Sideloading: Own content or "from somewhere else"

[Atunah]

I can't even remember the last time I used my usb cord on my kindles. Now I only own kindles as e-readers and a Nexus tablet. I buy most of my books at Amazon. But I have purchased from other stores before like direct from Kensington (Discoveranewlove), AllRomance and got a few freebies from Smashwords. I sort it all in calibre, but don't use calibre to send anything to my kindles. I use the send to kindle plug-in and so those books are part of my Amazon Cloud.

No clue if that is considered side loading in the spirit of the discussion. Now I used to side load back in 2008 with usb on my very first kindle. I was still a bit confused at the time.

I don't really keep a lot of books on my devices, I pull them down when I need them and they reside in collections until then.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Atunah

I can't even remember the last time I used my usb cord on my kindles. Now I only own kindles as e-readers and a Nexus tablet. I buy most of my books at Amazon. But I have purchased from other stores before like direct from Kensington (Discoveranewlove), AllRomance and got a few freebies from Smashwords. I sort it all in calibre, but don't use calibre to send anything to my kindles. I use the send to kindle plug-in and so those books are part of my Amazon Cloud.

No clue if that is considered side loading in the spirit of the discussion. Now I used to side load back in 2008 with usb on my very first kindle. I was still a bit confused at the time.

I don't really keep a lot of books on my devices, I pull them down when I need them and they reside in collections until then.

It's really a tough one, as there's no single clear definition of sideloading in the web.
Personally, I would consider your process as sideloading.
Personally, I don't focus on the technology (as in "strictly USB"), but on the workflow per se.
By some manual process you transfer your books to your reader.
Whether you then download from some Cloud or from Amazon directly, personally I wouldn't mind.
The important correlation of course is, where you get your books from to begin with.
You already wrote, you purchase from numerous sources. And then you sideload (before that the usual processes in calibre and such). Perfectly makes sense and is a widely common approach. Albeit your last process step with the plug-in probably is advanced way above average. Maybe not for MR standards, but certainly for the general public.

[Terisa de morgan]

What can I say? Most people I know have kindles? And sideloading? Yes, they're able to do it. And Kobo, the "preferred" purchase for pirates? Ja, in Spain, at least. Kobo is a minor trademark, with a lot of brands not known out of this country, but the main seller: Amazon and its Kindle. No sd-card, no epub format (what's the necesity), a nice "Send to kindle" offered by amazon...

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

What can I say? Most people I know have kindles? And sideloading? Yes, they're able to do it. And Kobo, the "preferred" purchase for pirates? Ja, in Spain, at least. Kobo is a minor trademark, with a lot of brands not known out of this country, but the main seller: Amazon and its Kindle. No sd-card, no epub format (what's the necesity), a nice "Send to kindle" offered by amazon...

What really would interest me, but I simply don't know enough pirates and the ones I know are tiny fish:
Are pirates active readers? Do they buy their reader and at some stage start to add pirated stuff to their legally bought one?
In my small test group (but like I said before: Only a handful of countries, no professionals amongst them and only about 10 people) it was exactly the other way around:
Not caring about the reader or UI. A bit about the OS, maybe Linux or something like that might make things easier and offer more options. But solely about the file format. Most of them are Europeans (Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Netherlands, Poland, Austria, Italy - probably forgot some) and most of them focus on English content. So their drive towards ePUBS might be a regional thing. And then, after the file format, they discovered the SD card and liked that for capacity and interchangeability. And only then they bought their readers and at that time already had tens of thousands of books - downloaded in an hour. And it only took an hour because of the search and filter, not because of the file sizes.

I'm always fascinated by grey (or deeply dark) areas.
Those 10 don't make any money out of it and don't move real quantities, so it's a rather limited picture.
Still it's interesting enough, how simple and risk-free they describe it all.
I'm not tempted myself. Not for ethical reasons or anything like that. I'd probably use arguments myself such as "it can't be bought here anyway. If it can't be bought, I can't harm any sales". But I simply wouldn't want to load my readers with tons of stuff of unknown quality. Bad enough, when I discover errors, typos and the likes in my bought stuff. But I'd hope for an, on average, higher quality standard for purchased stuff than for pirated one.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by HarryT

to you, too. Please don't imply that people are idiots before checking your facts: there is no way to set the default on the Amazon UK site. Just because something is available to people in one country, doesn't mean it's available to everyone.

I did not mean to imply you are an idiot.

I did mean to imply that perhaps yo overlooked the rest of what I said, and misread the tone of my post.

Perhaps next time you should say straight out, that that option is unavailable in the UK, rather than "They go to wherever you tell them to go. When I buy books, for example, I get them sent to Kindle for PC. Nothing is ever sent to my Kindle."

