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

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by djgreedo

You may not have directly deprived them of a physical object or money, but you may have prevented a potential sale. You may have devalued their work. You may have transmitted their intellectual property against their wishes.

EDIT:
It doesn't matter if the book is out of print - the author may be trying to get the book back in print, etc. The author may not want the book to be distributed further. It should be the author's choice, shouldn't it?

It should be the author's choice. (In general theory, anyway. I'd sometimes quibble over particulars, especially in cases where the author wrote with intentions of copyright lasting 28 or 56 years, and copyright was posthumously extended to 95 years.)

That doesn't make it *theft*.

If I break into the author's house and destroy the files on his computer, I may have done a great deal of damage to his career, but that doesn't mean I've "stolen" anything.

If I tell everyone the author is a lying bastard and they shouldn't buy his books because he uses the money to buy drugs and then beats his wife, that's slander, not theft. It's still illegal, but it's illegal for different reasons.

I'm not saying "filesharing is okay." I'm saying it's not theft, and calling it by the wrong label both adds to the confusions and allows those who infringe on copyrights to feel justified, because a lot of those trying to stop them don't understand what they're doing.

The fact that "copyright infringement" doesn't carry the emotional impact of "stealing" is something the ones who want to stop filesharing have to deal with. Exaggerating the name of the illegal activity for effect isn't working to stop it.

Not calling it stealing is simply splitting hairs or moving the goalposts. Whatever you call copyright infringment it amounts to the same thing - depriving a creator of control over his creation.

But "depriving a creator control over his creation" is not against the law. Stealing is. And copyright infringement is. And slander is.

But going to his publisher, and offering them a huge bundle of money to delay printing of his book for an extra year or two, is not against the law, and if he's already signed a contract with them, there may be nothing he can do about that.

Writing a scathing review, using quotes from his book, that convinces people not to buy the book, is also depriving him control over his creation, just as much as writing an unauthorized sequel does. He still controls the original content, but because of what I've done with it, he may not have as many sales as he otherwise would. One of these is legal, and one is not.

Neither is "theft."

Do you consider diminishing someone's ability to earn a living from their creative endeavors to be hurting them? How about diminishing a creator's control over their own creative work?

There are lots of very legal ways for me to diminish someone's ability to earn a living from their creative endeavors. I can write insulting reviews. I can protest sales of their books or movies. I can write academic papers denouncing it as tripe. I can tell people I know that the author is an arrogant jerk. I can threaten the publisher with a lawsuit, depending on the content of the book. I can announce that the book is not appropriate for children, and convince librarians not to buy it.

And so on.

All of these hurt the author. But they are not theft, and they're not illegal.

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).

Why not just call it all "badcrime" and leave it at that? Insisting on the correct name for an illegal activity isn't hairsplitting.

Copyright infringement is a lot more complex than stealing. It's not taking money or content from anyone... it's taking control of content, and potential money, and it's possible it does no harm whatsoever (in various specific cases; in others, there's no question it does economic harm).

We don't call arson, murder "because destroying someone's house is like killing his livelihood; that makes it murder." We don't call embezzlement, rape "because stealing a company's money is violating its essential self." We certainly don't call driving-without-insurance (a crime in my state) "theft" because it "steals money from the insurance companies that have a right to it."

If I send out two dozen copies of an an ebook I made because it doesn't exist (in copyright, w/no permission), and those recipients like it so much they all rush out and buy a copy of the hardcover, plus sign up for the next book by the author... then I haven't caused the author any economic damage.I've still committed copyright infringement.

For some casual conversations, blurring the exact laws being discussed is reasonable for brevity. In this forum, plenty of people are aware of the nuances of copyright laws (in several countries), and there's no excuse for sloppy language.

People who say "I'm going to call it theft regardless of what the law calls it" are saying "my emotional reaction is more important than legal facts." I find this a vastly unconvincing argument, and tend to ignore any supporting details those people offer--because obviously, they're not trying to be rational or persuasive; they're pushing propaganda.

