Piracy vs Bookstores

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by tompe

You have a natural right to make copies or use whatever idea you want. The government have introduced limitations in this right with copyright laws

You also have a natural right to shoot someone who cuts you off on the street. However, the government has introduced limitations in this right with laws. A society needs laws to prevent people from doing what comes naturally... like stealing from others. Without those laws, society will not be able to function.

Without the protections provided by copyright laws, intelligent people will not produce much of the things you benefit from on a daily basis. You have more things available to you today, thanks to copyright laws. Therefore, copyright laws actually enrich your life.

llasram suggested Prohibition is a good analogy for the e-book situation. I believe a better analogy is speeding. Despite laws designed to protect society, people speed, and they always rationalize a good reason to do it ("I'm able to handle this speed"... "There's no one else on this street"... "I won't get caught"). It is the attitude of the Last Man On Earth: No one will be hurt by my actions. But in fact, with almost 7 billion people around him, there's a very good chance that he will hurt someone after all.

And when they do get caught, or worse, their speeding results in an accident or death (as many of them do), the speeder still seeks to blame someone else, or to rationalize why it wasn't his fault ( usually because "It was that guy's fault." My personal favorite: "That guy came outta nowhere!").

Society recognizes that people speed, so it sets up guidelines to supplement the laws (for instance, allowing everyone an "extra 5MPH" before they will be stopped), in order to avoid breaking its back trying to arrest everyone, and do the most good. And for years, this has been the situation accepted on both sides (despite the fact that cars still kill more people than cigarettes).

Now, with the invention of speed cameras, potentially every single car can be documented speeding, and a fine can be mailed out to them via computer, with penalties (such as loss of license) if they do not pay. Others are talking about putting speed regulators on privately-owned cars. Suddenly, everyone is up-in-arms over an established speeding law, because they can't get away with it like they used to.

And at heart is the outright refusal to accept the fact that "speed kills," or that the law in place is not designed to inconvenience them, but to prevent someone else from being inconvenienced by a sudden and violent death.

E-book "pirates" refuse to accept the idea that an IP creator is hurt when he is not paid for his work. And in a world where someone is dependent on the income he makes from his IP, every copy not paid for is injurious to him. But the "pirate" in his selfishness doesn't care about someone he's never met, somewhere on the other side of the planet, so he does what he wants, in his rationalizations for justification, and his ultimate belief that he won't get caught.

And every so often, a creator is so hurt by the amount of pirating of his work that he stops creating... we lose their creations, and we are all worse off for it. And still, the "pirate" seeks to blame someone else ("It's the governments"... "It's that guy's high price and DRM"... "Someone else posted the pirated work... they did wrong. I only downloaded it.").

Everyone should understand that we all live together in a society, one becoming more global every day... and that in order to keep this society working, we can no longer afford to succumb to the temptation of living by the "natural law."

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by llasram

Why will no one pay fair wage for my mashed-potato-and-human-hair sculptures? They are creative endeavors each involving months of dedicated effort as a shape each starchy curve with infinite care. It must be discrimination!

Maybe... because they don't like them? Just because a product is out there doesn't mean anyone wants it.

Originally Posted by llasram

In a pure market economy the value of a product is a function of supply and demand and nothing else...

Copyright works by granting creators a legislated monopoly on the content of their creative work, allowing them to artificially scale supply against demand and turn a profit. But informational content is not a physical product – treating it as such is an entirely artificial construct for the purpose of compensating creators in a market economy.

On one hand, you argue that e-books can be free because they are cheap to produce... a "supply-side" physical goods argument. Then you point out that e-books are actually intellectual property, which is not constrained by the cost of production. So you're actually contradicting yourself there.

Originally Posted by llasram

Copyright was effective for so long because the means to distribute creative content was so expensive and time consuming, thus not widely prevalent, and thus easily controlled. The core contention of the “pro-freedom” side of this “debate” is simply that this is no longer the case. The technology for costless duplication and distribution makes the copyright system’s legal imperative to treat information like a physical product as sensible as a legal requirement to sell liquids by their color. Our laws and institutions can do better, and until they do there will be a lot of moral edge cases.

This is a misconception about the point of copyright: It protects the idea, not the physical container of the idea. It guarantees the creator a period of time to profit off their idea (and if they die prematurely, to their heirs)... it does not subsidize its production or dissemination.

In practice, people tend to reduce the concept of copyright to simple terms: "X number of books equals Y dollars to author Z." This is generally what e-book readers and producers, and "pirates," actually argue over. But in fact, copyright goes much deeper than that... it bypasses the physical media and cuts straight to the idea. Most people cannot intuitively quantify ideas, so they must resort to simpler concepts.

