be less piracy overall when people can get legal copies of ebooks in the first place. I'm buying new books in ebook format now when possible, rather than paper. If I can't get a book in ebook format, but want a copy for re-reading purposes, I think buying a paper copy (even a used copy) and downloading a scan is acceptable. I'm less fussy about tracking down a paper copy if the work is completely out of print. Eventually my entire re-read library (which is extensive, I re-read a lot) will be converted to digital format by one or the other of these means, and I'll be buying the rest of my content in ebook format-- I'd rather do that from a legitimate outlet that makes it easy for me to find what I'm looking for, is unlikely to give me malware, etc. I'm sure there are people who enjoy trawling the darknet, but I'm not one of them. I think most people would rather get their content via legitimate means.

HarryT, someone who not only shares but re-sells someone else's work is a criminal by my standards and should be prosecuted. But most of the time, software "sharing" has no excuse similar to format-shifting with books.

Here's a possible exception: I recently purchased (used, of course) a copy of Lost Treasures of InfoCom, a collection of interactive fiction. The version I ended up getting is for the old MacOS, which I don't run, and came on single-sided 3.5" floppy disks. I know I can get the files for these games online. I could go through the trouble of extracting the data files from the floppies and the archaic Mac disk format, or I can just download clean data files that will work with Gargoyle, an interactive fiction interpreter. These games are out of print. I think there's no moral problem with retrieving the files, now that I have legal copies. It would be both illegal and immoral, however, for someone (other than Activision) to start selling copies of these files.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The only way the Kindle could be the eReader of choice is if eReader is ported over to it and installed in a future firmware upgrade. The Kindle does not presently support eReader books. No eink device supports eReader (with DRM) format ebooks. eReader is a format developed for PDAs and cell phones. It has not really come out of that mode. So please do not confuse the Kindle with eReader.

Sigh... you know what he meant...

Y'know, you need a simple disclaimer note that you can just copy and paste as needed, to wit:

"Be advised that the words "Ereader," "ereader" or "e-reader" have been casually used on this forum to mean a generic e-book reading person, device or application. Those words and their use should not be confused with "eReader™," which is a particular e-book reading application that uses the PDB format. eReader™ is the property of eReader.com. All rights reserved."

Or something like that.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Here's a possible exception...

If you'd ordered a book that turned out to be an ugly hardback, you wouldn't consider it okay to walk into the bookstore or library and just take a paperback copy for free. (And neither would the store or library. Ask them.) To balance out the cost, you'd return one and use the refund to buy the other. They are two distinct properties, and both have to be paid for (or returned, in the library's case).

I still hear an issue of believing that electronic versions of documents are essentially worth nothing, and therefore okay to just take at will. I think this attitude towards electronic files is a mistake. Yes, it opens up the illogical position of seemingly creating something from nothing, but in fact, this is a fallacious logic, since electrons configured and energy used are still something, just something too small for you to see with the naked eye. As any doctor or physicist will tell you, being small doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I think the sooner we understand and accept the fact that electronic files really are definable entities with malleable but distinct characteristics, the sooner we can work out a way to deal with them legally, morally and ethically.