eBook piracy, how common is it?

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sorry, Sparrow, but when I was a teenager in the 1970s, we all used to save up our pocketmoney to buy "45" records; we didn't expect to be able to get it "for free". There really IS a different attitude towards it these days. I don't know whose "fault" it is, but the fact that the attitude exists is undeniable.

The reason there is a different attitude today is that there is a different reality today. That change is what underlies this thread. I'm not discussing the moral aspects, per se, but the technological change itself. (This is an overview so dates are approximate and I've left out minor technologies.)

Before 1950, if you wanted a I.P. product, an analog copy had to be made in a factory. To make a mass illicit copy of it, you had to have a factory. Since a factory can be legally seized (for cause), the econmonic risk was much higher that the reward, so there was (basically) no I.P. "piracy".

Around 1950, the first magnetic tape came into existance. this was the first breach of the old analog ways. It was expensive, but it allowed easy individual duplication of certain I.P. property. Then in 1960 came the photocopy. For a US dime, you could copy a page of print. These thing became better and cheaper, and copying became more and more common. However since it was analog copying, each generation became less and less accurate, limiting the number of generations available from a master. A major nusiance for copyright holders, but not insurmountable. Note, VCR's are just a variant of magnetic tape. As the tapes and recorders got cheaper and cheaper, kids started to swap LP's and bung down their own copies of their friend's LP's (at least in the US).

The computer changed all of this. Suddenly 1. You weren't limited to analog gen loss, there was no gen loss in digital copies. and 2. You had a built-in digital copy machine as part of the package. (By definition anything that allowed you to save data was a digital copier.)

The internet, which is an outgrowth of the computer, allow you to digitally communicate with anyone with a computer around the world, in real time.

So instead of a factory at risk for I.P "piracy", you have a computer. and the cost to make a perfect copy has dropped from millions (for that factory) to a few hundreths of a penny, for the electricity.

This is the reality change. And this reality change is what's caused the attitude change in the next generation. When the cost of production for anything approaches zero, the rules of the analog world simply stop applying.

You may not like, I may not like it. But the world has changed and short of joining the ghost of Ned Lud, it's not changing back.

[Good Old Neon]

Originally Posted by tompe

But that is the whole point with comparing them. The argument is that they are so similar in certain aspects that it is inconsistent to think that one is OK and the other is not.

Not really, libraries loaning out books is entirely legal. It would be more like file-sharing if a library received one copy, printed up millions of copies and then made them freely available for the taking. All it takes is one file-sharer to post one copy of a book on the web and then bam, it’s available anywhere and everywhere at no charge.

[BenG]

Before 1950, if you wanted a I.P. product, an analog copy had to be made in a factory. To make a mass illicit copy of it, you had to have a factory.

Not completely true. Consumer wire recorders were around before magnetic tape. I was listening to an old jazz musician on NPR and he was telling about making wire recording's of "Bird" from the radio and learning new riffs before anyone else in town had heard them.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by BenG

Not completely true. Consumer wire recorders were around before magnetic tape. I was listening to an old jazz musician on NPR and he was telling about making wire recording's of "Bird" from the radio and learning new riffs before anyone else in town had heard them.

I know, I know. I was trying to limit the discussion to common technologies and approximate dates to save space. There was a mea culpa in the first paragraph. Wire came in in the 1930's I believe.

[gouzos]

Originally Posted by Good Old Neon

Not really, libraries loaning out books is entirely legal. It would be more like file-sharing if libraries received one copy, printed up millions of copies and then made them freely available for the taking. All it takes is one file-sharer to post one copy of a book on the web and then bam, it’s available anywhere and everywhere at no charge.

So what if it's legal? We're talking about morality and what should be legal not what is legal right now.

I still can't see the difference unless you live in one of the very few countries where libraries pay royalties when a book is lent out.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by gouzos

So what if it's legal? We're talking about morality and what should be legal not what is legal right now.

I still can't see the difference unless you live in one of the very few countries where libraries pay royalties when a book is lent out.

Well, one difference is that libraries buy books; in fact they are very often a major component of hardback sales for an author. If 1000 libraries have a copy of a book, that's 1000 sales for the author. It takes only 1 copy of a book to be uploaded to the internet in order for arbitrarily many people to download it.

[sirbruce]

Originally Posted by gouzos

So what if it's legal? We're talking about morality and what should be legal not what is legal right now.

I still can't see the difference unless you live in one of the very few countries where libraries pay royalties when a book is lent out.

The difference was already explained to you. With a physical book, only ONE person can hold a given copy at a time. With an ebook, most people don't delete the file off their hard drive when they "give" it to someone else; they just make a copy.

An item's worth is directly poportional to its scarcity. If I print only 10,000 copies of my book, yes I may be hurting my sales prospects long-term, but I'm controlling the distribution and ensuring each one has high value. If a library buys one and lends it out, it doesn't create new copies. It may stimulate demand (people like the book and now want to own it), or it may depress demand (people who otherwise would have bought it but now are satisfied with just reading it). But if the library could print new copies of that book on demand and let each person keep it FOR FREE, well maybe some people would still go out and buy the book, but the price per book would still fall because it would be a lot easier for people to get a copy of it than before.

The right of copyright is not just the right to sell at any price; it's the right to control the number and manner of sales as well.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

The right of copyright is not just the right to sell at any price; it's the right to control the number and manner of sales as well.

Well, that is, of course the literal meaning of "copyright"; it is the right of an author to control how their work is reproduced - ie. copied.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Well, one difference is that libraries buy books; ...

