Maggie Stiefvater writes of her experience with piracy

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

To be clear, you are mixing two things here.

1: The recording industry is in decline because times and the market have changed. People don't buy full albums like they used to.

I remember during the boom period of CDs that there were complaints that CDs were just too expensive. A new release at that point averaged around +/-$16.00. The fact that nearly twenty years later a new digital album runs between $10-12 dollars tells me that CDs likely were overpriced. When digital music was first catching on, you had to buy the entire album, the cost was the same as CDs and the process was cumbersome.

Napster revolutionized that and people realized that they didn't always want a full album. They just wanted a few choice songs. Illegally downloading music was huge. Aside from the fact it was free, it was also easy. Everyone did it. It was all over the news. Piracy became a big issue.

2: Eventually, Apple developed iTunes and sold individual songs at $0.99 a piece. Amazon joined in and the files were (eventually) sold without DRM and legal MP3s took off. There's still piracy, to be sure. It just isn't what it was. It's hard to argue with a buck a song and in general, it's probably easier to find a legal version of a song on iTunes or Amazon than to look for the file elsewhere.

Eliminating all music piracy won't make people go back to forking over $17 for an album when they only want two or three songs. That ship has sailed.

That's my memory of what happened to the music industry in the last twenty years. Fair warning: I wrote this in my tablet and it's fairly late. Research and spell checking were minimal.

Uhm, I think you forgot something. Back in the day, one could buy 45s with 2 songs.
Though you are correct when we lost vinyl (new) for a bit.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Uhm, I think you forgot something. Back in the day, one could buy 45s with 2 songs.
Though you are correct when we lost vinyl (new) for a bit.

True. But at a price which made the album appear good value, and with one song you probably hadn't heard of and likely didn't want. Though of course there was always the odd occasion where the "B" side was better than the "A",

[David Munch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Music sold by Apple is too expensive given that it's lossy. You don't even get CD quality. You get music that's less than it should be. Would you like to buy an eBook to find it's not all there?

That's a really flawed argument, since the vast majority of consumers wouldn't be able to tell the difference between CD and 256 kbps AAC music.
And you can put the same argument up for CD's, since you can listen to the music live and get the full audio spectrum.
Would you like to buy a CD to find it's not all there?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Here's my unsolicited advice to authors and publishers. For an author's first book, don't worry about piracy. But to reduce piracy against a publisher's successful authors, hire a few white hat hackers to deliberately upload damaged copies. Sometimes they can repeat chapters. Sometimes, skip pages. Randomly change the names of secondary characters. Some things, like adding insults into the faked books, should be off limits. But generally let a small anti-piracy staff use their imaginations to make the pirate reader's experience one of risked frustration.

No, no, no, no, no!

You DO NOT want subtle mistakes. That will reflect badly on the legitimate copies.

You need to pad the book to make it look the right length, but you do NOT want to make the padding subtle.

Repeating the first few chapters to pad to the right length seems a very good plan to me. Perhaps with a "now go an buy the ebook to get the rest of the story" page after the sample ends.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by darryl

I'm afraid that the additional quotation adds absolutely nothing. Even Author's United put their arguments, albeit truly appalling ones, to the DOJ when they sought to have action taken against Amazon. Complainant's don't just fill in a complaint form, they put their submissions as to why they believe action should be taken. One does not own a legal argument. Someone puts it, someone considers it and it either has merit or it does not.
The legal arguments were the obvious ones in this case, and any competent lawyer in the field would have made them. The DOJ obviously found merit in Amazon's submissions, and took the matter further. They found none in AU's submissions and did not.



Your argument here is essentially that a player like Apple brings more competition to the market just by entering it. Your loss leader example is quite ironic, since the whole purpose of the conspiracy from Apple's point of view was to avoid competing on price. Under agency, Amazon of course could not offer loss leaders even if it wanted to, at least on Big 5 books. This is a powerful indictment of Apple's motives. Because if Apple had really wanted to compete against Amazon in this market it did (and still does) have the deep pockets to do so. And it would have needed them. Though I suggest to you that they would not have received any support from the Publishers, who were of course already upset at $9.99.

