Piracy Experiment

[TGS]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

While reading this thread I have to say I've seen some very selfish comments. Writing books is a job. The people who write the books deserve to be paid - the same way you deserve to be paid for your day's work.

Surely you are not suggesting that anyone who manages to put together 150k words or so deserves to be paid. I get paid because someone is able to extract more value from my work than they pay me. Turning out 300 pages of tosh may be an honourable activity - but it may be rubbish and/or it may not be possible to monetize it's value. In such circumstances the producer should not be paid.

If I contravene copyright in order to read a book because I don't want to pay for it I may go on to pay for that author's other work or I may not. Either way, I was never going to pay for the thing that I downloaded.

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

You are stealing from people who spent months or years writing books. It's not holier-than-thou to point this out, nor to point out that "smiling" at book stealing is, well, kind of chilling.

If you read my post, you will please note that I am smiling at the attitudes of people here - the ones who profess to be horrified (or "chilled"), not at the idea of "book stealing".

Interesting rhetorical device though - where you imply that people who *point out* the stealing are worse than the book stealers. Why? Because they point out the theft? Very post-modern. Morally bankrupt, but still.

Amazing.

You obviously read what I wrote, yet you twist it to say what you want it to say. Please show me the sentence where I say that where I said or implied that they were "worse"?

You are cherry-picking my comments so that you can apparently ignore the point of them. And again the defense being used is sweeping, condemning generalizations - "morally bankrupt" here, "scum" used in a different post. Is it a wonder that I smile at the negative hyperbole used to try to denigrate those whose opinion differs?

Stealing from authors is bad. The fact that other people do other bad things doesn't make it good.

No, but it does turn them into hypocrites when they rail against others for it when in their own lives there are most likely other areas where their moral and ethical choices can be held up to censure by others who hold differing opinions.

• Anyone here divorced? Shame on you - you broke your marriage vows.
  
• Anyone ever call in sick to work when they weren't? Shame on you - you defrauded your employer the value of your services, plus you are a liar.
  
• Anyone ever sneak into a concert or a club without paying? Shame on you - you stole the value of that entertainment.
  
• Anyone fudge on their tax returns? Shame on you - you are a criminal.
  
• Anyone here having sex outside of marriage? Shame on you - you're a fornicator.

See? It's very easy to generalize and apply morally/ethically condemning labels to people without taking into account any other factors. But of course, the countering argument is usually that one thing has nothing to do with the other. But that argument is false, because the response itself reveals that the speaker is not understanding the larger point that is being made.

And what understanding of the world allows you to draw a line and claim that stealing from authors is *good?*

Again, show me where I said that stealing is "good".

My point, which you apparently also missed, was that we all create parameters of behavior for ourselves based upon our lives and our understanding of the world. In each of our lives there are gray areas in which we say "I think this behavior may be acceptable/unacceptable because..." - whether the behavior relates to personal relationships, personal behavior or to something like ebooks.

It's easy to develop a world view that provides a justification or rationalization for anything you want to do, of course. And, obviously, there are grey areas in a lot of matters. But I don't see how stealing from authors falls into a gray area at all.

Because you apparently haven't been understanding what people have been saying in the myriad threads on this board about the topic. Your constant use of the catchphrase "stealing from authors" and your dismissal of other opinions as "justification or rationalization" merely indicates your mind is closed regarding this.

No one here is being asked to step over to the Darkside (though they do have cookies ) or to change their behavior. What some of us are able to do, and which we are trying to explain to others, is that we can see both sides of the coin and that both sides have valid points. We are trying to keep an open mind about the whole issue.

But for some of you, everything is seemingly an "either-or" proposition - usually "if you don't think the way I think, then you must be (fill-in-the-blank)". "Keeping an open mind" is automatically equated to condoning or participating, when in reality it might be nothing of the sort.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by TGS

Surely you are not suggesting that anyone who manages to put together 150k words or so deserves to be paid. I get paid because someone is able to extract more value from my work than they pay me. Turning out 300 pages of tosh may be an honourable activity - but it may be rubbish and/or it may not be possible to monetize it's value. In such circumstances the producer should not be paid.

If I contravene copyright in order to read a book because I don't want to pay for it I may go on to pay for that author's other work or I may not. Either way, I was never going to pay for the thing that I downloaded.

