Sideloading: Own content or "from somewhere else"

[gweeks]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Not to mention that MobileRead itself has been a victim of people (at least one person) coming and taking the Ebook-uploads, then slapping his own covers on them and selling them. I'd call that pirating.

While morally suspect, it's not piracy if the books are public domain. If the books are public domain you don't get to impose additional restrictions on them for other uses.

Greg

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by gweeks

While morally suspect, it's not piracy if the books are public domain. If the books are public domain you don't get to impose additional restrictions on them for other uses.

Greg

Absolutely. It's despicable, but not illegal.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by nathany

Calibre is very capable, but the UI hurts my eyes. I haven't bothered investing the time to figure it out.

I had some problems with Calibre after the 2.x releases and I fixed them. PM me with your problems to see if they're the same thing I encountered.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by crane3

Option 2 implies that people who do "some" pirating don't buy which is not true...

That's why you have multiple choices.
Someone pirating a little and buying in parallel would choose both options.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by crane3

...And one can just get the books free for legitimately from the various sites & haven't bought a book yet...

I left out any free material deliberately as a separate choice on its own.
Pirates can download and sideload free stuff as well. They probably won't even be aware of it, they probably download all they can get and don't know whether it originally was free or stuff for purchase.
Without difference, there's no comparison.
I was interested in the difference "I buy and then sideload" vs. "I get it without buying and then sideload".
I never claimed, the poll would (or should) cover all or at least the majority of users.
I was interested in this single aspect about purchased stuff vs. pirated one in the context of sideloading.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

..I assume you must've had some idea of what you were going to get out of this poll, other than finger exercise?)

Not really.
I don't expect to "get anything out of it". Neither of a poll, nor a thread. In some rare occasions maybe a buying recommendation or help in solving a problem. But normally it's just spending a few minutes while hanging in a conference call. It doesn't have to be a "life changing" experience.
And in my book, that's the very nature of a hobby. Not being about any kind of productivity, but (often enough aimlessly) spend your spare time.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

...My point is you are acting as though the only alternative to purchasing books is to pirate them, and your target group of people-who-don't-purchase-books is artificially restricted to pirates-only. Thus saying if you check the box for sideloading from "other places", you believe that must mean the person is a pirate, which does wonders for your analysis of your target group.

I never said/wrote that.
It's my poll. It doesn't have to cover the aspects interesting for you. It was supposed to cover the sole topic interesting for me in this moment: Sideloading purchased books vs. sideloading illegal obtained ones.
Yes, on a per-book-basis there will be exceptions. User A buys his book in Amazon. Pirate X illegally obtains it from the darknet. But User B, as opposed to User A, get's the very same book for free from Kobo in a promo.
But I never spoke on a "per-book-basis". I guess it's safe to assume, most people have more than a single book. So if you have 100 sideloaded to your reader: Where are they coming from? If you can't tick a box for 30 of those 100, because they have been freebies and don't fit into the choices: Where's the problem to leave them out? The remaining 70 will fit in either or both of the other categories. There's no box about "number of books". So it doesn't matter, whether it would be 90:10 or 60:10, for example.

Originally Posted by eschwartz

...but then again, the purchases aren't being pirated either (insomuch as they are, indeed, purchases), so perhaps we shouldn't count those either. And then your target group will be pirates-only... and shockingly, all of them pirate...

They have been purchased at some point. But either the pirate didn't buy it to begin with, or he illegally distributes it later on.
And the question wasn't "do you pirate" but "do you sideload pirated stuff".

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Ye's, exactly. Legal HD video streaming (which is about 300kbytes/sec, or a little over 1GB/hour) dwarfs ebook piracy in terms of traffic.

Ebooks obviously won't even appear in most statistics about data traffic.
But allow me to build a brief chain of logic:
- Most ISPs cap at 100GB per day.
- This can be reached by a huge family, each member streaming Netflix for (many) hours.
- But I dare say, it will be rare exceptions, reaching 100GB every single day by streaming Netflix. Majority probably only reaches this daily limit by downloading huge quantities of BlueRay- or DVD-Rips.
- Purchasing a movie is between € 7 and € 15.
- That's about the same price range as an eBook. (Yes, they can be cheaper, but so do movies. And yes, you can have books for free, but my point was about pirated stuff vs. bought one not free one).
- If it's interesting enough to pirate movies, why should it be any different for eBooks? Maybe eBook readers are more loyal to their hobby or a different breed altogether or the number of readers is smaller than the number of movie viewers. But piracy to a large extent is about money (saving and generating), so the comparison of figures with movies certainly makes some sense.
- So, if you would agree with me, that this enormous amount of data is a strong indicator for massive movie downloads (another indicator would be 3 law offices in Munich alone, solely focusing on "declarations to cease and desist" and the respective financial penalties): Do you expect it to be drastically different for eBooks?

One could even reason, there's more to gain with eBooks than with movies.
It's about the same amount of money for a fraction of the data volume.
If someone wants to sell BlueRay-Rips, he needs some infrastructure in place to handle the traffic. For eBooks of 1MB and less it would be way easier - for the same value of pirating (€ 7 to € 15 per book/movie or something like that).

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

The main problem with capping usage nowadays is the amount of legal content you can download. Downloading HD content to my Sky box is a couple of gig per hours viewing, add in streaming, gaming, OS/software updates etc and a family could hit 10's of gig fairly quickly, in fact with the amount of online stuff nowadays your average family can probably download as much or more than your average pirate.

