Is the e-book threatening the future of our literary culture?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I don't think anything can be done about peer-to-peer filesharing or IRC, but websites where people upload texts could be pressured into checking for plagiarized content using the same method TurnItIn uses to check for plagiarized term papers in academia. It would require the publishers to submit their content for reference to the validation site, however.

And who would run the validation site and populate it with the data required to do the validation?

This method could possibly also be used for newsgroups, with a cancelbot, though I think it wouldn't be very effective.

Won't happen. The "distributed star" topology of news servers makes it impossible to validate content that way. And while there are "moderated" groups that require approval for posting, forging it is trivial. I read one group where you have to do that to post, and the fact that you can do so is considered evidence of your right to post there. (It's a tech group, aimed at sysadmins.)

But I think more people know how to get stuff from websites than P2P, IRC, and newsgroups combined.

I think you're quite right.
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Dennis

[LaughingVulcan]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Frankly, nothing.
<snip>
The folks who grab the illegal copies aren't likely to have paid for them in the first place, so it's not like you're losing revenue you might otherwise have had. And while illegal copies are available, how much of the market knows where to get them? And will the format be one they can use? I see lots of books scanned, OCRed, and posted to various newsgroups. As plain text. The effort to get it into a format I would want to read on my PDA is far more trouble than I care to go through, and I'm someone with sufficient technical knowledge that I could do it.
<snip>

I'm not sure about that. Certainly there are those out for a free lunch, but I've also seen opinions such as, "I'm grabbing the books that I can't seem to purchase from an eBook retailer." And also, "I only take the books that I already have paper copies of."

The question is how much of each are out there.

And it would be nice if there was some route to legally pay for the rights to such books - the amount that the publisher would profit plus pay the author for the copy.

[ebookpirate]

As JSWolf says,

"I've come to find out that a lot of the books being shared on the net are books not available for sale as ebooks. Thus scanned and OCRed. So I think in this case we blame the publishers. If the books are available, there would be less need to scan and OCR."


this is correct. I don't see many pirated files of publishers who are selling their book as ebooks online at a REASONABLE price, but if their books are not online or if their price is UNREASONABLE like 3 or more times the usual paperback price for that particular book, then i'll see the files. Penguin books, especially. I sometimes laugh when i see a couple of books that would usually be paperback books for $5-$7 yet the publisher/author has to inflate it up to $15 to $30 for the hardback's introduction and do the same for the ebook, yet i'll see it FREE as a pirated file.

But they're getting sneaky. They'll offer a book for $15 in every ebookfile except mobipocket which will be for $5. Like there's a chance i'll EVER download mobipocket or any other proprietary software!! Forgetaboutit!! I'd rather pay more for a more open format like Microsoft's LIT.

And some publishers know the score like simon and schuster which lists their ebooks for a very low price. i'd rather save up all my $$'s for simon and schuster's site and even try out authors i don't know about from their site.

performers from Homer to shakespeare made a living not from copyright but from selling tickets, getting patrons, performing at events or castles or fairs. Today's "artists" before the mp3 era (hello, rolling stones) just want to collect and sit on their collective a***es.

in my humble opinion, i think the best way for authors/publishers to collect is to give away their books for free or cheap and insert advertisements in them. That way, everyone benefits.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

And who would run the validation site and populate it with the data required to do the validation?

Yeah, that's the sticky part.

I happened to stumble across a nice alternative to TurnItIn today, though: http://www.copyscape.com. You can try the site for free. An especially nice feature is that you can pay for a service called "Copysentry" that will continually scan the web and tell you when copies of your stuff show up elsewhere. Also, you don't have to post your content to the web with the "premium" account -- you can paste it into their input window. So an author wouldn't have to post their content to a public location.

And of course, someone like Cory Doctorow could use this in an inverse way, to see how far his CC books have spread.

I don't know if it can check for zipped attachments, though. It wouldn't be that hard to develop something that would do this, however. Seems like a market opportunity for someone.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ebookpirate

But they're getting sneaky. They'll offer a book for $15 in every ebookfile except mobipocket which will be for $5. Like there's a chance i'll EVER download mobipocket or any other proprietary software!! Forgetaboutit!! I'd rather pay more for a more open format like Microsoft's LIT.

LIT is "more open" because it has been easily cracked. It certainly wasn't designed as open.

You can crack Mobi, too, and one of the other folks here wrote an app to do it.

performers from Homer to shakespeare made a living not from copyright but from selling tickets, getting patrons, performing at events or castles or fairs. Today's "artists" before the mp3 era (hello, rolling stones) just want to collect and sit on their collective a***es.

The Stones still get out on the road and play.

