Book Publishers Force Down Piracy Sites

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

True. But what expenses have increased in that time period?

Bribes for politicians won't be cheap. Then there's the legal costs for dragging destitute single parents through the courts.

[plib]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

What is your point exactly? That authors don't deserve to be paid?

They'll have a lot less money to pay the authors after they've p**sed their money down the drain paying lawyers to play whack-a-mole to no effect.

Though I'm sure they'll probably still manage to pay their CEO's - whether those CEO's have managed to come up with a modern business model for a changed environment or not.

[John Barlow]

Bittorrent Junkie has decided to close voluntarily. So the threat of legal action is having its effect on some of the biggest sites, it seems

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by John Barlow

Bittorrent Junkie has decided to close voluntarily. So the threat of legal action is having its effect on some of the biggest sites, it seems

Going after individuals didn't seem to have much of an effect, but going after larger sources might. Filesonic and Fileserve both stopped permitting sharing...and it looks like about 10 other services have stopped sharing or changed their method of doing business.

And legitimate file-sharing services like Rapidshare appear to be being very careful in dealing with potentially infringing material.

Making something a crime never completely eliminates the activity - murder has been illegal for as long as humans have had laws...but it still goes on. So maybe going after the big providers will have a noticeable affect; it's just too early to say.

[xg4bx]

i've got a crazy idea so bear with me.

how about instead of spending money trying to plug holes like the dutch boy, how about publishers use that money to promote their authors and give potential customers a reason to buy legitimate copies? or instead of paying lawyers, they use the spare money they obviously have to lower prices? crazy i know. i'm no business major so that might be a nutty idea.

or, in a worst case scenario, they simply stop selling ebooks?

human nature simply isn't going to change because these publishers say so. instead of going after those who have already turned to the 'darkside', give the legitimate customers you have a reason to continue being legitimate customers instead of allowing them to be drawn towards piracy. it all goes back to the same arguments: either lower prices and ditch drm or they'll continue trying to plug the dam.

[FizzyWater]

I don't have any problem with publishers doing what they can to product their products by closing down pirate sites. I think that's a much better option than trying to go after downloaders when it's so easy to falsify IP addresses.

I think it's even possible to falsify IP addresses for seeding torrents (I had a coworker who used to hack into neighbors' unsecured wifi all the time).

So take down the sites by the folks who benefit monetarily from the pirating....it just seems less likely to be abusive to some innocent bystander.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

i've got a crazy idea so bear with me.

how about instead of spending money trying to plug holes like the dutch boy, how about publishers use that money to promote their authors and give potential customers a reason to buy legitimate copies? or instead of paying lawyers, they use the spare money they obviously have to lower prices? crazy i know. i'm no business major so that might be a nutty idea.

or, in a worst case scenario, they simply stop selling ebooks?

human nature simply isn't going to change because these publishers say so. instead of going after those who have already turned to the 'darkside', give the legitimate customers you have a reason to continue being legitimate customers instead of allowing them to be drawn towards piracy. it all goes back to the same arguments: either lower prices and ditch drm or they'll continue trying to plug the dam.

Could not agree with you more.

If they have a nice, large slush fund available to use copyright lawyers with associated legal costs, plus "incentive" money for US senators, then surely they can re-direct that slush fund to restructuring their business model.

Throwing multi-scads of dollars at those two areas is exactly akin to the dutch boy plugging the dike. Far too late to stop the tide.

Deal with the issue of WHY customers are turning to the darkside. There are plenty of studies that strip away those who simply will not pay for anything and evaluate why the rest of the darksider's do what they do.

Afterall, if a potential customer has the money and has the desire to buy an ebook. But is prevented into either doing so due to Geo restrictions, cost or prevented from format shifting because they have a new ereader, then rectify that so to keep the customer and make the sale.

Simple? Seems not.

Now they are beginning to blame the whole issue on the demise of SOPA....sigh.....

Oops...another hole has opened up....

[Bittybye]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

i've got a crazy idea so bear with me.

how about instead of spending money trying to plug holes like the dutch boy, how about publishers use that money to promote their authors and give potential customers a reason to buy legitimate copies? or instead of paying lawyers, they use the spare money they obviously have to lower prices? crazy i know. i'm no business major so that might be a nutty idea.

or, in a worst case scenario, they simply stop selling ebooks?

human nature simply isn't going to change because these publishers say so. instead of going after those who have already turned to the 'darkside', give the legitimate customers you have a reason to continue being legitimate customers instead of allowing them to be drawn towards piracy. it all goes back to the same arguments: either lower prices and ditch drm or they'll continue trying to plug the dam.

