E-Book Piracy: The Publishing Industry's Next Epic Saga?

[kennyc]

Well said Elf!

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The excuse "I wouldn't have bought it" surely doesn't make it acceptable to take it without paying for it?

The was completely beside the point he was making, but it did serve to derail the conversation nicely. Well done.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

It's often considered immoral for one person to do something that would be problematic if everyone did it.

If *everyone* torrented ebooks instead of buying them (or if only one person purchased the book, and all other readers got free copies), obviously, that's bad for the author & the support staff that made the book possible to distribute.

The example was that only people that would not buy it anyway obtained a copy without paying for it. So I do not see how this change anything.

I'm in the chaos-theory camp that believes that a certain amount of inefficiency and rules-breakage is necessary to any economic & social system; the only way to guarantee *no* unauthorized free copies is total draconian control of people's reading habits, and that's a cure worse than the disease. That doesn't make the free copies "moral" as much as "philosophically necessary," which is an entirely different direction of argument.

If they are necessary they cannot be immoral. They can maybe be amoral.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Crusader

The vast majority of pirates would never buy the content they are pirating in any case so no revenue is lost as such.

But they might well have bought other, cheaper, IP if they couldn't pirate the expensive stuff. In other words, pirating IP might not be a loss of sales for the IP owner who's being pirated, but for other IP owners.

Or are you suggesting that the pirates would just not consume IP if they couldn't pirate?

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That is a morally bankrupt argument.

Great, and by the time you've chased down the people who've made unauthorised copies and strung them up, you've bled customers. What about your moral responsibility to the people whose content you're distributing to maximise their sales? This isn't to say you need to praise unauthorised copying, but trying to pretend there is only one moral dynamic at work here is incorrect.

Once again, there is no evidence that removing DRM reduces sales, but the opposite. And the same goes for the high street food shops introducing the self-service terminals. This dosn't mean removing all the checks, it means removing certain types of checks (DRM).



pdurrant - As to that, they don't want people to pirate other people's cheaper content! Indeed, if you look at, say, Maya there is a very good reason they launched Maya PLE. It's to ensure that the barriers to learning Maya are low, and then companies will thus buy Maya for commercial use.

Before Maya PLE, the majority of people who learned Maya before working in a commercial environment did so on unauthorised copies. And that learning drove Maya sales...

This is a far from isolated instance in the software world.

[neilmarr]

I don't have figures to hand, but I would take an educated guess that the publishing industry loses much more in seriously uncovered huge royalty advances on celebrity contracts than it does to piracy. Neil

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

It's often considered immoral for one person to do something that would be problematic if everyone did it.

My mother used to tell me that when I wanted to pick flowers from a public garden

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

I don't have figures to hand, but I would take an educated guess that the publishing industry loses much more in seriously uncovered huge royalty advances on celebrity contracts than it does to piracy. Neil

I suspect you are right Neil and that sort of thing is exactly the core of what needs to change in the business (along with the other stuff we've been discussing) it needs to become more efficient, just like our car engines.

[GhostHawk]

Locks only keep the honest people honest. They are a temptation remover.

But anyone who is truly determined to break in, well they'll have the tools to do so.
Or they'll grab a brick and go through a window.

I think much the same can be said for DRM. It only keeps the honest folks honest.
Those who are truly determined to get around it will, in one way or another.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by GhostHawk

...
I think much the same can be said for DRM. It only keeps the honest folks honest.
Those who are truly determined to get around it will, in one way or another.

It's actually much more than that, because it changes what can do with books. It restricts some of our consumer abilities as compared to a paper book.

(as discussed above of course...ad naseum)

[Tim32127]

Originally Posted by GhostHawk

Locks only keep the honest people honest. They are a temptation remover.

But anyone who is truly determined to break in, well they'll have the tools to do so.
Or they'll grab a brick and go through a window.

I think much the same can be said for DRM. It only keeps the honest folks honest.
Those who are truly determined to get around it will, in one way or another.

In my case it does'nt. This month I spent around $300.00 at sony for books last month 2.35 The difference is I figured out how to remove their drm {Thank you to the people who did the work by the way} Had I done so earlyer I would have been buying sooner. I buy every book I even might be interested in from Baen I even pay them for the free ones. So not everyone is just tring to cheat the people who write/publish/distribute/ect. I just want a book I can reread next year or whenever I want regardless what reader I have.

For the record I haven't downloaded a single free cd since Rhapsody was born
Tim..

[Crusader]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

But they might well have bought other, cheaper, IP if they couldn't pirate the expensive stuff. In other words, pirating IP might not be a loss of sales for the IP owner who's being pirated, but for other IP owners.

Or are you suggesting that the pirates would just not consume IP if they couldn't pirate?

If a sudden unbreakable DRM-method appears then I guess it's possible that they might actually pay for cheaper IP media once they have no other options. What's most likely is that this would be limited to 2nd hand sales though - still not an actual sale for the publisher/author or they might be forced to actually start usign libraries again. Free books, CD's, movies... although it won't be the latest releases.

The thing is true pirates have the ingrained mentality that they don't want to pay for ANY IP unless they are absolutely forced to, and chances are that they will bypass that product and look for alternatives they can pirate.

'Pirates of necessity' (those users willing to pay for something but aren't allowed to by restrictions/availability etc.) are a whole different breed. They pirate because they don't have another option. Given the chance they'd gladly pay for the product. These are actual lost sales. NOT due to the piracy, but because of publisher's (Big Business) inability to provide them with a legitimate way to obtain the product.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by jasonkchapman

That's easily said, but just as impossible to prove as the industry's assertion of the opposite. In the end, it's just one unsupported assertion against another.

You could ask their parent's if they would give them tons of money to buy the stuff.

I don't think it is even a little bit difficult to show that the majority of copyright violitions come from kids and college students.

Take a look at RIAA's litigation data. It's tough to go after minors, and I am sure that has figured into their decision to back off on litigation.

[Kirtai]

Originally Posted by GhostHawk

Locks only keep the honest people honest. They are a temptation remover.

I keep seeing this and have to admit that it's one of the silliest arguments I see.

Honest people don't need help to resist temptation. That's why they're called honest people.

Locks and other barriers only deter on the lazy/incompetant/timid dishonest people.

[sircastor]

Originally Posted by Kirtai

I keep seeing this and have to admit that it's one of the silliest arguments I see.

Honest people don't need help to resist temptation. That's why they're called honest people.

Locks and other barriers only deter on the lazy/incompetant/timid dishonest people.

I think what he was saying is that locks help honest people avoid temptation. We're all susceptible to doing things we shouldn't, but it's easier to avoid the temptation if there's some other thing dissuading us.

This always comes down an equation of want vs. consequences. The consequences may be expenditure of time, money, sacrifice of morals, physical danger, prison, etc. I hate to be callous about it, but most people, even the honest ones, have a breaking point. Locks on doors help people avoid that breaking point. DRM helps some people avoid breaking the law. To be fair, I think it's much rarer that a lock keeps you out of your own house