"eBook versions of owned paper books" Popular Front

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It is indeed, but unfortunately that's the way it is for the future, and doesn't affect the "historical" situation for existing works. Most other countries have had "life + x" copyright laws for decades, but the US has gone through all sorts of different copyright laws during the 20th century, which has left things in a real mess. Some things are in copyright, others aren't according to whether their copyright was "renewed" or not. In most countries, you can tell whether a work is in copyright or not simply by checking when the author died. In the US, you have to do searches to establish whether or not a copyright was renewed, which makes things very, very complicated.

The US now has pretty much the same copyright laws as everyone else, but those won't actually affect anything until the 2040s. In the mean time, the situation is complex and messy.

I don't think it's any more complex than anywhere else where the law changes with time. Just look at the signatory dates for those acts. I think it's a mess everywhere, particularly with new media like digital in particular.

[HarryT]

As I say, Kenny, it's not that the law has changed more often in the US than elsewhere, it's the fact that, up until 1964 (I think that's the right date) the US had a system of copyright registration and renewals, which (AFAIK) other countries did not. This means that you need to search copyright registers, and so on, to determine whether or not a particular work is still in copyright. In pretty much every other country, all you have to do is check when the author died. That's for books; there are of course of forms of copyright for such things as musical performances, and so on.

It really is a lot more complex to determine whether or not a book is in copyright in the US than it is elsewhere. Those of us who regularly upload books here can attest to that!

[braver]

CD vs paper book analogy is deeply flawed, because one is digital and the other is analog. It's not just the amount of effort, but in fact impossibility to scan the content into an equivalent digital form, which distinguishes A/D conversion from D/D. You can't really scan a book with all the figures, sidelines, etc.

Furthermore, the original printed book nowadays is produced from digital masters. It's much more natural for the publisher to produce an ebook from the same masters as the paper book he prints.

I posit that if the notion of the right to contents comes to pass, the right to have a digital original of any analog or digital instance will naturally follow, with the necessary fees and even profits. Perhaps, you can buy one instance at market price, and be eligible for digital upgrade at a discount.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by braver

CD vs paper book analogy is deeply flawed, because one is digital and the other is analog. It's not just the amount of effort, but in fact impossibility to scan the content into an equivalent digital form, which distinguishes A/D conversion from D/D. You can't really scan a book with all the figures, sidelines, etc.

Sorry, that one takes more effort than the other does not make the analogy "deeply flawed". It doesn't even make it a little flawed.

Originally Posted by braver

Furthermore, the original printed book nowadays is produced from digital masters. It's much more natural for the publisher to produce an ebook from the same masters as the paper book he prints.

A CD is produced from a digital master as well. You still don't get all the iTune downloads of a CD when you purchase the CD.

Originally Posted by braver

I posit that if the notion of the right to contents comes to pass, the right to have a digital original of any analog or digital instance will naturally follow, with the necessary fees and even profits. Perhaps, you can buy one instance at market price, and be eligible for digital upgrade at a discount.

I posit it will end up being much like the music scene is now.

Digital media will, over time and as ebook readers become more common, drop in price until it reaches a point which consumers think is fair to pay. At that point consumers will most likely simply buy the digital media. Those who want the physical copy of the book will pay for that too. Buying one will not confer any rights or entitlements to the other, either for free or at a discount. Along the way there may be marketing ploys and other isolated instances of digital copies being given away with the purchase of the physical book.

Time will tell which scenario will come to pass.

Cheers,
PKFFW

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

Digital media will, over time and as ebook readers become more common, drop in price until it reaches a point which consumers think is fair to pay. At that point consumers will most likely simply buy the digital media. Those who want the physical copy of the book will pay for that too. Buying one will not confer any rights or entitlements to the other, either for free or at a discount. Along the way there may be marketing ploys and other isolated instances of digital copies being given away with the purchase of the physical book.

I think as the devices get better and cheaper, more people will go digital and the whole idea of printing thousands of copies in advance will fall by the wayside for most of the things that are currently in print media today. Printing will probably still continue as a craft but not as a mass market production. If you want a paper copy, there's already POD. If the same format shifting rights apply (at least here in the US) it seems likely that you would be able to print your file. At the very least I think it would be a bad plan for the publishers not to include a right to printing. Even iTunes in its DRM days allowed you to burn a limited number of copies. After all, if you get too restrictive many people will choose to simply download the content without paying.

So it seems likely to me this concern about getting a free or highly discounted digital copy when purchasing print will be fairly short lived in the scheme of things. Not much consolation for those of us going through the transition where we have shelves and shelves of paper books. I think that's what we get for living in interesting times.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by Alisa

I think as the devices get better and cheaper, more people will go digital and the whole idea of printing thousands of copies in advance will fall by the wayside for most of the things that are currently in print media today. Printing will probably still continue as a craft but not as a mass market production. If you want a paper copy, there's already POD. If the same format shifting rights apply (at least here in the US) it seems likely that you would be able to print your file. At the very least I think it would be a bad plan for the publishers not to include a right to printing. Even iTunes in its DRM days allowed you to burn a limited number of copies. After all, if you get too restrictive many people will choose to simply download the content without paying.

