Piracy Experiment

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by Maggie Leung

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/te...y/24music.html

Thanks for that link, Maggie!

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by unboggling

Unless you pay for the privilege to selectively download items within it, you have to download the entire file then sort through it.

Not true. Any decent bittorrent client allows you to pick and choose which files within a torrent you want do download and which you don't, and even to place high/medium/low priorities on the order you want them downloaded. You could pick a single file from a 20,000 file torrent.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

They then go onto MR and gleefully gloat that “From Samarra to Sinjar: A Love Story” was a great book that they didn’t pay a dime for.

That in itself would be of great benefit to the writer, and something that they would not have got if the person in question had downloaded someone else's book instead.

You need to get over this idea that it's a choice between buying your book and downloading it. The choice is downloading your book or downloading a different book. Which would you really prefer?

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

I agree! That's why I think that the current model for paying authors is broken.

In effect, I expect that we will have a new morality in this regard in the 21st century digital age, because we now have the possibility of creating an infinite supply of a good.

In some ways I can agree – large scale publishers trying to control the flow of information is no longer a functioning model. If people want to change the way something works, we need to be a part of the solution – not the problem.

There are a lot of things that I do not like about the current publishing industry. I don't like DRM, geo-restrictions, device golden handcuffs, etc. – but I would rather see a model being created by the users of the product rather than the users simply pointing out the flaws and taking advantage of them.

Think about that for a second. You could be the solution! DRM is the result of piracy and we hate DRM. Yet the way we show that DRM is the enemy is to: prove the creators of DRM are correct by doing what DRM is supposed to stop? If the problem is “the big bad publisher” – support the author! If every person who downloaded free books from the darknet made financial contributions to the authors (even while skipping the pub), I wouldn’t blink an eyelash.

The way I feel reminds me of a thread I was reading in the Calibre developers section (I did not comment because I do not have the technical ability). The person who started the thread spoke very passionately about how upset he was – every day new users come to MR by following a trail of bread crumbs from Calibre. These new users were different, they had a large sense of entitlement (Make Calibre do this! Make Calibre do that!). They did not do what others had done in the past when learning about the openness of Calibre: roll up their sleeves and donate time & effort into making Calibre a better product.

We are in a position to help define the way books will be read for years to come. What are we doing to take advantage of this position? I wish I had the technical ability that a lot of you do, I’d build a better mouse trap. Sadly, I don’t have that ability – my eyes glaze over when the conversations get too technical. Instead what I do is support authors who go to bat for me and refuse to infect their products with DRM. I support publishers who produce DRM free products. I support Calibre and the developers of Calibre both by spreading the word far and wide AND financially. Do you know why I do that? Ass, cash, or gas - Nobody rides for free.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

"Pirates"

"Scum"

"Lammer/lamer"

"Hoarding pirate"

"Intellectually dishonest"

"Book stealers"

"Selfish"

Interesting to see the judgements some here are passing on their fellow members. Apparently it's very unsettling to come into contact with people whose lives have developed differing moral and ethical codes, and who feel that their codes are just as valid as that of those passing judgement.

Why, it must be The-End-Of-The-World-As-We-Know-It.

Again, you are equating stealing with being called a thief, as if they were the same thing. They aren't. Stealing is wrong. Calling someone who steals is not wrong. You don't seem to understand this distinction.

Put another way, ripping off authors is not a lifestyle choice, like, say, being a Baptist. If I called someone scum for being a Baptist, obviously I should be criticized for that, since their decision doesn't affect me or anyone else.

But stealing books *hurts people.* It's hurts authors, it hurts editors, and it hurts many other people who *worked* to produce the book. You can pretend that stealing books is a "philosophy," but in reality it is an *activity* that hurts *real people,* with lives and such. That's what I (and others) are critical of, and why complaints that you are being "judged" don't have much traction.

Yes, not every downloaded book would have been a sale, etc. And there are some other grey areas. But you have to be deliberately obtuse to believe that many people aren't just stealing books because they don't want to pay for them.

So, yeah, stealing books hurts people. People who hurt others for their own gain are scum.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

But stealing books *hurts people.* It's hurts authors, it hurts editors, and it hurts many other people who *worked* to produce the book. You can pretend that stealing books is a "philosophy," but in reality it is an *activity* that hurts *real people,* with lives and such. That's what I (and others) are critical of, and why complaints that you are being "judged" don't have much traction.