And then I would have been appropriately apologetic about not being multiculturally aware and everything etc. rather than persisting in my uninformed beliefs.

Instead, you fed my belief and still managed to come out with an awkward response to my post:

Originally Posted by HarryT

They go to wherever you tell them to go. When I buy books, for example, I get them sent to Kindle for PC. Nothing is ever sent to my Kindle.

Regardless of how my premise may have been and was in fact wrong, you certainly didn't answer to that.

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Maybe it's a cultural thing.
But in Germany and most other countries I know is the non-verbal equivalent of calling someone an idiot.
In my book, that's an absolute no-go and I certainly wouldn't thank someone for being out of line.

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Around here, it usually means smacking oneself in the head for missing something obvious. It's most often directed at the person posting, not directed at others.

Correct.

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Can be the same in Germany.
But in the context of eschwartz it's clearly directed towards others.
Mostly me, but in the meantime some others as well.

You could say that smacking oneself in the head for missing something obvious is acceptable, but suggesting others do the same is a bit rude... I don't think though, that it necessarily follows I am implying they are an idiot.

Idiots do not have an exclusivity on making leaps of illogic, we all have our off days.

What if I do so to myself? Am I calling myself an idiot? Not usually.

I prefer keeping one uniform meaning to things.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Neither did I state, all or even most sidelaoders would be pirates.
Nor did I use scatology ( is the non-verbal equivalent of calling someone an idiot).

I left lots of people out of the equation, that's true.
Namely the ones downloading (and then sideloading) legit stuff for free.
But that's the very nature of a poll: It's not for the entire public, but a small target group.
In this case:
Buying and sideloading vs. sideloading pirated stuff.
Free downloads don't make sense in this context, since it's rarely pirated.

And that is precisely the problem. You are picking and choosing "a small target group" as narrowly as you can in order to ensure the greatest imbalance of pirates over people in general.

Thus your entire poll is suspect and assuming you get the results you wish, any conclusions based on it are worthless.

Originally Posted by mgmueller

I get your point.
But, like I wrote: The aspect that -exclusively- did interest me, was "buying content" vs. "using pirated content". And this in conjecture to sideloading, as pirates obviously mostly (entirely, depending on the definition) use sideloading.

The ones downloading freebies or PD don't make sense in that equation.
This kind of poll than would be entirely about "what are the sources of your content". Interesting, but different topic.

I don't think, my test group of 10 friends represents the majority. My personal guess would be, about 1/3 of consumers, but how to validate that?

Silly me, and here I was, thinking your poll was about people "using pirated content" vs. "not using pirated content".

So... what's your point?

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Personally, I'm pretty sure the number of pirates is way bigger than you might assume.
I don't know about the US.
But in Europe, there are intense discussions about ISPs capping the download capacities.
Depending on the ISP and the country in question, they typically drastically reduce your download speed after reaching a certain daily limit.
But here it comes: The limits in question are in the tens of GB. Per day! The limit I have in my business contract is 100GB per day, for example.
I don't need that, not even close. But I automatically got it, linked to my speed of 100Mb.
Question to me would be, why so many people exceed their limits. Obviously enough, so the ISPs have to react.
Yes, my neighbor as a highly sought after web developer will need this kind of capacity from time to time. But the general public?
Such capacities largely only make sense for pirates.
Downloading BlueRays of 30GB and the likes.

Of course, eBooks won't add to that volume, even 500 books per day equate to less than a single CD.
But I dare say: If movies and TV shows are pirated to such an enormous extent: Why should it be any different for books?

But again:
The MR community, largely consisting of book lovers, obviously will differ (to the better) from the general public.
And only a minority of sideloaders will be pirates.
Still I'd find it interesting to get an idea about the ratio.
A poll obviously won't give the full answer. But maybe an idea. And maybe some vivid discussions - without scatology, please.

Again, sounds like you have already chosen your own conclusion.

May I posit that a lot of people have Netflix and Hulu accounts and <gasp/> use them?

You have correctly guessed that they must be using media. But why your persistent attempts to declare the default state of media consumption as being from illegal sources???

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

And it's not the real topic. My issue was: What do people have on their readers and from which source? But of course excluding the standard downloaded ones from the respective stores. That's an option only the buyers have, not the pirates, so there's nothing to compare.

The pirates don't have the option to buy????

Okay, sure, and the buyers don't have the "option" to pirate...

