Should Demonoid Stay Down? - Page 12

mrkai · 12-08-2007, 12:55 PM

JSWolf, I honestly think if the discussion was actually focused on *revenue* as opposed to moralism, a lot more people would be getting paid

It never seems to be about getting paid...it always more about someone "getting something for nothing" when what they get, at least electronically, is "virtually nothing" in the first place.

My wife gave me a perfect example. She is a (sigh) huge Prince fan. So huge that she had me get a friend in the UK send that Prince CD that came in the newspaper...fan.

Now she could have downloaded every single track off the thing on the internet.

She chose not to...but for the (in the framework of this discussion) "wrong reasons".

We'll come back to that in a second.

She has a 20-Disc set of some Prince thing. I don't know what it is, just that it is 20 discs. She likely has every song on it on other records. But this 20 disc set is the hightlight of her collection. It is very rare, it seems, and if sold would fetch quite a bit of money.

If she ripped every song off of the collection and put it on a DVD...what do you think that is worth..to anyone?

She didn't download the songs off that prince cd because the cd was worth possessing in and of a thing itself...even tho the cd is simply chemicals and plastic. She could have had and enjoyed the music days before it got here from the UK...because all a CD is is chemicals and plastic, you see, but it was the thing she wanted.

This...dichotomy just seems to escape people. "No one wants a book without words! It would just be blank pages!" they cry. So true. The thing is...

No one wants words without a book that much, either. At least with a book of blank pages, you can put your own words in, or give it to someone to put words in, or pull out the pages and do origami, or make paper planes...or have kindling.

Eh?

Sparrow · 12-08-2007, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

... it doesn't cause any harm since if I didn't download it, I would borrow it from the library instead.

If you borrow the book from the library, you are preventing other people from accessing it for the duration.
Perhaps taking the hypothetical download would do more to maintain the sum of human happiness (the library book remains on option for others).
It could be argued that the download, in this scenario, is the ethical to do.

bingle · 12-08-2007, 02:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

I suspect that most teenagers grow out of the "it's OK to be a freeloader" attitude when they have to start making a living for themselves in the real world. It's the small number of adults who persist in that attitude when they should know better that I have issues with.

Actually, I think your demographics are wrong. I wasn't able to find any numbers on the percentage of teen file sharers, but according to a 2005 survey, 27% of American adult internet users download music or video files (36 million people), with half of that being from P2P services, and half being through other means (from friends' iPods, email, web sites, etc).

Just a note. I think piracy is a lot more widespread than you'd like to believe, and will only continue to be so, as the generation of children with broadband in the home and university grows up.

DaleDe · 12-08-2007, 04:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sparrow

If you borrow the book from the library, you are preventing other people from accessing it for the duration.
Perhaps taking the hypothetical download would do more to maintain the sum of human happiness (the library book remains on option for others).
It could be argued that the download, in this scenario, is the ethical to do.

You are doing more than that. Libraries use checkouts to justify their existence and in some cases they may even buy more books of a particular type if it is popular. The is also true of eBooks you check out of a library. Money as spent on the book you are reading. Certainly not the same as getting a Pirate copy.

Dale

Penforhire · 12-08-2007, 08:21 PM

Hmm, but if you could not borrow the book from the library you (the public) would have a greater incentive to buy that book. The e-book scenario you suggested removes that incentive.

Mrkai, I think we agree in broad strokes but the reason we focus on ethics and not revenue in these threads is it applies more to we consumers. We can exert our influence in the area of ethics, perhaps swaying someone on the fence about doing something. Or at least I'm trying to understand the reasoning of those who disagree with me, perhaps sharpen my understanding of my own views. Revenue? Sure, that is what publishers must focus on but we have less direct influence over that. At least that's why MY focus on ethics here.

mrkai · 12-08-2007, 08:42 PM

I was thinking more about folks that sell IP here Penforhire, than those that consume it. I understand very well their POV and how, I guess in the opinion here of the majority, for worse, they are the growing/emerging market segment.

its funny. When the press, radio, tv, video tapes and DAT came around these same discussions took place. Folks swore they would be wiped out and really only one set got killed off (hand transcribers). History shows that tech helps grow markets instead of decimating them.

Hell even public libraries caused a stink. Publishers learned to work alongside them. In a world where "Once its Bits, it ain't worth Sh-" I personally think the effort should be spent adapting to and exploiting the market instead of trying to beat it into submission, pissing off the customer base at the same time.

That's just Good Business.