If they meant to be persuasive, they'd stick to facts that are the same for everyone.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by numtini

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.)

And that is the economic window that is open and will be for a long time.

The competition between time/risk/quality of the "darknet" vis a vis the price/convenience/quality of a commercial product will place a cap on what can be charged for a e-book, just like it has formed a cap on music.

The current idea is to charge a high price, make it inconvenient in the name of piracy (DRM), and then provide a low quality product is an absolute recipe for failure. (I'm not talking about you, Steve!)

Will this be enough to maintain a flow of new titles? I don't know. The biggest problem against new titles is not piracy, but the sudden influx of readily available old titles. Unless you are reading ebook tied to current events, which a flow of new titles is imperative, dies it really matter if the title is absolutely new, or merely new to you? Over a 100,000 titles have been produced in the last 100 years. Have you read them all? I haven't. If you think Project Gutenberg is not a big threat to modern publishing, you haven't thought it through. And it's perfectly legal. There are nearly 30,00 titles. If I read a book a day for 70 years, I would only read 25,568 books. (1 book x 365.25 days per year X 70 years = 25,567.25) In other words I could read just Project Gutenberg for my entire life and never run out of free material to read. And that's despite, draconian changes in copyright over the last 40 years trying to prevent things from falling into the public domain. Just imaging where the competition from legal free would be if the 1976 copyright revision had not gone into and everything from 1953 on back were public domain...

[anappo]

> But "depriving a creator control over his creation" is not against the law.

Yup. You could even deprive her of content control by tickling!

[carld]

Originally Posted by numtini

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.

You can't tell me that you have a right to take what you want from someone else just because you don't want to pay for it.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by carld

You can't tell me that you have a right to take what you want from someone else just because you don't want to pay for it.

What are you prattling on about? Where in the quoted section did you read that?!

- Ahi

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Why not just call it all "badcrime" and leave it at that? Insisting on the correct name for an illegal activity isn't hairsplitting.

How dare you make sense in this thread?

- Ahi

[carld]

Originally Posted by ahi

What are you prattling on about?

- Ahi

I don't answer to insults. Which means I probably won't be replying to your posts, ever.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by numtini

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.

Nobody is telling you that you "have" to pay $9.99. The choice is entirely yours - if you don't think that it represents fair value, don't buy it. The important point, however, is that the fact that someone doesn't think that the asking price is reasonable does not give them some "divine right" to take it without paying for it.

$9.99 is about £6, which is cheaper than the typical UK paperback (£6.99 or £7.99 is a typical paperback price here in the UK), so personally I'm perfectly willing to pay £6 for an eBook. The eBook is worth at least as much as a paperback to me, because the fact that it has no physical storage space requirements is a valuable benefit.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

But "depriving a creator control over his creation" is not against the law. Stealing is. And copyright infringement is. And slander is.

"Depriving a creator control over his creation" (without their consent) violates copyright law... so it is illegal. If I write a novel and copyright it, I have the right to withhold that novel from specific use or any use at all, as long as the copyright is in effect. Violating that is against the law.

I think a lot of people are missing the boat when they spend so much time arguing that theft can only happen with physical property. For one thing, there are precedents for the "stealing" of electronic creative works, such as re-broadcasting a copywritten TV show, like the Super Bowl, in a public place for profit... or playing copywritten music over the web without compensation to the publishers. Of course no physical property was stolen, but it is still against the law, because it violates copyright law. So the discussion over whether copying an e-book should or should not be legal has already been settled by precedent.

Yes, copying a digital file of copywritten work for personal profit (or to deprive the copyright owner of potential profit), without the copyright owner's consent, is illegal.

Personally, I think the above statement is almost watertight... it does leave up to further refining the question of what constitutes "depriving of potential profit," and that needs to be addressed to establish what people can and cannot legally do with digital files they've bought... which is the real issue being discussed here, I think.

