Could the Kindle spark book piracy?

[Ervserver]

Cd sales are down because less people are buying them. Why dish out for a cd that has only a couple good songs on it when you can buy the individual songs you want online for .88 - .99

[wgrimm]

Originally Posted by rflashman

If anything, studies have found that most pirate downloads are not 'lost' sales but non-existent sales. When NAPSTER shut down music sales did NOT go up. When Macrovision started shipping on videotapes, movie video sales did NOT go up.

Macrovision probably enhanced some hardware sales! I bought an APEX dvd player (the one with the back door), and one of the reasons was because you could zap Macrovision with it. And I bought a Central Point Option Board years ago, because with it you could copy almost any protected diskette (and the board paid for itself 50 times over whgen people requested that I make backup copies of WP and 123 that they had bought and couldn't copy).

IMHO, piracy reflects pricing in many respects. There are a certain number of people who would pirate a product no matter what, but who would NEVER pay to buy a product. These "pirates" don't account for lost sales. Then there are those who pirate because of high prices, or unavailability of a product. Lower prices, or make the product available at reasonable prices, and they WILL buy. Don't give me an ethical argument when most people cannot even agree on a rational ethical foundation- give me a rational response to market forces.

If you're a publisher, and want to sell- don't worry about piracy. Add value, price fairly, if you really MUST use DRM, do it unobtrusively like Ereader, and you will sell. And watch the market- prices for information have been dropping steadily. If you keep your information highly priced, you are doomed to failure.

I would like to see a vibrant ebook market; if publishers continue to shaft the e-reader by absurd pricing and ridiculous DRM schemes, this vibrant market will never appear. Throw greed away, and look at the marginal price of ebook publishing.....

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by rflashman

Yeah, difference is I REFUSE to buy any music as a form of protest. So I'd rather just pay Sirius (car) and XM (home) instead.

But you are still buying music, albeit indirectly, by doing that, are you not? If these are subscription-based services, doesn't a part of the money go to the record companies to permit the broadcaster to play the songs? That's certainly how it works in the UK; radio stations have to pay large sums of money to broadcast music.

[jasonkchapman]

Originally Posted by wgrimm

If you're a publisher, and want to sell- don't worry about piracy. Add value, price fairly, if you really MUST use DRM, do it unobtrusively like Ereader, and you will sell. And watch the market- prices for information have been dropping steadily. If you keep your information highly priced, you are doomed to failure.

From a content producer's point of view, this is the only viable option. I wonder if there are any solid figures on any of the "honor system" mass transit systems in Europe, because there seem to be a lot of parallels. If you hop tram in Prague without paying for it, you're violating the law. However, if you're taking a spot that would otherwise have gone empty, you're not costing the system any additional expense. It's relatively easy to "get away with it," but enforcement does exist and some people do get caught by random inspectors. (Setting aside, for the moment, that there are a lot of reports of abuse in the inspection system.)

The NYC subway, on the other hand, has a more obtrusive "DRM" system (Digital Rider Management?). If you don't pay, you don't get on. The card system and the turnstiles and the gate infrastructure costs a lot of time, effort, and money to maintain, and still people hop the turnstiles.

So. Does the honor system work more often than not? Enough, that the savings from the light-weight "DRM" system balances any losses?

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by jasonkchapman

So. Does the honor system work more often than not? Enough, that the savings from the light-weight "DRM" system balances any losses?

I think another reasonable question is: does the honor system have a different sociological impact than the ticket system used in NYC and elsewhere? What sort of effect does wide scale trust have on society? I suspect that when there are rigorous ticket mechanisms in place, most people conclude that it is not their job to police the system if someone hops the turnstile, whereas in an honor system, there may be social pressure to "live up to" the trust entailed.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I think another reasonable question is: does the honor system have a different sociological impact than the ticket system used in NYC and elsewhere?

Generally, a society can function more smoothly, and cheaply, when there is overall trust, because trust allows a society to "relax" in terms of efforts to maintain order and security. If there is too much violation of trust, a society must put up additional defenses. This not only costs more, but it tends to upset people who feel "put upon" by the extra security (and the sometimes passed-on cost), which can actually encourage more dishonesty with the more disgruntled people.

On the other hand, fear of punishment can be as effective a deterrent against violating trust, and can cause a society to run just as smoothly (albeit out of fear of reprisal). But if this is taken too far, you risk additional upset and stress in people, which could be even less advantageous than loss due to distrust.

</channeling my sociology studies>

[nekokami]

But does trusting people encourage them to be more trustworthy? And does implicitly not trusting them encourage them to cheat, as a result of feeling like they are being accused of being cheaters anyway?

The last thing I need right now is another research project....

