Piracy Experiment

[silasgreenback]

Originally Posted by Grimm

Invite-only or semi-closed registration torrent sites have so many retail quality e-books on them you'd be amazed.

I've always wanted to see what the private trackers are holding, but since I'm not visible on the "scene" and don't check to see when registrations are open, I'll just remain curious.

[Grimm]

HOnestly it's more efficient for the sites. It's a good way to weed out the leechers who refuse to seed. Makes for better quality items with better availability.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Grimm

The pirated books were paid for originally. How is someone downloading a pirated copy of an e-book any different than a person borrowing a pbook from a friend or buying a pbook from a secondhand store?

Either way the author got paid for the original purchase, but that is all.

It has been asked and answered before.

Downloading a pirate copy is different to borrowing a pbook from a friend because
(i) The friend still retains the ebook version even if you never 'return' the ebook.
(ii) Many more than one friend can have the book at any one time.

Downloading a pirate copy is different to buying a pbook from a secondhand store because
(i) The person who originally bought the pbook no longer has it
(ii) There can only be one secondhand pbook per original sale.

Clear now?

Of course, there are grey areas. Giving a copy of an ebook you've bought to an actual friend because you think they'll like the author is technically copyright infringement, but is fine IMO if only done occasionally.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Downloading a pirate copy is different to buying a pbook from a secondhand store because
(i) The person who originally bought the pbook no longer has it
(ii) There can only be one secondhand pbook per original sale.

(iii) plus, if you buy secondhand book you are creating a market, so people are not afraid to buy expensive hardbacks, knowing they can sell it later at secondhand.

[bucsie]

Originally Posted by Grimm

They are free......the quality is, on the whole, excellent.

To my experience, the quality of darknet books that are freely available - not on invite-sites - is about 50-50. Some are great, especially recently released ones (probably ebooks with stripped DRMs), but a lot of them are bad - OCR problems, conversion issues, watermarks etc. They are readable, and stealers aren't choosers... usually.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by bucsie

To my experience, the quality of darknet books that are freely available - not on invite-sites - is about 50-50. Some are great, especially recently released ones (probably ebooks with stripped DRMs), but a lot of them are bad - OCR problems, conversion issues, watermarks etc. They are readable, and stealers aren't choosers... usually.

If by stealers you mean people who read unauthorised ebooks, you couldn't be more wrong. They will often fix mistakes they find while reading and either "release" the fixed versions themselves or report the mistakes so that someone else can do it. With retail ebooks, even if you send the publisher a list of mistakes they will never be corrected.

The problem is with the file collectors. They won't pick up the fixed ebook because they think they already have it, so the error-filled version continues to circulate. And since there are more file collectors than readers, those are the versions that are easiest to find.

[Namekuseijin]

I think retail of something which can be freely and cheaply copied is non-sense. Yes, it doesn't take into account all the sweat, tears and deprivations that got into the making, which is why believe in the near future authors will get back to make a living by mecenate: big content providers relying on a monthly fee rather than individual selling of cheaply reproductible and distributable material.

Books were pretty valuable in the old days when they were manuscripts. Then came the press and suddenly it became a lot easier to gain access to information. Then came xerox and it became cheap to duplicate such information. Then came computers and reproducing several copies came for free. Then came the internet and distributing these several copies costs nothing too. Relying on people's morals to think of the author's poor kids and wife won't solve the problem. The old business model simply doesn't work anymore.

How long until Harry Potter or Emo Vampires unusual phenomena convince people otherwise?

[bucsie]

"Emo Vampires", LOL

[silasgreenback]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

If by stealers you mean people who read unauthorised ebooks, you couldn't be more wrong. They will often fix mistakes they find while reading and either "release" the fixed versions themselves or report the mistakes so that someone else can do it. With retail ebooks, even if you send the publisher a list of mistakes they will never be corrected.

The problem is with the file collectors. They won't pick up the fixed ebook because they think they already have it, so the error-filled version continues to circulate. And since there are more file collectors than readers, those are the versions that are easiest to find.

You're right on the money. I've gotten the impression that with a lot of books, the readers treat the file as a sort of Project Gutenberg affair. It's not uncommon to see version numbers appended to the end of a file's name.

[Grimm]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

It has been asked and answered before.

Downloading a pirate copy is different to borrowing a pbook from a friend because
(i) The friend still retains the ebook version even if you never 'return' the ebook.
(ii) Many more than one friend can have the book at any one time.

Downloading a pirate copy is different to buying a pbook from a secondhand store because
(i) The person who originally bought the pbook no longer has it
(ii) There can only be one secondhand pbook per original sale.

