Sideloading: Own content or "from somewhere else"

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

...Why would you leave something you paid for in the hands of someone else? Would you walk out of a store a leave your package sitting on the counter? This is NO different. You paid for it, it belongs in your PC/reader where you have access at all times...

I've got an entirely different practice.

As a teenager, I was (amongst other stuff) collecting comics and books.
Oh, how I did care about those.
The ones I purchased new even 10 years later still did look like new.
My nickname is "Monk" (as in Adrian, not clerics), so you can imagine my tidiness.
When moving, I eventually packaged them in huge cardboard boxes. I even put those hygroscopic (or whatever you call them) thingies in the boxes to suck up any moisture.
And, surprise, surprise: I never ever touched those boxes again in the last 14 years.
I wouldn't be surprised, if most of them would have rotted away in the meantime. Thousands of them, once a proud collection.

I've had similar experiences with lots of stuff.
Everything has its era. But at some stage you will let go, without ever looking back (much).
So I see books similar to, let's say, a vacation: They are an enormous fun. But they won't last forever. You will remember the highlights forever. But you move on.

To put it in a nutshell:
Even though I love all my gadgets, I'll never have to care about the battery dying on me. I may love it now, but I definitely will use something else in a year tops.
And same for the books: I have 500 lit-files lying around uselessly. I even had converted them years ago. And they are DRM-free. But I won't bother converting them.
Of the 500, probably only 100 are still highly interesting. And of those 100, I maybe would like to read only 10 at the moment. I easily will find hundreds of equally entertaining other books. And I can afford, re-purchasing 10 of the maybe 120 books I read per year.

And:
I put all things into context.
Some will say, even 10 books are € 100 and a lot of money.
Yes, you're right, if you look at it as a single expenditure.
But that's not how I perceive such purchases.
I buy my books mostly when on a trip.
A 3 days business trip will cost, let's say € 100 for the train, € 150 for 2 nights in the hotel and € 100 for 2 dinners, € 50 for cab fares. This comes up to about € 400 easily. Not considering clothing, suitcases, pens, batteries, my train card and whatever additional costs.
Frankly, after those 3 days I couldn't even tell, if somebody took another € 20 or even € 50 out of my wallet. So I simply don't mind € 10 for a re-purchased book once per month (10 per year in the example above).
But I do mind the time I would have to spend worrying and fumbling around.
I've raised this point in another thread and have been in the clear minority. Most members don't care about the time spent and don't consider it a burden.

Coming back to your example:
You compared to buying a package and taking it with you out of the store.
I would compare it to a dinner or an evening at the cinema. Both are way overpriced hobbies. Reading will cost € 1 per hour or even can be for free. But the restaurant will cost € 50 or more per hour. Not very efficient. But it obviously was fun, else you wouldn't have gone there. So it was worth it.
If I (in the example from above) loose the 10 books I would like to re-read now, I would have had costs of € 10.8 instead of € 10.0 for the remaining 120 books. Does this harm my fun in any way?
You might say: "You've lost your 500 original books, not just the 10. So your loss is 500 x € 10".
But:
a.) I've read many of those books before. So they're not entirely lost, I have my memories left.
b.) Whether my paper books from my youth still are in my cellar or have rotted away: What's the difference for me now? Their era is in the past.

I'm a figure driven guy.
For example, I vividly remember the costs for my last car.
Or the monthly mortgage I pay for 14 years already.
In comparison to the costs of living, the costs of having fun are almost nil. One normally can afford, to not care about efficiency or productivity for hobbies. Usually, they only will make up for maybe 5% to 25% of ones budget...
But funny enough: Most people care more about -in this example- the loss of 10 eBooks than about the costs for gas for commuting. Not to mention the costs for the car...

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Not most, all.
Sideloaded implies not-delivered-via-storefront-syncing. Unsurprisingly, pirates never download their stolen books from the Storefront.

Definitions I've found:
a.) ...in reference to the process of transferring data between two local devices, in particular between a computer and a mobile device...
b.) Sideloading is the installation of an application on a mobile device without using the device’s official application-distribution method.

So it could be both:
Definition one for example wouldn't consider download via calibre cloud storage sideloading per se.
Before reading the definitions a while ago, I tended towards your interpretation.
Sideloading = some unofficial method for avoiding the standard process.