I know a chap who is doing something like you suggest. His band has a couple of major label and a batch of indie label releases. They have a following, and make their living touring. He'd like you to buy their CDs, but if you rip them and share them with friends, he's cool with that, too: the more people who hear the music, the more will go to see them when they play.

It's turning the industry model upside down. Before MP3s, that album was the product, and you played gigs to promote the album. Now we are seeing the albums promoting the gigs.

But meanwhile, how does that model translate for an author of books?

in my humble opinion, i think the best way for authors/publishers to collect is to give away their books for free or cheap and insert advertisements in them. That way, everyone benefits.

I'm not sure the pool of ad dollars is big enough. And if that's doable at all, it will be major publishers who can implement it. Smaller independent and folks self-publishing will be frozen out. They won't be able to attract advertisers. Advertisers place ads where they think the ads will generate sales, and be seen by a sufficient number of viewers interested in whatever it is they advertise.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I don't know if it can check for zipped attachments, though. It wouldn't be that hard to develop something that would do this, however. Seems like a market opportunity for someone.

Peering into Zipped attachments is easy enough: GMail does it.

Peering into Zipped attachments posted on another site is not.
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Dennis

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I'm not sure the pool of ad dollars is big enough. And if that's doable at all, it will be major publishers who can implement it. Smaller independent and folks self-publishing will be frozen out. They won't be able to attract advertisers. Advertisers place ads where they think the ads will generate sales, and be seen by a sufficient number of viewers interested in whatever it is they advertise.

What about something like google ads? Only for downloaded files?

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Peering into Zipped attachments is easy enough: GMail does it.

Peering into Zipped attachments posted on another site is not.

Not sure I follow you here... do you mean if the link to the zipped file is hosted on some other site it would somehow be harder to peer into?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Not sure I follow you here... do you mean if the link to the zipped file is hosted on some other site it would somehow be harder to peer into?

I think it might be impossible to peer into.

To look inside a Zip file, you must have the file, so that your search routines can open it and look inside it.

If the file is on a remote site, you must either grab a copy of the file, or use the mechanism the remote site might provide for peering into the file. Most sites I've seen that host files don't provide the latter option, and if the site requires a logon/password to access hosted material, you won't be able to use the first option, either.
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Dennis

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I think it might be impossible to peer into.

To look inside a Zip file, you must have the file, so that your search routines can open it and look inside it.

If the file is on a remote site, you must either grab a copy of the file, or use the mechanism the remote site might provide for peering into the file. Most sites I've seen that host files don't provide the latter option, and if the site requires a logon/password to access hosted material, you won't be able to use the first option, either.
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Dennis

Ah. I was assuming you'd grab a copy of the file. After all, when you look at a website, you're effectively grabbing a copy of the HTML file (or whatever is generated by the script that creates the page, if we're not talking about static pages).

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Ah. I was assuming you'd grab a copy of the file. After all, when you look at a website, you're effectively grabbing a copy of the HTML file (or whatever is generated by the script that creates the page, if we're not talking about static pages).

Yes, you are, but the HTML file is not a compressed archive that must be opened and examined. And whether you can get to it at all depends upon the site. Does it require a login/password?

Even if it doesn't, you may not be able to grab the file in a neatly automated manner. Sites use a file called ROBOTS.TXT to specify what a web spider can search and what it shouldn't index. Spiders that ignore ROBOTS.TXT may just get their originating IP address blocked by the site they spider.
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Dennis

[UncleDuke]

the printing press threatened the world, so to this. it will be a new world with new order. do not weep for the buggy whips of the old days.

[nekokami]

DMcCunney, agreed about logins and robots.txt (yes, I know about that file). Does scribd, just to pick an example, require a login to download an attachment? I'm guessing that their files aren't that protected, given the recent SWFA kerfuffle.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

DMcCunney, agreed about logins and robots.txt (yes, I know about that file). Does scribd, just to pick an example, require a login to download an attachment? I'm guessing that their files aren't that protected, given the recent SWFA kerfuffle.

I have no idea what Scribd does. Beyond a fast visit to look at the sight, I didn't investigate.

The point was simply that validation is not an easy process, and may not be possible to implement in a meaningful form.
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Dennis

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I have no idea what Scribd does. Beyond a fast visit to look at the sight, I didn't investigate.

The point was simply that validation is not an easy process, and may not be possible to implement in a meaningful form.
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Dennis

As I just remarked in the other thread (about the SFWA mess), I think a service could be built that would check content against Google Books. Then a publisher (or several of 'em) could lean on Scribd to check content on upload. If they did that, they could avoid being accused of being pirate havens to begin with.

Though I don't know if Scribd would consider it in their interest to take that kind of precaution.