"The book industry is gonna get Napstered..."

[djgreedo]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

This would lead books down the same road a lot of music has gone. A great voice has (mostly) become secondary, looks and performance on stage and in videos are what sells. Well, time will tell where this is going!

It just might. Just because it's not desireable doesn't mean it won't happen.

It is a lot harder to write a book than it is to mime on stage in revealing clothing though

[HansTWN]

My question is, why throw in the towel this early in the game? Paid music downloads are doing quite well. What we need is no DRM (best) or at least DRM that works on every device.

[djgreedo]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

My question is, why throw in the towel this early in the game? Paid music downloads are doing quite well. What we need is no DRM (best) or at least DRM that works on every device.

Absolutely. We need to get rid of DRM.

I'm thinking ahead further. I think authors are going to struggle to make enough money from the 'iTunes' model because the price will be driven very low by competition (free books, e.g. public domain, amateur) and unlike musicians, authors have limited alternative revenue streams.

Is selling an infinitely copyable file going to be as reliable an income stream as relinquising all copyright concerns and generating income using ads, sponsorship, etc?

Realistically, an iTunes system will probably happen, but will it be sustainable? Time will tell. People need to be convinced that the true value of a book is more than they currently think based on the physical copy paradigm. The value of a digital file is less tangible, and people in general don't understand how much work actually goes into creative endeavors.

Could an author get by selling a novel for $1 per copy? $2? Will the public at large be content to pay $15 for an ebook? The market will decide this, but my bet is that prices will end up closer to $1 for a book than $15.

[anappo]

To: HansTWN

> this hatred of "evil corporate entities" comes from. Didn't even know "Das Kapital"

Das What Kapital?! Attempts at forcefully (by DRM or otherwise) keeping the customer away from competition is anathema to the free market.

To: PKFFW

> Firstly, your belief is that piracy does not do any economic harm.
> As this hasn't actually been proven

Proven - no. But it does have -some- supporting evidence. The biggest problem with this evidence is that nearly all of the studies on piracy limit their subject specifically to music. Studies on illegal music downloads suggest that the actual economic effect is at worse a mixed bag. Books however are sufficiently different to dismiss that evidence. To my knowledge, the only study so far addressing e-books was the O’Reilly one.

The PPT stack of their presentation you can find here:
http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event...esentation.ppt

Basically, they say two things:
1. There were very few pirates downloading the books in their sample set during their observation period.
2. They need larger sample set to be more certain.

For all that it's worth - this matches my personal experience. The amount of stuff out there is quite huge. Surprisingly few are seeding/downloading it. Or at least were, when I last checked.

> So you've just made the decision that you might not find
> what your want legitimately so you wont even bother trying?

Nope. I was not talking of myself there. I was talking of a hypothetical new customer (friends & family, right?) to the e-book market. The first place they are likely to find something they are interested in is eithe gutenberg or darknet. Which is a problem, no?

Anyhow. This discussion with you is quite fun but it as far as truth-seeking is concerned, it misses the point. The key difference between us is not whether I am a freeloader or not. Or that whether piracy does harm or doesn't. The key difference between us is that you believe DRM is put on content because someone somewhere thinks it is effective against piracy.

I have problems with that belief and those problems are -not- limited to the basic assumption being false (that DRM actually -is- effective against piracy). Quite aside the effectivenes problem, can your belief explain following phenomena:

1. Why is it that there is no e-book reading device that supports more than one DRM-scheme? For a hardware manufacturer, it would be a huge advantage against their competition if their device supported as much of the commercial content as possible. It would be technically trivial to do that. Yet it is not happening. The new Opus gadget for example, comes in two versions - one with prc support, one with epub. They have software for both formats running on the same hardware. Yet they are not selling you a device that supports both. What causes them to piss away that advantage?

2. Why is it that amazon, the owner of mobipocket, purposefully made their kindle format incompatible with existing DRM-ed content - prc being the dominant DRM format at the time of kindle's launch?