Apple some time ago was heavily criticized.
Their movies not being "real" HD.
A "real" HD movie in the eyes of experts wouldn't have 5GB but manifold of that.
But most legal providers do like Apple, to still being able to process the traffic.
Pirates, on the other hand, give you entire BlueRays as 1:1 Rip, easily exceeding 25GB.
Even a big family with 8 people and all of them active users of the web, will have difficulties to reach a 100GB limit.
Yes, one might download 20 movies to a Sky box and exceed the limit. But every single day?
I can't find scenarios even for big families, constantly exceeding 100GB. And that's exactly the way, ISPs argue: Yes, there's a cap (which wasn't originally in the contract which causes the legal problems), but "normal users" barely ever will reach it. And then, like my neighbor, you even can negotiate package deals. For my neighbor, for example it's not "100GB per day" but "1TB per week" now - without any changes in his pricing structure.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

- So, if you would agree with me, that this enormous amount of data is a strong indicator for massive movie downloads (another indicator would be 3 law offices in Munich alone, solely focusing on "declarations to cease and desist" and the respective financial penalties): Do you expect it to be drastically different for eBooks?

I certainly agree that piracy is a real problem, and that there are undoubtedly people who do as you suggest. I'm not sure, though, that one could necessarily equate high downloads volumes with piracy - there could well be other causes for it, as we've already discussed.

I do think that 100GB/day is a huge, huge amount of data. My internet traffic is about 30GB a month, and that includes watching a fair number of programmes using video streaming (BBC iPlayer).

[Terisa de morgan]

mgmueller, your Europe and mine (Spain) are not the same. Cap at 100GB per day? Netflix? Movies between €7 and €15? Same price recent ebook and recent movie?

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

mgmueller, your Europe and mine (Spain) are not the same. Cap at 100GB per day? Netflix? Movies between €7 and €15? Same price recent ebook and recent movie?

The € 7 to € 15 for a movie have been the comparison about buying them, not streaming them via Netflix.
Apple: € 6.99 to € 14.99 typically. Same in $ in the US. Similar in UK, Scandinavia and UK. I don't know about Spain, but normally within the EU the differences shouldn't be too big.
DVD: Typically less than € 10, rarely above € 15, often enough around € 5 for slightly older ones.

My cap is 100GB per day and that's what Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone discuss right now, 2 of the biggest ISPs in Europe. What's your cap respectively the cap discussed in Spain?
Of course there are contracts with a lower cap. My mobile contract obviously is way lower, my wife's DSL package as well.
But it's not "isn't the cap of 100GB too high? Most have a lower cap" it's "the ISPs did announce a cap of 100GB" and there's outrage and obviously a reason for the ISPs choosing that cap. Why would they set a cap of 100GB, if there would be only limited traffic above that cap?

Why the question mark behind Netflix? Is it not available in Spain? It only recently officially came to Germany, before that you had to use VPN (but could use German credit card and billing address). But in competition to Netflix there certainly are dozens of VOD providers with similar process and structure.

What would you say, is the price for recent books and recent movies?
The most expensive movies you find in Apple are $ 20, which is a rare occasion. Usually it's $ 14.99 for a new movie in HD. Then it drops down quickly to $ 9.99 after a few weeks. Often enough there are special deals for $ 6.99.

The books I buy and see, be it Kobo or Amazon and some others, typically range from $ 9.99 to $ 14.99. Sometimes there are cheaper ones for $ 4.99, often enough more expensive ones for $ 16.99 to $ 18.99, rarely exceeding $ 20.

For books, the spectrum certainly is broader. You'll find books of $ 50 and even more.

But the typical price range for books and movies is very similar, no matter what source I check.

[Hampshire Nanny]

Originally Posted by shalym

When I first saw this poll, I almost chose the choices that used the phrase "from somewhere else", until I realized that you were talking about pirate sites. Why do you not consider any of the sources of legitimate ebooks that are not associated with a specific device?

Originally Posted by mgmueller

I did:
Point 3: "I buy from my merchant of choice, strip from DRM and sideload to my hardware of choice."

Originally Posted by mgmueller

I never said/wrote that.
It's my poll. It doesn't have to cover the aspects interesting for you. It was supposed to cover the sole topic interesting for me in this moment: Sideloading purchased books vs. sideloading illegal obtained ones.

@mgmueller -- if you really wanted to compare sideloading purchased books to sideloading illegally obtained ones, you shouldn't have left out the purchase of DRM-free books. I purchase from Baen, Phoenix Pick (Arc Manor), and the various "Bundle" offerings. All of these are legitimately purchased, but need to be sideloaded into my Kindle. Since they are DRM-free, there's no stripping required, but your only option for purchased content specifically stated "strip from DRM".

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Hampshire Nanny

...you shouldn't have left out the purchase of DRM-free books. I purchase from Baen, Phoenix Pick (Arc Manor), and the various "Bundle" offerings. All of these are legitimately purchased, but need to be sideloaded into my Kindle. Since they are DRM-free, there's no stripping required, but your only option for purchased content specifically stated "strip from DRM".

That's a tricky one and I still don't know how it could be solved/phrased in a poll.
I'm interested about the piracy aspect.
Yes, pirates will have free stuff as well and might not even know or make a distinction.
But I was interested in the aspect about pirating stuff. Yes, pirates can spread DRM-free content and this still was pirating. But I'm explicitly interested in the aspect "I know that I'm pirating, because I had to strip from DRM". So, if the pirate in this concept has to strip from DRM, it makes most sense to compare to the same for the none-pirates.
It's complicated, I admit it.
But again:
It's that very small niche that interests me.
I don't want to try to get the whole picture about piracy.

So:

Pirate --> stripping from DRM (there are other ways to pirate, but I wanted to make that distinction, to be sure the pirate is aware of pirating) --> sideloading.

And the honest user the very same. Compare the very same process, with the only difference of the legitimacy about getting the content in the first step.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

I'm interested about the piracy aspect.

You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.