Open Source culture to blame for e-book piracy!

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by kennyc

No not a solution. The point of copyright and other intellectual property laws is to allow the creator to profit from their work while improving society by making it available.

No. The goal of copyright is to promote the creation of works that society wants. Allowing the creator to profit is just means to reach that goal, and if there was a known better way to reach it, copyright law might change, and its new shape might not involve creators profitting.

Originally Posted by kennyc

If you destroy the incentive to create new works there will be none.

True; but if you only destroy potential financial gains, works will still be created.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

No. The goal of copyright is to promote the creation of works that society wants. Allowing the creator to profit is just means to reach that goal, and if there was a known better way to reach it, copyright law might change, and its new shape might not involve creators profitting.

Absolutely. Too bad more people don't understand that.

[lioslaith]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I do share eBooks with my wife and mother and mother-in-law. I don't think it's wrong to do so. If I had bought the pBook, I would still share. So it's no different really. Same book, same sharing. The only difference is the ability for multiple people to read at the same time.

Me too. Or rather I share what I purchase with my Mother. We both have ereader devices, both of which I bought last year. I see it as sheer insanity to expect me to purchase two copies of an ebook for people inside the same house. I would share with my brother and sister in law if they wished to read a book I had already shelled out for. I would do exactly the same - and have done in the past - with paperback and hardback books and probably will again in the future.

I'm not preaching or talking ethics or any such thing. I just don't see it as wrong. I'm not uploading it or reselling it online for hundreds of strangers to download, I'm lending it out to my closest family. If that's wrong then lock me up now.

Instead of placing blame for piracy, finding out why it occurs might be half the battle. I'm not saying that everyone who has paid a visit to the darknet does so because it's their only option. There will always be those who will take advantage of any technology for their own profit but lumping everyone in the same club is just wrong.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

. ....



True; but if you only destroy potential financial gains, works will still be created.

Not at the level needed to sustain and advance society.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

No. The goal of copyright is to promote the creation of works that society wants. Allowing the creator to profit is just means to reach that goal, and if there was a known better way to reach it, copyright law might change, and its new shape might not involve creators profitting.

You say it like the financial gain is a minor thing. Its not, it's the fundamental reason it works, nothing less.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

No. The goal of copyright is to promote the creation of works that society wants.

Again, the Stature of Anne gives both a commercial and a creative reason...

Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing, Reprinting, and Publishing, or causing to be Printed, Reprinted, and Published Books, and other Writings, without the Consent of the Authors or Proprietors of such Books and Writings, to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families: For Preventing therefore such Practices for the future, and for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books;

[tompe]

Originally Posted by kennyc

You say it like the financial gain is a minor thing. Its not, it's the fundamental reason it works, nothing less.

That is an empirical question and I believe other system would work also. in any way good to see you accept that financial gain not is a primary goal but just a mean.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

True; but if you only destroy potential financial gains, works will still be created.

Exactly. Monetary gain is only one, and not the most significant reason for creation, or the motivation to create.

If you're a follower of WI Thomas the sociologist (I came to him through the writing teacher Dwight W. Swain) then you'll be aware of the Four Wishes theory. These are the four motivations that stand out the most in any human being.

1. Adventure (the experience of the new, a challenge. In writing this might be seen as experimenting with form and breaking out beyond genres.)
2. Security (to maintain a status quo, to fend off change. In writing this might be the writing-for-money and only money attitude.)
3. Recognition (this is the drive to fame, to be praised, in writing circles it might be the hunger for a good review or the winning of a prize)
4. Response (love. To be honestly appreciated, to reach others on an intimate level. In writing this would, I assume, be the one-on-one we sometimes get from reader to audience, that moment when writing changes us and those who read what we write).

Of course there can be a mix of motivations, but money and the security it might bring is only one motivation to write. If you take it out of the equation, that leaves at least three more motivators for creativity, for any action within our society.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by tompe

That is an empirical question and I believe other system would work also. in any way good to see you accept that financial gain not is a primary goal but just a mean.

Certainly other systems could work, but only if the fundamental core of world economy changes and that ain't gonna happen on a macro scale.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

Exactly. Monetary gain is only one, and not the most significant reason for creation, or the motivation to create.
...

I challenge you to prove that in the economy and society we currently live in. I disagree most vehemently when you are talking about the business of creating new things as a whole. The world would collapse. There is no magic machine or mechanism that will provide for all people's basic needs. If there were, the creative people would be free to create, but it simply isn't true. Without pay for creativity we will be back to hunting and gathering in virtually no time.

[cian]

Originally Posted by random50

It was the quality on average I was referring to. I'm much less convinced about the quality side of the argument anyway, aside from in relatively trivial ways such as typos.

But far more people produce blogs, than write newspaper/magazine articles, so the average is not terribly relevant, or important. In some areas its not terribly surprising. In some areas its not that surprising. The quality of some literary blogs is very high indeed, but then literary criticism has always been semi-amateur anyway. And in areas like computing knowledge is not almost entirely disseminated within the community via practitioners. In other areas you have academics such as Juan Cole, or the linguistics blog (forget the name).