BTW: HarryT stated the same here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...80&postcount=8
"Most people use the word to mean "loading via the USB connection".

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

What makes you think, pirated content mainly is from OCRed material?
Why not convert digital content, thus eliminating any discriminating header information (user name, credit card number)?

That's how it happens for movies.
There are tools you legally (?) can buy in open webstores.
They strip iTunes movies (supposedly it even works for rentals) from DRM and make a quick (supposedly loss-free) copy without user information.
I wouldn't rely on such marketing information and certainly never would distribute any content that might link to me. But that's what I've heard about movies and it kind of makes sense.
Of course there's the occasional TV episode you can download only hours after initial broadcast, so this obviously has to bee some digital recording...

Anyway...
Will pirates really scan an OCR?
I've seen this for comics with the respective signature on the front page.
But for books?
Years ago, extremely well made PDFs of the Harry Potter books had been circulated. They definitely had been scanned, this was obvious from the layout and such.
But nowadays?
Maybe some older books still aren't available in digital form and might find their producer via scan and OCR.
But I really would be surprised, if someone went through such troubles for content, that already exists digitally.

I was assuming since they already had the book, they wouldn't need to specifically convert it to EPUB because of some ridiculous advocacy-of-the-EPUB.

Unless they want to nuke the text back to TXT/Markdown or something, the watermarks could be hiding anywhere. Speaking of which, how many books actually have watermarks at all? Dunno, I have never gone into the issue...

I imagine they have their tools for stripping metadata out, people like that would make them. Relying on just a mobi-to-epub conversion seems rather risky, but what would I know? I have never thought about how to illegally distribute all my purchases.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

You must not read classics then.
Neither do I, but at least I know they exist.
...

Depends on the definition of classics.
I don't read the Iliad anymore (did so 30 years ago).
But I'll read Daniel Defoe, Oscar Wilde, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas... I consider them "classical literature" (project Gutenberg agrees).
But even though they are out of copyright, you still can buy them as special editions. And I do so. I avoid free stuff. In German we have a saying: "What costs nothing is worth nothing" and I find some truth to that.
Some will say, the classics in MR are more caringly prepared than classics you can buy.
Still:
For one, I enjoy buying. There's something satisfying to purchasing.
And last but not least: Like I wrote before: What are those € 10 compared to your mortgage, gas costs for commuting and other costs for living. Many care about the cents and forget about the bills...

Admittedly, I reflected my own purchasing behavior onto the others and simply din't consider free stuff being that important. Still: If you download a freebie, be it classics or be it some bonus program form Amazon, that's the same process as buying a book from them. You check it out and all the other process steps.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

No, that's public domain so I included those under the purchased choice, meaning it came from legit sources, whether I paid or not for it.

Originally Posted by mgmueller

To me, this clearly would fall into the legally obtained = purchased category.

Because it is of course highly intuitive to read "purchased" as "obtained legally from anonymizing sources".

"I buy all my ebooks from Project Gutenberg". Yeah, right.

Some purchases might be for "0", like someone described before for freebies from Amazon, where you still use the 1-click button and get a bill for "0".
Some purchases may be via flatrate/monthly fee. Some may be from public libraries. You don't pay directly, but (eventually) via your taxes.

And I am not and never have been talking about those... I have been talking about PG and the Patricia Clark Memorial Library and other such sources.
Are those being paid for? How?

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I was assuming since they already had the book, they wouldn't need to specifically convert it to EPUB because of some ridiculous advocacy-of-the-EPUB. ...

You wrote "whatever their OCR spits out".
As per Google's definition, OCR lets you convert images with text into text documents using automated computer algorithms.
And my question was: Why do you assume, pirates would handle images, thus needing OCR, instead of processing the digital files that usually exist already.
Maybe there are copy protections that can't be cracked yet. But even then it would be more efficient and accurate quality-wise, to process the digital data. Manually in the worst case. Still better and faster than OCR.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Definitions I've found:
...in reference to the process of transferring data between two local devices, in particular between a computer and a mobile device...
Sideloading is the installation of an application on a mobile device without using the device’s official application-distribution method.