By "stealing", I'm assuming you mean copyright violating, but the above is not a fact it is just your opinion. I'm not sure what assumptions you are making to come to that opinion, but every writer who has looked beyond "Oh no someone downloaded my book I must be losing $10billion" has come to the conclusion that unauthorised downloading has either had no affect on their sales at all, or they have seen an increase in sales since the unauthorised copy became available.

[ruel]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I know of writers who have done it successfully enough that a Google search will not show up any unofficial downloads. They might be there in dark corners, but not where "normal" people would be able to find them. So statistically, the people who do have access to them don't really matter.

People that know how to find pirated materials do not use Google to get them. They use the search engines within the torrent websites. The only affect of Google not indexing certain pages is that people who have no idea how to download a torrent file won't be able to find the file. So, it doesn't even matter.

[Hatgirl]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I know of writers who have done it successfully enough that a Google search will not show up any unofficial downloads. They might be there in dark corners, but not where "normal" people would be able to find them. So statistically, the people who do have access to them don't really matter.

I've been staying out of this conversation as it's the the standard Pirate!/Luddite! screaming match, but this comment had me in stitches.

Oh no, I'm not normal! But it seems I don't statistically matter. Great, I guess that means I can end my moratorium on pirating ebooks, then

[Cait London]

Originally Posted by Fayth

I was trying to decide whether I could justify pirating some ebooks that I had already purchased as pbooks, but the ones I found must have been the professionally formatted epubs because they were very well done. In the end I didn't keep them because it was obvious there was a good amount of effort put into making new artwork for the ebooks and formatting them very well. I'll have to pick em up when I have more money.

Thank you, Fayth. It is an amazing amount of work to format books, plus get an appropriate cover, so you're much appreciated. Many of us are placing our backlist books into e-publishing and it is our income. We're working so hard to make them available much cheaper than when traditionally published.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Cait London

Thank you, Fayth. It is an amazing amount of work to format books, plus get an appropriate cover, so you're much appreciated. Many of us are placing our backlist books into e-publishing and it is our income. We're working so hard to make them available much cheaper than when traditionally published.

What Cait said.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Again, you are equating stealing with being called a thief, as if they were the same thing. They aren't. Stealing is wrong. Calling someone who steals is not wrong. You don't seem to understand this distinction.

Put another way, ripping off authors is not a lifestyle choice, like, say, being a Baptist. If I called someone scum for being a Baptist, obviously I should be criticized for that, since their decision doesn't affect me or anyone else.

But stealing books *hurts people.* It's hurts authors, it hurts editors, and it hurts many other people who *worked* to produce the book. You can pretend that stealing books is a "philosophy," but in reality it is an *activity* that hurts *real people,* with lives and such. That's what I (and others) are critical of, and why complaints that you are being "judged" don't have much traction.

Yes, not every downloaded book would have been a sale, etc. And there are some other grey areas. But you have to be deliberately obtuse to believe that many people aren't just stealing books because they don't want to pay for them.

So, yeah, stealing books hurts people. People who hurt others for their own gain are scum.

You are equating copyright violation with stealing - people who conflate these two things are scum.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by ruel

People that know how to find pirated materials do not use Google to get them. They use the search engines within the torrent websites. The only affect of Google not indexing certain pages is that people who have no idea how to download a torrent file won't be able to find the file. So, it doesn't even matter.

The people who would find it in dark corners don't really matter any more than the people who just collect files do. It is what the majority do that counts, not what a very small minority do. By removing links from Google you would directly affect that majority, forcing them to read someone else's book instead of yours. Which, as we all know, is what every writer wants.

[Duiker]

Originally Posted by rcuadro

Not true. I can find about 99% of the recently released books the day they are released with out paying for it...

Agreed. In fact I once found a perfect pdf of a book at least 1 month before it was even released in hardback. Naturally, I deleted it and waited for the hardback to come out so I could pay $32.95 for it instead.

[Duiker]

I'd also like to say that I have read "stolen" copies of ebooks and gone on to buy many of those authors other books. Had I not been turned on to that author by the darknet I likely would never have gone on to legitamitely buy his/her books. In fact I would say that at least 70% of my legit purchases are directly related to the books I've read on the darknet. In my case I would say that the darknet has actually INCREASED book sales.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Duiker

I'd also like to say that I have read "stolen" copies of ebooks and gone on to buy many of those authors other books. Had I not been turned on to that author by the darknet I likely would never have gone on to legitamitely buy his/her books. In fact I would say that at least 70% of my legit purchases are directly related to the books I've read on the darknet. In my case I would say that the darknet has actually INCREASED book sales.

That's one of the reasons why smart writers see it as an opportunity rather than a threat.