Open Source culture to blame for e-book piracy!

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by Dumas

Let's see ... schex86 registered here a few days ago because he had been reading/listening to Ben Franklin's autobiography from PG and thought there were some interesting points from Franklin's perspective as they related the discussion at hand.

That work certainly isn't under copyright. The US constitution and subsequent Act which have been discussed are not under copyright.

As far as I can tell, your assumptions and personal attacks directed towards schex86 lack standing based on what he's posted and are more a reflection of your character than his.

You are correct. I had mistaken schex86 for another poster in this thread who stated they had, and would continue to, engaged in copyright infringement. I should have checked to be certain of my memory before posting.

I would like to unreservedly apologise to schex86 for implying that he/she may have done so.

Allow me to rephrase my question;

schex86 - Do you think that your assertion that current copyright law is against the USA Constitution has any relevence to a USA citizen choosing to infringe the copyright of a citizen of another country?

Or to put it another way;

Do you think USA citizens should respect the copyrights of people who are not USA citizens?

Cheers,
PKFFW

[Dumas]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

schex86 - Do you think that your assertion that current copyright law is against the USA Constitution has any relevence to a USA citizen choosing to infringe the copyright of a citizen of another country?

Or to put it another way;

Do you think USA citizens should respect the copyrights of people who are not USA citizens?

It is my impression from schex86's posts that his position is current copyright legislation is no longer consistent with the original framers' intent and nothing more than that.

I think for the most part, any issues related to cross-border infringement fall under the Berne Convention.

I suggest instead of discussing generalities, perhaps a more constructive discussion could be had related to a fairly recent issue, that of Amazon's deletion of 1984 and Animal Farm from customers' Kindles. The copyright on “1984” will not expire until 2044 in the United States, while it has already expired in other countries, including Canada, Australia and Russia where it is freely available.

Some slightly different questions but along the same lines as you proposed:

Should Cn, Au, and Ru citizens respect US copyright in this case?

Should US copyright even be an issue since Orwell was English?

[Wetdogeared]

I just had to revive the latest piracy thread to record this latest article and quote.

Will piracy rip the spine out of ebooks? By Gary Marshall of TechRadar.com

...this year's CES had more electronic books than a library for Daleks...

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Wetdogeared

I just had to revive the latest piracy thread to record this latest article and quote.

Will piracy rip the spine out of ebooks? By Gary Marshall of TechRadar.com

Gary Marshall writes,

Piracy is inevitable, but that doesn't mean piracy needs to do to the book industry what it did to music. To an extent the music industry was the architect of its own misfortune, responding to the threat of piracy with excessive DRM, too-high prices and format wars that confused and alienated customers.

So has the publishing industry learnt from the music industry's mistakes?

Given what we've seen so far as regards DRM, I don't have much confidence that things will improve in the short-term, but I think long term prospects are more hopeful.

Marshall quotes George Walkley (Hachette UK) as saying that the publishing industry also wants to avoid the file format wars:

"... device manufacturers are increasingly supporting epub natively. For example, Sony recently took the decision to deprecate its proprietary BBEB ebook format in favour of epub, and nearly all of the new ebook readers announced at CES support epub."

The elephant in this room, of course, is Amazon. Will Amazon eventually go the ePub route? Will ePub eventually become the new industry standard? Will DRM-free ePub eventually become routine?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

...

The elephant in this room, of course, is Amazon. Will Amazon eventually go the ePub route? Will ePub eventually become the new industry standard? Will DRM-free ePub eventually become routine?

I'm waiting for the first consumer rights lawsuit that happens because a major DRM book/reader supplier goes out of business and leaves the consumers high and dry.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I'm waiting for the first consumer rights lawsuit that happens because a major DRM book/reader supplier goes out of business and leaves the consumers high and dry.

Hope it's not Amazon, because that's most of my library!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Hope it's not Amazon, because that's most of my library!

Better make sure you have backup copies.

[asjogren]

I am OK with no right to sell and limited rights to share - IF the price reflected those limitations. Personally, I think an eBook with these restrictions should be priced like a used paperback of the same title. $9.99, in my opinion, does NOT reflect these restrictions - nor the limitations of pictures, maps, graphics etc. on some of the eReaders and eBook formats.

If the publishing industry wants to get "full" price for eBooks, then they need to find a way to facilitate lending and re-selling - just like paper books.

The other thing they need to do is solve this Geographic "issue". It is their problem, not mine. Why should Barnes and Noble restrict me from buying an eBook while I am in Mexico? There are no book stores within a 4 hour drive that have any significant selection of books in English. Nor will there be - there is not a sufficient market to develop. For eBooks, I just need to VPN to the USA to bypass. For paper books I simply need to get them to the border and the next person coming through delivers.

What do these DRM and Geographic issues accomplish? Making customers unhappy is not beneficial.

Think about it. Price versus rights. Make it cheap enough compared to paper books and I don't care.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Better make sure you have backup copies.

I have backups of everything, but I'd have to learn how to strip the DRM.

[Marseille]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I'm waiting for the first consumer rights lawsuit that happens because a major DRM book/reader supplier goes out of business and leaves the consumers high and dry.

I'm suprised Wal-Mart didn't get their pants sued off. They may not have been a major music player, but you have to believe that their customers felt pretty safe buying from such a major company.

[DawnFalcon]

Nah, the lawsuit will come when a major publisher withdraws it's Amazon catalogue, and demands Amazon use it's remote deletion ability to delete all it's books on Kindles.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Nah, the lawsuit will come when a major publisher withdraws it's Amazon catalogue, and demands Amazon use it's remote deletion ability to delete all it's books on Kindles.

That would do it!