My perspective on buying books with DRM

[barryem]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Yeah, sure, whatever you say. Take your openness somewhere else and stop advocating piracy on MobileRead.

I don't and never have advocated piracy. If you read my post you'll see that I stated that I buy nearly all my books. The ones I get from pirate places are the very few I want to read that I can't find on Amazon or other legal sources. That happens maybe once or twice a year, and not every year.

I also sometimes buy a book which is formatted badly enough to be distracting and I'll sometimes find a better pirate copy to read. In this case I've already bought the book. That happens a bit more often than being unable to find a book on Amazon but not much more.

It's not that I'm actually against piracy. I'm not. What others do is their business and I'm glad those books are available for the few times I need them. But I do want authors to keep writing books for me and for that reason I think it's important that I pay for books.

As for the argument that getting a pirated book is stealing, that really depends on your definition of stealing. Most people think of stealing as a zero-sum game. I take it out of your pocket and now I have it and you don't. But it's reasonable to include other definitions and call it stealing. I think doing so is more about giving your statements an emotional impact than anything else. I doubt that downloading a pirated book would fit any legal definition of stealing but I'm not a lawyer and I can't really be sure of that.

If I advocate anything it's paying for the books you read. I hope you do. I do. For those who don't, I hope they at least read. A world full of well read people would be a better world.

I was one of the very early ebook readers, long before you could buy ebooks or ebook reading devices. I've talked about this in this forum before but I'll mention it again. In the days before the internet became available to the public there were BBS systems and there was Compuserve. I was active in the HP forum on Compuserve because I had an HP 95lx (later a 200lx), a small pocket size MS-Dos computer that ran on 2 AA batteries. One of the guys in the Compuserve forum wrote a little app for reading books in plain text. I seriously doubt this was the first electronic ereader but it was the first one I saw.

I bought a copy, which came with a book that had been scanned by the author, I forget which book it was, and read it. Soon I scanned a few books, as did other members of that forum, and we were sharing them.

Compuserve had very strict rules about piracy, which, in those days, meant software, since there were no ebooks or music files, etc. Anyone caught posting copyrighted material (programs) was kicked off, and they monitored it pretty closely. But they didn't consider this piracy and they gave us room to share these books. I think we eventually had a couple hundred books in our little library.

Of course that was piracy by any legal definition but we didn't know it and neither did Compuserve. We were just sharing books, something avid readers usually do.

Anyway, this, and probably other similar groups, were the beginning of ebooks. Ebooks grew out of piracy. Without piracy we might have had ebooks anyway but there's no way to really know that.

Years later when the Palm Pilot came available something like the same thing happened. I was an early Palm user and there were ebook readers for sale to use with easily downloadable books long before there were ebooks to buy. Then ebook sellers came along and soon they began talking about those other books being pirated, which, of course, they were, and the idea of piracy was born.

Barry

[Rbneader]

Originally Posted by barryem

Of course it's not a societal ideal. Ideals are about how we should behave. Larceny is one of the ways we actually do behave, ignoring the ideals.

I'm not sure the people of the USA are really more larcenous than other people. I spent most of my adult life in a very culturally diverse area in Houston and had friends from a lot of countries and cultures and I found them to be about as honest and as dishonest as we locals. But I do think we are a bit more open about it.

Barry

Legally and cultural, the US is much more focused on intellectual property rights than many other countries. Russia and China are standouts in terms of winking at copyright violations, for example.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by barryem

I don't and never have advocated piracy. If you read my post you'll see that I stated that I buy nearly all my books. The ones I get from pirate places are the very few I want to read that I can't find on Amazon or other legal sources. That happens maybe once or twice a year, and not every year.

I also sometimes buy a book which is formatted badly enough to be distracting and I'll sometimes find a better pirate copy to read. In this case I've already bought the book. That happens a bit more often than being unable to find a book on Amazon but not much more.

As I said, your casual acceptance of downloading pirated ebooks at any inconvenience essentially glorifies their existence. If there were no pirated ebooks, then you would no doubt buy the pbook and have it scanned and OCRed -- there is a whole cottage industry in that area.

It's not that I'm actually against piracy. I'm not. What others do is their business and I'm glad those books are available for the few times I need them. But I do want authors to keep writing books for me and for that reason I think it's important that I pay for books.