Surely I am. If you want to read that 150K words, that is. Otherwise - if you find it so easy and worthless - go do it yourself and read your own work. Stop acting like you got nothing out of it. That's just absurd. You got your entertainment.

I don't prescribe to the "every download equals a lost sale" theory, but if you read it you got something out of it.

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I don't assume they were high. I assume Vista got pushed out the door before it was ready. MS was trying to end-of-life XP, and generate a new revenue stream.

Yes, that's probably true.

But there's also some things in Vista that I can just see them sitting around and thinking up supposed "improvements" to it - things that actually wound up breaking items that worked well on XP. XP was at least consistent - what worked worked, and what didn't didn't. With Vista, that's out the window (pardon the pun). With Vista you have things like folders never remembering their last size, menu options that are not consistent, folder customizations that keep resetting to default, desktop icons that disappear, network and volume icons disappearing from the systray, etc. One shouldn't have to do registry edits just for everyday functions. I have a whole bookmark category just for solutions to common Vista annoyances.

[ficbot]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

How would you feel if your boss told you that you should work for free?

People get told this all the time. It's called commission sales work. You don't get a buyer to agree to pay you money, and you don't get a cut, no matter how much time you've spent.

Look, I am not condoning piracy by any means. But the 'writing is a job' thing doesn't hold any weight for me. I work a 9-5 sort of job and I have a contract. I can sue my boss if she doesn't pay me for it. On the other hand, I *have* done commission sales, and NOT gotten paid for it. No sale, no money. Writers are, from a business standpoint, commission sales workers. You have to pitch to your customer and convince them why they should give you a sale as opposed to going with some other option. If you are not doing that, you won't make money.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by ficbot

People get told this all the time. It's called commission sales work. You don't get a buyer to agree to pay you money, and you don't get a cut, no matter how much time you've spent.

Look, I am not condoning piracy by any means. But the 'writing is a job' thing doesn't hold any weight for me. I work a 9-5 sort of job and I have a contract. I can sue my boss if she doesn't pay me for it. On the other hand, I *have* done commission sales, and NOT gotten paid for it. No sale, no money. Writers are, from a business standpoint, commission sales workers. You have to pitch to your customer and convince them why they should give you a sale as opposed to going with some other option. If you are not doing that, you won't make money.

Fine, I will agree with this scenario. But that means if the book is read, the author deserves payment. Period. I'm not trying to argue cost - it's value. There is value in someone else's work - and just because you don't like the work doesn't mean it should be free.

Go ahead and download from the Darknet if you want, but drop some money in the author's paypal account for that privilege.

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

Go ahead and download from the Darknet if you want, but drop some money in the author's paypal account for that privilege.

Reminds me of shareware. One day that may be the norm, but what about today? Are there authors who are set up like that?

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by ficbot

People get told this all the time. It's called commission sales work. You don't get a buyer to agree to pay you money, and you don't get a cut, no matter how much time you've spent.

Look, I am not condoning piracy by any means. But the 'writing is a job' thing doesn't hold any weight for me. I work a 9-5 sort of job and I have a contract. I can sue my boss if she doesn't pay me for it. On the other hand, I *have* done commission sales, and NOT gotten paid for it. No sale, no money. Writers are, from a business standpoint, commission sales workers. You have to pitch to your customer and convince them why they should give you a sale as opposed to going with some other option. If you are not doing that, you won't make money.

Your consent was required for commissioned work. Authors have no choice if their work is posted on the darknet by others.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Reminds me of shareware. One day that may be the norm, but what about today? Are there authors who are set up like that?

I'm not sure about large pub author's like Clancy – but I read a lot of small press published works and they have donation boxes on their sites. I know of a few other authors that allow the ability to contact (email, etc) if you want to make some type of donation as well..

[Anke Wehner]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Reminds me of shareware. One day that may be the norm, but what about today? Are there authors who are set up like that?

I know self-published authors/bloggers who offer at least part of what they write for free and have a tipjar. There's also "crowdfunding" - "For each X dollars of donations received, I'll write an installment of this serial and post it on my blog for anyone to read", for example.
With webcomics, a tipjar might even be expected, though I wandered away from that "scene" and may be misestimating how common it is.

Someone recently linked me to an article by a published author explaining why pirating and paying the author directly is NOT a good idea: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...no-tipjar.html
(Short version: The publisher's work DOES matter and should be paid for, too.)