So it could be both:
Definition one for example wouldn't consider download via calibre cloud storage sideloading per se.
Before reading the definitions a while ago, I tended towards your interpretation.
Sideloading = some unofficial method for avoiding the standard process.

BTW: HarryT stated the same here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...80&postcount=8
"Most people use the word to mean "loading via the USB connection".

Perhaps I disagree with him...

Sideloading is most commonly used for USB connection, because most commonly that is what people do.

IF people thought about it for a bit, they would associate sideloading with calibre cloud and even SSH transfer...

Why should it be limited to the specificity of the USB protocol?

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Depends on the definition of classics.
I don't read the Iliad anymore (did so 30 years ago).
But I'll read Daniel Defoe, Oscar Wilde, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas... I consider them "classical literature" (project Gutenberg agrees).
But even though they are out of copyright, you still can buy them as special editions. And I do so. I avoid free stuff. In German we have a saying: "What costs nothing is worth nothing" and I find some truth to that.
Some will say, the classics in MR are more caringly prepared than classics you can buy.
Still:
For one, I enjoy buying. There's something satisfying to purchasing.
And last but not least: Like I wrote before: What are those € 10 compared to your mortgage, gas costs for commuting and other costs for living. Many care about the cents and forget about the bills...

Admittedly, I reflected my own purchasing behavior onto the others and simply din't consider free stuff being that important.

But apparently you also look for excuses to spend money on stuff; I definitely have heard the idea of not worrying too much about the cost of something you want, but it is a rare person who asks the vendor "can I pay you more money".
By all means, you go and give Amazon tip money.
That is not exactly empirical evidence. Stop projecting your purchasing habits on others.

Still: If you download a freebie, be it classics or be it some bonus program form Amazon, that's the same process as buying a book from them. You check it out and all the other process steps.

I have never been asked to log in and select books to go into a checkout cart and click the buy button and get a receipt, when downloading books from PG and the MobileRead Patricia Clark Memorial Library.


As I have said above, that is what I consider to be the classic case of freebie classics.

Not buying $0.00 books from Amazon.

Either way, you cannot discount the presence of such dealings.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

You wrote "whatever their OCR spits out".
As per Google's definition, OCR lets you convert images with text into text documents using automated computer algorithms.
And my question was: Why do you assume, pirates would handle images, thus needing OCR, instead of processing the digital files that usually exist already.
Maybe there are copy protections that can't be cracked yet. But even then it would be more efficient and accurate quality-wise, to process the digital data. Manually in the worst case. Still better and faster than OCR.

If they have an ebook, they don't need to convert to EPUB for some ridiculous advocacy-of-the-EPUB.

THEREFORE I MUST HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THE CASE WHERE THEY DON'T HAVE THE EBOOK, when I mentioned OCR.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

But apparently you also look for excuses to spend money on stuff....

I don't need an excuse for something I don't bother about.
I obviously wouldn't tip a merchant. But I wouldn't negotiate prices either.
If I buy book X for € 10 easy enough, why would I mind to re-purchase book Y for the very same amount?
I'll have the very same fun for the very same amount of time.
I might have spent those € 10 a few years ago already, but that's a matter of the past...

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

THEREFORE I MUST HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THE CASE WHERE THEY DON'T HAVE THE EBOOK, when I mentioned OCR...

Strange pirate, that is.
This (your point about not having the book), to some extent, has been true a few years ago.
10 or so years ago, it was a real contest who would be first to pirate the newest Harry Potter book.
Would it take an entire day after initial release, until a pirated copy pops up? Would it even happen before the publishing date?

But those days for most products are long gone.
Exactly because of that "pirating contest" publishers aim for synchronous publishing dates globally. And for all sorts of media at the same time.
After all, they want to sell the digital product while it's still fresh, not when the market already is flooded with digital copies - often of surprising quality.

I haven't seen an OCRed copy of a new title for years, but admittedly I'm not that close to the hacking/pirating scene. But I'd be highly surprised if it really still would happen that way.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Because it is of course highly intuitive to read "purchased" as "obtained legally from anonymizing sources".

"I buy all my ebooks from Project Gutenberg". Yeah, right.



And I am not and never have been talking about those... I have been talking about PG and the Patricia Clark Memorial Library and other such sources.
Are those being paid for? How?