Anymore my point was rather that this is terribly surprising, and if ten years ago you had suggested that article lengths pieces would be more and more written by amateurs, with the elite writers doing so at a level far beyond professionals, people would have laughed at you. It seems improbable to me that something similar would happen with novels (short stories and poetry less so, as nobody much makes money out of those anyway), but...

If you remove the ability to profit from a labour intensive activity, you're surely certain to see less output, simply because the creators will have to spend their time on other things to earn a living.

This is true of plenty of creators today, though. Its not ideal (but then what is), but people seem to make do. I'm often surprised to find out how little some relatively famous literary authors make from their work, for example. I think you would see less of certain types of more commercial and genre fiction, but you could possibly see more of other types of fiction merely because there were more routes to an appreciative readership. But its hard for me to imagine any system where a writer like Neil Gaiman did badly financially, even if he never sold another copy of his novels.

This is not so relevant to blogs, by the way, because whilst they may be time consuming to keep running, the initial creation of the blog and the creation of each article is a short project. This also makes them much easier to create from a psychological point of view than books, film, art, etc.

Well yes, but some of the more high profile blogs produce a level of output equivalent to what many freelance journalists produce. So who can say?

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Not at the level needed to sustain and advance society.

I see that you're an artist/author. If people stopped paying you for your work, would you stop doing it?

[Mycropht]

I will comment on the first few posts in this thread.

Let us assume that in a country there is a written law against walking on the street without a veil (I have fantastic imagination). A person breaking that law is a criminal. Would YOU consider such person a criminal? For the people on this forum, I would guess the answer in "no". Why do you not consider such person a criminal? Probably because you do not believe such law is a proper law. You do not believe in that law.

Fine. By the same token, do you consider that a person is a criminal if (s)he buys an e-book, reads it and then strips DRM so her/his cousin could also read it? The law says such person is a criminal. Do you?

I have no problem paying to an author 3 times what (s)he gets for a sold book now. However, I do have a problem paying for renting an e-book (in the Kindle way) as much as a hardcover costs. IMHO, the path between an author and a reader is getting quite short and I imagine not so many people will be able to squeeze in the book publishing industry as before. That's tough. Then again, the world changes. People change. Laws change. Good luck to the publishing industry in their fight for the old ways which will probably turn out to be a search of Lost Time. For a start, I suggest an agency which will sue people left and right and will spend more money than it is able to squeeze out of defendants (that's my imagination again).

Before anyone accuses me of promoting book piracy, I do not own an e-book reader (although I want one). Also, I have never bought a stripped book. I honestly believe authors should be rewarded for their work. In the vanishing world of the paper books I am not sure that is happening in all cases where an author deserves a reward. I also believe the people enabling that a book gets to a reader should be rewarded. But, if that part gets simpler and easier, they should get less. Simple.

Btw, has anyone read any of the books written by Charles Barnes or Clifford Noble?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

I see that you're an artist/author. If people stopped paying you for your work, would you stop doing it?

Not at the level needed to sustain and advance society.

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[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by cian

But we don't respect the moral rights of an author. Nobody pays attention to them. We respect the legal rights. I don't think Thomas Merton wrote his books for financial gain, but so long as he didn't give up any of his legal copyrights (such as some people do through copyleft) then you still have to compensate his heirs. His intention is legally irrelevant. To reverse this, Cory Doctorow allows people to copy his work, but I'm fairly sure he seeks to profit from his creations. One could choose to honor that wish, but there's no legal requirement there.

Capitalist societies are indifferent to intent and morality (maybe they should care, but that's a separate argument). All they care about are contractually enforcable rights. So for example, I might improve a piece of common land hoping to profit from it, but I have no way of enforcing that intent. If the law changed so that copyright only lasted for ten years, would the morality change?

What you're talking about is a legal right.

The only time I even mentioned rights was in simply mentioning that it is the authors right to write a book purely for financial gain. It was a turn of phrase. I never said anyone had to respect that right. I frankly don't care if people who want free stuff decide to respect an authors right or not as there is nothing I can do about it anyway.

Let me try to be very very very very very very clear for you so there can be no further misunderstanding.

My point(s) was this............

There is a difference between borrowing from a library and obtaining a copyright infringing copy from the internet. The reason for this difference is because of the laws that govern both libraries and copyright. To claim there is no difference is simply wrong.

Why a person writes a book in no way grants another person the right to infringe the creators copyright. It does not matter if they write the book purely for financial gain or because they just love to create. Using the supposed reason for the creation of the work as an excuse or rationalisation to infringe the copyright of the author is an invalid argument.

Now.........

Whether somone chooses to respect the copyright or not, whether the copyright is a moral right or legal right or any other such thing has nothing to do with my point.

You seem very caught up in those points and that is fine. Just don't confuse your point with my point.

Cheers,
PKFFW