My journey into the darknet

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by TGS

Which would be great if you wanted to inhabit a world controlled by the likes of Rupert Murdoch and his sons.

Now that's a scary thought! But still the story indicates that people are coming around the the true legacy of digital media and intellectual property.

[Ben Thornton]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Now that's a scary thought! But still the story indicates that people are coming around the the true legacy of digital media and intellectual property.

I don't think that it says that "people are coming around" to any particular view. It says that those who stand to gain from selling the content have the view that people making unauthorised copies should be punished, and they are promoting the view that it is the same as stealing. Thank goodness that the law disagrees with them, and with good reason.

Are we going all the way round again? Essentially, sane people agree that legally, unauthorised copying that is illegal is not (legally) classed as theft. Morally, some people think that it is the same. Others think that it isn't. There are lots of nuanced views inbetween (which consider, for example, whether something would have been out of copyright under the rules used to grant copyright in the first place).

[TGS]

Originally Posted by kennyc

"It's a basic condition for investment and economic growth and there should be the same level of property rights whether it's a house or a movie.

That's given me a brilliant idea - property rights - houses - what you think of as theft and piracy is actually more like squatting!

• It's a civil, not a criminal offence
• The owner has a remedy - but that involves the civil courts not the criminal courts
• Squatters are not entitled to damage anything in order to gain entry to their squat
• If a squatter has not been evicted after 12 years (I think) they can claim ownership of the squatted property - (I'm thinking orphaned books here)

Never thought I'd find myself agreeing with kennyc AND James Murdoch, but we seem to be speaking with one voice

Now Kenny, can I count on you to join me in changing the way we think and talk about this practice to more appropriate language?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by TGS

That's given me a brilliant idea - property rights - houses - what you think of as theft and piracy is actually more like squatting!

• It's a civil, not a criminal offence
• The owner has a remedy - but that involves the civil courts not the criminal courts
• Squatters are not entitled to damage anything in order to gain entry to their squat
• If a squatter has not been evicted after 12 years (I think) they can claim ownership of the squatted property - (I'm thinking orphaned books here)

Never thought I'd find myself agreeing with kennyc AND James Murdoch, but we seem to be speaking with one voice

Now Kenny, can I count on you to join me in changing the way we think and talk about this practice to more appropriate language?

Hee-Hee. So that's what's Google is doing eh? Squatting? on the toilet? and we're in the bowl?

Interesting thought though...

[blt50203]

Hmm. Interesting thread. I believe that I am entitled to read however I like, be it with a book, on a phone, a dedicated reader, etc.. Ebooks should be treated no differently than a regular book. If I buy a book I am entitled to resell it, loan it out, donate it, or whatever else I choose to do. DRM technology forces you to buy the book again if your device breaks.

If someone takes the time and effort to scan a book they purchased to share it, how is this wrong? And how is it different from giving it (the physical copy) to someone else to read. After all, the person you are giving it to didn't pay for it.

Not sure how this will all play out in the future, but if you buy it I say you own it.

That's my opinion, humbly submitted for your approval or bashing.

Originally Posted by blt50203

If someone takes the time and effort to scan a book they purchased to share it, how is this wrong? And how is it different from giving it (the physical copy) to someone else to read. After all, the person you are giving it to didn't pay for it.

The difference is that when you lend out your paper book it entirely leaves your possession. If the person you lent it to then lends it to yet another person the same is true.

On the other hand if you scan the paper book to make a digital e-book file and lend that out both people now have a copy. Further 'lending' could lead to an unlimited number of people with a copies all sourced from the purchase of a single copy.

I know that a number of people here seem to disagree with any concept of intellectual property rights, but it would be a barren world if this idea found broad moral and legal acceptance. How much new creative material would be produced in not just books, but all media, and even extending to inventions if one could only look on it as a hobby, not something to produce an income?

To take a reductio ad absurdum approach to one argument that has been expressed here about how obtaining free copies of copyrighted material does harm the copyright holder:

A new author writes a book and decides to publish it directly as an e-book for a price of say $7.00. We will keep it simple and say he does not bother with any DRM. One person actually pays to download the file and then uploads it to a web site for 'sharing' e-books; say darkwiiiingduckbooks.com. Anyone out there who pays $7.00 to download a copy from the original site is just being foolish when it is available for free at this site. If say 1,000 people download the e-book from darkwiiiingduckbooks.com the author has no legitimate cause for complaint as that $7,000 was only ever potential income.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

Anyone out there who pays $7.00 to download a copy from the original site is just being foolish when it is available for free at this site. If say 1,000 people download the e-book from darkwiiiingduckbooks.com the author has no legitimate cause for complaint as that $7,000 was only ever potential income.