3. Why is it that the first thing the gemstar bizdev cockroaches attempted to do to the rocketbook software suit was to remove capability to import third party content?

If these (and similar) points cannot be explained away with anything to do with piracy, then I think your belief has a problem.

The real reason all this is happening is not piracy. It's a bizdev reason - to lock the customer into buying his content only from the company store. The reading hardware is expensive. If you can make it so that any given piece of hardware can display commercial content only from -your- store, then your customer would need to shell out another investment for some other piece of hardware if he wants to buy content from someone else. This is what they are doing with DRM.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by anappo

Anyhow. This discussion with you is quite fun but it as far as truth-seeking is concerned, it misses the point. The key difference between us is not whether I am a freeloader or not. Or that whether piracy does harm or doesn't. The key difference between us is that you believe DRM is put on content because someone somewhere thinks it is effective against piracy.

Have you been reading my posts at all? Are you mixing me up with someone else perhaps?

I have repeatedly stated I am not a fan of DRM, I think it should be gone. I have repeatedly stated I do not think it is effective against piracy. I have repeatedly stated that the issue of DRM is not even the issue I am interested in discussing.

My interest, and what I have a problem with, is the idea that anyone and everyone has the "right" to acquire digital "copies" of the "content" of ebooks simply because the medium is digital and therefore they believe it has zero value.

I have said that the only effective measure against this idea is to educate people about the value of creative endeavours and to instill the idea that paying a fair price for a "decent product" is reasonable. A "decent product", as I have previously stated, being an ebook with out DRM, with full ownership rights, with fair private use being applicable.

I really have no interest in the entire DRM debate.

Cheers,
PKFFW

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by anappo

1. Why is it that there is no e-book reading device that supports more than one DRM-scheme? For a hardware manufacturer, it would be a huge advantage against their competition if their device supported as much of the commercial content as possible. It would be technically trivial to do that. Yet it is not happening. The new Opus gadget for example, comes in two versions - one with prc support, one with epub. They have software for both formats running on the same hardware. Yet they are not selling you a device that supports both. What causes them to piss away that advantage?

Actually, Sony Reader supports both Sony's own BBeB/Marlin DRM and Adobe's ADEPT.

[anappo]

To: PKFFW

And I say that these two statements of yours:

> I have said that the only effective measure against this idea
> is to educate people about the value of creative endeavours

> I really have no interest in the entire DRM debate.

are utterly incompatible with eachother.

As long as the DRM is there, the actual educational effect is the opposite of what we would desire. Even if successful evangelising minus bad karma from DRM ended up with a positive value, how can you claim having interest in one and not the other?

To: igorsk

> Actually, Sony Reader supports both Sony's own BBeB/Marlin DRM and Adobe's ADEPT.

I stand corrected - I didn't know that. Must be the reason they dicontinued it!

[tompe]

Originally Posted by djgreedo

I don't see the term 'stealing' as problematic. It seems a waste of time to split hairs over it. It may not be a 100% accurate depiction of the nuances of digital copyright infringement, but that is analgous to stealing if not stealing in a traditional sense. It has largely the same effect on the owner of the IP (or perhaps different but equal effects).

It is very problematic because the different kind of laws have very different motivations. People calling it stealing is trying to make people forget that copyright is a time limited monopol granted to achieve certain goals. They want to pretend that copyright is some basic right. And therefore calling it stealing is either just ignorant or dishonest.

Read some of Lessig's books and his description of how the laws in US was changed and how people changing the laws used argument from the stealing camp to motivate how they voted.

[HarryT]

It's just as "basic" a right as the concept of property ownership is. Both are "artificial" and "granted by the state". What is it but the law which says that you have any more right to a particular book, or car, or house, than anybody else does?

