E-Book Piracy: The Publishing Industry's Next Epic Saga?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Happ

Are you serious? You mean to pay authors in terms of the reviews they have? Why would that be better than the people who actually read their books paying for them?

It is better because it is a system that can work in the long run. The current system will soon collapse.

Let’s get something clear here. The fairest system is when those who read books by author X pay author X. Whatever strays from this is not as fair.

Why? Define "fair"!

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by tompe

You mean to pay authors in terms of the reviews they have?
It is better because it is a system that can work in the long run. The current system will soon collapse.

I don't know if "pay by reviews" would work (especially if that's online reviews... I would expect a surge in review-writing bot programs), but there are ways to measure popularity--TV manages to do *something* with Nielsen ratings.

I expect that, if we moved to (or added) "arts/progress tax + pay by popularity" for paying authors/ artists/ scientists/ programmers/ etc., we'd have some bumpy years of trying to figure out how to do that fairly, followed by a long run of, well, more-or-less effective payment methods. If that's how we decide to pay them, we'll sort out methods that encourage them to produce good works.

Some artists would absolutely thrive on that arrangement. Some would very likely fall apart under it--there might be great works that just aren't appreciated in the artist's lifetime, or artists who just can't get inspired if they don't have to compete with the sales of other works. But that's not much different from now--we're losing access to some great works due to obscurity, and others because the authors can't afford to spend the time finishing & releasing their works.

I don't think the current payment methods are bad, as much as not likely to effectively survive the next surge in computer/internet activity. And we do need to find something that works; books, unlike songs, can't be performed in person at concerts that make it okay to distribute free copies.

I don't know if popularity ratings are the way to go, or a gov't tax/subsidy. But I've no doubt that we'll find *something* that works. People have been producing creative works for money for several thousand years, in drastically different economic climates, with drastically different technology. Creativity isn't going to be stifled by widespread copying. Authors, as a group, aren't going to starve or vanish--although some specific authors may no longer be able to make a living. Authors who work *well* with the system we've had for the last 100 years or so may not be able to manage to switch to whatever new system we find, but books aren't going to stop being produced because of that.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I don't know if "pay by reviews" would work (especially if that's online reviews... I would expect a surge in review-writing bot programs), but there are ways to measure popularity--TV manages to do *something* with Nielsen ratings.

I expect that, if we moved to (or added) "arts/progress tax + pay by popularity" for paying authors/ artists/ scientists/ programmers/ etc., we'd have some bumpy years of trying to figure out how to do that fairly, followed by a long run of, well, more-or-less effective payment methods. If that's how we decide to pay them, we'll sort out methods that encourage them to produce good works.

I thought about Nielsen ratings when I suggested that you paye people to evaluate things.

The system does not have to be fair. The current system is not fair according to my fairness criteria. We only need some system that works and that is accepted by people. And to be accepted the system only have to appear to be not too unfair.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Think of the last DVD you bought that forced you to watch at least 1 preview or ad before allowing you to go to the main content... how many people take those DVDs back to the store, or publicly malign the sellers, because of it? And how many just watch the previews?.

Actually, with DVDs you just set them going five or ten minutes ahead of time, then go make the popcorn.

The thing with ads is that you have to get people to watch them. Done right, they are entertainment. Done wrong, they are popcorn time.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Don't need a law, exactly, just a judge's ruling on a copyright case that refusal to enter a market makes it available for others to copy into. Such a ruling would also imply that books never released in paperback were free to be published in that way. Potentially, to avoid commercial exploitation, the ruling could say that no direct profit could be made from the unauthorized copies.

You won't get such a ruling in the US. It does not fit the structure of current copyright law. You would need legislation, & you won't get it as long as Disney is around.

The right to control the property interest protected by copyright necessarily includes the right to determine how, when or if to publish. That right is clearly protected by US copyright law.

There's no footing in the copyright statute to give a judge, even the most liberal "the law is what the courts say it is" judge, a place to stand & say that because a copyright owner has not entered a market, someone else can do it for him.

Much as I'd like to say otherwise...

