You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Lol, now this is what I call an irrelevant comment!

Why? It is take things without paying for it. So why is it irrelevant?

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Well, when people just take what they want without paying for it..., I can at least appreciate their anger and willingness to try to get back at those people, even when they do overreact.

That savings will be passed on to consumers is a lot more likely than that pirates will be paying when buying is cheap and convenient. That only works for ridiculously low amounts like $1.

At least you acknowledge that they overreact, and they didn't back off on overreacting until they got a bunch of US ISPs to monitor P2P traffic in a process that manages to be alarming without really showing any teeth. It goes into effect very soon, and I'm interested to see how that goes. It's supposed to be focusing on educating down loaders.

That $1 price point is already common for much media. It gets a lot of people to buy who otherwise wouldn't. The problem is when the media companies blame the "not buying" numbers on piracy because they have no way to know how much, if any, money is lost. I actually heard, with my own ears, a record label guy state that if people aren't buying, they are stealing it. He really believes that. Can't possibly be because cookie cutter singers all sound the same, which is why I wouldn't buy. They think a little too highly of their product, it seems.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Tha ability to buy books wirelessly has turned many into reading fiends. They don't care about DRM, they mostly don't even care about price. They do care about what others are reading, as in it is almost a status thing to read Game of Thrones. Above all they care about convenience. They make $30 to above $200 an hour and if married, spouse makes the same.

For the most part they are a new category in reading people and look to me to be able to support a significant amount of ebook sales. These people must die or run out of cash before prices drop

Those aren't the ones driving the ebook revolution. As much money as they have, they don't have *time* to read as fast as books are selling. The 1% of the population with 43% of the wealth are not going to read 43% of the ebooks, even though the marketing is aimed at them.

The ones driving the switch are the former buyers of thrift-store romances and used-book-shop SF novels, who are willing to pay $2 per book to buy and read 10 books a week--if they can find 10 new books a week to read. Those people, who are students and housewives than any other categories, have mostly been invisible to publishers' marketing campaigns; their voracious reading habits were considered irrelevant because they didn't feed into the royalty stream.

They're also the ones supporting the darknet filesharing, because they come from a background that assumes that resources of any sort are expected to be shared. When they're done with a book, they hand it along to someone else who hasn't read it. Anything else feels like sending used books into a paper shredder in order to force future readers to buy a new copy.

Ending the commercial threat of piracy will take acknowledging those readers and finding a way to convince them not to distribute their files widely. That's probably going to require a way to legitimately distribute to family and close friends, because right now, there's no legal difference between "email an ebook to your aunt in another state" and "upload the ebook to megafileshare and PM the link to your aunt... and if she shares the link around, well, so what?"

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

What's the ebook solution for the 75% of paper readers who never directly supported a specific author with income? Should they just ignore that author's works? Do authors believe that a readerbase 1/4 the size they'd get for print will support them?

According to the Bowker survey earlier this year, 43% of ebook readers already don't directly support a specific author with income. A later survey said it is over 50% possibly due to KDP free promos.

And this with DRM and lending restrictions. Remove DRM and/or permit resale and we have the ability to surpass 75%.

With ebooks authors have the potential for greater income and less income. I can understand the uneasiness felt by the industry.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by tompe

Why? It is take things without paying for it. So why is it irrelevant?

What will you think of next? Car manufacturers starting to sue people who take test drives at dealers? Simply put, you are talking about legal uses, we are discussing illegal uses here.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

What will you think of next? Car manufacturers starting to sue people who take test drives at dealers? Simply put, you are talking about legal uses, we are discussing illegal uses here.

And why is it illegal then?

And you are really not talking about what is legal. You are making a moral argument. If you only wanted to make a legal argument you just have to say that it is illegal. Instead you are talking about taking without paying and the anger that causes. Did you really mean that the anger was only because it was illlegal? I really do not believe you only meant that. You seemed to say that they were angry because of moral reasons.

[HansTWN]

Well, Tompe, piracy is illegal and wrong --- borrowing a pbook from a friend or buying second hand is not, but is one of the intended uses. If a book sells well second hand it is actually good for the author publisher (the original buyers have more money to spend on new books and are confident that they will be able to sell any new books they buy now). Why compare an innocent fair-rights use that is good for the copyright holder with piracy? Satisfied?

[shalym]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Well, Tompe, piracy is illegal and wrong --- borrowing a pbook from a friend or buying second hand is not, but is one of the intended uses. If a book sells well second hand it is actually good for the author publisher (the original buyers have more money to spend on new books and are confident that they will be able to sell any new books they buy now). Why compare an innocent fair-rights use that is good for the copyright holder with piracy? Satisfied?

Because, under current law, if I make a copy of an ebook to loan it to my mother, the penalty is the same as if I make a copy and upload it to a torrent site. They are both considered piracy under the law.