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Atunah

I can't even remember the last time I used my usb cord on my kindles. Now I only own kindles as e-readers and a Nexus tablet. I buy most of my books at Amazon. But I have purchased from other stores before like direct from Kensington (Discoveranewlove), AllRomance and got a few freebies from Smashwords. I sort it all in calibre, but don't use calibre to send anything to my kindles. I use the send to kindle plug-in and so those books are part of my Amazon Cloud.

No clue if that is considered side loading in the spirit of the discussion. Now I used to side load back in 2008 with usb on my very first kindle. I was still a bit confused at the time.

I don't really keep a lot of books on my devices, I pull them down when I need them and they reside in collections until then.

That's what I do as well. The Send to Kindle app is very useful in that way. No muss no fuss. No having to unplug the Kindle or make sure that Calibre isn't turned on before plugging the Kindle in.

[Xanthe]

I am still questioning why this poll requires the names of the voters to be made public, especially when the presupposition behind the poll seems to be that side-loading = piracy.

I'm sure that some of the respondents might be a little upset that their innocent responses can be used to label them as pirates by anyone viewing the poll results and using the same "side-loading = piracy" definition.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

And that is precisely the problem. You are picking and choosing "a small target group" as narrowly as you can in order to ensure the greatest imbalance of pirates over people in general....

People who buy their content are "a small target group"? They should be the vast majority, theoretically. Especially on MR.
The point says "I buy..." not "I buy all"...
Meaning, if you buy some you already can make a tick in that box. Thus it should be the vast majority, else the business model of Kobo and even more so Amazon wouldn't make any sense.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

..Thus your entire poll is suspect and assuming you get the results you wish, any conclusions based on it are worthless....

What makes you think, I have any kind of "wish"?
I don't have any agenda, nobody is paying me for whatever result.
And a poll in a user forum certainly falls in the hobby category and doesn't have any impact on my "real" life. Although I already admitted that you did annoy me with your constant head-smacking which I took as you calling me an idiot repeatedly, so it did have some impact yesterday...
I already stated: The wording of the poll was ambiguous. It still is, changing the wording in an ongoing poll (can this even be done?) conclusively would falsify the results entirely. I had an idea behind the ambiguity (MR regulations and so on), but it obviously fell flat.

Basically, there should be 3 groups of readers:
a.) Only buying their stuff. I'm in that category. I'm not into freebies, I don't pirate.
b.) Only pirating. I guess, only few hardcore pirates exclusively have pirated stuff. Even your average pirate from time to time might buy some stuff. Then he can (multiple answers possible) tick (a) and (b).
c.) Theoretically, those 2 groups would cover it. There's the downloads of freebies, PD and such. But even those consumers for some content will fall in categories (a) or (b). And if the voters saw the point about "somewhere else" being ambiguous description for pirating they could vote (a) to make a point.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

...any conclusions based on it are worthless...

They are. Either way.
You understand, we're in a user forum?
It's not the real world here, nothing to gain. No money, no reputation. It's a hobby. I don't intend to publish or renew my MBA.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Again, sounds like you have already chosen your own conclusion.

May I posit that a lot of people have Netflix and Hulu accounts and <gasp/> use them?

You have correctly guessed that they must be using media. But why your persistent attempts to declare the default state of media consumption as being from illegal sources???

Even your average HD stream in Netflix only has 5GB tops, as opposed to MKVs starting with 5GB, usually having 10GB and in a 1:1 BlueRay Rip exceed 20GB.
There's certainly your occasional retiree, watching 15 hours of Netflix and reaching the limit of his bandwidth. But the vast majority of users exceeding 100GB per day (and that's not once, that's every single day, else your bandwidth doesn't get capped) only can be pirates.
Yes, my neighbor as a web developer exceeds his limit occasionally. We have the same ISP, so we exchange data about performance, stability and such a lot. Even he, as a power user, will exceed this enormous limit only a few times per month, never on a daily basis.
And if you consider, that ISPs even have changed the small print of their contracts already, this kind of traffic has to be in a significant dimension.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

The pirates don't have the option to buy????

Okay, sure, and the buyers don't have the "option" to pirate...

I'm talking about the poll here, as you very well know.
Each pirate can decide on his own: Am I a sole pirate or equate my purchases for enough to be considered as well?
Should I quantify it: If your purchases make up for more than 10% of your stuff, please click (a) and (b)? Would it be relative or absolute figures then? It's the very nature of a poll to be extremely simplified.
And if the point "somewhere else" would have been obvious for all voters, the rest would have fallen in place automatically. This, as you made clear often enough, was the ambiguity that might have confused some voters and falsified the results. Maybe some in the camp of "somewhere else" don't belong there. Then the results for the "buyers" would be conservative ones and one can consider this in his assumptions.