I agree completely. Stop charging so much for books and I'll buy right away rather than wait until the price comes down. Make it so everyone who loves to read can afford to buy the book rather than go to the darknet.

I hate piracy and think the owners of such sites should be taken down. But I think publishers are going too far in some cases.

[plib]

Originally Posted by sabredog

Could not agree with you more.

If they have a nice, large slush fund available to use copyright lawyers with associated legal costs, plus "incentive" money for US senators, then surely they can re-direct that slush fund to restructuring their business model.

Throwing multi-scads of dollars at those two areas is exactly akin to the dutch boy plugging the dike. Far too late to stop the tide.

Deal with the issue of WHY customers are turning to the darkside. There are plenty of studies that strip away those who simply will not pay for anything and evaluate why the rest of the darksider's do what they do.

Afterall, if a potential customer has the money and has the desire to buy an ebook. But is prevented into either doing so due to Geo restrictions, cost or prevented from format shifting because they have a new ereader, then rectify that so to keep the customer and make the sale.

Simple? Seems not.

Now they are beginning to blame the whole issue on the demise of SOPA....sigh.....

Oops...another hole has opened up....

Restructuring the business model is the sine qua non of any digital distribution method in future, and if it's not done voluntarily then it will probably happen involuntarily.

There's a very good analysis of what has happened in the music industry here: http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/1...-birth-of.html

What happened to the music industry isn't completely apposite to what's happening in the publishing industry, and some of what he recommends - direct artist publishing and easy to use good quality online stores, for example - are already in existence in the ebook world.

However some of the problems are the same, particularly the dominance of major, invested interests and the refusal to reprice digital products to a more reasonable level instead of desperately hanging on to past pricing models, and, unfortunately for the publishing world, they're the inheritors of a massive change in the consumer mindset resulting partly from the very nature of digital distribution and it's related cost structure and partly from the expectations of at least a couple of generations who have already rejected the old distribution models and all they stood for.

When you add in the mindset of some of the existing players, for example Penguin with their desire to increase "friction" before a consumer can read their product!, there's a very good possibility that the publishing industry is going to face exactly the same issues the music industry faced, with pretty much the same results.

The people on this board are very much a minority. Whatever the megasales of ereaders were over Christmas the ereading population is only a fraction of the paper reading population. However that fraction is only going to grow. To my mind the publishing industry has a choice. It can either try to get on board and drive the bus, or it can be run over by the bus.

Either way I recommend reading the above link. Agree or disagree, it's thought provoking at the very least.

[AgentOrange]

I think more publishers should go the route of Baen books and partner with their authors to offer free ebooks as encouragement for people to say, buy the rest of the series that the author offered the first few books of for free. Introducing the Baen free library

Baen knows cracking down on piracy or increasing prices only encourages piracy to continue, so if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

instead of paying lawyers, they use the spare money they obviously have to lower prices? crazy i know. i'm no business major so that might be a nutty idea.

But then you would put the anti-piracy industry out of business. It would cause chaos in the economy, and thousands of jobs would be lost worldwide.

[spindlegirl]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

But then you would put the anti-piracy industry out of business. It would cause chaos in the economy, and thousands of jobs would be lost worldwide.

LOL, I was just talking about this to my husband the other day. They never will stamp out piracy because the art of pretending to try to stamp it out in mock outrage just makes too darn much money. Plus their staff of people to make official looking graphs and studies of all the "lost dollars" for shock value.

They can't measure the "lost sales" of piracy anymore than you can measure the "lost sales" from people for whom the item in question isn't even on their radar! I am a lost sale for "Scary Movie" because I had no freaking desire to see it, ever...

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

But then you would put the anti-piracy industry out of business. It would cause chaos in the economy, and thousands of jobs would be lost worldwide.

Well strewth!

We cannot do that can we!

Just not cricket!!!

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by spindlegirl

They can't measure the "lost sales" of piracy anymore than you can measure the "lost sales" from people for whom the item in question isn't even on their radar! I am a lost sale for "Scary Movie" because I had no freaking desire to see it, ever...

But YOU mentioned it...AND....in writing...on a public forum no less!!!!...

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by sbroome

Again, the issue is people consuming without paying. If people are right in saying that piracy users wouldn't have consumed this stuff if it weren't free, fine; but if they aren't going to pay they don't deserve the content. Nobody is going to regret the fact that a bunch of cheapskates are disappointed.

Are you talking about a hypothetical pirate that never buys content, one that all research shows doesn't exist?