Do you pirate books and why?

[BearMountainBooks]

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Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Torrents are going to continue to exist; they have a lot of legitimate uses. Bands and indie film producers use them to distribute files they can't afford to host directly.

Same with "darknets"--unsearchable websites not accessible through standard clickthroughs. A lot of businesses and activist groups use hidden file-exchange sites.

No amount of action against piracy, no matter how well-supported, is going to shut down private filesharing on the internet... and that means there'll always be systems available for illicit filesharing. Saying "torrents cause illegal filesharing" is a lot like saying "unlocked supermarket shelves cause shoplifting." (You haven't said that; some authors try to.)



You have no say whether your books are promoted by white supremacist groups to encourage people to join their cause. You have no say whether your books are chopped up to make word collages. You have no say whether your characters are horrifically mocked and parodied into explicit pornography. You have no say whether your text is quoted out of context and used to justify child abuse.

You don't get to decide how your books are used. You can rail against unethical uses and take action against illegal uses, but once you publish, other people get to decide how to use what you've made available. Authors have *never* been able to control the direction and methods of the spread of their books.

Those are different issues and actually have nothing to do with with the topic. Just because those things happen does not change the fact that pirating/torrent sites are an infringement on the authors intentions if not an out-and-out infringement on the authors' legal rights. Pointing to other things wrong in the world doesn't change the situation or make it more or less legal.

[Rhialto]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

Why on earth was this made a public poll rather than an anonymous one?

Where should they dig the Very Deep Pit?
Piglet said that the best place would be somewhere where a Heffalump was, just before he fell into it, only about a foot further on.


A.A. Milne

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by Dulin's Books

sure the second is much worse. one is "travelling" to where you can purchase it and doing so. the other is getting a copy from your neighbor after he finishes making a few thousand using his scanner

If that is the case then why is it so many folks from outside the US are posting that they are using torrents instead of breaking the geo restrictions? The books are available, it is easy to do, it is free to do, and any one on this site can find out how to do it. So why are people pirating when there is an easy, free, well documented method of getting around them?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

If that is the case then why is it so many folks from outside the US are posting that they are using torrents instead of breaking the geo restrictions? The books are available, it is easy to do, it is free to do, and any one on this site can find out how to do it. So why are people pirating when there is an easy, free, well documented method of getting around them?

Torrenting can be a lot easier than getting around geo restrictions. Torrenting works the same everywhere; each site may have different geo restrictions settings--some use IP addresses, some demand a credit card with a US address, require both. Some may require a different kind of verification.

Also, some publishers & bookstores insist that evading the geo restrictions is illegal. If one is going to break the law anyway, why bother leaving the paper trail of a trackable ID? Why not just pirate the book, if the only way to get it is to be a criminal?

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

If that is the case then why is it so many folks from outside the US are posting that they are using torrents instead of breaking the geo restrictions? The books are available, it is easy to do, it is free to do, and any one on this site can find out how to do it. So why are people pirating when there is an easy, free, well documented method of getting around them?

Circumventing geo restrictions may work with ebooks and mp3's, but it doesn't work with dvd-movies or pbooks. Therefore, many people got used to pirating the stuff in a digital format. And while circumventing them is easy, torrenting is even easier; and you don't have to deal with drm.

Georestrictions are one of the most stupid things I ever came across in the entertainment industry. Why would you NOT want to allow some people to buy your product, even though they clearly want to? It's absurd, if you think about it.

*Grabs a tube of toothpaste*
"Where do you live Sir?"
- "I live in Jeffersonstreet, in Amsterdam."
"Sorry Sir.... In that case, you may not buy Prodent toothpaste, but you can buy this Elmex tube."
- "???"

It's absurd, I tell you.

[The Terminator]

If authors wanted their books to be free they would be, wouldn't they? The government doesn't need to force these things.

[ProfCrash]

It might be absurd but it is not the fault of the stores. Complain to your government about the stupidity of the law.

I would prefer that the authors get paid and think that it is a cop out to say that it is easier to download off a torrent then it is to buy using a VPN to get around geo restrictions. Authors work hard to produce a good that we want. If we can, we should pay for it. There are ways to do so even with geo restrictions so I find it a bit disheartening that people who know that is possible and can find out how to do it easily choose to skip it for convenience sake.

[Katsunami]

There are books that I cannot buy in the Netherlands, although I can buy *other* books from the same author, published by the same publisher; therefore I think it's not a problem of the government.

And, you're right. Authors should be paid. Therefore I don't understand why obtaining products (geo restrictions) or using products (drm) sometimes has to be so darned difficult.