So it seems likely to me this concern about getting a free or highly discounted digital copy when purchasing print will be fairly short lived in the scheme of things. Not much consolation for those of us going through the transition where we have shelves and shelves of paper books. I think that's what we get for living in interesting times.

Totally agree.

As for printing your digital file, yes I believe you will be allowed to do that just as you are allowed to burn your mp3's to disc. I'm not sure too many people will have the ability to print and bind themselves a nice pbook version of their digital file though. In order to do that they will very likely have to pay a printing company to do it.

Cheers,
PKFFW

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

Totally agree.

As for printing your digital file, yes I believe you will be allowed to do that just as you are allowed to burn your mp3's to disc. I'm not sure too many people will have the ability to print and bind themselves a nice pbook version of their digital file though. In order to do that they will very likely have to pay a printing company to do it.

Cheers,
PKFFW

Amazon already offers Print On Demand (POD) and they're not alone in the field. As the technology improves, the equipment will likely get more affordable allowing even more competition. It is currently significantly more expensive than mass produced books: $25+ for a modest sized book with very plain binding. However, even if the price never went down, that's not too bad if you consider that we will likely be buying mostly digital copies at lower prices and paying for far fewer print copies.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by Alisa

Amazon already offers Print On Demand (POD) and they're not alone in the field. As the technology improves, the equipment will likely get more affordable allowing even more competition. It is currently significantly more expensive than mass produced books: $25+ for a modest sized book with very plain binding. However, even if the price never went down, that's not too bad if you consider that we will likely be buying mostly digital copies at lower prices and paying for far fewer print copies.

Absolutely.

I was alluding to the fact that those print copies will have to be paid for. Just because one has bought a digital file of the content wont bestow some sort of right or entitlement to free or cheap copies of the content in some other format.

Cheers,
PKFFW

[neilmarr]

Amazon bought a young PoD company caled Booksurge a year or two ago and -- in typical bully-boy fashion -- refused to carry any longer the tens of thousands of titles produced by publishing houses that used better and cheaper PoD options (like Lightning Source International in the US and UK). Their main aim was to lose the big time author mills and self-publishing and vanity operations like PublishAmerica and Lulu's global package and corner that lucrative market for themselves. Genuine small indies they tended to leave alone after the initial scare. My own wee house uses (non-Amazon) PoD and prices are competitive with mass-produced books in the high street ... and at Amazon's own sites.

Sorry for the wee rant.

My purpose in popping into this thread, apart from reading what other folks miss of treebooks not available in ebook formats, was to ask if anyone knows where I could get an ebook copy of George R Stewart's *Earth Abides*. I've searched high and low because it was a favourite when I was a kid and read it many times and fancy another run at a post-apocalyptic groundbreaker to see if it holds the same appeal now that I'm an old man (the book was published in the year of my birth; 1949).

Cheers. Neil

[Patricia]

Google is usually good at locating ebooks. I put the author's name is quotation marks, then the title in quotation marks and then the word ebook.
e.g.
"George R Stewart" "Earth Abides" ebook

Unfortunately, this search string shows that there don't seem to be any legal ebooks of this title.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

Amazon bought a young PoD company caled Booksurge a year or two ago and -- in typical bully-boy fashion -- refused to carry any longer the tens of thousands of titles produced by publishing houses that used better and cheaper PoD options (like Lightning Source International in the US and UK). Their main aim was to lose the big time author mills and self-publishing and vanity operations like PublishAmerica and Lulu's global package and corner that lucrative market for themselves. Genuine small indies they tended to leave alone after the initial scare. My own wee house uses (non-Amazon) PoD and prices are competitive with mass-produced books in the high street ... and at Amazon's own sites.

Is that really the case, Neil? My recollection of the situation - and please do correct me if I'm wrong - was that Amazon simply required that they be supplied with 5 copies of each book, to eliminate the delays of POD printing. If this really is the situation, it doesn't seem like a very onerous requirement.

[macminer]

Originally Posted by Lo Zeno

Oh for xxxx's sake!
Stealing: taking something which you are not allowed to take.
This, at least, is what stealing means at my home.

I really cannot believe that people can be so brainless.

It seems that abstract reasoning is futile when emotions take over reasoning, so let's give an example. At my home, when my son takes my dictionary without being allowed to, he is certainly not stealing my dictionary. He is just using it without my permission. It may happen that I actually need that dictionary and go searching for it, only to find it on his desk and maybe I am even furious because of that, but there's no way I can call this stealing.

Mind this was an example where a person physically takes my book away from me (causing temporary deprivation) and even then it is not stealing.

So, stealing certainly does not mean "taking something which you are not allowed to take". An adequate definition of stealing must include both taking away something that causes permanent deprivation and an actual intention to deprive the owner of that object. It is easy to give many other situations when someone takes away your property without your consent and this is not considered theft either in legal or ethical terms. For example, if you left your book on the bus or train, would you say it must remain there forever or any person that removes it is considered a thief? Or a means of transport is urgently needed (for example, because of some natural disaster) and somebody takes my car without my permission to save their life. This also would not be considered theft in most legal systems and probably in all ethical systems, since sustaining/rescuing life is a higher value than guarding private property.