As for the argument that getting a pirated book is stealing, that really depends on your definition of stealing. Most people think of stealing as a zero-sum game. I take it out of your pocket and now I have it and you don't. But it's reasonable to include other definitions and call it stealing. I think doing so is more about giving your statements an emotional impact than anything else. I doubt that downloading a pirated book would fit any legal definition of stealing but I'm not a lawyer and I can't really be sure of that.

stealing == acquiring something through illegal channels, i.e. you have no right to possess it.

Loss on the part of the original owner is a common consequence, and the main reason it is found to be reprehensible. It is not IMHO fundamental to the nature of stealing.

In this case, pirating a book is a fair equivalent to a zero-sum game. It is a common misconception that no one is hurt by piracy. And no doubt many pirates would never have paid money.
But piracy is a trend toward authors not getting paid, regardless of the lack of an exchange of goods.

I have my doubts about how damaging piracy is in a practical sense myself -- but I still cannot translate that to approval or condoning such behavior, since pirates don't deserve what they take.

I reject your weasel words.

If I advocate anything it's paying for the books you read. I hope you do. I do. For those who don't, I hope they at least read. A world full of well read people would be a better world.

That is such a messed up view of the world I am not entirely sure how to begin describing it, but I will endeavor to try.

Have you heard of public libraries?
Theft is not a prerequisite to being literate, in fact there are any number of huge cultural movements to bring literacy to the unwashed masses, even the poor ones. If nothing else, people can be well-read on public domain texts.
There is no good reason why society needs the reading of current fiction over any other type of literature... and piracy tends to be targeted at the books that aren't already free, which is mostly current fiction.

I was one of the very early ebook readers, long before you could buy ebooks or ebook reading devices. I've talked about this in this forum before but I'll mention it again. In the days before the internet became available to the public there were BBS systems and there was Compuserve. I was active in the HP forum on Compuserve because I had an HP 95lx (later a 200lx), a small pocket size MS-Dos computer that ran on 2 AA batteries. One of the guys in the Compuserve forum wrote a little app for reading books in plain text. I seriously doubt this was the first electronic ereader but it was the first one I saw.

I bought a copy, which came with a book that had been scanned by the author, I forget which book it was, and read it. Soon I scanned a few books, as did other members of that forum, and we were sharing them.

Compuserve had very strict rules about piracy, which, in those days, meant software, since there were no ebooks or music files, etc. Anyone caught posting copyrighted material (programs) was kicked off, and they monitored it pretty closely. But they didn't consider this piracy and they gave us room to share these books. I think we eventually had a couple hundred books in our little library.

Of course that was piracy by any legal definition but we didn't know it and neither did Compuserve. We were just sharing books, something avid readers usually do.

Anyway, this, and probably other similar groups, were the beginning of ebooks. Ebooks grew out of piracy. Without piracy we might have had ebooks anyway but there's no way to really know that.

That may very well be, but it could equally be argued that ebooks came out of freely-available public domain texts, cf. Project Gutenberg who were *very* active in the early ebook movement.
Ebooks were not born of pirated ebooks per se, and they doubtless would have arisen anyway, just from the efforts of Michael Hart and other public-spirited and honest individuals.

Regardless -- that benefit may come out of a bad thing is not valid grounds for reclassifying it as a good thing.

Years later when the Palm Pilot came available something like the same thing happened. I was an early Palm user and there were ebook readers for sale to use with easily downloadable books long before there were ebooks to buy. Then ebook sellers came along and soon they began talking about those other books being pirated, which, of course, they were, and the idea of piracy was born.

Barry

Okay, point???

[RobertDDL]

I'm not arguing, just posing a question.

I have a newly found favorite author (Jane Gaskell). All her books have long been out of print, long before the age of the e-book. So, I have to buy them used. Some of them I got for almost nothing, some of them for more than a new book would cost, but still affordable. Of one (The Shiny Narrow Grin), the cheapest copy I could find cost $350, plus shipping. While looking (in vain) for a less expensive copy, I unexpectedly came across a pirated one, to be downloaded freely.

Now, seriously, if the $350 went to the author, in her case I'd even be willing to pay them, but as it is, she wouldn't see one cent of it. I'd still be willing, in the absence of a proper e-book edition to buy, to buy a used pbook copy for a reasonable price, both for moral reasons and because this pirated copy (which I have downloaded) ignores the italics.

But $350?

So, where are we here on the "stealing" issue?

[latepaul]

Still wrong IMO. Otherwise you end up with a slippery slope of what price is too high and justifies the piracy.