JSWolf · 12-08-2007, 09:51 PM

Now, if the library does not have a copy of this book I want and I could still download a good copy in electronic form for free and I bought the book instead of downloading it but then decided to download it since I have paid for the paper copy, it that a problem? I know technically they are two distinct things, but really, is it again hurting anyone?

mrkai · 12-08-2007, 11:31 PM

Now you get into a whole other thing, Jon.

You see...some people feel that the book in and of itself is worth nothing without the words...the words are the "book" as it were. So I think folks here would say you were a cretin because you have 2 copies of the words, tho you've paid for only one

Oddly enough, many of these same people feel that if you actually retype the book it isn't a problem as long as you don't give a copy of what you retyped away...ala personal use.

If you already have the book, and someone re-typed it and you wished to acquire this as a convenience to save you the trouble...violator

Even as the one YOU (would have) retyped, and the one you acquired that someone else retyped would be a match of the one you bought printed

Makes *perfect* sense doesn't it?

JSWolf · 12-09-2007, 12:08 AM

Well, what I think is if I bought the paper edition and there is no legal electronic edition then morally, I don't have a problem acquiring the ebook. If I purchase the pbook and then decide I want the ebook, then it's my fault for not buying the ebook instead. So I really should not be acquiring the ebook.

Steven Lyle Jordan · 12-09-2007, 08:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrkai

Now you get into a whole other thing, Jon.

You see...some people feel that the book in and of itself is worth nothing without the words...the words are the "book" as it were. So I think folks here would say you were a cretin because you have 2 copies of the words, tho you've paid for only one

Oddly enough, many of these same people feel that if you actually retype the book it isn't a problem as long as you don't give a copy of what you retyped away...ala personal use.

If you already have the book, and someone re-typed it and you wished to acquire this as a convenience to save you the trouble...violator

Even as the one YOU (would have) retyped, and the one you acquired that someone else retyped would be a match of the one you bought printed

Makes *perfect* sense doesn't it?

I woke up, and my ears were burning.

But I do NOT consider Jon a cretin. I didn't even know he was from Crete.

Yah, I know, the "e-book as personal copy" thing is hard to work out. Jon, your analogy would be okay if it were akin to your walking down the street with your hardback book, and discovering a paperback copy of the same book lying there on the street, nobody laying claim to it. Go ahead, take it. Ethically, it would be nice if you spoke up and said aloud, "Hey, does this belong to anybody?" And receiving no response, pocket the book and walk away.

However, what you are suggesting is really more like your taking a copy of a paperback printed by a bootlegger, without due compensation to the creator. Even if you steal that bootleg copy, the fact is you are still profiting off of the losses of the creator. At the very least, you are doing nothing to stop the illegal distribution of content, which is also hurting the creator... and two wrongs don't make a right.

It's easy to say that if a digital copy "didn't exist a second ago," then taking it doesn't deprive the creator of any profit. This is actually wrong. You would be depriving them of MORE profit, because their profit is lessened by the cost of publishing, and if they produce digitally, their publishing cost is very low.

(If you made the copy for distribution... well, you weren't legally supposed to, remember?)

So, producing the digital copy is wrong, for anyone but the creator and their authorized resellers (or you, for personal use only). Your obtaining an unauthorized copy, free or otherwise, is violating the creator's rights, and denying them the profit from a legitimate purchase. The only way you are not "hurting" them is to not take the e-book.

And in this world, you're still expected to pay for things you get... even if you get two of them.

HarryT · 12-09-2007, 09:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

So, producing the digital copy is wrong, for anyone but the creator and their authorized resellers (or you, for personal use only). Your obtaining an unauthorized copy, free or otherwise, is violating the creator's rights, and denying them the profit from a legitimate purchase. The only way you are not "hurting" them is to not take the e-book.

Some people, Steve, appear to hold the rather odd view that a lost sale is not "depriving the author of money", since the author never had that money in the first place. The logic of this rather escapes me, but this is an argument that one not infrequently encounters.

nekokami · 12-09-2007, 09:30 AM

Steve, I'm curious (and since you still seem to be participating in this thread, I'll ask here) -- are your DRM-free books circulating on the darknet? I'd think with your low prices and lack of DRM that there wouldn't be much incentive to steal them... and since a lot of the darknet seems to be driven by this "gift economy" system where the participants gain status by providing rare items, I'd think there wouldn't be much incentive to give them away, either. I've heard that Baen books tend to have low distribution on the darknet, but I haven't seen that claim backed up with numbers. I'm just wondering what your own experiences are.

Steven Lyle Jordan · 12-09-2007, 09:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

Some people, Steve, appear to hold the rather odd view that a lost sale is not "depriving the author of money", since the author never had that money in the first place. The logic of this rather escapes me, but this is an argument that one not infrequently encounters.