Generally using money extracted with menaces from ordinary people, most of whom don't want them, and will never read them.

If the authors/publishers want to press the moral argument against downloading; shouldn't they be consistent, and decline to sell their wares immorally to libraries?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Generally using money extracted with menaces from ordinary people, most of whom don't want them, and will never read them.

You are against the idea of public libraries, Sparrow? Personally, I can think of few things that taxpayers' money can more usefully be spent on.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You are against the idea of public libraries, Sparrow?

Nope, just inconsistent moral positions .

Ok, for the publishers to help themselves to my money.
Not ok, for me to help myself to their books.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by BenG

Not completely true. Consumer wire recorders were around before magnetic tape. I was listening to an old jazz musician on NPR and he was telling about making wire recording's of "Bird" from the radio and learning new riffs before anyone else in town had heard them.

Have you ever heard a wire recording? I have, and while it might be good enough to allow this musician to remember the sound in order to learn a riff it was certainly not good enough to challenge the entertainment industry with illegal copies.

The tape recorder was the first rival to live music. As a matter of fact the initial development money for the tape recorder was supplied by Bing Crosby. He didn't like multiple takes for his records so he would just record his part and then let everyone else practice to match his recording. He financed and bought the first tape recorders (outside of Germany) in 1947 from Ampex.

Dale

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

The right of copyright is not just the right to sell at any price; it's the right to control the number and manner of sales as well.

And that's the whole problem in a nutshell. That control is gone in a digital age. Artist's have to find a new way to leverage the new distributions and attitudes to their advantages. They have to stop thinking of 'how it was' and instead look at 'how it is' and 'how it might be'. Already tons of artists are doing this, offering their work free to promote the sales of physical books, taking donations instead of set prices, publishing themselves through POD (F Paul Wilson, quite a best-seller with the Repairman Jack series, has gone this route on a novella collection). Assigning blame, shouting out about how the artists are losing, about how it's all so unfair on the creators and the companies is tantamount to yelling watch out for the iceberg after the Titanic has already sunk (Okay, terrible analogy, but it's in good company within this thread).

This is how it is, a whole generation and the generations to follow see nothing 'wrong' in downloading and sharing copyrighted works. There's a whole generation who see the corporations as the bad guys and, contrary to a lot that's been said in this thread, are on the side of the creators. They understand that the creators are being stiffed by the companies and they don't want to take part in that system any longer. The social nature of the internet has given them an expectation of a more direct relationship with those creators, and as such, when they want to pay, they don't want to pay a go-between.

Even the companies are wising up to all this and beginning to understand that piracy, or whatever you want to call it, has a lot more benefits than downsides (sadly not Amazon and the book market yet). If you're a US citizen you can watch almost anything for free on Hulu, catch up with South Park on their official channel, watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report on the Comedy Channel. In Britain we can watch several channels online with 'catch-up'. Many bands are offering their work for free, because they know album sales don't amount to much if you're not a mega star, and the live performances is where the money's at - downloads are becoming promotional. Authors are offering free books in a similar vein - many fine writers already here on Mobileread have done this.

The world has changed. Those who live in the past are doomed to become irrelevant. Those who move with the times have a much better chance of thriving.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You are against the idea of public libraries, Sparrow? Personally, I can think of few things that taxpayers' money can more usefully be spent on.

I agree with this.

However, I also acknowledge that libraries, like file sharing, work against the "one purchase, one reader" concept that many ebook publishers are trying to promote. In the case of libraries, the extra readers are subsidized by the government that funds the library purchases; in the case of filesharing, the extra readers are subsidized by the publisher's loss of potential sales (or library loans)--the author's returns on those potential sales (which are a lot fewer than the number of downloads) are miniscule at best.

The issue becomes an economic one: who should pay for the extra readers? rather than a moral one: should a book be read by someone who hasn't paid for it?

If the key issue is "you shouldn't read stuff you haven't paid for," then libraries are immoral. If the issue is "taking money from hardworking creators and the people who promote them," then the creators and promoters need to find an economic model that fits with people's willingness and ability to pay.

People have no right to materials they haven't paid for--but they do have an expectation that many forms of information are available for free, or for a small access fee. The way to change how people think of filesharing isn't to call them thieves and criminals (if they're criminals, why haven't any of them been successfully prosecuted?); it's to understand why they think it's acceptable, and work from there.

[gouzos]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

The difference was already explained to you. With a physical book, only ONE person can hold a given copy at a time. With an ebook, most people don't delete the file off their hard drive when they "give" it to someone else; they just make a copy.

An item's worth is directly poportional to its scarcity. If I print only 10,000 copies of my book, yes I may be hurting my sales prospects long-term, but I'm controlling the distribution and ensuring each one has high value. If a library buys one and lends it out, it doesn't create new copies. It may stimulate demand (people like the book and now want to own it), or it may depress demand (people who otherwise would have bought it but now are satisfied with just reading it). But if the library could print new copies of that book on demand and let each person keep it FOR FREE, well maybe some people would still go out and buy the book, but the price per book would still fall because it would be a lot easier for people to get a copy of it than before.

The right of copyright is not just the right to sell at any price; it's the right to control the number and manner of sales as well.

So what if they don't delete it? It's not an actual book anyway. What you are saying would be like forbidding loaning books to friends or ever buying a book and destroying it after you read it.

That's actually the problem. Books(content) continue to be considered by the law be just like books(objects) but they are not. In this age they will have to be considered different entities there will have to be new ways to reap benefits once the distinction has been made.