And yes, Apple do indeed have many of the same advantages as Amazon which you mention. But these count for nothing when Apple had absolutely no intention of competing. What Apple's entry to the market in fact did overnight was reduce competition by raising ebook prices substantially. Apple had the potential to increase competition by competing with Amazon, but made it very clear they would not do so. In fact, their condition on entering the market was there would be no price competition. And, during agency, there was none.

Competition isn't just about price. There are free smartphones, yet many people prefer the much more expensive iPhone. Apple has always been about premium experience. They were never going to join the race to the bottom.

As far the rest, well, the facts are the facts. What Amazon did was not the normal way such complaints are handled.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Competition isn't just about price. There are free smartphones, yet many people prefer the much more expensive iPhone. Apple has always been about premium experience. They were never going to join the race to the bottom.

True. Apple was quite free to enter the market and compete on these other aspects without orchestrating the price fixing conspiracy.

Originally Posted by pwalker8

As far the rest, well, the facts are the facts. What Amazon did was not the normal way such complaints are handled.

There is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in the behaviour described. It is in fact the normal way such things are handled. Do you say that company's don't submit their legal arguments to the regulatory authorities? Do you further say that any argument advanced in such a brief must then be ignored and not presented in any action taken? Certainly, Amazon, like any large company, would wish to exploit any contacts they did have, just as Apple would. But there is absolutely no indication that anything improper or even out of the ordinary has occurred here.

I don't think we are going to agree on this and we are probably fast approaching the stage where we must agree to disagree for fear of boring our fellow members.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Uhm, I think you forgot something. Back in the day, one could buy 45s with 2 songs.
Though you are correct when we lost vinyl (new) for a bit.

The thing that you are both missing is that a majority of people listened to music on the radio, so people were use to the idea that music was free. Also back then, there were a lot of used record stores, much like there were a lot of used book stores. With cassettes, people got in the habit of making copies of albums and then giving copies to their friends. So people got us to the idea of passing copies around. Napster simply tapped into that culture.

I would tend to argue that piracy tends to be more of a cultural thing than a price thing. Price points do matter from the stand point of sales, but you can't beat free from a price point of view. If price was the driving force, then why are there any sales at all?

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by darryl

True. Apple was quite free to enter the market and compete on these other aspects without orchestrating the price fixing conspiracy.



There is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in the behaviour described. It is in fact the normal way such things are handled. Do you say that company's don't submit their legal arguments to the regulatory authorities? Do you further say that any argument advanced in such a brief must then be ignored and not presented in any action taken? Certainly, Amazon, like any large company, would wish to exploit any contacts they did have, just as Apple would. But there is absolutely no indication that anything improper or even out of the ordinary has occurred here.

I don't think we are going to agree on this and we are probably fast approaching the stage where we must agree to disagree for fear of boring our fellow members.

It isn't the normal way things are handled according to my sister the Federal lawyer. She does this stuff for a living. You file a complaint, you don't file a legal brief.

[darryl]

Even the DOJ website advises members of the public who want to make a complaint as follows:

If you have information about a possible antitrust violation or potential anticompetitive activity, use the following questions as a guideline to describe your complaint:

What are the names of companies, individuals, or organizations that are involved?
How do you believe they have violated the federal antitrust laws? (For details on federal antitrust laws, see Antitrust Laws and You.)
Can you give examples of the conduct that you believe violates the antitrust laws? If so, please provide as much detail as possible.
What is the product or service affected by this conduct? Where is the product manufactured or sold, or where is the service provided?
Who are the major competitors that sell the product or provide the service?
What is your role in the situation in question?
Who is harmed by the alleged violations? How are they harmed?

They further advise that they handle complaints as follows:

The CCC creates a record of the information that you provided.
The CCC conducts a preliminary review of your complaint for possible antitrust violations.
If your complaint raises sufficient concern under the Federal antitrust laws, the CCC refers it to the appropriate Division legal staff where additional research may lead to a formal investigation into the reported conduct.
If the Division needs more information, we will contact you typically within one month of submitting your complaint. Due to the confidential nature of Division investigations, you will not be notified if we open an investigation.

Admittedly most individual citizens would not engage lawyers and provide a full brief, but I'd be vary surprised if most larger businesses did not. As is clear from the above, even citizens complaining are expected to make their case.