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's just as "basic" a right as the concept of property ownership is. Both are "artificial" and "granted by the state". What is it but the law which says that you have any more right to a particular book, or car, or house, than anybody else does?

actually i don't think that's quite accurate. as tompe said, copyright is a limited-time monopoly granted to the creator, and at the end of it (in theory, anyway, barring micky mouse lobbying...) the creative work reverts to the public domain, which is its original and final intended status ; whereas property ownership is eternal (unless you sell your property) and you can do with your own property whatever you like (sell it, chop it up, paint it, give it away, transform it to your liking...). it's really not the same concept at all.

[HarryT]

No, I'm not saying it's the same right - it clearly isn't. But it is a right granted to you by the law. Without legal rights, all we're left with is the "law of the jungle".

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No, I'm not saying it's the same right - it clearly isn't. But it is a right granted to you by the law. Without legal rights, all we're left with is the "law of the jungle".

With "basic rights" (which I personally do not believe exists) I was referring to the philosophical standpoint that property right is one of the three basic rights. People incorrectly using the term stealing for copyright infringement tend to have the philosophical viewpoint that includes basic rights.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No, I'm not saying it's the same right - it clearly isn't. But it is a right granted to you by the law. Without legal rights, all we're left with is the "law of the jungle".

i don't think it's constructive to compare the two given they are fundamentally very different, and the only thing they have in common is that they have a legal basis. and technically, property rights have *more* than a legal basis, since they also depend on the physical act of possession (nine-tenths of the law, as the saying goes) whereas an idea cannot truly be "possessed" in the sense that once it is shared with someone else it begins to exist independently of the creator. if i have an idea, if i tell it to no-one, and never write it down, it will die when i die (unless someone else has the same idea). if i tell it to one other person, the idea is no longer dependent on me to exist and i don't control the other person's reaction to it ; they might expand on it and develop it in a way i never thought of, for example. if i die, my idea will still be out there in other people's minds, or in the case of writing / art / etc., enriching our collective shared culture.

[numtini]

Originally Posted by fugazied

Corporations who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat the failures of the past.

Someone actually read the article!

This isn't about what is right, it isn't about what is moral, it isn't about what is profitable, it's about what is real. The easy availability of music, ebooks, and video from the pirate market is not subject to debate. It is a constant, not a variable. It's there. It's always going to be there unless you want a society that makes 1984 look libertarian.

What the article concerns itself with is that most readers, viewers, listeners, etc have no problem with paying for material. We just want it to be reasonable and given the constant that piracy will exist, if publishers don't offer it on reasonable terms, the market will push people to simply pirate it.

What do consumers want?

Universal availability--ie, we want everything to be available and are not going to accept that some things aren't available in digital format--Harry Potter may very well be the 'gateway drug' to ebook piracy.

Reasonable pricing--People expect an electronic version to be cheaper than something that involves a physical object and supply chain to produce and distribute it. That is perfectly reasonable. And geezus on a popsicle stick, it can't be more expensive than the physical item. You can't tell me I have to pay $9.99 for a book that is available for $6.95 in mass market paper then tell me I'm getting a bargain because the hardcover is $25.

An understanding that we aren't going to have to buy something repeatedly or go through a huge honking deal if we switch devices. That is sort of a DRM question, but sort of not at the same time. People don't care about DRM, they don't know about DRM. What they care about is not having to buy a new book when they get a new reader. If the industry settled on one form of file and drm that would work as well, but it hasn't happened. (That might very well be the issue upon which the "information wants to be free" and consumer markets part on. Consumers don't care about DRM as a rights or technology issue, they care about portability and ease of use--make it invisible and they won't care.)

[anappo]

> it can't be more expensive than the physical item.
> You can't tell me I have to pay $9.99

Dunno about that. To me a non-crippled file actually has several advantages over a paper book. Thus I am quite prepared to pay more for a file than I would for paper. Production and delivery costs are less - so what? I'd rather the difference go to authors/editors, if what I get in return is added convenience that comes with digital.