eBook piracy, how common is it?

[sirbruce]

Originally Posted by gouzos

Making hard copies and selling them is definitely wrong. As I believe that selling the chance to read a book as much as the actual book is also wrong.

But you seem like you might be okay with making hard copies and GIVING them away.

Originally Posted by gouzos

I think that if an author knew that, for different reasons, there was no chance that I would buy the book, I think he/she would choose that I read it for free than never getting acquainted with the work.

It depends on the author. For many authors, that's true; for others (I suspect Ellison), it would be a privelage they'd reserve only for friends.

[Amalthia]

Originally Posted by Good Old Neon

Cleaning one’s plate, to me, suggests the meal went down quite well. Folks who refuse to pay often do so because they’re assholes - plain and simple. You don’t like what you’re eating, tell the waiter, and in most cases, they’ll offer you something else at no charge. Eat the entire meal, sopping up the gravy with your last slice of bread, and then claim that the meal was not to your liking - tough shit.

I work in customer service for a large paint manufacturer, you would not believe the bullshit people come up with to try and get something for nothing. I’ve had people tell me they want a refund because, after seven years, they no longer like the color they chose.

It happens all day, every day. The customer is not always right, but quite often, they're looking to get something for nothing.

I've one time had a meal refunded because my dinner showed up 30 minutes after my husband's, wasn't what I ordered, and when they finally did get my food my husband had to wait for me to finish eating. I asked to speak to a manager and explained some of my dissapointment with how the meal had turned out and the manager refunded our meal.

There are legit reasons to complain to the manager. Through no fault of my own the eating dinner together at the resturant didn't quite work out the way it was supposed to.

[Amalthia]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Do you see riding the subway without a ticket as a sign of dissatisfaction with the ticketing system? I see if as cheapskates who don't want to pay for the service they are receiving.

It could be also if they are riding the subway in London they just plain ran out of money! the subways there are criminally expensive. I was able to travel by train from Brussels to London for 40 euros but it cost me 40 euros to get from the train, to the subway, and 20 miles outside of town...WTF? is up with that???

I know it's off topic but to call people who can't afford the subway cheapskates just isn't fair.

Now anyone that can't pay for a subway ticket in Berlin or Paris...okay they may deserve the name...

[Amalthia]

Originally Posted by Good Old Neon

The Cost of Free: How File-Sharing Hurts US

This morning on the Today Show, I watched a story about identity theft through file-sharing sites such as Limewire. While users (an alarming number of them children) use such sites to steal copyrighted material, such as music, movies, and more and more frequently, novels, identity thieves are reaching into their computers (as often as not their parents' computers) and downloading personal information. Then, before you can say Chapter 11, the victims' tax returns, college financial aid applications, and banking information are out there in cyberspace, where anyone can steal them... and wreak absolute havoc in your life. Apparently, this problem is nothing new and extends to plenty of other file-sharing sites as well.

I heard a couple of stunned parents find out their tax return had been fraudulently filed before they had the chance to do it, with their $2000 refund wired into some thief's bank account. They seemed stunned because they had no clue that their daughters' file-sharing habits were hurting anybody. Until thieve reached out and hurt the family, taking "everything we've worked for."

Though I feel compassion for the victims of ID theft, this is sort of the way I feel when I see my work coming up as available for "free download" on Internet searches. I even see sites (many of them off-shore, with no contact info offered) claiming to have material that hasn't yet been properly edited or published. I work for nine months to a year on each book, with little guarantee of numeration, only to see it stolen, and its sharing passed off as innocuous "fun" and a "great way to save money." As if downloaders have a god-given right to take whatever can be stolen.

Not long ago, author Stephanie Meyer of the popular Twilight series had the partial rough draft of her work in progress, Midnight Sun, stolen and widely, illegally disseminated over the 'Net. Meyer was mortified, angry, hurt -- as any author would be. In fact, she was so upset, she abandoned the project for a time, unable to handle the pain of having the material out in the world before it was ready. By following the link to her response, you can get an glimpse of the quality of pain this illegal distribution caused her.

The trouble is, many people think of all artists, whether they be authors, musicians, or those in the movie industry as something other than "real people." They believe (with a painful degree of wrongness) that we're all so rich this won't affect us. They also think of the publishers, distributors, and other purveyors of art as faceless corporations, too large to be seriously damaged by the loss of "a few" sales. But the fact is, when theft puts publishers or record labels out of business, they can't go out and find new artists, or pay them for their labors. And less-established, rising stars (the struggling majority) will never get their chance. Nor will the public have the chance to experience their talent, since they'll be forced to go work in fast food jobs.