Yes... it seems especially popular around the subject of e-books and e-music, since the production cost of the file is theoretically zero (though, in reality, there is a cost in energy and time used... it's just really, really small).

The logic seems to be that if "zero" cost was incurred in producing a product, it is okay to give it away for free. I don't agree with this, as it is not the physical medium (which, yes, even includes "electrons") but the content that you are paying for. An author doesn't get paid for the physical pages you buy. They get paid for each transaction of the content, the text itself, the idea. Buying an e-book is buying the idea, and so the author should get paid.

The idea that the author didn't lose money "he never had" is a lot like saying "since I didn't take you on my voyage on the Titanic, you didn't drown." It's calling bootlegging a "victimless crime," which is immaterial to the fact that it is still a crime, even if there is no direct correlation to an amount of money lost. Bootleggers have no right to distribute material that is not theirs (as the Titanic owners had no right to risk lives which were not theirs).

Steven Lyle Jordan · 12-09-2007, 09:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nekokami

Steve, I'm curious (and since you still seem to be participating in this thread, I'll ask here) -- are your DRM-free books circulating on the darknet?

Neko, I have no idea... I've never even looked.

As you pointed out, I've been operating under the theory that a price considered fair by consumers will keep them from stealing the content. As I've only been doing this for 2 years, I have yet to evaluate the darknet and see if my books are in there anywhere. (If anyone else here knows, feel free to respond.)

Of course, stuff generally turns up on the darknet if it is popular... and I'm still relatively unknown.

If I ever discover that my books are all over the Darknet, I have 2 choices:

Lower my prices, and see if this encourages more legal sales; or
Get out of the business, and consider it a loss.

Well, actually I suppose I do have a third choice: Business as usual, if it is profitable enough. Down the road, I guess we'll see.

JSWolf · 12-09-2007, 09:55 AM

Let's take a real world example that we can all relate to. Let's say I bought a copy of the Harry Potter #7. Then I download an ebook copy after that. Now I have a legal pbook and an illegal ebook. But there is no legal ebook. Has anyone lost any revenue for my reading the ebook considering I have the pbook? I could have downloaded the ebook without bothering to purchase the pbook. Now, who's pocket did I just deprive of any revenue? Nobody. I even added to it by the purchase of the pbook. So now I would have the pbook and the ebook. If at some point down the line, an ebook was to be released in a format my reader can handle and I still keep my ebook copy, then I might be guilty of taking revenue. But if I was to then find out about the legal ebook and go and delete my illegal ebook, has anyone been done any harm? Not a single person. Not by me, I'm not going on about the person I got the ebook from or anyone else who downloaded it. So what Iw ould be ending up with would be a legal pbook and if the ebook is release legally, either I buy that or I have no ebook. But in the meanwhile, having the illegal ebook hurts nobody.

12-08-2007, 12:55 PM	#166
mrkai Bit Wrangler Posts: 181 Karma: 415 Join Date: Oct 2007 Device: Sony PRS-505	JSWolf, I honestly think if the discussion was actually focused on revenue as opposed to moralism, a lot more people would be getting paid It never seems to be about getting paid...it always more about someone "getting something for nothing" when what they get, at least electronically, is "virtually nothing" in the first place. My wife gave me a perfect example. She is a (sigh) huge Prince fan. So huge that she had me get a friend in the UK send that Prince CD that came in the newspaper...fan. Now she could have downloaded every single track off the thing on the internet. She chose not to...but for the (in the framework of this discussion) "wrong reasons". We'll come back to that in a second. She has a 20-Disc set of some Prince thing. I don't know what it is, just that it is 20 discs. She likely has every song on it on other records. But this 20 disc set is the hightlight of her collection. It is very rare, it seems, and if sold would fetch quite a bit of money. If she ripped every song off of the collection and put it on a DVD...what do you think that is worth..to anyone? She didn't download the songs off that prince cd because the cd was worth possessing in and of a thing itself...even tho the cd is simply chemicals and plastic. She could have had and enjoyed the music days before it got here from the UK...because all a CD is is chemicals and plastic, you see, but it was the thing she wanted. This...dichotomy just seems to escape people. "No one wants a book without words! It would just be blank pages!" they cry. So true. The thing is... No one wants words without a book that much, either. At least with a book of blank pages, you can put your own words in, or give it to someone to put words in, or pull out the pages and do origami, or make paper planes...or have kindling. Eh? Last edited by mrkai; 12-08-2007 at 12:57 PM.