It is for the benefit of these people that copyright laws are written. In the absence of intuitive understanding, the individual is expected to accept their society's rule of law because, hopefully, they trust the leaders of society to rule on something they do not understand. (And if you don't trust your leaders... you've got much worse problems.)

Originally Posted by llasram

So with the case of inheritance (wow, I got carried away), I’m not sure how I feel...

I suspect that if your author/father died unexpectedly, and you stood to inherit large sums of money that he would have gotten, and spent some part on you, had he lived... you would have an appreciation for inheritance. The details may vary depending on your age (I'd consider you even more deserving of it if you were underage, and had no way of making an income of your own, for instance), but I see nothing wrong with passing the money guaranteed by law to a creator, down to their heirs, for (at least) the original duration of the copyright.

[spooky69]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

E-book "pirates" refuse to accept the idea that an IP creator is hurt when he is not paid for his work. And in a world where someone is dependent on the income he makes from his IP, every copy not paid for is injurious to him. But the "pirate" in his selfishness doesn't care about someone he's never met, somewhere on the other side of the planet, so he does what he wants, in his rationalizations for justification, and his ultimate belief that he won't get caught.

And every so often, a creator is so hurt by the amount of pirating of his work that he stops creating... we lose their creations, and we are all worse off for it. And still, the "pirate" seeks to blame someone else ("It's the governments"... "It's that guy's high price and DRM"... "Someone else posted the pirated work... they did wrong. I only downloaded it.").

I'll continue to agree with you that people who break the law and steal content that should be paid for are wrong, and defending that position (especially by playing the role of the revolutionary, bravely not paying for copyrighted materials as a form of righteous protest) is really pretty silly. I also recognize that piracy will always have some effect on the income of the author/musician/artist, but this doesn't necessarily have to be a negative impact, as there are certainly a few examples of creators who have been thrust into the spotlight thanks to the type of "viral" marketing that's possible on the internet. Of course, most of the time piracy is going to have a negative impact on the pocketbooks of creators and publishers, especially in the e-book market where the viral marketing effect is going to be much less pronounced. I just have to say one more time that the extent to which this income is affected by piracy is often going to be directly proportional to the how well a frank assessment of the realities of piracy is used to develop alternate methods of revenue generation that go beyond appealing to people's good nature.
As for you assertion that piracy will eventually dissuade some authors to stop writing books, that's definitely going to be true in some cases, but I do feel the need to argue the point that when the piracy argument turns into "pay us for being artists or we'll stop making art," my sympathy for the plight of those artists starts going away very quickly. I can say that because I've released a short musical album and written most of a book, both of which I've made available online with no immediate plans to gain any future monetary compensation from them. I don't expect everyone to have the same attitude towards distributing their artistic creations, and I'll admit that my decisions in this area weren't fully altruistic, but any real "gotta get my message out there" artist won't quit because they too many people want to experience their output without paying. On the other hand, I have complete sympathy for the starving artist who has to work two jobs to pay his bills and doesn't have any time to write/draw/paint/record because they're too tired from being on their feet all day. Wanting to keep those people's artistic output up is a good argument for why piracy hurts the little guy, and why it might make it harder for unestablished names to start making a living off of their creative work.

[Redcard]

I have fifteen copies of The Chronicles of Narnia, including the really big one with the original pictures drawn in them. There's no legitimate ebook of it out.

I don't find anything wrong with finding an illegitimate ebook of it and reading it. I'm sorry. It'd be different if I hadn't paid for the book, but I did. Many times over. And they've not released an ebook version of it because Disney has got the rights now and will milk it for all they can.

[sebastien]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Without the protections provided by copyright laws, intelligent people will not produce much of the things you benefit from on a daily basis. You have more things available to you today, thanks to copyright laws. Therefore, copyright laws actually enrich your life.

Hmmm, what about Linux and all that open-source mouvement with GPL and copyleft licenses? None of it is copyrighted in the way you describe. Intellectuals works on these project because of the satisfaction they derive from having their name associated with the software they helped build.

Also, an author doesn't receive a cent from second hand books and libraries. Does that mean that they should be banned?

I think that the author is not the one who suffers more from pirating. The publisher and distributor are the one loosing the most.

You must be familiar with the latest Nine Inch Nail album? They gave it away for free on their web site, and yet they turned a mighty profit with special edition cd/dvd for their biggest fans.