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by nekokami

But does trusting people encourage them to be more trustworthy? And does implicitly not trusting them encourage them to cheat, as a result of feeling like they are being accused of being cheaters anyway?

The last thing I need right now is another research project....

It may also depend on the "society" involved. The place I've come across subways which use the "honour" system is Germany, which is a country where "rules" are very much respected. I would imagine it works pretty well there. It would be a disaster in a country like Italy, where people flagrantly ignore EVERY rule.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by nekokami

But does trusting people encourage them to be more trustworthy? And does implicitly not trusting them encourage them to cheat, as a result of feeling like they are being accused of being cheaters anyway?

Not exactly... showing them an amount of respect tends to make them more trustworthy, and disrespect encourages cheating. Respect usually includes trust, though trust doesn't have to include respect.

In offering products for a low price, for instance, you are indicating you have respect for a customers' desire to buy reasonably-priced items, and you are willing to earn their respect by giving them what they want. That mutual respect is hoped to lead to trust, which results in good products, and honest customers.

High-priced or shoddy items suggest a lack of respect for customers' needs, and they respond accordingly by seeking ways to cheat the seller.

[Sparrow]

Out of curiosity, I downloaded a pirated copy of a novel. It was very crudely formatted, and would have been painful to me to read.
I then looked up the same novel on the ebook stores, and found I could get a proper copy for $4.
I'd far rather spend the $4 to get a copy, than hours tidying up the illicit version.
But then I'm lucky - $4 isn't a great deal of money to me, I can afford to be 'honest'.
I'm thinking the people who'd download and read the pirated text must be too hard up to buy it.

[rixte]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Out of curiosity, I downloaded a pirated copy of a novel. It was very crudely formatted, and would have been painful to me to read.
I then looked up the same novel on the ebook stores, and found I could get a proper copy for $4.
I'd far rather spend the $4 to get a copy, than hours tidying up the illicit version.
But then I'm lucky - $4 isn't a great deal of money to me, I can afford to be 'honest'.
I'm thinking the people who'd download and read the pirated text must be too hard up to buy it.

Well, not necessarily. It could be a format/DMR issue, where they can't read the legit copy on their chosen platform.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I'd far rather spend the $4 to get a copy, than hours tidying up the illicit version.

Unfortunately, even legitimate copies of e-books can be badly formatted, or clearly not checked after conversion. I just bought an e-book from eReader.com that should have been edited after conversion... there are misspelled words, bad punctuation and irregular paragraph spacing within the first chapter. It's not quite a deal-breaker, but it is annoying.

It serves to remind you that editors do have their place, and shouldn't be discounted just because it's easier to publish e-books.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I'm thinking the people who'd download and read the pirated text must be too hard up to buy it.

A lot of what's circulating on the darknet isn't available in any legitimate ebook form. But as Charlie Stross has pointed out, "I don't think most of the ebook sharing subculture is even about reading the books in the first place — it's about collecting, and participating in a gift sub-culture where your kudos is governed by how much stuff you can give away." I think Charlie is right on target with this. It's what drove the crazy race to put out each ebook version of the Harry Potter books more quickly than the previous volume.

And I think this is the reason that ANY reasonable attempt at providing good ebooks at a reasonable price with a reasonable TOS will have nothing to fear from the darknet. Ripping off "open" ebooks gets you no credit in the gift-giving sub-culture, and most people would far rather pay a reasonable price to be able to find what they're looking for easily and not have to worry about picking up a virus (or navigating past erm... rather unseemly ads) than go rummaging around the seamy side of the net to save a couple of bucks. Really.

[bingle]

Originally Posted by nekokami

A lot of what's circulating on the darknet isn't available in any legitimate ebook form. But as Charlie Stross has pointed out, "I don't think most of the ebook sharing subculture is even about reading the books in the first place — it's about collecting, and participating in a gift sub-culture where your kudos is governed by how much stuff you can give away." I think Charlie is right on target with this. It's what drove the crazy race to put out each ebook version of the Harry Potter books more quickly than the previous volume.

Yeah, this is actually a continuation of the early days of the 'warez' subculture. In those days, groups of crackers would race against each other to be the first to crack a piece of software, and post it on the BBSes. The most respected ones were the groups that could do '0-day' warez - i.e. cracked and distributed on or before release day. I imagine it's much the same subculture with respect to ebooks. Groups that release early and often gain more respect (without it mattering too much which software was released).

So yeah, I imagine it's more about quantity and speed than about quality, or even popularity.

EDIT: Oh, look at this, there's even a Wikipedia entry! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebook_scene

[nekokami]

Not Wikipedia's strongest article, I think, but yeah, there it is.

When did the word "scene" become synonymous with copyright infringement? Both this article and the Wikipedia article on "The Scene" lack sufficent references.