"If you can afford an ebook reader, you can afford ebook prices"

[kindlekitten]

*yawn* seriously guys. get a room or a private message. neither of you have brought anything new to the debate in several pages

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by dmaul1114

I live a life about self interest

Thankfully, not everybody does, otherwise the world would be a very sad place.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Not everyone would be dissuaded from writing or publishing for those reasons, but enough would that it's worth allowing copyright to extend at least somewhat after death of the author.

Why do you believe that? I think that if the work is great then it will be published. And if people choose not to publish non-great work late in life just because of money reasons then you have not really lost anything since we will have new and better authors to choose from.

[Iphinome]

DawnFalcon I'd leave moral rights as an issue for countries with them to deal with, I'm not aware of any US legal equivalent outside the normal copyright protections I don't really feel qualified to take a side as the concept is quite foreign to me. I don't see it ever having to legally apply to anything out of copyright.

Do you support the idea? It seems to block parody satire or harsh criticism as derogatory treatment. Do I misunderstand? The wording wasn't overly clear.

[scveteran]

Originally Posted by Iphinome

[Citation Need]

Sorry to take a while to come back to this. I have been pretty sick the last few days.

Please take a look at the US Copyright website. Specifically http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506. This tells you that if you do infringe on the copyright, it can be a criminal offense.

If you go to http://www.ehow.com/facts_4810511_pu...ight-laws.html you can see penalties.

[scveteran]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

I never said or indicated I was coming from or standing on the moral right. I am of the evergrowing voice that the publishers MUST listen to. we are the new reality! they need to understand that we have a voice and will share our opinion.

A LOT!

I am sorry, but no one has to listen to you or anyone else. You can give your opinion just like I do, but no one has to listen.

The publishers have the right to and can continue to sell their products as they see fit. Just like we consumers have the right to and can decide whether to purchase any product or not.

What we can not legally do is take things that don't belong to us.

[scveteran]

Originally Posted by Iphinome

I know I'm getting pretty far off topic but of course there will be censorship, if it's in someone's interest to censor they'll try it which in an odd way makes it in all our best interests to keep it from happening.

Back to the slightly less off topic...

If you want to help musicians authors and the like I respectfully suggest you make the publishers your target. There's a reason the phrase Hollywood accounting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting exists. These are the people who hold musicians in indentured servitude, the ones who don't want to allow ebooks and if they do they want it so drm encumbered to be useless denying authors even the chance at more royalties.

You say you don't care if they go out of business but they're the ones who file civil cases against alleged copyright infringers and keep any judgments they may get. Those awards don't go to the author musician actors or directors. No one's telling you to share files but you're picking on people who are sticking it to the bad guys, whatever their personal motivations.

Sorry, but IMO the guys who are pirating the files ARE the bad guys. I also know better than to believe the stuff you are selling about all publishers being the bad guys. There are some that are bad apples, but there are others that are honest business people.

I also disagree with the idea that some here espouse about all corporations being evil. The vast majority of corporations are legitimate businesses that follow the law and do things honestly and above board. Many of them also give large sums of money to charity.

[scveteran]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Barnes & Noble has this tech--their loaning ability could just as easily be giveaway-permanently ability. It's as effective at preventing unauthorized copies as any other form of DRM.

But they didn't make it usable the same way physical book loans are, and they didn't make it able to be permanent, and they allowed publishers to refuse to participate.

The technology to transfer ownership of ebooks without allowing unauthorized copies exists; publishers are refusing to allow customers to exercise their rights.

re: criminal penalties--

Copyright Infringement—Penalties—17 U.S.C. § 506(a) and 18 U.S.C § 2319
Up to 5 years, $250,000, for "the reproduction or distribution, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, with a retail value of more than $2,500."

Hm. Which seems to mean that copies of Harry Potter ebooks aren't prosecutable by this law, because they have no retail value--they aren't on the market at all. All a person would have to do to avoid this law is make sure their distributions stayed under $2500 retail value in a 6-month period. If they're distributing content that isn't purchasable, this law may not apply at all. (Books that aren't commercially available as ebooks; comics/manga; digital conversions of out-of-print albums.) Even distributing songs--you'd have to prove an awful lot of distributions to hit $2500 worth of copies at $.99 each.

Elf, I think you are misreading things. The section you qouted is one standard. However it is not the only standard. Another one is that if the thief gets any financial advantage. Taking a work without paying for it is a financial advantage and so even if you take a single item you could theoretically be prosecuted.

You also have come up with the idea that that these items have no retail value at all. That is simply wrong. I challenge you to show any law that says these items have no retail value.

[scveteran]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

in a situation where activities, behaviour, and acceptance are going to help set the policies of the publishers from here on out, I would say "good on ya'"

it's called Civil Unrest. Tried and True Technique

I like you but I have to tell you that what you are saying is simply wrong and immoral IMO. And if you can tell your children that it is ever ok to steal except in a life or death matter, you are not teaching your children right.

And this is not a case of Civil Unrest. It is a crime. A better example of civil unrest would be for you to stage a sit in at a book store.