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Yep. They're looking at ebooks as a way to enforce "one purchase = one user." And for the most part, upper-class/wealthy people accept that as reasonable, and students and lower-class communities, who have always survived with a lot of sharing and resales, have outright rejected it.

Which is what happened with music & video games: the biggest market demographic utterly rejects the idea of one sale meaning one user, and the publishers had no plan in place to deal with anything else.

One would think that they would be looking to go to a rental model for ebooks, rather than trying to shoehorn them into the pbook sale model. The dichotomy seems to me to be a natural one: if you want to own a book, buy the pbook. If you just want to read it, rent the ebook.

It strikes me that the pricing & timing confusion that is going on right now is actually a distortion reflecting the underlying economic reality of that natural dichotomy.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

But arguing silly stuff is half the fun.

Ahem. My arguments are recondite; yours are speculative; his are silly.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Shakespeare didn't have copyright supporting him. Nor did Cervantes. Or any of the Greek plays, or Roman writings. Or the Analectics of Confucius (Kung-Fu-Tse). Or Marlowe, Omar, ect.... (And yes, the Library of Alexandria didn't have a copyright supporting it, either.)

Copyright is a Western Civilization invention, from the 1700's forward. Born by the printing press, dying by the computer chip. Selah.

The roots of copyright are a bit deeper than that, but certainly if you date our modern understanding of copyright from the Statute of Anne you are right.

Some of the statements I've read on this thread concerning copyright law "limiting" property rights are puzzling to me. Copyright law establishes property rights. Any concept of limitation seems to me to presuppose the prior existence broader right to intellectual/artistic property, which never was the case.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Shakespeare didn't have copyright supporting him. Nor did Cervantes.

Cervantes did, sort of.

He published his works with a "royal privilege", whereby he alone (or the publisher by him designated) had the right to print and sell them for a 10 year period. The text of this privilege is included in the versions I've uploaded here. I don't think he had any special treatment, it was probably the standard practice in printing and publishing at the time.

The privilege didn't cover derived works, though, and an apocryphal 2nd part of Don Quixote was published by Avellaneda, which pushed Cervantes to publish his own 2nd part and kill Don Quixote at the end to prevent further adventures of his character

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That sounds strange. Russia is a signature to the International Berne Copyright Convention; I really don't see how they can legally sell copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holder.

You don't need the direct permission of the copyright holder, in practice. You need a licence from an authorised collections society. There are supposed to be agreements between authorised collecting societies to distribute the cash.

In this case, there is a licence but no agreements.

It is fully legal for use in Russia. The RIAA tried to take them down, and bounced hard.
The use by people outside Russia...well, that's something else and I'd advise you take local advice.

(I have, but am not willing to share at this point)

[Happ]

Originally Posted by tompe

It is better because it is a system that can work in the long run. The current system will soon collapse.

We’d better be clear on this: you cannot hold these two beliefs on pain of inconsistency:

1) Most people will pay voluntarily if given the chance for something they can easily get for free;
2) The system in which people pay for what they read is doomed.

A good reason to be against DRM is 1. 2 is a good reason for wanting a good DRM system in place — and the best kind of system so far is iTunes and ePub with DRM. Both suck, but work for most people. Now, if we push for a tax system, it is because we do not believe in 1. This means the tax system is competing not with people paying for what they read, but with a DRM system. What on earth can make anyone believe that a tax system, with all its Orwellian shadows, is better than DRM?

A payment system is fair if 1) pays the authors and 2) those who use what the authors created are the ones who pay them. A system is unfair if 1) authors are not paid, either directly or indirectly and 2) it is not those who use the authors’ creations that primarily pay them, but rather someone else.

[Happ]

The history of copyright is only relevant if you look at how the authors were paid. One must never forget that. And to my mind any system that allows authors to be in dire straits whilst lots and lots of people enjoy reading their books or using their software or listening to their music is a lot worse than any DRM-iTunes-Kindle bullshit DRM craze.