Secondly, splitting hairs over the choice of words is largely irrelevant. It's semantics, and seems to be based on whether the arguer wants copyright infringement to sound like a very bad thing, or only a slightly bad thing. (And please, no "badcrime." Sounds like you've been re-reading 1984 too many times!) Whether it's a car or a candy bar, theft is theft. You might as well call it what it is.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by carld

You can't tell me that you have a right to take what you want from someone else just because you don't want to pay for it.

Ok Carld, let's take this from the top. Since you don't want to acknowledge the difference between physical theft and copyright infringement, we'll describe this in physical lease terms, which is closer to the reality.

The government granted you a exclusive lease on your work called a copyright. It is not property, it's a lease. It doesn't last forever. Like any lease, it expires. At the time of the granting of the lease, you agreed to the terms and conditions, that were in effect at that time. You didn't have to either place the work under those terms, or release it at all. You chose to do so under those terms.

Now if I leased a car from the government, at the terms of 4 years at no more that 60K miles (100K KM), do you have the right to suddenly say, "I'm going to use 120K miles , lowering the residual value, because I decided I wanted to drive more." Would you not be stealing miles/value from the lessor (the Government)?

Contrawise, If you sign an agreement for 4 years at 120K miles, and the government suddenly said, "I'm going to change it to 60K miles, because I want more residual value." Would not the Government be stealing miles/value from you?

And so to copyright. When the Government "extends" the terms of copyright, at the behest of and to the economic benefit of the lessee, i.e. the copyright holders, is this not "stealing", by your own definition of Stealing? It's stealing from the people who granted the lease (through their government) in the first place.

So to me, that makes each and every holder of an extended copyright a thief, just as you consider copyright infringers. They don't have to be thieves, they could quitclaim into the public domain the extended leases granted. But they don't. So they're thieves, by your definition.

So, at the end of this long chain, why are you coming down so hard on one set of thieves (copyright infringers), and being so soft on the the other set of thieves (the holders of extended copyrights)? They're both thieves (by your definition.)

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

"Depriving a creator control over his creation" (without their consent) violates copyright law... so it is illegal. If I write a novel and copyright it, I have the right to withhold that novel from specific use or any use at all, as long as the copyright is in effect. Violating that is against the law.

Authors don't have the right to total control over their creations.

If your novel is found to be libelous, or a threat to national security, someone can step in and prevent you from distributing it. If someone dislikes it, and writes a review that pans it, and you don't sell any more books after that, that, too, is a legal way to deprive you of sales. If your book is popular, someone can quote from it extensively in their book, "The Philosophical Meanings of Steve Jordan's Book." You don't get to control their use of your content.

There are legal limitations on others' use of your content--but you don't get to decide what those limitations are.

CERTAIN TYPES of copying, CERTAIN TYPES of depriving control of use of content, are illegal. Other types are legal. There is no law that says "depriving a content-creator of control of his/her content is punishable by a fine of $X and/or prison sentence of Y time."

[quote]... Of course no physical property was stolen, but it is still against the law, because it violates copyright law. So the discussion over whether copying an e-book should or should not be legal has already been settled by precedent. [quote]

It is still against the law. And it should be.
It is not theft.

Libel is against the law. It's also not theft, even though it can result in loss of income.

Yes, copying a digital file of copywritten work for personal profit (or to deprive the copyright owner of potential profit), without the copyright owner's consent, is illegal.

Hmm. Mostly, yes, but I can think of a few examples off the top of my head where that's not true.

1) Educational--teachers are permitted to, for example, make 40 copies of a poem to hand out to the class, instead insisting that each student buy a book for that one poem.

2) Personal use--I'm not required to buy a digital copy of a book I own physically, and have scanned & converted myself in order to avoid buying the DRM'd version. (I don't have any of these. Yet. But I'm considering starting a collection; the used paperback version is often cheaper than the ebook version, and I don't mind scanning, OCR'ing and formatting books. I've done this for a few books that don't have commercial ebook versions available; is that depriving the author of potential profit? Certainly I don't intend to buy an ebook version if one becomes available.)