But if simple decency and fairness aren't enough to stop people from downloading or teach their kids that they won't tolerate it, perhaps the specter of identity theft will do it. Because there's no honor among pirates, nor on the file-sharing websites where they so often weigh anchor.

link - http://boxingoctopus.blogspot.com/20...-hurts-us.html

I don't think mixing identity theft with file sharing really supports your argument.

Plus the parents are ultimately responsible for making sure the security on their computer is up to date and to monitor what their children are doing online and what programs have have installed.

I'm willing to bet the ID theft could have happened from any number of ways that aren't related to file sharing via their computer. Malware is everyone online and visiting a not trusted site could have been enough to open a vulnernability on their computer system.

Neither my husband nor myself downloaded anything onto our projector computer but it got attacked twice and we had to reformat twice to remove the adware.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by astra

My point was that darknet is not for sharing legal ebooks with DRM stripped (although occasionally it happens as well) but it is a place where one can find books that have no legal ebook versions. In other words, it is not a place that exists only to make ebooks available for people who don't want to pay money.

Actually it is a place to provide eBooks for those that do not want to buy the paper books primarily. It potentially deprives the author of the same revenue.

Dale

[igorsk]

The handling of Midnight Sun leak was really lame. They should've done like Baen and cash in twice.
http://www.webscription.net/p-914-st...ws-oopsie.aspx

[gouzos]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

But you seem like you might be okay with making hard copies and GIVING them away.

No, in fact I am not okay with it. What I am OK with is someone giving me a chance to read their book.

I still can't get why you're okay with borrowing from friends, checking out of libraries that don't pay royalties, passing down old copies and buying second hand but not filesharing. All these methods do not make the author any money. What they also have in common is that they are -for me at least- definitely not at par with the experience of buying a brand new book.

However what they do is make the readers aware of new books and authors, keep the interest in reading high and create a community of readers. In fact they help sustain and create new readers.
In fact I believe that if someone is so keen on reading, it can only be a good thing. Also, if someone borrows books and downloads them, I'm pretty sure he's a book lover and will also buy some books to own and help the industry as best he can.

[sirbruce]

Originally Posted by gouzos

No, in fact I am not okay with it. What I am OK with is someone giving me a chance to read their book.

Then your logic is inconsistent. The library BUYS EVERY COPY and DOES NOT MAKE NEW COPIES. Copying an ebook DOESN'T BUY EVERY COPY and MAKES NEW COPIES.

Originally Posted by gouzos

I still can't get why you're okay with borrowing from friends, checking out of libraries that don't pay royalties, passing down old copies and buying second hand but not filesharing. All these methods do not make the author any money. What they also have in common is that they are -for me at least- definitely not at par with the experience of buying a brand new book.

Again, if when you lent or copied your ebook YOU LOST YOUR COPY, then I would be fine with it, because it would be EXACTLY LIKE A PHYSICAL BOOK.

I've pointed this distinction out to you three times now and you seem to just ignore it or make flawed counter-arguments.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

Again, if when you lent or copied your ebook YOU LOST YOUR COPY, then I would be fine with it, because it would be EXACTLY LIKE A PHYSICAL BOOK.

Then it's a technical issue, not a moral one: we just need to establish a way to transfer files rather than copying them.

When I open two copies of Windows Explorer, one showing my C drive, and one showing my flash drive, I can move files between them either by copying, or by moving, which deletes the original.

You're saying it'd be just fine to give an ebook (movie, album, software program) to someone else, as long as you deleted it as part of the transfer. This is do-able. Difficult, because computers make it easy to copy data (it's what they do), and harder to remove it, especially removing all traces of it. But it's possible to do this.

I may have to try doing this: putting together a flash drive full of ebooks from Fictionwise that I'm done reading, deleting them from my hard drive, and selling them on eBay. Of course, I'd still have *access* to them on FW, but if I didn't actually re-download them, I wouldn't be making a copy I have no right to.

However, I suspect that many ebook publishers would not agree that this was reasonable, and believe that they have only licensed their books for use by one person--the purchaser--and that no additional transfers of the purchase are allowed. The RIAA's lawsuits used language that indicate they believe that proof of actual illegal copying is not necessary; availability of copying alone should be enough to prosecute. And since there's no way to prove "I didn't keep a copy somewhere," they would claim that of course any data that was transferred, was illegally copied.