You've made that point already clear.
My poll hasn't been unambiguously.
(I'm usually writing while in conference calls. When starting the poll and same now. I'm often enough distracted, I admit it. And I project my own pattern onto others).
But in the meantime everyone -you as well- know what was meant.

BTW: It's considered impolite and bad style, to write in capital letters and smash your head.
Idiots such as me might not deserve better. But intellectually superior people like you then even more should mind their manners.

I hope your healthy self-confidence pays in your job.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

...And I am not and never have been talking about those... I have been talking about PG and the Patricia Clark Memorial Library and other such sources.
Are those being paid for? How?

Content one gets there, most likely isn't exclusive, but can be obtained from numerous sources.
Especially out of copyright titles should be wildly spread.
And usually some of those sources will sell the titles.
You can't buy book X from the Patricia Clark Memorial Library.
But the very same title, albeit probably prepared and processed differently, can be purchased elsewhere.
For example, I could download the aforementioned Alexandre Dumas classics from here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54372
Prepared even by, it appears, HarryT.
Even though, personally I wouldn't look for a free copy. If I want it, I buy it from my usual source. If that's, for example, Amazon at the moment, I wouldn't even compare prices with Kobo or B&N.
Yes, I shouldn't project my own purchasing behavior onto others.
But again: I was interested in the results of the poll in one specific area.
This doesn't concern free stuff. You still could pirate stuff that costs in one source, although it's for free in another source. But that's kind of a construed scenario.
My main interest was the correlation between pirated stuff (not paying for them) and sideloading. This comparison for free stuff is way less interesting, since it kills one of the motivations of pirates (either saving money themselves or even generating a profit by selling pirated stuff)...

[Byrdie]

I think I have seen this error in logic before. Once upon a time (say 10 or 12 years ago, iirc) the music industry determined that .mp3s could not possibly be used by anyone other than pirates, therefore .mp3 players like the Ipod must also be filled with only pirated music since the legit stuff was so expensive. Completely ignoring the fact there were people filling those players by ripping their already-purchased albums, many of which weren't available in digital format anyway, so that they didn't need to lug around bulky stereo gear and massive record collections. Not to mention home recordings and indie music often available from the bands for free. Hence the ".mp3 is an illegal file format!" propaganda the RIAA tried to spread.

And we all know how successful that little campaign was, now don't we?

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Byrdie

I think I have seen this error in logic before. Once upon a time (say 10 or 12 years ago, iirc) the music industry determined that .mp3s could not possibly be used by anyone other than pirates, therefore .mp3 players like the Ipod must also be filled with only pirated music since the legit stuff was so expensive. Completely ignoring the fact there were people filling those players by ripping their already-purchased albums, many of which weren't available in digital format anyway, so that they didn't need to lug around bulky stereo gear and massive record collections. Hence the ".mp3 is an illegal file format!" propaganda the RIAA tried to spread.

And we all know how successful that little campaign was, now don't we?

Nice analogy.

And now, MP3s quickly are dying (Apple showing the most drastic decline in MP3 sales ever).
Being replaced extensively already by streaming services.
And streaming services like Spotify already stumbling into massive problems due to wholesale content providers such as Amazon.
Which kind of proves my point, that no invest is forever. You can archive your MP3s. You'll find players still for some years. But there will be less and less motivation to actually do so.

From an early beginning, one had been able to rip his CDs and convert to MP3s.
For eBooks, it was way more complicated.
Yes, you can scan and OCR for way over 2 decades already. And there are professional book scanners for a somewhat affordable price. But who actually does so? Just comparing the effort of ripping a CD to scanning and OCRing books.
Only recently did solutions like "get a free download for your analog purchase, even though it was 2 years ago" pop up.

The interesting issue would be, how many readers actually use pirated material.
My guess would be, it's less than with CDs/MP3s. Simply because there are more alternatives, like public libraries for instance. And maybe because a book might deliver more value = 10 to 20 hours reading time vs. a few hours listening time.

Of course, a poll simply could ask:
Do you buy your stuff? Or do you download only free stuff? Or do you illegally download pirated stuff? But this wouldn't be allowed (advocating piracy) and couldn't lead to an authentic picture. Thus my detour over the link to sideloading...