My journey into the darknet

Originally Posted by GhostHawk

Very well said Elfwreck!

I agree with Elfwreck to the extent that some model for providing fair compensation to authors for e-books must be found before the market grows to any significant extent. As it stands now with the model embraced by so many here – essentially e-books should be free – it is not just the big publishers that have an incentive to throttle the e-book baby in its cradle; authors too.

Originally Posted by Harmon

I recently interested in reading a Book that was written in the 1980s. I wanted to browse it before I bought, but I could not find a copy in my local Borders. I checked, and could not find anyone selling the Book in any ebook format, much less one that my edevice could read. So I was forced into a position where I would have had to buy it from Amazon & hope I liked it.

As it happened, I found a used copy, which I bought, and found that I liked. But it is FAT. So I checked the darknet, & found a copy, which I am now reading on my Sony.

And once you had purchased the used p-book and found you liked it the reason that you searched the darknet to find a e-book copy instead of purchasing it from Amazon was …? You felt that you had already compensated the author, even by purchasing a used paper copy? If you had found the book on the darknet before buying the paper version?

Regarding the rest of the post you do raise a lot of interesting ideas. Sticking with the subject of books – as Kennyc mentions in his intervening post most of the problems newspapers are in have to do with loss of traditional advertising revenue, not piracy. Though news aggregation sites like HuffingtonPost can't help – it is still not clear to me in your model how authors who produce the original content will be fairly compensated for their creativity and time spent in producing the work. All the talk of book clubs and such just sounds to me like additional overhead that will not be provided by the author at all, but by some third party.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

I agree with Elfwreck to the extent that some model for providing fair compensation to authors for e-books must be found before the market grows to any significant extent. As it stands now with the model embraced by so many here – essentially e-books should be free – it is not just the big publishers that have an incentive to throttle the e-book baby in its cradle; authors too.

There's a whole generation growing up thinking that everything should be free, no amount of foot stamping or bribing politicians to create new laws is ever going to change that. What is needed is a way to make money from that free content.

I beleive they are already doing so. Music downloaders spend more money on music than people who don't download. I doubt it is any different for book downloaders.

[Krystian Galaj]

An idea that the "creator" of the work has some bacis, absolute right to it might make sense if the "creator" was a sole creator of the work. In other words, the work could not use concepts developed by other people previously and known in society before the work is released, it can't even use words as each word is a concept.

Every book ever made is a collage of myriads of small ideas and memes which are part of the common culture. Else it wouldn't be understandable to anyone but the creator.

It's like saying every breath I make is my sole property, even when I'm in crowded elevator and to exhale I had to inhale breaths of all the other people in it first. Just by virtue of putting all those particles of air together.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

And once you had purchased the used p-book and found you liked it the reason that you searched the darknet to find a e-book copy instead of purchasing it from Amazon was …? You felt that you had already compensated the author, even by purchasing a used paper copy? If you had found the book on the darknet before buying the paper version?

I believe an ebook version wasn't available on Amazon; the worry was about buying a print version without seeing a sample first.

Though news aggregation sites like HuffingtonPost can't help – it is still not clear to me in your model how authors who produce the original content will be fairly compensated for their creativity and time spent in producing the work. All the talk of book clubs and such just sounds to me like additional overhead that will not be provided by the author at all, but by some third party.

Yes. We'll need new business models eventually. Right now, ebook freebies help physical sales, but that won't last forever (and it can't work for books that are out of print).

I don't know what the new models will be--but the successful one won't be "one purchase=1 reader for ebooks priced between mmpb & trade pb prices."

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Not good for those individuals and copyright owners who are victims of theft.

Ah....
Poor Rowling! Poor Dan Brown!

Let's have a minute of silence in memory of their stolen propriety, which won't ever return.....





PS I'm making irony on the fact that the less those two are read, the better for mankind.....

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

^Elfwreck

Fair enough I don't want to get caught up in a semantics argument over the use of the word theft, or any other word or phrase. Still, in the hypothetical scenario I presented, at the end 7001 and individuals have copies of the book and one has paid for it. If everyone cannot agree that this represents a real material loss of income to the author I don't know what else I can say?