3) Reviews: Reviews are allowed to copy some of the original, for the purpose of convincing people not to buy the original. That's use of the author's work, for profit, without consent.

All of those are copying without permission for profit or to avoid paying for new copies. None are copyright infringement in the US.

Secondly, splitting hairs over the choice of words is largely irrelevant. It's semantics, and seems to be based on whether the arguer wants copyright infringement to sound like a very bad thing, or only a slightly bad thing. (And please, no "badcrime." Sounds like you've been re-reading 1984 too many times!) Whether it's a car or a candy bar, theft is theft. You might as well call it what it is.

It's semantics, and semantics are important to our laws.

Theft covers both cars and candy bars. It does not cover "unauthorized use of someone else's arrangement of thoughts in a fixed format."

If you can only convince people that copyright infringement is bad by pretending it's an entirely different type of lawbreaking, the arguments against it must be pretty weak.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

"Depriving a creator control over his creation" (without their consent) violates copyright law... so it is illegal. If I write a novel and copyright it, I have the right to withhold that novel from specific use or any use at all, as long as the copyright is in effect. Violating that is against the law.

I think a lot of people are missing the boat when they spend so much time arguing that theft can only happen with physical property. For one thing, there are precedents for the "stealing" of electronic creative works, such as re-broadcasting a copywritten TV show, like the Super Bowl, in a public place for profit... or playing copywritten music over the web without compensation to the publishers. Of course no physical property was stolen, but it is still against the law, because it violates copyright law. So the discussion over whether copying an e-book should or should not be legal has already been settled by precedent.

Yes, copying a digital file of copywritten work for personal profit (or to deprive the copyright owner of potential profit), without the copyright owner's consent, is illegal.

Personally, I think the above statement is almost watertight... it does leave up to further refining the question of what constitutes "depriving of potential profit," and that needs to be addressed to establish what people can and cannot legally do with digital files they've bought... which is the real issue being discussed here, I think.

Secondly, splitting hairs over the choice of words is largely irrelevant. It's semantics, and seems to be based on whether the arguer wants copyright infringement to sound like a very bad thing, or only a slightly bad thing. (And please, no "badcrime." Sounds like you've been re-reading 1984 too many times!) Whether it's a car or a candy bar, theft is theft. You might as well call it what it is.

And the long precedents of "Fair Use"? You seemed to have forgotten them....

[GlennD]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Hmm. Mostly, yes, but I can think of a few examples off the top of my head where that's not true.

1) Educational--teachers are permitted to, for example, make 40 copies of a poem to hand out to the class, instead insisting that each student buy a book for that one poem.

2) Personal use--I'm not required to buy a digital copy of a book I own physically, and have scanned & converted myself in order to avoid buying the DRM'd version. (I don't have any of these. Yet. But I'm considering starting a collection; the used paperback version is often cheaper than the ebook version, and I don't mind scanning, OCR'ing and formatting books. I've done this for a few books that don't have commercial ebook versions available; is that depriving the author of potential profit? Certainly I don't intend to buy an ebook version if one becomes available.)

3) Reviews: Reviews are allowed to copy some of the original, for the purpose of convincing people not to buy the original. That's use of the author's work, for profit, without consent.

All of those are copying without permission for profit or to avoid paying for new copies. None are copyright infringement in the US.


It's semantics, and semantics are important to our laws.

Actually, all of these could be considered copyright infringement. Education is generally accepted as fair use without much question or fuss, but reviews do have to be careful of what parts of a work they reprint without permission.