Clear now?

Of course, there are grey areas. Giving a copy of an ebook you've bought to an actual friend because you think they'll like the author is technically copyright infringement, but is fine IMO if only done occasionally.

Very clear. What I find troubling about your explanantion is you really have no set rule on when it actually becomes "not ok" or "less ok" which, to me, means you make it up as you go by what "feels" right to you. Thanks for taking the time to explain your thoughts on it though.

[jamesbeat]

I don't agree that pirated books are necessarily lower quality than paid-for ones.
I think that there is a large legacy collection of books that have been scanned and distributed for a long time, lots of them were around long before ereaders even existed, and these books are definitely of varying quality.

Now there are books that have been released by publishers and had the DRM stripped.

I think it's a false assumption to think that a pirate will scan and OCR a book that is already available to buy as an ebook, so providing the book has been released in electronic form, the pirated and genuine versions will most likely be identical.

This is similar to what happened with music.
If you downloaded music over five or so years ago, you'd get all sorts of garbage. Weird bitrates, tracks all merged into one mp3 file, not properly normalized, even some recorded from vinyl.
Proper tags? Forget it.

Since ipods and itunes (and their competitors) have soared in poularity, the pirated music has soared in quality and uniformity, and as nobody downloads the amateur stuff any more, it disappears from the torrent sites.
When I moved over to mp3 from CD, I did it the smart way. Instead of ripping my 300+ collection of disks, I searched for them all on P2P and left my computer turned on for a couple of nights.
Definitely a legal grey area, but I didn't worry too much because I owned all the original CD's that i downloaded.

the point I am attempting to make is that as ereaders continue to become even more popular, the quality of the illegal downloads will rise, because there will be more professionally produced material available.

As to the older books that maybe will never be released in ebook form by publishers, well a badly made scan is better than no scan at all, and the poor quality ones can be edited yourself if you have the time and inclination.
That's why some downloaded books have a version number.

My experience of darknet books has been downloading books that either I already have the paper version or the book is out of print.

Sometimes torrents are the only way to obtain out of print stuff, except of course trawling used book stores or ebay for a 30 year old paper version that stinks and is disintegrating.

Buying used books does not put any money in the author's pocket, and as for the publisher, if they wanted money for the book, they should print it or release it as an ebook I can buy.

[wvcherrybomb]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

The problem is with the file collectors. They won't pick up the fixed ebook because they think they already have it, so the error-filled version continues to circulate. And since there are more file collectors than readers, those are the versions that are easiest to find.

I'm sure this is correct.

The file collectors are a curiousity to me. What's in it for them? Are they just trying to make a name for themselves? Maybe just a hobby?

[rhari79]

Maybe someone has already pointed this out:

Paucity is the father of all Law Breaking.

If something is not available somewhere, in abundance, then people will take efforts to get it through whatever means possible.
Make abundance a rule globally and Piracy goes out.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Grimm

Very clear. What I find troubling about your explanantion is you really have no set rule on when it actually becomes "not ok" or "less ok" which, to me, means you make it up as you go by what "feels" right to you. Thanks for taking the time to explain your thoughts on it though.

Is it a problem if I share one ebook with one friend? No.
Is it a problem if I share every ebook I buy with 100,000 friends? Yes.

There isn't a number x where:

share 1 ebook with x friends is OK
but share 1 with x+1 friends with y is not OK.

Nor is there a number y where:

share y ebooks with 1 friend is OK
but share y+1 ebooks with 1 friend is not OK

That's rather what a grey area means. And that's why laws include words like "significant".

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by dncharles

This is a bit harsh on Smashwords. It's out there for works of all quality, sets formatting standards, gives endless advice, employs checkers and good conversion software and does what it can to get a good looking, readable product out there- all at no cost to the author.

You gotta remember that it's an open system - anyone can publish, and often it's a case of RIRO (rubbish in, rubbish out). I say bless them for their acceptance of all, for letting the market decide on talent, and for not being as anal as Apple, who demand total html perfection before they'll take you onto their precious platform.

And I've seen some really awful eBooks come out of Smashwords meatgrinder. I remember one eBook that had every line underlined. What Smashwords should do is allow the author to upload there own formatted versions and meatgrind for when there isn't an uploaded format. So if the author uploads say an ePub and a Mobi along with whatever format is wanted for the meatgrinder, the meatgrinder would then generate the rest from the source except for the ones the author put up. That would ensure better quality copies if the author could get them done outside of the meatgrinder.