I certainly do not want a world in which authors either have to be rich to be able to write novels or have to go hungry or have to work somewhere else and do it only in the evenings and weekends. I understand however why so many amateur writers see no problem with giving their writing for free. They just want to be read, when no one knows that they even exist. But once they are read by millions does it make sense that the writer still has to keep her day job and write only on weekends?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Happ

We’d better be clear on this: you cannot hold these two beliefs on pain of inconsistency:

1) Most people will pay voluntarily if given the chance for something they can easily get for free;
2) The system in which people pay for what they read is doomed.

A good reason to be against DRM is 1. 2 is a good reason for wanting a good DRM system in place — and the best kind of system so far is iTunes and ePub with DRM. Both suck, but work for most people. Now, if we push for a tax system, it is because we do not believe in 1. This means the tax system is competing not with people paying for what they read, but with a DRM system. What on earth can make anyone believe that a tax system, with all its Orwellian shadows, is better than DRM?

The reason to be against DRM is that it limits the use of what you buy in an unreasonable way. Nobody here has pushed a tax system. It was just mentioned as one possible alternative. Many countries already have tax systems supporting creators. For example money is payed to authors when a book is borrowed from a library. I cannot see any Orwellian in that. Actually DRM systems can be very Orwellian since it can give companies a lot of information about people.

A payment system is fair if 1) pays the authors and 2) those who use what the authors created are the ones who pay them. A system is unfair if 1) authors are not paid, either directly or indirectly and 2) it is not those who use the authors’ creations that primarily pay them, but rather someone else.

Are you saying this is a definition of fair? This is just an arbitrary choice. You can define it as fair if better quality of the work gives more money. Or you can define it as fair if the system give maximal happiness. Or something else.

[Happ]

A definition is not arbitrary just because there are competing definitions. That would make any definition arbitrary by definition. Rather, a definition is arbitrary if there is no good reason to believe that it is better than rival definitions. On the face of it, it is fair to pay authors who do the things we use. We would need a good argument against that, and just the desire to use what authors do without paying is not a good reason.

You are right that there are other reasons to be against DRM. My point, however, is that unless one has a viable alternative to pay the authors, being against DRM because it is evil is just not helpful. I bet any author and any industry boss would love not to have to support DRM. If you give them a good chance of making a living without DRM, no publisher or author would use it. Hell, it actually costs money to put a DRM system in place.

DRM is a pain in the neck for everyone, readers and authors and publishers alike. Just like security checks at the airport are a pain in the neck for everyone involved — and it costs money too. The point is that one puts up with it because one believes the alternatives would be a lot worse. So if you want to abolish DRM — as I do — you have to argue not that DRM is itself evil, but rather that there are good, viable, sensible alternatives.

As for public libraries, in most countries authors are not paid for books read in public libraries. But I agree that they should. This, however, would not be Orwellian because it would be based on books actually requested by readers, not download statistics.

Finally, if you have privacy worries over DRM you should be VERY worried about the Google model of business our digital age is turning up to be. This is a business based on a special kind of advertising that thrives on metrics about people’s digital behavior. And this is the ugly face of ‘free’ in Web-language. Firefox is free? Well, sort of. It is fed by Google. Why? Because people do not want to pay for software. Therefore, anyone who is against DRM and offers no viable alternative is a de facto supporter of the Google ad-based model of business, because if people do not pay authors, authors will have to be paid by ads. And THAT is Orwellian.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Happ

A system is unfair if 1) authors are not paid, either directly or indirectly

We need to be very careful here. Nothing in copyright guarantees that the authors will be paid. I'm pretty sure I know what you meant, but this is a slippery slope that we need to stay away from. There are such things as unsuccessful artists, and those who cannot sustain that career because they don't get paid. Such things are supposed to happen. Copyright is not a right to make a profit, nor does it say anything about getting paid. Copyright is also not a guarantee of absolute control over an artists works. Some people think it is (or want it to be), but we need to be careful about not crossing that line.

All copyright really says is that if somebody is going to distribute your work, they need your permission. That's about it. The parts about getting paid, making a living as an artist... that's your problem, not the government's. Coming up with a system that is based on author's getting paid is very different from what is in place today, and probably not something that anybody really wants if they think about it. Do we really want the government forcing the public to finance artists that the market is not otherwise interested in supporting?

As I said, I'm pretty sure that's not what you meant, but I felt it needed to be pointed out.