Could the Kindle spark book piracy?

[astra]

Originally Posted by nekokami

A lot of what's circulating on the darknet isn't available in any legitimate ebook form. But as Charlie Stross has pointed out, "I don't think most of the ebook sharing subculture is even about reading the books in the first place — it's about collecting, and participating in a gift sub-culture where your kudos is governed by how much stuff you can give away." I think Charlie is right on target with this. It's what drove the crazy race to put out each ebook version of the Harry Potter books more quickly than the previous volume.

And I think this is the reason that ANY reasonable attempt at providing good ebooks at a reasonable price with a reasonable TOS will have nothing to fear from the darknet. Ripping off "open" ebooks gets you no credit in the gift-giving sub-culture, and most people would far rather pay a reasonable price to be able to find what they're looking for easily and not have to worry about picking up a virus (or navigating past erm... rather unseemly ads) than go rummaging around the seamy side of the net to save a couple of bucks. Really.

I completely agree.

Let's put it straight forward - *.lit books are in a way DRM free.
It means that whatever you can buy in this format should be all over the darknet - accordingly to all the publishers who say that they NEED DRM in order to protect the content from being pirated.
However, I find it ammusing that you find next to nothing of real *.lit files on the darknet.

What does it prove?

[Alisa]

I was reminded of this post this morning while listening to my local public radio station. They had a story on the light rail in LA which uses the honor system. They had a study which said that 11% of patrons routinely do not pay. I don't know what the methodology was but for the sake of argument I'll just accept it as accurate as well as their estimated loss from this behavior of $5.5M. To combat this, they are proposing to install turnstiles at the cost of $30M with an estimated $1M of annual maintenance. This seems so ludicrous to me. Even if you assume that 11% will remain customers once they force people to pay and you will indeed recover that $5.5M and not lose any of the remaining 89% of honest paying customers when you make things slower and tougher for them, the cost really doesn't balance especially when you consider these capital "improvements" are normally done with bond money. Even if they paid cash, the break even point is around 6.5 years. What's the lifespan of the turnstiles? What other improvement could the money be used for? How many of those 11% would be too poor to afford the ticket? It could be a social benefit to allow them free access. It's like the DRM-mentality in so many ways. They just see the fact that someone's getting something for free, not the fact that they may be throwing $10 at a $1 problem and hurting their own product in the process.

Originally Posted by jasonkchapman

From a content producer's point of view, this is the only viable option. I wonder if there are any solid figures on any of the "honor system" mass transit systems in Europe, because there seem to be a lot of parallels. If you hop tram in Prague without paying for it, you're violating the law. However, if you're taking a spot that would otherwise have gone empty, you're not costing the system any additional expense. It's relatively easy to "get away with it," but enforcement does exist and some people do get caught by random inspectors. (Setting aside, for the moment, that there are a lot of reports of abuse in the inspection system.)

The NYC subway, on the other hand, has a more obtrusive "DRM" system (Digital Rider Management?). If you don't pay, you don't get on. The card system and the turnstiles and the gate infrastructure costs a lot of time, effort, and money to maintain, and still people hop the turnstiles.

So. Does the honor system work more often than not? Enough, that the savings from the light-weight "DRM" system balances any losses?

[jasonkchapman]

Originally Posted by Alisa

They had a study which said that 11% of patrons routinely do not pay. I don't know what the methodology was but for the sake of argument I'll just accept it as accurate as well as their estimated loss from this behavior of $5.5M.

I sure would love to see the methodology used to arrive at that figure. Off hand, it strikes me as high.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by astra_lestat

I completely agree.

Let's put it straight forward - *.lit books are in a way DRM free.
It means that whatever you can buy in this format should be all over the darknet - accordingly to all the publishers who say that they NEED DRM in order to protect the content from being pirated.
However, I find it ammusing that you find next to nothing of real *.lit files on the darknet.

What does it prove?

It proves that people who buy LIT books are not, generally speaking, thieves. Remember that only the buyer of a LIT file can strip the DRM from it.

[nekokami]

No street cred to distributing a file that the lit DRM has been stripped out of. It's too easy. Therefore, it has no value in the gift-giving economy of the darknet.

[Ervserver]

A month or so ago the Band Radiohead let its fans decide how much to pay for a digital copy of the band's latest release, "In Rainbows," from their website. More than half of those who downloaded the album chose to pay nothing.

62 percent of the people who downloaded "In Rainbows" in a four- week period last month opted not to pay the British alt-rockers a cent. But the remaining 38 percent voluntarily paid an average of $6. Would those same 62% have downloaded the cd illegally had it not been offered?

[tompe]

What does this example show? I assume that for an ordinary CD were people give copies to some friends also have a large percentage of people that have a copy but have not payed for it. So without looking at the absolute numbers you cannot say anything about this example. Also when a thing is new people download stuff just to check if they like this music or not.

[Ervserver]

Just an interesting social experiment. The band is calling the experiment a success while the recording industry is calling it a failure. What if ebooks were sold in this manner, we pay as to how well we liked them or not, would it work?

By the way this story is well documented, you can search for all the numbers and examine them

Originally Posted by tompe

What does this example show? I assume that for an ordinary CD were people give copies to some friends also have a large percentage of people that have a copy but have not payed for it. So without looking at the absolute numbers you cannot say anything about this example. Also when a thing is new people download stuff just to check if they like this music or not.

[nekokami]

I think what it shows is that the band is satisfied with a different level of return than the music industry.

[bob_ninja]

Originally Posted by Alisa

... How many of those 11% would be too poor to afford the ticket? It could be a social benefit to allow them free access. It's like the DRM-mentality in so many ways. They just see the fact that someone's getting something for free, not the fact that they may be throwing $10 at a $1 problem and hurting their own product in the process.

Exactly!!!!

I hate those outrageous claims, like Microsoft loosing billions in China due to piracy. How many users in China can affors $500+ for Office? Is Microsoft on drugs? Of course, now they have special pricing for China, fraction of a cost in North America. How is that suppose to make us feel here paying hundreds of dollars for their software.

Hollywood is even worse. Computer software is often a necessity. Music and movies are a luxury. If they did stop all piracy in China and other poor countries they certainly would not see many more billions coming from there. It is a joke.

Meanwhile anti-piracy measures like DRM have a far greater effect on law abiding paying customers than poor people who cannot afford to pay high prices. They still go to their pirates and pay the same minimal price regardless of the latest DRM. No change.

Yeah, at some point they need to look at the bigger picture and discover they are chasing that last cent, past the point of diminishing returns. There is only so much money people have available.