The Danger of E-books by RMS

[JSWolf]

If we stopped buying eBooks and went to pBooks until eBooks were fixed would not work at all. All that would happen is the publishers would think eBooks didn't work and just stop them altogether. We'd lose eBooks and we'd also just plain lose.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

Redhat would probably disagree with you. They seem to be making quite a bit of money from Open Source software (Linux). Free Software doesn't *necessarily* mean you can't make money from it.

RH doesn't make money off the software. They make money off the support. Scientific Linux is the exact same thing without the support.

[Solicitous]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

I agree with most of what Stallman has to say, but I do not think we should reject ebooks. We should obtain our ebooks through indirect methods until the direct methods provide a more just method for supporting authors.

I do like this aspect of his internet sharing license,

"The most obvious method is to compute each artist's share in direct proportion to her work's popularity. (Popularity can be measured by inviting 100,000 randomly chosen people to provide the lists of the works they have played.) That's what "compensate the rights holders" proposals typically do. But that method of distribution is not very effective for promoting the arts, because a large fraction of the funds would go to the few superstars, who are already rich or at least comfortable, leaving little money to support all the artists who really need it."

I've advocated for randomized lists of content users to gauge what should be promoted on a content distribution system, it feels like it could work. He's talking about music here, and it seems that levy's could probably be more easily computed directly in the user's music player. Although the potential for abuse is still there as always(music player bots playing songs over and over) For that we would need an end to anonymity(one player per person), which goes against Stallman's first point I suppose. If everyone knows what everyone else is doing, I think we would be allright.

But for books it is a bit different. Sometimes we read a book and say that book was not good... Should the author still be compensated for such a book?

Well I personally see several issues in the theory. The popularity of the author and measurement in particular. Ok take random sample of who bought and read what and distribute collected levies from there. What about obscure authors? Lets take a look at say a medical text book (ebook version for the argument). Now that type of works in terms of sales compared to all ebooks sold will be very very small, I mean lets face it, it has a very small but specific market share. Take a Stephen King novel, and for arguments sake it sells 100,000 copies per 1 copy of the medical book. Does that mean Stephen King gets 100,000 times more moneys from collected levies than the author of the medical ebook? The medical ebook may be very very popular in the narrow specific market but as part of the entire ebook market it may not even register.

Secondly, internet levy. Will this not reduce the money going to the authors and potentially ruin online sales? I am all but certain there will be a mindset of people saying "Hang on, I am required to pay an intenet levy to compensate authors due to file sharing, I want X-ebook....well I've paid the levy I'm not going to pay the author twice I shall just download it via file sharing". Thus online ebook stores lose a sale, and the author will not receive a royalty for that particular copy, merely a portion of collected levies based upon a flawed statistic. Think again to the medical author, they may collect say $30 a copy sold (given a good number of text books sell for around $100 it probably isn't unreasonable). Take a share of the levy and they may collect a few cents, or a dollar if they are lucky.

[Giggleton]

There's no reason we have to continue this archaic practice of purchasing before use in the digital era.

The internet levy would allow people access to all texts at no charge (the charge would be the levy, or access fee)

I think before a text gets access to the levy kitty, the text would have to pass a peer review process. That is where I think the random pool of people can come in, To determine if a text is worthy.

The network should be able to determine how popular something is, number of downloads, time spent listening/reading.

We could have fiction and non fiction levy sections and more I suppose.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by HarryT

An extreme viewpoint from a well-known extremist.

Agreed.

I started to post this screed when I saw it, then I thought better of it.

[b0ned0me]

Originally Posted by jocampo

we cannot use cash when buying online, not cash in the strict usage of the word. I know about it, I'm a DBA ;-) ...

Paranoid about privacy? Get a P.O BOX, and pay everything cash. You can even buy a Kindle from Target or any brick store here in USA and later register with a Hotmail or Yahoo email.

But most of these restrictions have nothing to do with the nature of the internet or with ebooks. I believe it would be technically trivial to set up a fully functional anonymous e-cash system using prepaid/top-up cards similar to how pay-as-you-go SIM cards operate. Plenty of companies would be delighted to set those up and accept them as payment (with no physical address required at all at any stage in the process), were it not for all those pesky government regulations intended to restrict money laundering, tax evasion and the like.

Loss of privacy is not really so much about the policies of retailers or the nature of the technology - it's because governments really, really, really dislike untraceable flows of money.

Originally Posted by Giggleton

I think before a text gets access to the levy kitty, the text would have to pass a peer review process. That is where I think the random pool of people can come in, To determine if a text is worthy.

So either it's a truly representative sample of the population and author payments are determined by the same people who lap up whatever ghostwritten celebrity pap is pushed out this week, or it's a non-representative sample and author payments are determined by whoever picks the reviewer pool.
I'm not sure the effects will be much different from the old-fashioned approach where writers either get paid by publishers if they sell well, or get paid by the government if the culture bureaucrats approve of them.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

RH doesn't make money off the software. They make money off the support. Scientific Linux is the exact same thing without the support.

Maybe that is the future of ebooks. If you pay you get the patches that fixes all spelling error and other things an editor would have caught.

