E-reads and Curtis Agency Declare War on Piracy

[Shaggy]

“On Friday afternoon we identified some 3500 illegally shared files of titles by our authors and ordered them removed. It took me 45 minutes. By Monday just about every one of them had been taken down.”

Or, more likely, by Monday Muso's IP address was on a blacklist that is now being blocked by most of the filesharers, but the content is still out there.

[xg4bx]

i'll admit, i've "sampled" some works. a lot of the time it wasn't something i'd buy in the 1st place. however, many times i liked what i read and went and bought the next book in the series or whatever, i wasn't gonna hope someone uploaded it one day. so the author ended up getting a sale from me that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

other times its stuff that doesn't have a legitimate legal ebook version and is even out of print in paperback. point me to where i can get legitimate copies, in ebook or paper, of karl edward wagner's Kane books without paying a used bookseller an arm and a leg. they don't exist.

as a horror fan, many times authors release very limited edition hardcovers and those hardcovers sell for anywhere from $50-$150.theyre the only place one can get the book, theres no trade or ebook edition unless someone should post a pdf of it. is it right? no, but not many can afford $100 for a novella. i look at that as a case of getting a book into the hands of fans.

i've bought faaaaaar more books in my life than i could ever conceiveably take but not all "pirates" are scums out to steal food from authors mouths. many times readers,myself included, are just looking to get a digital edition of books they already own. i'm not going out and buying a 6th copy of dune nor paying $15 for a "legit" copy of a 50 year old book whose author is long dead.

i do think bulk uploaders are scum though. theres no justification for posting a thread of "new york times best sellers:1980-2011" or "12,000 ebook" threads. thats just inexcusable. to me thats true theft.

[molman]

It would funny to upload thousands of binary blobs, or your own copyrighted material and see if they get taken down. Is there any provisions for entrapment style actions in the DCMA? (sorry not from US) You could then take them to court.

@xg4bx: I think your post echoes many peoples odd logic around this topic (which I personally find to be a false logic). My contention comes down to this. You don't have to consume said book/song/tv show etc. It is in many ways a luxury item. If you can't afford that $100 novella don't read it. If you breach someone’s copyright (I really don't like the word pirate, it is so loaded now), then just accept that you are breaking the law in most countries and depriving the people who hold the legal rights due compensation... anything beyond that is just the stories people tell themselves. Btw. Not judging you, just saying that people seem to have overly complex narratives around this topic.

I personally think copyright law is where the real issue lays, and that the abstracts of the physical world don't translate well to the digital where everything is infinitely copy-able...... but then I'm leading us down a rat hole so I'll stop.

[afa]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

as a horror fan, many times authors release very limited edition hardcovers and those hardcovers sell for anywhere from $50-$150.theyre the only place one can get the book, theres no trade or ebook edition unless someone should post a pdf of it. is it right? no, but not many can afford $100 for a novella. i look at that as a case of getting a book into the hands of fans.

Uhhhh.... Yeah, that doesn't work. As molman stated, that is false logic. Regardless of whether a $100 novella is overpriced or not, it doesn't really follow that it's okay to download a pirated copy. That's like my saying that a $400,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom is far too expensive for me to buy, so it's okay that I steal it.

Understand that I'm not really judging you for the action; go ahead and do what you want. It's water off my back. There are plenty of members here who download stuff like that. All I'm saying is, it's not really a justification.

(Note: Please no one start a flame war on whether downloading a pirated ebook does or does not equate to stealing. I've heard it before. Let's move on.)

i've bought faaaaaar more books in my life than i could ever conceiveably take but not all "pirates" are scums out to steal food from authors mouths. many times readers,myself included, are just looking to get a digital edition of books they already own.

There are even more people who do that. While there are certainly arguments against this, too, it is actually something that I can understand. Not saying it's necessarily right or legal, but I can see why one would do that.

[mikemc2]

Originally Posted by molman

I hate how the DMCA is take down upon complaint and then prove if legal or not. It's so backwards.

Some torrent sites have moved the physical location of their servers to Eastern Europe and moved their top level domains outside the U.S. (.me for example which is Montenegro) to avoid preemptive seizure by ICE. Build a better mousetrap and the mice just get smarter...

[molman]

Originally Posted by mikemc2

Some torrent sites have moved the physical location of their servers to Eastern Europe and moved their top level domains outside the U.S. (.me for example which is Montenegro) to avoid preemptive seizure by ICE. Build a better mousetrap and the mice just get smarter...

Yeah wack a mole for sure.