There's a difference between "no legitimate complaint" and "those downloads are theft."

Insisting that they are only potential income is accurate. Nobody (or not many people) is/are claiming that the author isn't hurt by the loss of potential income--only that it's *not theft* the way that hacking into his bank account would be.

He hasn't lost money he had. He hasn't lost ebooks he owned. He hasn't had anything taken away from him, other than possibilities.

And acknowledging the probable value of those possibilities doesn't require renaming them to "theft." If removing the possibility of a sale is theft, so are used books, bad reviews, and failure to list a book on the front page of an advertisement.

I keep hearing, "but used books can only be read by one person at a time! And they eventually fall apart, so they can't get unlimited use!" ... except that our legal definition of "theft" has nothing to do with obsolescence; it's not less theftful to steal a pack of napkins that can only be used once than to steal a washcloth that can work for years.

If the moral issue is "this use prevents the author from getting paid," there are dozens of legal uses that do that. What makes them "not theft?" (I'd offer, "the fact that they're legal," except that copyright infringement isn't legally *theft* any more than these other acts are. And a scathing review could potentially be libelous, and therefore illegal, without being "theft.")

Those who believe massive unauthorized downloads are a big problem for ebook publishing (I'm undecided, myself, but agree with at least the potential) will need to find ways to convince people who disagree with them, not ways to verify to themselves how much wrongness they think is involved.

They can try to just push through stricter legislation without convincing the people current torrenting & using file transfer sites. They can't succeed without crippling substantial legitimate uses of the internet. (It's possible they can't succeed at all; "the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." All attempts to block info-exchange online, of any sort, have met with often-stunning levels of non-success.)

In order to enforce easily-breakable laws, you need to convince the general public that they *should* be followed. And the concept that "make a copy" means "stealing" is just not going to fly: stealing means there's *less* to go around, not more.

To encourage legal behavior, make it easier & more convenient than illegal behavior. Rants about how wrong the illegal behavior is, are irrelevant to that goal. Most people don't follow laws because they'd feel guilty for breaking them; they follow laws because they're convinced that the laws are useful and good.

A lot of people are not convinced that modern copyright laws and the DMCA are helpful to society as a whole, rather than the interests of mega-corporations and their affiliates.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Not good for those individuals and copyright owners who are victims of theft.

The music publishers have had a vast increase in profits since internet downloading became widespread. Are you saying they are not passing any of that extra profit on to the musicians?

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by schmolch

What a horrible world we live in where we have free access to (almost) all Books.
We should rather watch more TV to improve ourselfs and our fellow human beings.
You can call it stealing and criminal as much as you want, in the end it is still a good thing for all of us.

AH, but people are also STEALING TV programmes by allowing people to watch them.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

To encourage legal behavior, make it easier & more convenient than illegal behavior.

Price ebooks at what you would pay for a tatty reading copy of a paperback and nobody who would otherwise have paid for it will bother looking for a free copy. There will still be people who will get it for free, but since they would never pay for it anyway there is no loss of income. Or if you were really greedy you could just inject advertising into the free copies and make money from those people as well.

^Elfwreck

Fair enough I don't want to get caught up in a semantics argument over the use of the word theft, or any other word or phrase. Still, in the hypothetical scenario I presented, at the end 7001 and individuals have copies of the book and one has paid for it. If everyone cannot agree that this represents a real material loss of income to the author I don't know what else I can say?

Perhaps another scenario both more and less hypothetical? In an entirely conceivable future where e-books represent 95%+ of the book selling market traditional publishing houses have all but disappeared and the major source for purchase of e-books is godzillamazon and a few other web outlets that function as book outlets. These take a percent of the price of each e-book in exchange for the visibility they provide as well as for handling the transactions. In this future H.K. Rowling first publishes Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Now as before the first person to buy and download the e-book turns around and uploads it to a file sharing site where it can be downloaded for free. Over 100 million smart people do so. In this scenario would Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, or any of the subsequent books ever have been written? Did H.K Rowling suffer a real material loss?

