Can e-Publishing Overcome Copyright Concerns?

[tirsales]

Now it gets strange. A digital existance is a material form? Well - as far as we have a number of ions changed.
But - hey, if we have a material form, we can just sell it like every other book (a material form as well) too - and we cannot copy it as no two material forms can ever be identical.

By the very definition of matter a file is NOT material - it occupies no space, it has no weight, etc

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by akiburis

Sorry. Whatever an ebook may be by its very nature, it exists as a digital file. Which is a material form. Otherwise, you'd have to get your ebooks from God.

really ? can you touch it ?
material : adjective. formed or consisting of matter; physical; corporeal: the material world.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=material

are you confusing ebooks with those cumbersome things printed on thin sheets of processed wood pulp and bound on one side ? those are PAPER books, and they *do* have an immuable, material form. regardless, i'm not sure where (a purely hypothetical) god comes into the equation.

Zelda : "Hello, God ? when do you think you'll be ready with those Dorothy Sayers ebooks i've been waiting for ? it's been almost 6 months now..."

[tompe]

Originally Posted by akiburis

Sorry. Whatever an ebook may be by its very nature, it exists as a digital file. Which is a material form. Otherwise, you'd have to get your ebooks from God.

This is trivially not true. A book can be in a database for example. Or it can be stored distributed on the net and the bits do not have to be stored in a file. An ebook can also exist as radio waves. You can broadcast a lot of book and just tune in to them when reading.

Also a file is an abstraction. It can be vary hard to identify which parts store the information. Sometimes it can be impossible when the information you see available to you is store encrypted on different computers and it is impossible to know were they are stored.

[akiburis]

@akiburis: So ... A pommes (french frie) inside a box is essentially not in any way related to a pommes on a dish?
A coke in the bottle is absolutely not the same as a coke in a glas?

So when's the last time you got another helping of fries and Coke by making a digital copy of the box and glass?

really ? can you touch it ?

Of course, you can. And you might wipe it out if you did. Something to do with electricity, I believe. A material thing.

But enough of philosophy, I agree.

[zelda_pinwheel]

you know, i'm really not even sure exactly what discussion we're supposed to be having here anymore. but i think the difference between material and immaterial probably has more to do with physics than philosophy.

[tirsales]

You CANNOT touch the file - you can touch the harddrive or the cdrom etc, but NOT the file. Just as you cannot touch the content of the book - but only the paper itself. But yes, this is getting a pure philosophical discussion - though Zelda is right and the defintion of matter is a physical one.


There is no difference between the coke in a bottle and the coke in a glas - there is no difference between the p-book and the e-book.

And yes - I cannot copy a coke - but it is material. But a file is not. You contradict yourself. But we found an agreement at last - this leads to nothing and we can get back to topic.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by tirsales

Now it gets strange. A digital existance is a material form? Well - as far as we have a number of ions changed.
But - hey, if we have a material form, we can just sell it like every other book (a material form as well) too - and we cannot copy it as no two material forms can ever be identical.

By the very definition of matter a file is NOT material - it occupies no space, it has no weight, etc

Boy, you spend an afternoon cleaning up in the basement, and look where the discussions go when you're not looking!...

tirsales has hit on a point I've been trying to make for a while, now: Whether or not a collection of electrons count as a "physical object," and therefore should be bound by the same rules and considerations. I believe that this debate is at the root of the argument between publishers/authors and consumers, regarding the value of e-books, and their existence as an object to buy or own.

Many people take the side that e-books, being ordered electrons, are essentially "nothing," and therefore should not be treated like the bound paper they buy... nor should they be held responsible for taking such a thing without compensating someone, since "it doesn't really exist," or "nothing was actually taken from the owner."

My opinion is that electrons are like Whos: They may be invisible to the eye, but that doesn't mean they don't exist, or have value. Therefore, a book bound in a collection of electrons is as much a physical object as a book bound in paper.

But in fact, the distinction is neither here nor there.

Funny thing is, we wouldn't have this discussion if it weren't for the fact that we cannot manage to separate the content from the container. But the fact is, when we talk about the "cost of books," we're really talking about the cost of paper... hardback, paperback, trade... those are the real drivers of prices. Content? Well, I can buy a paperback by a famous author for the same as a paperback by a no-name, so surely the content does not hold any significant value... right?