12-08-2007, 08:42 PM	#171
mrkai Bit Wrangler Posts: 181 Karma: 415 Join Date: Oct 2007 Device: Sony PRS-505	I was thinking more about folks that sell IP here Penforhire, than those that consume it. I understand very well their POV and how, I guess in the opinion here of the majority, for worse, they are the growing/emerging market segment. its funny. When the press, radio, tv, video tapes and DAT came around these same discussions took place. Folks swore they would be wiped out and really only one set got killed off (hand transcribers). History shows that tech helps grow markets instead of decimating them. Hell even public libraries caused a stink. Publishers learned to work alongside them. In a world where "Once its Bits, it ain't worth Sh-" I personally think the effort should be spent adapting to and exploiting the market instead of trying to beat it into submission, pissing off the customer base at the same time. That's just Good Business. Last edited by mrkai; 12-08-2007 at 09:36 PM.

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12-08-2007, 08:21 PM	#170
Penforhire Wizard Posts: 2,230 Karma: 7145404 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Southern California Device: Kindle Voyage & iPhone 7+	Hmm, but if you could not borrow the book from the library you (the public) would have a greater incentive to buy that book. The e-book scenario you suggested removes that incentive. Mrkai, I think we agree in broad strokes but the reason we focus on ethics and not revenue in these threads is it applies more to we consumers. We can exert our influence in the area of ethics, perhaps swaying someone on the fence about doing something. Or at least I'm trying to understand the reasoning of those who disagree with me, perhaps sharpen my understanding of my own views. Revenue? Sure, that is what publishers must focus on but we have less direct influence over that. At least that's why MY focus on ethics here.

12-08-2007, 09:51 PM	#172
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 79,792 Karma: 146391129 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	Now, if the library does not have a copy of this book I want and I could still download a good copy in electronic form for free and I bought the book instead of downloading it but then decided to download it since I have paid for the paper copy, it that a problem? I know technically they are two distinct things, but really, is it again hurting anyone?

12-08-2007, 11:31 PM	#173
mrkai Bit Wrangler Posts: 181 Karma: 415 Join Date: Oct 2007 Device: Sony PRS-505	Now you get into a whole other thing, Jon. You see...some people feel that the book in and of itself is worth nothing without the words...the words are the "book" as it were. So I think folks here would say you were a cretin because you have 2 copies of the words, tho you've paid for only one Oddly enough, many of these same people feel that if you actually retype the book it isn't a problem as long as you don't give a copy of what you retyped away...ala personal use. If you already have the book, and someone re-typed it and you wished to acquire this as a convenience to save you the trouble...violator Even as the one YOU (would have) retyped, and the one you acquired that someone else retyped would be a match of the one you bought printed Makes perfect sense doesn't it?

12-09-2007, 12:08 AM	#174
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 79,792 Karma: 146391129 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	Well, what I think is if I bought the paper edition and there is no legal electronic edition then morally, I don't have a problem acquiring the ebook. If I purchase the pbook and then decide I want the ebook, then it's my fault for not buying the ebook instead. So I really should not be acquiring the ebook.

12-09-2007, 09:30 AM	#177
nekokami fruminous edugeek Posts: 6,745 Karma: 551260 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Northeast US Device: iPad, eBw 1150	Steve, I'm curious (and since you still seem to be participating in this thread, I'll ask here) -- are your DRM-free books circulating on the darknet? I'd think with your low prices and lack of DRM that there wouldn't be much incentive to steal them... and since a lot of the darknet seems to be driven by this "gift economy" system where the participants gain status by providing rare items, I'd think there wouldn't be much incentive to give them away, either. I've heard that Baen books tend to have low distribution on the darknet, but I haven't seen that claim backed up with numbers. I'm just wondering what your own experiences are.

12-09-2007, 09:55 AM	#180
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 79,792 Karma: 146391129 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	Let's take a real world example that we can all relate to. Let's say I bought a copy of the Harry Potter #7. Then I download an ebook copy after that. Now I have a legal pbook and an illegal ebook. But there is no legal ebook. Has anyone lost any revenue for my reading the ebook considering I have the pbook? I could have downloaded the ebook without bothering to purchase the pbook. Now, who's pocket did I just deprive of any revenue? Nobody. I even added to it by the purchase of the pbook. So now I would have the pbook and the ebook. If at some point down the line, an ebook was to be released in a format my reader can handle and I still keep my ebook copy, then I might be guilty of taking revenue. But if I was to then find out about the legal ebook and go and delete my illegal ebook, has anyone been done any harm? Not a single person. Not by me, I'm not going on about the person I got the ebook from or anyone else who downloaded it. So what Iw ould be ending up with would be a legal pbook and if the ebook is release legally, either I buy that or I have no ebook. But in the meanwhile, having the illegal ebook hurts nobody.