[twowheels]

What Giggleton keeps proposing sounds a bit like something that businesses already have available to them:

http://www.copyright.com/content/cc3...eBusiness.html

How the funds are distributed, I have no idea. To be honest, it sounds like extortion to me... protection money. :-)

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by twowheels

What Giggleton keeps proposing sounds a bit like something that businesses already have available to them:

http://www.copyright.com/content/cc3...eBusiness.html

How the funds are distributed, I have no idea. To be honest, it sounds like extortion to me... protection money. :-)

That is basically a database that you pay for access to. If the database contained all texts, and the access fee was small enough so that everyone could access it, then we might have something there.

[elcreative]

Love to know the qualifications of this "peer" review group... who decides they're my peers, nobody asked me so why should they have any say about where my money goes... if I like an author then I'll pay 'em for their work and couldn't give a damn for anyone else's decision about the author's work...

[leebase]

Originally Posted by tompe

That might be. But the views that started this threas are not extreme. They seem like sensible opinions that I mostly agree with.

eBooks being free with the Government following some formula for deciding how authors should be paid? That's not extreme?

Lee

[leebase]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

Redhat would probably disagree with you. They seem to be making quite a bit of money from Open Source software (Linux). Free Software doesn't *necessarily* mean you can't make money from it.

They make money from support. Then again, Oracle used to be a big partner of Red Hat. Then one day BAM -- Oracle Unbreakable Linux. It's just Red Hat Linux, but now sold and supported by Oracle. Red Hat can't do a thing about it.

It's extremely difficult and risky to build a business upon products you don't own and which anybody can copy and sell themselves.

Lee

[jocampo]

Originally Posted by b0ned0me

I believe it would be technically trivial to set up a fully functional anonymous e-cash system using prepaid/top-up cards similar to how pay-as-you-go SIM cards operate. Plenty of companies would be delighted to set those up and accept them as payment (with no physical address required at all at any stage in the process), were it not for all those pesky government regulations intended to restrict money laundering, tax evasion and the like.

You need to provide certain type of personal information when you are activating a cellphone via SIM card or pre-paid, at least here in USA. The same is for online payments. Banks cannot create a valid user account or receive any cash without validating your identity. One of the few ways to do it is with your name and address. Even with PayPal. PayPal only ask for your cellphone or email but must be mapped to a Bank account which or course, has your name and address on the Oracle, MySQL or MS-SQL database (or whatever other RDMS they use)

There is no way to establish any e-commerce or online payment without providing some type of way to identify yourself and I think it is an International rule. The reason? Money laundry and tax evasion. But that has nothing to do with violations of your privacy.

In terms of data or online transactions, collecting and saving information it's not a privacy violation. Using such data without your permission or for a different purpose than the initially intended, it is.

[jocampo]

I don't think that ebooks should be sold or downloaded for free. At least, not all of them.

If you want to read a classic, that's different but there are some kind of books, like the type I read (IT books) that requires a lot of research and hard work. If the author or company start selling those for free, they will have to "trust" or wait for possible purchases in order to receive some type of income. In the meantime ... what? ...

Now, I can be wrong, but I think that here in USA, you get some cash depending of the numbers of books you sold. Income will be secure this way because once the copy is sold, some money is being received. There are exceptions of course, like novels. I don't think Garcia Marquez has to wait in order to receive some initial payment for his work, instead the publisher provides some cash I think, regardless of the amount of books the author will sell or not.

I remember I took a Veritas Cluster course about 7 months ago. I received 4 books as part of the training, which of course was paid by the company I work for. The books are step by step instructions and technical manuals for the product. The cost? about 5k total those 4 books! ;-) ... Will the company sell those for free or make them available online without paying? I don't think so. The books are selling a service. Making it widely available allows others to take advantage of the information, without paying a penny. That's bad in terms of business.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

There's no reason we have to continue this archaic practice of purchasing before use in the digital era.

Archaic?? The same practice that's in use all over the world today? The same practice that's stood societies in good stead for, oh, 5,000 years, and yet has been updated to the electronic age, where you can easily pay for something before you get it?

Originally Posted by Giggleton

The internet levy would allow people access to all texts at no charge (the charge would be the levy, or access fee)

The Internet levy would, among other things, destroy the incentive to create great work. The Internet levy doesn't take into account a runaway hit. Nor does it take into account the author who isn't able to push a single copy. Worse, it's all, by design, routed through the government, and penalizes people who don't buy e-books. It also forces those who don't like certain works to pay for them anyway.

Frankly, you'd have to work pretty hard to come up with a worse idea.

Originally Posted by Giggleton

I think before a text gets access to the levy kitty, the text would have to pass a peer review process. That is where I think the random pool of people can come in, To determine if a text is worthy.

Welcome to the new censorship, Internet-style.

Originally Posted by Giggleton

The network should be able to determine how popular something is, number of downloads, time spent listening/reading.

Wait. What?! I thought this whole monstrous idea was about freedom. Why would I give anyone -- let alone a government capable of imposing levies -- the power to see how long I've spent reading or listening to a work? And what's that supposed to be measuring, anyway? Just because I spent a long time reading a book, it doesn't mean the book was any good.

Why all this effort to create a more complicated system, just to avoid paying for things directly?