But that's tangential.
The issue is: is the core moral right "the right to be paid for every COPY" or "the right to be paid for every READER?" The publishers would like to claim the right to be paid for every copy--but they don't have that; I have the right to copy my data onto a backup disc, move it to my laptop, copy it to my iPod, or do whatever else I want to do with it. (They don't even get guaranteed payment for every copy of a pbook; I can make copies for personal use, or for educational purposes.)

Amazon could surely make Whispernet work like PDA file transfers, where one person could send another a book through wireless, and it would move from one account to another.

But they don't want to be paid per copy. They want to be paid per reader. So they've tried to claim the right to payment-per-reader, a paradigm that has never existed for pbooks. They've avoided acknowledging or developing the concept of transferable copies.

[DoctorOhh]

I haven't read all the responses. My line seems moral, but illegal. I check to see if the book I want to read is available at a local library that I have free access to. Then I use P2P to access the ebook and read it on my reader. Like I said it seems morally acceptable but not exactly following the letter of the law.

[purl4peace]

Wow... has this thread gotten out of control. I answered the poll yesterday (before the flowchart) and read some of the discussion. Then I come back and see that there are 44 pages of discussion and an elaborate flowchart and just started laughing...

Poor Stringer... s/he thought it was such a simple poll -- only in this forum would it be parsed and picked apart to where you need to have to have a detailed pseudo-coded algorithm to get people to interpret it correctly.

Perhaps we could get Kovid to write a program to guide people to answering the question correctly. But then he would have to write a version for Kindle, Sony, Cybook.....

We are, indeed, the land of Babel!

[sirbruce]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

But they don't want to be paid per copy. They want to be paid per reader. So they've tried to claim the right to payment-per-reader, a paradigm that has never existed for pbooks. They've avoided acknowledging or developing the concept of transferable copies.

Something similar has been tried. The original DIVX format was like that; you could only view it a certain number of times. I think there was some provision for limited copying as well. But consumers didn't really like the idea; they wanted something they could "own". It's not exactly the same; my point is technologically it's possible but there are hurdles.

A better idea might be an online licensing system, where each ebook file has a unique code that only works with one device. Transfer a code to a different device, and the code no longer works. Oh wait, we already have that... it's DRM. Only thing is, currently we have no centralized service for transferring. But it could be done; Amazon does this themselves when you get a replacement Kindle. The files have to be redownloaded with the new PID.

But you're right; ebook publishers have not gone down a path that makes ownership transfer a feature. Neither have other media folks. I think primarily because it would require specialized software and cooperation from OS makers. But while it may also be true that they are using this as a "power grab", it doesn't change the fact that that's the fundamental difference between libaries and ebooks. If there were a way to treat ebooks the same way, publishers would not be happy (they weren't initially happy with libraries either) but it might be something they could live with if it eliminated piracy.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Then it's a technical issue, not a moral one: we just need to establish a way to transfer files rather than copying them.

When I open two copies of Windows Explorer, one showing my C drive, and one showing my flash drive, I can move files between them either by copying, or by moving, which deletes the original.

You're saying it'd be just fine to give an ebook (movie, album, software program) to someone else, as long as you deleted it as part of the transfer. This is do-able. Difficult, because computers make it easy to copy data (it's what they do), and harder to remove it, especially removing all traces of it. But it's possible to do this.

This is exactly the description of the SD card design. The S in SD card means Secure and the design was supposed to permit you play the card but not make copies of the card and then the card could be loaned to anyone.

Dale

[gouzos]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

Then your logic is inconsistent. The library BUYS EVERY COPY and DOES NOT MAKE NEW COPIES. Copying an ebook DOESN'T BUY EVERY COPY and MAKES NEW COPIES.

Again, if when you lent or copied your ebook YOU LOST YOUR COPY, then I would be fine with it, because it would be EXACTLY LIKE A PHYSICAL BOOK.

Don't you see that this logic is only superficial and pointless? It's is just another indication of being stuck in the past?

So If I told you that I made a huge site-databank where everyone could dump the ebooks they have read erasing them from their device and everyone could pick them up as long as they contribute as well, would that be OK?

I really believe you are stuck in the details. The essence of the matter seems to me to be simple. The publishing industry always made money (as did the music industry) even though there were plenty of ways of sharing.

In fact at some point they realized that harm was not done in the larger scheme of things. It just shifted the equilibrium a bit while at the same time keeping the industry alive.

[astra]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Actually it is a place to provide eBooks for those that do not want to buy the paper books primarily. It potentially deprives the author of the same revenue.

Dale

My interpretation is vastly different.