Wrong. The content is the value. If it is worthwhile to read the words of Hemingway, it doesn't matter what they are printed (or displayed) on. And if you get a discounted paperback of Hemingway, the lower dollar amount doesn't somehow diminish from the power of his words. There may be a cost associated with a number of printed and bound pages, but they are separate from the value of the content, and should be thought of as such.

Copyright (yes, back to the point of the thread. Ha ha!) was invented by men who believed that content, ideas themselves, had value, and needed to be protected as much as manufactured inventions. Copyright served to protect the author whose books were printed by another publisher without his consent, and without compensation. And it worked, because people and governments agreed to enforce that protection.

Only when (or if) governments, backed by the public, come to an agreement that e-books, regardless of their method of delivery, deserve protection, can we expect copyright to mean anything in regard to e-books. I believe the public can be brought to understand that it is within their best interests to recognize e-books as objects of value, just like a paper-bound book, because they both carry valuable content. Not all the public is there yet... no one has yet made the compelling argument, the "Common Sense" doctrine, that everyone accepts... but I believe it will come.

[tirsales]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Wrong. The content is the value.

Like I said - there is really no big difference between a p-book and an e-book because the important thing about the book is identical: The content.

Copyright (yes, back to the point of the thread. Ha ha!) was invented by men who believed that content, ideas themselves, had value, and needed to be protected as much as manufactured inventions. Copyright served to protect the author whose books were printed by another publisher without his consent, and without compensation. And it worked, because people and governments agreed to enforce that protection.

I agree. I have absolutely NO reason to object to copyrights - as I told some posts ago I develop software for a living. Both things - books and software - are protected by the same copyright laws (at least in Germany). (Okay, I lied - I also work as a system administrator - but most of my working time is nowadays spend developing and refactoring).
I have many reasons to protect against DRM. NOT against copyright.
I have no reason to not pay for the content - in fact I think, that e-books can in fact apply a higher margin "for the content itself" then p-books, because the container costs less. This does NOT reduce the worth of the e-book.
I would glady pay the same amount of money for an e-book as for an p-book if (and only if) the e-book is non-DRM'd - but then I WOULD pay that amount.
But - publishers and authors need to understand the position of readers. We do NOT want to limit ourselves to a special store or a special device or only reading when the moon is rising or any other arbitrary crap. I want to be able to read this e-book on whatever reader I want at whatever time I want and as often as I want.
Yes - I pay for that. As I pay for a p-book. But I essentially want to get the same accessibility and stuff.

E.g. a book gets released and at first it gets released as hard-cover for e.g. 25$. Sell the e-book for ~18$ (yeah, I know. But a hard-cover is really much more expensive to do). Then the soft-cover gets released for e.g. 9.95$ - sell the e-book for 9.95$ (without DRM or similar crap) - and we have an agreement. Let me use this e-book as I use a p-book and we are set.

Only when (or if) governments, backed by the public, come to an agreement that e-books, regardless of their method of delivery, deserve protection, can we expect copyright to mean anything in regard to e-books.

As far as it goes copyright laws enforce copyright protection no matter the method of delivery.

I believe the public can be brought to understand that it is within their best interests to recognize e-books as objects of value, just like a paper-bound book, because they both carry valuable content. Not all the public is there yet... no one has yet made the compelling argument, the "Common Sense" doctrine, that everyone accepts... but I believe it will come.

I agree - and I hope you are right.

[zelda_pinwheel]

tirsales, i agree with you in principle, as should be clear by now. however i don't think that it's reasonable to charge the same price for ebooks as for paper, precisely *because* they cost significantly less to produce. i hope publishers will understand this.

obviously, i will pay somewhat more for a drm-free book, however even then i don't want to pay for phantom irrelevant printing costs. it's fair to the author to pay for their work, regardless of the format (paper or digital) ; it's fair to the consumer to allow them to benefit as well from savings on production costs.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Copyright (yes, back to the point of the thread. Ha ha!) was invented by men who believed that content, ideas themselves, had value, and needed to be protected as much as manufactured inventions. Copyright served to protect the author whose books were printed by another publisher without his consent, and without compensation. And it worked, because people and governments agreed to enforce that protection.

