The $15 Boycott: Will you be participating?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by dmikov

I hope you are sarcastic. Cause the guy is an utter idiot. He has no clue what the law is or what he is writing about. Reading the comments was very entertaining though. The guy tried to reply and was putting his feet more and more in his big stupid mouth.

No I'm not kidding. Piracy is theft. If you take something of mine without my permission you are a thief. It's a matter of principles and morals and doing what is right. Just because you can (copy a file) doesn't mean you should.

[kennyc]

From PC World:

"Publishers are Shortsighted"

http://www.pcworld.com/article/18876...ice_fight.html

[TallMomof2]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It is unfair to compare eBook prices to that of used book prices. Plus, you didn't add in the mandatory shipping that you also have to pay. So that $3.95 book could easily be over $6 after you add in shipping.

That $3.95 price is for a *new* book not a used one. Amazon does have third parties who sell new books. The used prices are even lower. I didn't include shipping because I was attempting to do a straight comparison.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by kennyc

No I'm not kidding.

Well yes, we know you're a troll who insists that he knows better than the law, which ironically puts you in precisely the same place as the people making excuses on the other side. And I view you no better for such.

[llreader]

Originally Posted by Harmon

The U of Chicago's free ebook for February was Piracy: the Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates. One of the subjects concerns the concept of intellectual property as an invention of Western Europe, and another is the impact of the concept in other societies.

It really is a moving target, and while I'm not sure that societal consensus is turning against IP, it seems pretty clear that the consensus about what IP actually is, and how it can be "owned," is in flux - as it has been for two or three hundred years.

Just started this yesterday. Very interesting, and very relevant to this discussion. I recommend it as well.

Oops, yes, it was a one-day deal. Sorry.

[llreader]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

I agree with the point that it's very complicated, and that as with music illegal downloads can lead to future sales. They don't always, but they can. However, many people only read a book once, but they listen to albums many times.

What this means for illegal or other free downloads is that a person may read one book and get hooked, but rather than buying a copy of the one they have already read, they will go out and buy the author's other works. This is wonderful, and the author does get paid for those purchases. The problem is that these numbers aren't going to the current book, which is the one the publisher is counting when figuring the author's next advance.

So while I completely agree that saying that some downloads will lead to lost sales is not the whole story, but it is part of the story, and for an author's career it can be an important part.

I imagine it is usually that way - you only read once. I have had the other experience - reading downloaded copies of a book made me want to buy the book in some original format (especially the good ones), because I felt like I wanted to give something to the author. Buying used books did not have this effect on me (I paid, right?), and the author got exactly nothing from me in return for some used books I enjoyed very much. This may be a corner case, though.

I think the sales numbers are a big deal, though, for contractual as well as direct financial reasons.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by llreader

I imagine it is usually that way - you only read once. I have had the other experience - reading downloaded copies of a book made me want to buy the book in some original format (especially the good ones), because I felt like I wanted to give something to the author. Buying used books did not have this effect on me (I paid, right?), and the author got exactly nothing from me in return for some used books I enjoyed very much. This may be a corner case, though.

I think the sales numbers are a big deal, though, for contractual as well as direct financial reasons.

The numbers are a huge deal and not just for direct financial reasons. That's also why the used book market is not always such a big deal for authors, many of those books are out of print, and they wouldn't count toward the all-important current book numbers anyway.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I believe you, but what's a 303? That's the area code here in Colorado.

It's a 300 that is better than yours, because Sony always liked me better.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Harmon

It's a 300 that's is better than yours, because Sony always liked me better.

[llreader]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

The numbers are a huge deal and not just for direct financial reasons. That's also why the used book market is not always such a big deal for authors, many of those books are out of print, and they wouldn't count toward the all-important current book numbers anyway.

Yes, numbers can mean the difference between an author ever getting anything more than an advance from a publication. The out-of-print issue is changing now, though, because with ebooks, many things will never go off the market again.

In the future, in some cases, instead of ebooks threatening pbook sales, it may be the existence of circulating pbooks that affect new ebook sales.

And not all used books are out of print, and some of those come back into print if they are popular enough or if the author becomes a "star" (Gene Wolfe's "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" is an example, I believe).

[guyanonymous]

Services like "library thing", if attached to reasonably-priced (whatever that means ) ebook-sales as a means to pay for the site, may be the best way to help people learn about new books in genres/writing styles they like. It leverages the social nature of people to want to share what they know/think with crowdsourcing that can produce far more accurate relationships between unknown/well-known/old/new books than any advertiser/publisher might.

[ShadowAuthor]

Originally Posted by Connallmac

Remember kids Lars Ulrich says:

And that's a problem on many levels. So many people think it's okay to pirate because someone like Lars acts like a moron. Lars is also a hypocrite as well, when he learned of Guitar Hero, he called Activision, the games' publisher and asked to be sent a free copy.

You have this dynamic where people think it's okay to pirate Lars' music, and Stephen King's books, but then they also feel it's okay to pirate the artistic works of those artists who do rely on their sales to pay the bills, not buy jewel encrusted shark tanks.

Don't misunderstand, Lars is a money-grubbing douche of the highest order (who incidentally hasn't made good music since 1990), but piracy is wrong no matter the artist.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by Harmon

It's a 300 that is better than yours, because Sony always liked me better.

*caresses 505 proudly*

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by kennyc

No I'm not kidding. Piracy is theft. If you take something of mine without my permission you are a thief. It's a matter of principles and morals and doing what is right. Just because you can (copy a file) doesn't mean you should.

People, don't pay attention - it doesn't make sense to discuss beliefs with a fundamentalist.

[Ben Thornton]

Originally Posted by kennyc

No I'm not kidding. Piracy is theft. If you take something of mine without my permission you are a thief. It's a matter of principles and morals and doing what is right. Just because you can (copy a file) doesn't mean you should.

We've been over this before. Legally, illegal copying is not theft. Socially, it is not considered to be equivalent (witness the provision of blank media and equipment to facilitate various forms of copying, and the fact that most people do it). Morally, it depends on what your morals are.

I can only make sense of what your saying as either an assertion that they are in fact legally the same, or that people tend to view them as the same, or simply that you feel the same way about them.

If you find, say, the theft of CDs from a shop and the copying of a CD to give to a friend, equally repugnant, fair enough. It strikes me as an unusual point of view, but it's all that I can think you mean.