Shari

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by shalym

Because, under current law, if I make a copy of an ebook to loan it to my mother, the penalty is the same as if I make a copy and upload it to a torrent site. They are both considered piracy under the law.

Shari

But you're not "loaning" it to your mother; you're creating another copy of the book and GIVING that copy to your mother. Two people have a copy of the book where only one had it before. That's the fundamental difference between an eBook and a paper book, and that's why it's piracy.

There's nothing wrong with lending your mother your reading device with the book on it - that way, only one person has the eBook, and there's no piracy.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Well, Tompe, piracy is illegal and wrong --- borrowing a pbook from a friend or buying second hand is not, but is one of the intended uses. If a book sells well second hand it is actually good for the author publisher (the original buyers have more money to spend on new books and are confident that they will be able to sell any new books they buy now). Why compare an innocent fair-rights use that is good for the copyright holder with piracy? Satisfied?

You are still confusing what is moral and what is legal.

Why is piracys illegal?

Why is it wrong?

Are people angry because it is wrong?

Or are they angry because it is illegal?

If downloading books were legal (like it is in Holland) the I assume you think that there are no reason for creators to get angry because people "take something without paying for it" or?

[Quexos]

Some people are confusing even the very definition of piracy. They amalgamate people that sell stolen goods with people that share for free and no profit.
Pirates used to be these gangs that scoured the seven seas searching for treasures to pillage, all for PROFIT.
Sharing is NOT wrong though it may be considered illegal.
I reject altogether that notion of wrong, it's a judgement on the part of others to sharers and they have no right to do that.
Sometimes I have to wonder if some people are not simply jealous that they pay for digital content while smarter people don't.
Whenever I buy something, a video game, a movie or a book, I do it because I want to and if I hear others manage somehow to get it from a third party that shared it, well good for them, I did not buy a content to be a good little brainless sheep that does what the government wants him to do, I bought it cause it was my choice period, regardless of how others acquired it. And in this neo-liberal economy with all the limitations to individual freedoms such as DRM, geo-restrictions or unequal quality depending on location (e.g. A special edition of a book with extras in a territory but not in another) I CERTAINLY could never blame "smarter" people. So yeah it sounds like jealousy to me ...

Originally Posted by tompe

You are still confusing what is moral and what is legal.

Why is piracys illegal?

Why is it wrong?

Are people angry because it is wrong?

Or are they angry because it is illegal?

If downloading books were legal (like it is in Holland) the I assume you think that there are no reason for creators to get angry because people "take something without paying for it" or?

[shalym]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But you're not "loaning" it to your mother; you're creating another copy of the book and GIVING that copy to your mother. Two people have a copy of the book where only one had it before. That's the fundamental difference between an eBook and a paper book, and that's why it's piracy.

There's nothing wrong with lending your mother your reading device with the book on it - that way, only one person has the eBook, and there's no piracy.

So...in your definition, if I have a spare Kindle and loan it out to my mother with a couple hundred books on it for her to read that is somehow different from making a copy of a specific book and then loading it onto my mother's kindle? Incidentally, that first scenario is perfectly allowable under Amazon's Terms of Service. Also, now that Amazon has given us the ability to turn off access to the store and the archives, this is a scenario that I can see happening in the future--and it may be a way for smaller libraries to get around using Overdrive. Buy twenty $69 kindles, attach them to an Amazon account, and loan them out to people.

Shari

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by shalym

So...in your definition, if I have a spare Kindle and loan it out to my mother with a couple hundred books on it for her to read that is somehow different from making a copy of a specific book and then loading it onto my mother's kindle? Incidentally, that first scenario is perfectly allowable under Amazon's Terms of Service. Also, now that Amazon has given us the ability to turn off access to the store and the archives, this is a scenario that I can see happening in the future--and it may be a way for smaller libraries to get around using Overdrive. Buy twenty $69 kindles, attach them to an Amazon account, and loan them out to people.

Shari

It's piracy if you do it outside the terms of the way that the content is licensed to be used, and if you read the Kindle "Terms and Conditions", you'll see that what you postulate is not permitted.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Quexos

Some people are confusing even the very definition of piracy. They amalgamate people that sell stolen goods with people that share for free and no profit.
Pirates used to be these gangs that scoured the seven seas searching for treasures to pillage, all for PROFIT.
Sharing is NOT wrong though it may be considered illegal.

Whether you like it or not, the term "piracy" has been used for the unauthorised reproduction of copyrighted works for over 400 years, and your attempt to restrict it to those who do it for money has no merit. Giving away something that you have no right to give away is most assuredly wrong.

[corroonb]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Whether you like it or not, the term "piracy" has been used for the unauthorised reproduction of copyrighted works for over 400 years, and your attempt to restrict it to those who do it for money has no merit. Giving away something that you have no right to give away is most assuredly wrong.

400 years ago people believed in witches.