^Elfwreck & Mr. Ploppy

Hearing arguments that suggest the legality and/or morality of obtaining copyrighted e-books without paying for them is dependent on pricing of the e-books I can't help but think of this hoary old joke:

At a high society party a wealthy older gentleman approaches an attractive and elegantly dressed young lady and asks,

“Well you have sex with me for a million dollars?”

She replies in the affirmative.

The gentlemen then asks,

“Well you do it for $100 dollars?”

The young lady taking great offense replies,

“Certainly not! What do you take me for, a whore?”

The gentlemen responds,

“We have already established that. Now we are just negotiating the price.”

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by TGS

That's given me a brilliant idea - property rights - houses - what you think of as theft and piracy is actually more like squatting!

• It's a civil, not a criminal offence
• The owner has a remedy - but that involves the civil courts not the criminal courts
• Squatters are not entitled to damage anything in order to gain entry to their squat
• If a squatter has not been evicted after 12 years (I think) they can claim ownership of the squatted property - (I'm thinking orphaned books here)

Never thought I'd find myself agreeing with kennyc AND James Murdoch, but we seem to be speaking with one voice

Now Kenny, can I count on you to join me in changing the way we think and talk about this practice to more appropriate language?

And what is your street address again? I've always had a hankering to possess property in Denmark! However, before I set out to squat my way onto your property, I have to demand certain conditions be met: all utilities must be provided at your cost; adequate supplies of food (fresh and organic veggies and fruit, meat that has not been exposed to dangerous levels of antibiotics, etc.) must be available at the price levels found in deepest Mississippi; the place simply *MUST* be furnished to the levels found in the best mansions of Europe. Have your person call my person and let's talk!

Derek

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

^Elfwreck

Still, in the hypothetical scenario I presented, at the end 7001 and individuals have copies of the book and one has paid for it. If everyone cannot agree that this represents a real material loss of income to the author I don't know what else I can say?
.”

How much would the author have lost if only 3 of those 7001 people who downloaded his book actually read it, and the rest just burnt it onto a CDR with thousands of other books and forgot about them? How much would the author have lost if one of those 3 readers then goes on to buy a copy of his next book as soon as it comes out, and the one after that?

Things aren't as black and white as you would like to think.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

How much would the author have lost if only 3 of those 7001 people who downloaded his book actually read it, and the rest just burnt it onto a CDR with thousands of other books and forgot about them? How much would the author have lost if one of those 3 readers then goes on to buy a copy of his next book as soon as it comes out, and the one after that?

Things aren't as black and white as you would like to think.

You're right, they are even moreso!

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

Perhaps another scenario both more and less hypothetical? In an entirely conceivable future where e-books represent 95%+ of the book selling market traditional publishing houses have all but disappeared and the major source for purchase of e-books is godzillamazon and a few other web outlets that function as book outlets.

In an entirely conceivable future, cars will run on solar-powered electricity, and internal-combustion engines will be deemed a pollution hazard; should we start insisting that people do not drive cars on public streets right now?

WHEN OR IF ebooks become the dominant form of text-based information exchange, we can figure out what kinds of behaviors regarding them are ethical. Right now, ebooks are a niche market, fraught with weird technical issues and bizarre legal ones (geo restrictions, DRM, odd copyright notifications even on PD books), and publishers who want to survive after they are the dominant form will need to figure out how to make their customers happy with their products.

Most publishing houses are fighting very hard to *prevent* ebooks from overtaking pbooks. And they're doing a wonderfully effective job of it; digital music is everywhere, while digital books are still rare, despite having been around longer. But while they're preventing a mainstream conversion to ebook as the standard form, they're encouraging an underground movement of techno-fanatics who are rapidly developing tools, both hardware & software, to deal with the eventual shift, without any corporate or even government oversight.

The big 6 publishing houses want to believe that they'll dominate the ebook market like they dominate the pbook one... but they're rapidly losing their window of opportunity to do so. And Godzillamazon isn't going to take over in their place--because it's trying too hard to meet the needs (or appease the fears) of those mainstream publishers, and that means *not* providing cheap, convenient ebooks. (TPZ means "not convenient," and the pricing ranges they've set up means "not cheap enough" in a lot of cases.)