I can understand the reasons for just pirating the stuff very well. Sometimes, it's just faster, easier, more convenient, and with fewer restrictions than the official way, and IMHO, that should not be so.

[ProfCrash]

The problem is the government. If the laws were changed you could buy an e- book from Amazon US with ease. The law says that electronic media is purchased based on where you computer is but a paper book is purchased based on where the distributor If the author signed a contract with a different publisher then some of his books may be available and others may not be available. If the law was different it wouldn't matter who the Publisher was. If the e-book was available some place in the globe you would be able to buy it, just like a paper book.

[Falcao]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Torrenting can be a lot easier than getting around geo restrictions.

I once got to extreme levels to buy a mp3 that was only available from Amazon UK: finding a British proxy (which a kind-hearted Englishman expat lent me free of charge), inventing a Liverpool-based address (Beatles influence), interchanging emails with an Amazon representative because I could not download the song the first time (or the second or third time), and finally installing the Amazon downloader. Then I discovered the world of torrents. Life has never seen the same after it

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

It might be absurd but it is not the fault of the stores. Complain to your government about the stupidity of the law.

It's not a matter of law. Geo restrictions are a matter of contract agreements between publishers and distributors--bookstores aren't held by them (which is why Amazon can ship pbooks anywhere). Somewhere in the contract dealing, the publishers decided that a sale for digital content takes place at the location of the buyer, not the seller--and that "location" would be defined as "the address of the bank associated with the credit card" and/or "location defined by IP address," regardless of where the person actually is.

Geo restrictions have nothing to do with the buyer's location; a person living in the UK who visits the US on a vacation can't buy US-only ebooks through their Amazon account.

And there's no laws against selling ebooks to any location in the world--just contract arrangements; selling a publisher's books in places they haven't authorized them is breach of contract. It can be a breach of copyright law, if someone else owns the rights in that area--but a lot of geo restrictions are enforced by publishers who own international rights, but are hoping to set up contracts in other countries. They refuse to sell in order to offer those rights to the highest bidder.

There's no law that forbids bypassing geo restrictions, although it's maybe (probably?) a violation of the TOS of the seller, which means that if you get caught, your account can be frozen.

[The Terminator]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

The problem is the government. If the laws were changed you could buy an e- book from Amazon US with ease. The law says that electronic media is purchased based on where you computer is but a paper book is purchased based on where the distributor If the author signed a contract with a different publisher then some of his books may be available and others may not be available. If the law was different it wouldn't matter who the Publisher was. If the e-book was available some place in the globe you would be able to buy it, just like a paper book.

I was replying to Giggleton. For actual freedom of publishing copyright is a must, without it books that the author does want money for, will not be purchased. With copyright the author has the choice to have the book free or not.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by Falcao

I once got to extreme levels to buy a mp3 that was only available from Amazon UK: finding a British proxy (which a kind-hearted Englishman expat lent me free of charge), inventing a Liverpool-based address (Beatles influence), interchanging emails with an Amazon representative because I could not download the song the first time (or the second or third time), and finally installing the Amazon downloader. Then I discovered the world of torrents. Life has never seen the same after it

Yep!

You would not be alone in that experience.

This is what makes the publishers, music and entertainment organisations so bloody hypocritical. They wave reports with falsified statistics around making "woe is me" statements and not once examine their own business practices in an attempt to meet customers expectations and the current digital economy.

You want the item, you have money to pay for it and if Jack or Jill Customer from Lower Allowable can buy it, why can't you, residing in Outabounds, buy it also?

Hence casual piracy abounds...

Yo ho ho and a torrent of ebooks...

[Catlady]

OK, so how do I, in the U.S., buy e-books from amazon.uk?

[Yapyap]

There's one big reason why I don't like pretending I'm somewhere else (although I do it when it's easy enough for me to manage and as long as Amazon turns a blind eye to it) - I feel somewhat guilty over my government not getting the VAT.

This is less of a moral problem with georestricted books I can't get otherwise (because if I'm not allowed to buy it, my government won't get the VAT anyway), but... Well.

Thing is, once you've learned to bypass georestrictions, it becomes rather tempting to do it also for books that are discounted/on sale for $1.99/free for Americans and $14 for the rest of us, doesn't it? I resisted doing that for a year, but with the amount of books I buy... It's not even the middle of February yet and I've already bought books for ~$200 this year (lest anyone think that I do nothing but steal all the time), including a number of preorders not available yet. Had I always been honest in my country settings, this would be at least $50 more.