My point is that the industry is changing. Pirating is inevitable. As second hand book store and libraries were. As an author, I would therefor reconsider my business model. My first order of business would be to make it more easy for the second book buyer, and 'honorable' pirates, to send me voluntary contribution.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

E-book "pirates" refuse to accept the idea that an IP creator is hurt when he is not paid for his work. And in a world where someone is dependent on the income he makes from his IP, every copy not paid for is injurious to him. But the "pirate" in his selfishness doesn't care about someone he's never met, somewhere on the other side of the planet, so he does what he wants, in his rationalizations for justification, and his ultimate belief that he won't get caught.

This generalization isn't fair. Just for fun, how much money do you make from the sale of a book? How much does the publisher? the printer? and the distributor?

The majority of the people on this forum are avid readers. People who most likely spend hundreds in book each year. Now they have a new toys and they are more than willing to spend as much for the material (minus the printing fee). The issue now is the availability of the material. In most cases the only way to access it is through pirating. All they ask is an easy way to have access to the material. All I ask, is a way to send money directly to the author/publisher.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Everyone should understand that we all live together in a society, one becoming more global every day... and that in order to keep this society working, we can no longer afford to succumb to the temptation of living by the "natural law."

Like off shoring jobs in order to maximize revenue, I totally agree.

[rationalbiker]

Originally Posted by tompe

You have a natural right to make copies or use whatever idea you want. The government have introduced limitations in this right with copyright laws

Making up a 'natural right' as you go along really doesn't help. Anyone can make a claim to a 'natural right' to do anything they want. Supporting that claim is another matter.

[mores]

Originally Posted by sebastien

You must be familiar with the latest Nine Inch Nail album? They gave it away for free on their web site, and yet they turned a mighty profit with special edition cd/dvd for their biggest fans.

Just a note: it's a quarter of an album (9 tracks) that you're able to download for free, the complete 36-track-set costs 5 Dollars.
That's where the money is. Not the special editions or the CD versions. Get the whole thing for a fair price, and "try" it for free.

[rationalbiker]

Originally Posted by sebastien

Pirating is inevitable.

Murder is inevitable too.

[Taylor514ce]

"Inventing a spurious straw man in support of an unwinnable argument" hereby mozzled to: Bushing. To Bush. Usage, "you totally bushed that 'natural law' idea just now, didn't you? Mission Accomplished!"

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by rationalbiker

Making up a 'natural right' as you go along really doesn't help. Anyone can make a claim to a 'natural right' to do anything they want. Supporting that claim is another matter.

You're wrong, Tompe is right.

Back before copyright laws, if someone possessed a copy of scroll, that person could pay the wages of a scribe to have a copy made of that scroll. You could make a copy because it was naturally assumed that since the scroll was your property, you could do with it as you wish. Ever since copyright laws were invented, this is no longer true.

[Nate the great]

I see this is your first post. Welcome to MobileRead.

Originally Posted by Redcard

I have fifteen copies of The Chronicles of Narnia, including the really big one with the original pictures drawn in them. There's no legitimate ebook of it out.

I don't find anything wrong with finding an illegitimate ebook of it and reading it. I'm sorry. It'd be different if I hadn't paid for the book, but I did. Many times over. And they've not released an ebook version of it because Disney has got the rights now and will milk it for all they can.

Please don't read too much into the loud argument going on. Someone with your moderate position is quite welcome here.

P.S. I am so jealous. I only have 3 copies of Narnia, and I've always wanted the large illustrated one.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

wait, the TV detector vans are real ??? are the cat detector vans real too ???

You're a loony!

[rationalbiker]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

You're wrong, Tompe is right.

No, I'm right and he's wrong.

The problem with that support is that it means rights are dependent on consensus. Just because some guys a long time ago agreed on something does not establish 'natural' anything.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

TV detectors are certainly real but only Monty Python could device a cat detector. TV detectors work by detecting the signal emitted inadvertently by a local oscillator inside the receiver that is used to help isolate and select the desired channel in the incoming signal which is then sent to an amplifier. It does not detect the screen itself so it will work on LCD TV sets or any other screen display.

Dale

So, if I have a TV with a license and I let my license lapse and I also have a CRT type computer monitor and I'm no longer using the TV because my license lapses and the TV detector van comes by and detects my computer monitor, will they come busting in the door to arrest me even though the TV is off and it's the computer monitor they are detecting?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sebastien

Also, an author doesn't receive a cent from second hand books and libraries. Does that mean that they should be banned?

Actually, libraries are major purchasers of books. Sometimes THE major purchaser for such things as reference books. Very often, too, publishers do a "library edition" of a book which is considerably more expensive than the standard retail version.

Additionally, in some countries, authors do get paid for library loans. In the UK there's a central "pot" of money which gets paid to authors each year on the basis of their total number of library loans over the previous year. It's not a fortune, but a popular author can get a couple of thousand £ from it.