That blog also has a series of very informative posts under the "Common Misconceptions About Publishing" link in the bar on the right side.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Anke Wehner

Someone recently linked me to an article by a published author explaining why pirating and paying the author directly is NOT a good idea: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...no-tipjar.html
(Short version: The publisher's work DOES matter and should be paid for, too.)

That blog also has a series of very informative posts under the "Common Misconceptions About Publishing" link in the bar on the right side.

That's Charlie Stross, who is a fine writer and a nice guy. He's also a MobileRead member (cstross), though he hasn't been by in a bit.

Another worthwhile blog on the topic is The Business Rusch, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Kris is a publisher (she and husband Dean Wesley Smith were proprietors of a small press called Pulphouse,) editor (former editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction,) and published freelance writer. She knows whereof she speaks. See http://kriswrites.com/business-rusch-table-of-contents/
______
Dennis

[TGS]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

Surely I am. If you want to read that 150K words, that is. Otherwise - if you find it so easy and worthless - go do it yourself and read your own work. Stop acting like you got nothing out of it. That's just absurd. You got your entertainment.

I don't prescribe to the "every download equals a lost sale" theory, but if you read it you got something out of it.

That's a slightly different point from the one I was responding to - which was that it was the act of writing that should be paid for. Now you have moved on to argue that if I want to read something written by an author I should have to pay for that. But my point is that if I did have to pay for some of this stuff then I wouldn't read it, it's only because occasionally I find I can read it without paying for it that means that I do read it. It's a bit like remaindered book shops. The author got nothing out of books sold to a remaindered bookshop but I could buy books cheap and try an author I knew nothing about. In fact I "discovered" Brian Moore, Barbara Pym and Anne Tyler by buying remaindered books very cheap. Now I am happy to buy their books.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by Anke Wehner

I know self-published authors/bloggers who offer at least part of what they write for free and have a tipjar. There's also "crowdfunding" - "For each X dollars of donations received, I'll write an installment of this serial and post it on my blog for anyone to read", for example.
With webcomics, a tipjar might even be expected, though I wandered away from that "scene" and may be misestimating how common it is.

Someone recently linked me to an article by a published author explaining why pirating and paying the author directly is NOT a good idea: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...no-tipjar.html
(Short version: The publisher's work DOES matter and should be paid for, too.)

That blog also has a series of very informative posts under the "Common Misconceptions About Publishing" link in the bar on the right side.

Very interesting blog. Thanks for the link.

I can see what he's saying and I appreciate it. But I *think* when faced with the idea of no payment at all vs. a donation - most authors would rather the donation.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by TGS

That's a slightly different point from the one I was responding to - which was that it was the act of writing that should be paid for. Now you have moved on to argue that if I want to read something written by an author I should have to pay for that. But my point is that if I did have to pay for some of this stuff then I wouldn't read it, it's only because occasionally I find I can read it without paying for it that means that I do read it. It's a bit like remaindered book shops. The author got nothing out of books sold to a remaindered bookshop but I could buy books cheap and try an author I knew nothing about. In fact I "discovered" Brian Moore, Barbara Pym and Anne Tyler by buying remaindered books very cheap. Now I am happy to buy their books.

In no way was I trying to give the impression that every person who sits down and churns out 150k words = an author. I churn out 150k words on a regular basis. Some people even get to read my work - but I don't expect to be paid for it (nor can you find it online) because I'm not an author. I write in my spare time and it's obvious.

I am of the opinion that there are a lot of issues with the ebook market - we've listed them here at MR several hundred times over - that can cause someone to use the Darknet. I don't think that every person who uses the Darknet is a pirate or a thief. If you download 1000 books and you read 50 of them - the authors of that 50 deserves to get some money, even if you weren't that impressed. The books you toss without ever reading? *shrug* It reminds me of browsing in a bookstore.

[ikonixx]

OK, so reading through this whole thread I came up with a question. This is an honest question, I'm not trolling here.

Now, this is assuming that the book that is being downloaded was purchased in dead tree form and digitized or in digital form and the DRM was stripped.

If I download a book from a torrent site and read it but don't share it, how is that different from going to a book reseller and getting the book there? Neither the author, nor the publisher sees a dime from either. If we say that the person that downloads a book is committing theft then isn't the person buying from a reseller doing the same?

Thanks.