A personal copy is by no means automatically 'Fair Use'. The Audio Home Recording Act specifically granted the right to make a copy of an audio recording for personal use but that doesn't apply to printed work. The bottom line with Fair Use is that it's decided on a case by case basis. If a copyright holder believes that your use is infringement, he has the right to sue you. Your defense will be 'fair use' and the judge will determine if it is or not. Obviously, your chances of being sued by a copyright holder if you scan a book and never distribute the digital copy are slim to none. It can still be considered infringement though. As you say, semantics are important.


I recommend taking a look at the wikipedia article on fair use doctrine, especially the section on common misunderstandings. Several of them are very relevant to your examples.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

To Ralph and Elf, the reason I specified "for profit, or deprivation of potential profit," is because that is exactly where the line gets drawn regarding fair use. For example:

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

1) Educational--teachers are permitted to, for example, make 40 copies of a poem to hand out to the class, instead insisting that each student buy a book for that one poem.

2) Personal use--I'm not required to buy a digital copy of a book I own physically, and have scanned & converted myself in order to avoid buying the DRM'd version. (I don't have any of these. Yet. But I'm considering starting a collection; the used paperback version is often cheaper than the ebook version, and I don't mind scanning, OCR'ing and formatting books. I've done this for a few books that don't have commercial ebook versions available; is that depriving the author of potential profit? Certainly I don't intend to buy an ebook version if one becomes available.)

In both of these cases, profit is not involved. If you sold copies, profit would be involved... that violates fair use and copyright law. Here, the question becomes whether you deprive the creator of potential profit... as I said, that's a question that needs to be answered to satisfy fair use.

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

And the long precedents of "Fair Use"? You seemed to have forgotten them....

No, I haven't (as explained above). However, because the physical nature and practical considerations of e-books and printed books are so different, you have to consider that some precedents are not going to apply to the new medium, and some of those might include some parts of "fair use" that are common to paper books today. It'll mean getting used to doing some things differently, in some cases, whether we like it or not... much as we got used to the cost and trouble of wiring our homes for phones, or cable, when those technologies came out, and accepting that you couldn't just put your phone or TV anywhere... it had to be near an outlet. Or getting used to the new traffic laws that went hand-in-hand with the development of the automobile.

I expect some aspects of "fair use" to change over time, although I'm not sure which aspects.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

To Ralph and Elf, the reason I specified "for profit, or deprivation of potential profit," is because that is exactly where the line gets drawn regarding fair use. For example:

{teacher's copies ... personal copies}

In both of these cases, profit is not involved. If you sold copies, profit would be involved... that violates fair use and copyright law.

"Refusal to buy more copies" is not a profit motive? Technically, uploading an ebook to a torrent network doesn't involve profit, either. It's still denying potential profit to the author.

An author would certainly make more profit if every school that wanted to have children study a poem had to buy an entire book per student. (Of course, the general response would be that children in public schools would only study poems in the public domain. As this is considered an undesirable state of affairs, some use for educational purposes is allowed. However, it's still use that prevents profit, and the author doesn't give permission for it.)

Here, the question becomes whether you deprive the creator of potential profit... as I said, that's a question that needs to be answered to satisfy fair use.

Yes, but it's not the only relevant question. It's balanced against other aspects, like the purpose of the (potentially fair) use, and the nature of the work itself.

Fair use isn't decided by "does/does not this use negatively affect the income of the author?"

However, because the physical nature and practical considerations of e-books and printed books are so different, you have to consider that some precedents are not going to apply to the new medium, and some of those might include some parts of "fair use" that are common to paper books today.

This part, I agree with.

Copyright law needs a major overhaul, because the established aspects don't apply well to digital documents, which leads to both ridiculous restrictions on personal use, and terrible losses to authors whose works are appropriated without compensation.

I expect some aspects of "fair use" to change over time, although I'm not sure which aspects.

I'd like to see the protections for educational use increased, or at least well-described, so that teachers and students understood how much is fair use. I wouldn't mind for-profit use, including reviews, parodies and transformative works, to be required to pay a simple licensing fee for amounts beyond incidental use. (This would require a lot more registration paperwork.)