I know nothing about your sister's work as a lawyer, how relevant it may or may not be or indeed the details of any discussion or discussions you may have had with her. With all respect to her and to you an appeal to her authority on this basis does not take us much further in this discussion.

POSTSCRIPT:

I searched the Passive Voice to see if PG, a lawyer, had any comment on this. PG's comment at the end of the extract from the article was:

Passive Guy suspects the hand of News Corp in this editorial. As he has said before, the Apple/Price-fix Six collusion was a classic example of behavior prohibited under the antitrust laws.

Price-fixing is a violation of the antitrust law whether it’s directed at the corner bookstore or at Amazon.

I was a bit disappointed that his comments shed no light on the question. However, I think the following extract from the comments makes the situation very clear:

Patricia SierraSeptember 9, 2014 at 10:10 am
This is the second time recently that I’ve read that Amazon launched the antitrust lawsuit by presenting information to the DoJ. Is that really how it happened? Or did DoJ request info from Amazon? I’m in the dark about how the DoJ gets involved in suits like this. Are they always asked to pursue a case, or do they do it under their own steam?

Passive GuySeptember 9, 2014 at 11:46 am
The DOJ starts virtually every action it takes when it receives a report – FBI, private citizen, corporation, etc.

[pwalker8]

All anti-trust cases are based on complaints. Anti-trust is civil, not criminal so unless someone complains, there is no investigation. There is a huge different between making a complaint and writing a brief and the DOJ using that brief as the basis of their case. They are very different things.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

All anti-trust cases are based on complaints. Anti-trust is civil, not criminal so unless someone complains, there is no investigation. There is a huge different between making a complaint and writing a brief and the DOJ using that brief as the basis of their case. They are very different things.

I believe PG referred to a report. In this case a report supporting a complaint. Let's agree to disagree.

[PandathePanda]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

No, no, no, no, no!

You DO NOT want subtle mistakes. That will reflect badly on the legitimate copies.

Since I get a lot of "freebies" from instafreebie, there is a few authors who seems not to give a dime about their image when they give their book away on the promotion, and doubt anyone who gets a freebie would rush out to buy their book

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

The thing that you are both missing is that a majority of people listened to music on the radio, so people were use to the idea that music was free. Also back then, there were a lot of used record stores, much like there were a lot of used book stores. With cassettes, people got in the habit of making copies of albums and then giving copies to their friends. So people got us to the idea of passing copies around. Napster simply tapped into that culture.

I would tend to argue that piracy tends to be more of a cultural thing than a price thing. Price points do matter from the stand point of sales, but you can't beat free from a price point of view. If price was the driving force, then why are there any sales at all?

Price isn't the be all, end all. But it is clearly a factor. In the end it is price and convenience.

In the early days of digital music, the publishers tried to recreate the existing model and it sucked. Napster didn't only succeed because it was free. It was also so much easier than getting music in any other way.

Nowadays, when I remember that other Alphaville song I want, I could probably scour the dark corners of the interwebs and risk a virus to get a free copy. But it's easier to go pay $1.29 at Amazon to get it. I wouldn't be as likely to pay $18.00 for a full album when there's only two songs I'm interested in. (Nowadays, the full album is $9.49. I'm talking about if we were still following the old model.)

Movies don't seem to understand this yet, that's why piracy is much more common there.

You could argue that book publishers figured it out and strangled the e-book market in the cradle rather than face the change.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by darryl

True. But at a price which made the album appear good value, and with one song you probably hadn't heard of and likely didn't want. Though of course there was always the odd occasion where the "B" side was better than the "A",

Odd occasion Rest your love on me by the Bee Gees. I have forgotten Side A.
Of course once cassettes came out that rather put singles out of business except in jukeboxes.
Didn't many people just record the songs they wanted to hear off the radio?

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by PandathePanda

Since I get a lot of "freebies" from instafreebie, there is a few authors who seems not to give a dime about their image when they give their book away on the promotion, and doubt anyone who gets a freebie would rush out to buy their book

I have met some of those authors. One even told me because I liked free and cheap books that I was not her reader. I was thinking of buying her book until she said that. I then made a note of any other author that agreed with her.
Suffice to say: that was a self fulfilling prophecy as now they couldn't even pay me to look at their books. Saves me a fortune.