[Phogg]

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

i do think bulk uploaders are scum though. theres no justification for posting a thread of "new york times best sellers:1980-2011" or "12,000 ebook" threads. thats just inexcusable. to me thats true theft.

I'm not so sure. I mean, who's ever going to read that many books in their lifetime? it appeals to some people's hoarding drive, I'm sure, but who would've bought those books fair and square? Those are really not lost sales, more like people downloading the bunch (cause it's there and, more importantly, it's free) and see what they like, if anything.

Originally Posted by mikemc2

Some torrent sites have moved the physical location of their servers to Eastern Europe and moved their top level domains outside the U.S. (.me for example which is Montenegro) to avoid preemptive seizure by ICE. Build a better mousetrap and the mice just get smarter...

There's also IRC, and the dozens of one-click download sites. Oh, and Usenet. Really, this isn't going to change anything.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by molman

You don't have to consume said book/song/tv show etc. It is in many ways a luxury item. If you can't afford that $100 novella don't read it. If you breach someone’s copyright (I really don't like the word pirate, it is so loaded now), then just accept that you are breaking the law in most countries and depriving the people who hold the legal rights due compensation...

Thay maybe so, but I have no sympathy for people who deliberately restrict their audience to a tiny minority of rich people. If they have no interest in selling it to a mainstream audience I don't see anything wrong with the audience making their own arrangements.

[xg4bx]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Thay maybe so, but I have no sympathy for people who deliberately restrict their audience to a tiny minority of rich people. If they have no interest in selling it to a mainstream audience I don't see anything wrong with the audience making their own arrangements.

the thing is though, most of these high prices aren't even charged by the publisher. the books are out of print and they're secondary market prices. so who am i really "stealing" from, some greedy speculator?

i'm perfectly willing to pay the $50 or so for a current release luxury hardcover from an author i love. i'm not paying 3 times that to some greedy speculating hoarder. the author certainly isn't seeing a cut of the inflated price.

most of the digital copies of them are poorly formatted pdfs, i'd gladly buy a legitimate legal copy. there simply aren't any. i'm just giving myself access to works that i would never, ever see otherwise.

something like car prices are high for a reason. manufactured collectibles like limited edition books only exist to serve a handful of speculators, not true fans of an author.

[Quexos]

Oh these guys will manage to do what the music and subsequently film industries have (time and again) failed to do for over a decade ?
Yeah, right. Good luck evil corporate hotshots !

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by afa

That's like my saying that a $400,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom is far too expensive for me to buy, so it's okay that I steal it.

Not really, since there's nothing illegal about building your own Rolls-Royce Phantom if you wanted to.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

the thing is though, most of these high prices aren't even charged by the publisher. the books are out of print and they're secondary market prices. so who am i really "stealing" from, some greedy speculator?

Most of the highly sought after ones go straight to the speculators on preorder, and they have them on sale more or less on publication day at twice the price. One I was interested in a few months ago was $75 for the hardback and $5 for the ebook, both straight from the publisher (in America, so the hardback would have cost at least $100 to have it posted over).

I decided to go for the ebook, but left it until I had a reading slot for it. But when I went to buy it, it wasn't there anymore. I emailed the writer and it turned out the ebook was "limited" too, and it was withdrawn from sale as soon as the hardback sold out. He said the only option now was to get the hardback on Ebay. So I bought something else instead.

This sort of thing makes no sense to me at all, unless the writers in question are the ones selling them on Ebay?

[starrigger]

It is amazing to see all the rationalizations and justifications for stealing. (Not saying I've never done it myself.)

That said, I don't think anyone can say whether piracy hurts or helps the average writer. I've no doubt it's costing some, probably the better known, writers some serious bucks. I also think it probably--inadvertently--helps a lot of less-well-known writers get better known. (I don't believe for a minute that the torrent pirates give a flying *** about the writers, but the side effect of their actions may help some writers.)

As for whether this effort by E-reads/Curtis will have any effect, I guess we'll have to wait and see. Comparisons to the music industry might or might not be accurate.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Quexos

Good luck evil corporate hotshots !

These "evil corporate hotshots" happen to be a small publisher that's bringing out-of-print books back into print in DRM-free editions (where permitted), at moderate prices. They pay a royalty rate to the authors that's twice what many large publishers pay, and pay it twice as often.

They might not be as good a deal for the writer as indie publishing, but a lot of writers don't want to do indie publishing.

Oh, and they're paying the cost of the takedown service on behalf of their authors. Yeah, they're evil, all right.