....

If the first buyer shares the ebook, the author get 7$ and 1.000 readers.
If the guy doesn't share the book, the author get 7$ and just one reader.

I really can't see the loss you're talking about...

[garbanzo]

darknet? good grief. this thread sounds like a bunch of preteen boys whispering about the time they found their daddy's playboy stash.

i bought an ebook reader for the same reason that i bought my ipod. and my dvd burner. and my 2tb of hard drives. hardware manufacturers enable piracy. in fact, they profit from piracy. apple has a good thing going, and i guarantee that they would not be in the position they are now without piracy. why does nobody complain about them?

it's like walking into a head shop, seeing a 3-foot blown glass bong, and then noticing a small sign that says "for tobacco only". yeah right.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Format C:

If the first buyer shares the ebook, the author get 7$ and 1.000 readers.
If the guy doesn't share the book, the author get 7$ and just one reader.

I really can't see the loss you're talking about...

He wouldn't get 1,000 readers, he would get at best an extra 4 or 5 readers. What is unknown is how many of those readers would become future buyers of any subsequent books (or a print version of this one).

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Format C:

Ah....
Poor Rowling! Poor Dan Brown!

Let's have a minute of silence in memory of their stolen propriety, which won't ever return.....





PS I'm making irony on the fact that the less those two are read, the better for mankind.....

I'm sure many would disagree with you based on their willingness to shell out their hard-earned money to purchase them.

In any case it does not forgive theft.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by kennyc

In any case it does not forgive theft.

Was that a slip of the tongue - I thought we had agreed it was squatting.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I'm not sure that is true. What the traditional newspaper sold is ADVERTISING. The price to a subscriber has probably never covered the costs or provided a means of making money.

I agree that traditionally, that has been the case. I've always thought that the subscriber was basically paying for delivery of the advertising.

But that's a side issue. My point is that the bait for the consumer is the content, so what the publisher is trying to do is sell the content to the consumer, in order that the advertising can be delivered. Except that the bait of content does not work in the digital world, because the content can't be protected. So the publisher needs another kind of bait.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Are you sure about that? Maybe the majority wouldn't even have known the author existed or that they would like the author/book enough to buy it.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure. The point is that in the hypothetical, the ebook represented only one sale, whereas a pbook would represent at least one sale, and probably more. So the author figures he's getting screwed if one ebook sale results in all those readers who don't pay.

Your point comes into play in the real world, where a single ebook which gets pirated does not eliminate all other sales.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

And once you had purchased the used p-book and found you liked it the reason that you searched the darknet to find a e-book copy instead of purchasing it from Amazon was …? You felt that you had already compensated the author, even by purchasing a used paper copy? If you had found the book on the darknet before buying the paper version?

I've pretty much come to the point where if there's an ebook version I'll buy it, and if there's not, I have no qualms about getting a darknet version. I have no sympathy for authors and publishers who want to restrict publication to analog versions. I'm not going to haul around a two inch thick book when there's an e-version available, and I'm certainly not going to reward people for not selling me what I want, and insisting that it's the two inch thick book, or nothing. They can have their wish - they sell me nothing.

So, do I think I need to jump through hoops to compensate the author? Nope. It's real simple to get me to pay for an ebook - have one available to sell.

it is still not clear to me in your model how authors who produce the original content will be fairly compensated for their creativity and time spent in producing the work. All the talk of book clubs and such just sounds to me like additional overhead that will not be provided by the author at all, but by some third party.

I was talking about publishers, not authors, and my point was that publishers, as merchandisers of books and newspapers, seem to me to be selling the wrong thing to the consumer in the digital world. The wrong thing is content, the right thing is access and convenience.

Notwithstanding what the publishers are selling, they still need content. It's just that content is not enough to support sales when the pirates can have it available for free. Publishers will still have to acquire content from authors and other creators.

I don't see the authors as being in competition with the pirates. They are really in competition with each other.

[Iphinome]

Originally Posted by kennyc

In any case it does not forgive theft.

and it doesn't forgive RAPE of the public domain

on the side note I'd like to propose that comments like this become the mobileread version of Godwin's law.