Incidentally, when my camera was stolen from me (physically taken by somebody out of my pocket on a crowded tram) in Rome, the Italian Police tried to convince me this was actually something normal there and that I shouldn't even expect them to accept a notification / write a report. So maybe I am entirely wrong and in Italy taking something from somebody is always considered theft, but at the same time theft is accepted as normal behavior even by the police

[Morlac]

Originally Posted by macminer

I really cannot believe that people can be so brainless.

No call for insults.

I argue the following with the full understanding that none of this even applies to the argument at hand -- which deals with copyright and digital copying, not the movement of physical items.

It seems that abstract reasoning is futile when emotions take over reasoning, so let's give an example. At my home, when my son takes my dictionary without being allowed to, he is certainly not stealing my dictionary. He is just using it without my permission. It may happen that I actually need that dictionary and go searching for it, only to find it on his desk and maybe I am even furious because of that, but there's no way I can call this stealing.

You feel that way because your son has a relationship with you. Say that a stranger off the street found an unaccountable urge for a dictionary (perhaps he was stuck on a hard crossword puzzle?) and walked into your home to use your dictionary. Would you feel the same way?

Or perhaps you feel that way because a dictionary has low intrinsic value. Say that your son took your laptop instead. Still feel the same way?

Or perhaps the factor is that your son lives with you. Say that he took it with him as he was moving to Australia to go to university. He'll be back eventually, he's just borrowing it, right?

Originally Posted by macminer

So, stealing certainly does not mean "taking something which you are not allowed to take". An adequate definition of stealing must include both taking away something that causes permanent deprivation and an actual intention to deprive the owner of that object.

No, it does not necessarily mean that it "must include" those characteristics. I'd wager that many thieves justify their theft with the notion that they are only borrowing and fully intend to return the item/money/whatsit ... someday. A car thief probably does not have that intention. Someone who embezzles money from their employer or takes things from family and friends to pawn to support a drug/gambling habit certainly might fully intend to return it someday. Shall all theft cases await (a) the death of the owner, or (b) the destruction of the item, or (c) the end of time, so that we may best judge whether the owner has been "permanently deprived" of their property?

Originally Posted by macminer

It is easy to give many other situations when someone takes away your property without your consent and this is not considered theft either in legal or ethical terms. For example, if you left your book on the bus or train, would you say it must remain there forever or any person that removes it is considered a thief? Or a means of transport is urgently needed (for example, because of some natural disaster) and somebody takes my car without my permission to save their life. This also would not be considered theft in most legal systems and probably in all ethical systems, since sustaining/rescuing life is a higher value than guarding private property.

There are almost always exceptions in the law. That doesn't mean that the law itself is invalid or that simplified statements of the law are valueless.

Your first case concerns lost or abandoned property in a public place. Say I leave my book on my front lawn (say it's in a plastic bag so weather isn't an immediate concern). It's not "abandoned" -- it's on my property. It may be lost, but again, it's on my property. You have no right to come onto my property and help yourself to the book.

The second is not so much a matter of the act not being considered theft as the authorities and/or the owner choosing not to prosecute. There's a difference.

Originally Posted by macminer

Incidentally, when my camera was stolen from me (physically taken by somebody out of my pocket on a crowded tram) in Rome, the Italian Police tried to convince me this was actually something normal there and that I shouldn't even expect them to accept a notification / write a report. So maybe I am entirely wrong and in Italy taking something from somebody is always considered theft, but at the same time theft is accepted as normal behavior even by the police

I'm not quite sure what the evidentiary value of your anecdote is meant to be. Clearly you were unhappy and upset when your property was taken from you. Clearly the police did not give you the kind of action you expected or wanted in response to the theft. Would it be better if the thief intended to mail your camera back to you in six months after he'd had an opportunity to take some pictures that would win him a contest prize that would allow him to pay for the operation that might save his second cousin's life?

[neilmarr]

Hya Harry: The five-copy rule has always been the case and still is. Nope, Amazon put out an ultimatum to all publishers using PoD ... use Booksurge from here in and re-set all current titles with Booksurge or we won't sell your books. It was as simple and as blunt as that and caused a heck of a lot of worry to smaller operators ... not to mention the big author mills and self-publishing outfits who lost a fortune (good!). There was a huge row, of course. The result was that Amazon eventually back-pedalled, without actually retracting their demand in writing. The result is that some small independents that use LSI and others are still selling their paperbacks through Amazon. Of course, they did drop our ebooks when they brought out the Kindle because they will only sell ebook by Kindle-registered publishers ... and you can't register unless you have a US office. Tough luck the rest of the world, eh? Hoots. Neil

If you're really interested, Harry, drop me a line and I'll try to dig out the original letters that were sent out and forward them to you tomorrow. N

[HarryT]

Thanks for the clarification Neil. No need to send me anything - your word is good enough for me!