Only when (or if) governments, backed by the public, come to an agreement that e-books, regardless of their method of delivery, deserve protection, can we expect copyright to mean anything in regard to e-books. I believe the public can be brought to understand that it is within their best interests to recognize e-books as objects of value, just like a paper-bound book, because they both carry valuable content. Not all the public is there yet... no one has yet made the compelling argument, the "Common Sense" doctrine, that everyone accepts... but I believe it will come.

Steve, I believe it will never come. I say that because the world of copyright has changed, and it'll never be the same again. It has changed because the method of production in the digital world has changed. The old rules just don't work the same way in the new world. I stated that back in my first post here (and why), way back when.

In the old mass-production world, it took a lot of capital to make something, which limited the number of manufacturer to a small number, and made the amount at legal risk to be sizable. The reward for pirating was not worth risk (in invested capital), so nobody did it. (They did do it in the patent world, because the returns often were worth the risk (study the history of the variable intermittent windshield wiper patent, for example.)) The copyright law was (in essence) self enforcing.

In the digital world there are at least 100 million manufacturing machines owned by individuals, most of which cost less than a weeks typical wages. There is no way to control the use of these manufacturing machines, short of shutting down Western civilization. That's a cold reality (like Tom Goodwin's story "The Cold Equations"), like it or not. The copyright laws are now virtually impossible to enforce in the digital realm. (Yes, you can stand a few people up and (figuratively) shoot them, but that still isn't going to stop the change. (Just like drug laws haven't stopped drug use, immigration laws haven't stopped illegal immigration, ect.))

This doesn't mean I'm a pirate or condone piracy, I'm just measuring reality, whether I like it nor not.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Well, since that "reality" can only result in 2 things--an incredible lack of new content, when creators/producers (like me) simply abandon a leaky ship--and incredibly painful DRM on everything that's left--I can't see how the government, or consumers, will let copyright go, or not replace it with something that does copyright's job, but better.

I guess we'll see in the long run.

[zelda_pinwheel]

yeah, those must be the ONLY two options. after all, that's precisely what's happening with mp3's / the music industry, right ?

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Well, since that "reality" can only result in 2 things--an incredible lack of new content, when creators/producers (like me) simply abandon a leaky ship--and incredibly painful DRM on everything that's left--I can't see how the government, or consumers, will let copyright go, or not replace it with something that does copyright's job, but better.

I guess we'll see in the long run.

Oddly enough, I tend to agree with your comment, We are going to lose new content. How much and how severe remains to be seen. The incredibly painful DRM will be bypassed by the "analog hole" (scanners and keyboards), like it is today.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

yeah, those must be the ONLY two options. after all, that's precisely what's happening with mp3's / the music industry, right ?

I was talking about a world without copyright protection... not the world today.

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

The incredibly painful DRM will be bypass by the "analog hole" (scanners and keyboards), like it is today.

Heh. When I said painful, I meant painful. As in surveillance. As in, you can't imagine the stuff that'll be forced onto everyone's computers (most of which you won't even be aware of) to keep people from doing it through the analog hole. If we lose copyright, that's what businesses will demand, to safeguard their property. Because they already know they can't appeal to our sense of fairness...

[tirsales]

No, I acutally dont think that we will see a loss of content.
Different marketing models: Yes.
Loss of content: No.
As I stated before: The same got declared when copying machines got cheap. The same was stated for software after P2P-networks became widely used, etc (Oh and btw: Printing was accused of the same stuff, too). It has not happened so far.

But neither a loss of content, nor a loss of copyright or similar. Heck, it didn't even happen for music or videos.

Different marketing models: Yes. Different players: Yes. Definitely more "community generated content", but there is still a very big market for professional writers (componists, etc) out there ...

But I agree - if the question would really be "secure DRM" or "loss of content" - it would be the loss of content, because there never will be (in fact there cannot be) a secure DRM system. At least non that can be used.
Because ... the only systems that could work would mean giving up ALL freedom - every single human right.
Business cannot just put a new "safe" DRM system onto society - they will have to cope with the changes, change their business models, make it easier to buy a book than to copy it, etc etc etc

Oh well, no one of us really can say what will happen, so I guess we will just have to see.