[scveteran]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Actually, 'theft' of ebooks doesn't increase the publication costs to the publishers or the retailers as no physical object has gone missing which needs to be replaced. Think about it. Has any paper been stolen? Has any printing ink gone missing? Are shipping containers destroyed or have delivery trucks been kyped, stripped and shipped off to foreign countries? Same with administrative labor costs. All of the work done to create the dead-tree books or formatting the original ebook files have been done and do not need to be re-performed. Yes, the intellectual property has been made off with, but there are no additional costs incurred by the 'theft' of ebooks.

Derek

I disagree with you because you are only looking at the actual physical costs not being any higher. I look at as the person has taken a copy that they wanted, and likely would have paid for except for the piracy.

So if author gets paid only on the copies that were physically sold and not the ones that should have be sold, you are taking money out of their pocket. You also take money away from others everytime you pirate the work.

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by scveteran

I am sorry, but no one has to listen to you or anyone else. You can give your opinion just like I do, but no one has to listen.

The publishers have the right to and can continue to sell their products as they see fit. Just like we consumers have the right to and can decide whether to purchase any product or not.

What we can not legally do is take things that don't belong to us.

they have to listen if we change their market

[scveteran]

Originally Posted by dmaul1114

Ah, that is a fair point. Especially since a lot of great work in many areas has been done late in life. So I guess their needs to be some extension beyond the lifetime.

The 28 with extension idea sounds like a good one. But I wouldn't limit to one extension. If you publish a hit book at 20, extend at 28, you should be able to extend again at 56 if you're still alive etc.

So I'd say unlimited 28 year extensions during the person's life time, rather than doing 50 years or 75 years after death etc.

Then at most you've got 28 years after death if they die right after an extension, and many will be shorter as they die in the middle of an extension.

The 28 years is arbitrary as well, you could do something shorter like 15 and just require more frequent extensions--which would get stuff in the public domain much quicker after death of the content holder.

I could agree with that.

[scveteran]

Originally Posted by Iphinome

Why should my taxes go to enforcement, go to pay any judge working a copyright case if society will never get anything out of it.

The thing is that society does get something out of it. It gets more people creating works.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by scveteran

I disagree with you because you are only looking at the actual physical costs not being any higher. I look at as the person has taken a copy that they wanted, and likely would have paid for except for the piracy.

So if author gets paid only on the copies that were physically sold and not the ones that should have be sold, you are taking money out of their pocket. You also take money away from others everytime you pirate the work.

Well, given that far too many polls and studies have shown that most 'pirates' would rather not buy any work, their pirating, for the most part, has little impact on book sales. IOW, if you come up with an 'unbreakable' DRM model, you won't see adramatic increase in e-book sales. You *might* see somewhat of a drop in pirated distribution - but here again, unless we implement a world-wide registry and monitoring of scanners and digital cameras, it is highly unlikely that you will see the problem disappear. And no one would want to live in such a world.

I suppose you could make it mandatory that anyone who purchases a device capable of reading an ebook be forced to pay a generic, monthly or yearly, license fee comparable to the cost of the average number of ebooks a person might read. This would be expensive for those, such as myself, who have ten ereading devices - but what the hell, it's for the authors! (Naturally, despite no real cost on their parts, the publishers woul get the lion's share of this money, with most of the rest going to the government agencies managing this, At least the authors would get 1%-3% of this 'recovery fee'.)

What I don't understand is *who* these 'others' are? Clearly you do not mean the retailers, agents, publishers or authors. Do you mean pirates are 'stealing' from the disabled, poor or children?



Derek

[scveteran]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Well, given that far too many polls and studies have shown that most 'pirates' would rather not buy any work, their pirating, for the most part, has little impact on book sales. IOW, if you come up with an 'unbreakable' DRM model, you won't see adramatic increase in e-book sales. You *might* see somewhat of a drop in pirated distribution - but here again, unless we implement a world-wide registry and monitoring of scanners and digital cameras, it is highly unlikely that you will see the problem disappear. And no one would want to live in such a world.

I disagree with you on this. Many people would purchase the book if they had not pirated it already.

Originally Posted by delphidb96

I suppose you could make it mandatory that anyone who purchases a device capable of reading an ebook be forced to pay a generic, monthly or yearly, license fee comparable to the cost of the average number of ebooks a person might read. This would be expensive for those, such as myself, who have ten ereading devices - but what the hell, it's for the authors! (Naturally, despite no real cost on their parts, the publishers woul get the lion's share of this money, with most of the rest going to the government agencies managing this, At least the authors would get 1%-3% of this 'recovery fee'.)

I have never suggested any such strategy for dealing with the problem and would not agree with the idea. However you are way off base with the accusations that the publishers would get most of the money. The truth is that ASCAP is a similar type of organization and passes all but 11.3% that it collects to the musicians. So I have to assume a literary version would do about the same.

Originally Posted by delphidb96

What I don't understand is *who* these 'others' are? Clearly you do not mean the retailers, agents, publishers or authors. Do you mean pirates are 'stealing' from the disabled, poor or children?



Derek

Of course I am talking about the agents, retailers, etc. They deserve to earn a living whether you like them or not.