[Apache]

Or you could send used books to a scanning service and have them converted to ebooks.
Apache

[darryl]

Or, as I'm sure many people do, you can accept that it is morally wrong and do it anyway. I have not been in this position, and am not 100% sure what I would do, though I would be (ironically enough) less than honest if I did not admit that I would be sorely tempted.

[RobertDDL]

Originally Posted by Apache

Or you could send used books to a scanning service and have them converted to ebooks.

This is what I've been doing with the others, but with this one, it would still cost me $350, so how does this resolve the problem?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by darryl

Or, as I'm sure many people do, you can accept that it is morally wrong and do it anyway. I have not been in this position, and am not 100% sure what I would do, though I would be (ironically enough) less than honest if I did not admit that I would be sorely tempted.

One option would be to request the book from the library. I've done that on a number of occasions with rare/expensive books.

[RobertDDL]

Originally Posted by HarryT

One option would be to request the book from the library. I've done that on a number of occasions with rare/expensive books.

Which library in Vienna would have a British fantasy novel from the 1960s, virtually unknown now, in English?

And if you can get a rare/expensive book from a library, is scanning it legally and morally less questionable than downloding an (assumedly) pirated copy?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by RobertDDL

Which library in Vienna would have a British fantasy novel from the 1960s, virtually unknown now, in English?

I don't know about Austria, but in the UK, all libraries can use the British Library's lending service to borrow books. I imagine that the odds are pretty good that whatever Austria's equivalent is would have it.

And if you can get a rare/expensive book from a library, is scanning it legally and morally less questionable than downloding an (assumedly) pirated copy?

Why would you need to scan it? The previous poster simply wants to read it. He could read the paper copy.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by RobertDDL

I'm not arguing, just posing a question.

I have a newly found favorite author (Jane Gaskell). All her books have long been out of print, long before the age of the e-book. So, I have to buy them used. Some of them I got for almost nothing, some of them for more than a new book would cost, but still affordable. Of one (The Shiny Narrow Grin), the cheapest copy I could find cost $350, plus shipping. While looking (in vain) for a less expensive copy, I unexpectedly came across a pirated one, to be downloaded freely.

Now, seriously, if the $350 went to the author, in her case I'd even be willing to pay them, but as it is, she wouldn't see one cent of it. I'd still be willing, in the absence of a proper e-book edition to buy, to buy a used pbook copy for a reasonable price, both for moral reasons and because this pirated copy (which I have downloaded) ignores the italics.

But $350?

So, where are we here on the "stealing" issue?

It is definitely still stealing. That is just a simple factoid.

That being said, I can definitely hear why it could be a reasonable and understandable resolution. I would have to say, like darryl, that in such a case I would be lying if I said I wouldn't do it be really tempted.

I think it is important that even if one does, ultimately, end up pirating books, they should keep in mind that it is indisputably wrong.
It does happen that people do the wrong thing. No one is perfect.
But if you do it and consider it totally all right, then you are well along a slippery slope, where you can justify all kinds of piracy when really it's just easier.

Really, that is what set me off. The unashamed midset that there is nothing whatsoever wrong, eyebrow-raising, or out of the ordinary in any way shape or form with pirating an ebook for internally-justified reasons.
And then bragging about it on a public forum that has an official no-piracy rule.

[RobertDDL]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't know about Austria, but in the UK, all libraries can use the British Library's lending service to borrow books. I imagine that the odds are pretty good that whatever Austria's equivalent is would have it.

In English? Hardly. Our libraries have books in German.

Originally Posted by HarryT

Why would you need to scan it? The previous poster simply wants to read it. He could read the paper copy.

This is a bit off topic, but to answer your question, because I want it for a friend who lives in the US, and who is blind. She would be entitled to read it for free, if it were available from the NLS or from bookshare.org, but it isn't, so I have to scan, OCR and proofread it for her.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by RobertDDL

This is a bit off topic, but to answer your question, because I want it for a friend who lives in the US, and who is blind. She would be entitled to read it for free, if it were available from the NLS or from bookshare.org, but it isn't, so I have to scan, OCR and proofread it for her.

If the book was ever published in the US, it should be in the Library of Congress.

[leitz]

Originally Posted by amazon author

It's a cat and mouse game, one day may come when removing DRM will be impossible or at least it will be very easy to trace the person who removed the DRM or shared it, etc.

Public libraries have e-books. It come a day when the every single book in the public library has a print and ebook version. The reason to have DRM-free books is to read the ebook in any e-reader device.