Goodreads.com promoting ebook "sharing"?

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by queentess

I'm not sure about world-wide availability, but it's $6.15 in the Amazon U.S. Kindle store. I don't see it available as ebook at Amazon U.K., so it is likely it has geo-restrictions.

I don't see any problem with "sharing" it with people from the UK then. No sales are lost by doing so (not even potential sales). Unless the book is complete tripe, the writer or publisher can only benefit from people discussing it on sites where people look for reading recommendations. So assuming you had some way of making sure people were active participants in such sites, they should really be offering free review copies anyway, or at least heavily subsidised ones.

[MartinParish]

I think everyone agrees that sharing a book with your friends is fine. The difficulty is that online it's so easy to share a book it could easily travel quite far without ever leaving a "circle of friends". Imagine, for example, if you were to share a book with some of your friends on Facebook, and some of them in turn did the same with their friends, and so forth -- that book could go a long way on the Web. The same is true of a Goodreads forum.

So I guess the point is this. Sharing the book with your friends is fine, I think everyone agrees on that -- but at what point does sharing a book online cease to be "sharing with friends" and become "sharing with the wider public"? And that, of course, is a pretty difficult question.

[elemenoP]

I don't know how you can "leave piracy out of it" because this is piracy. Assuming the person who offered to share the book is not the author or publisher, they don't have the right to do this.

eP

[BelleZora]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

I don't know how you can "leave piracy out of it" because this is piracy. Assuming the person who offered to share the book is not the author or publisher, they don't have the right to do this.

eP

I agree. When we loan a print book, we temporarily no longer have a copy of that book (or, often, permanently). A digital file can be endlessly reproduced. It is ethically wrong to give away that which we don't own...we may own a copy of a book, but we do not own endless copies. It is also stupid to deprive a favorite writer of the income to continue writing.

When I can't afford a book, I can usually find it at the library as either an ebook or in print. I own several ereaders and sometimes loan them which seems to me to be about the same as loaning a print book. Creating a copy is not the same thing.

[Harper Kingsley]

I give out promo copies of my books and I have tons of free stories on my site, but more people download my books than buy them :/ Which is dumb, because if they just messaged me I'm happy to share in the hopes that someone would review and pass my name around. But I'm like really poor -- like I'm thinking I might go to jail for debts. So the piracy thing is kind of a big issue with me. I don't mind someone sharing my book with a friend, but when you download 40 copies of my book, there's obviously something wrong.

That being said, I'm sure if someone asked me if their book club could read my book I'd probably be happy to provide a nice copy as long as they said they were just going to keep it in their group and reviews would be much appreciated.

But if they're just passing someone's book to 900 people, and it's the only book the author has... well, someone's eating Top Ramen for dinner and might just decide that the whole writing thing isn't worth the time and effort. In which case, the readers lose out too.

[JoeD]

It depends.

I'm not against the idea of lending to friends or even random people, however I'd like it to be more like the physical world where you lose access to your copy until the person either gives you it back or the loan expires.

For small groups, I'd see no real issue with that. Saying that I don't see an issue with people clubbing together to buy something and then taking turns to read/watch it either.

The problems start when the groups grow.

As for sharing multiple copies with a group. Again, not really sure. For a small book club of say 5 members, an author might be ok with it as long as those who received the copy do not retain it after they've done the review for that week/month.

Both are likely just as illegal at the moment, however for small book groups (not sure where the line would be on "small" though, 5-10 certainly, 100, probably not) I have a hard time seeing it as morally wrong. As long as it's one copy passed around and it's done inline with the way we'd pass a book physically.

I don't think there's an easy answer.

[Ravensknight]

Originally Posted by queentess

I've just received a message from the mods saying "We wanted to let you know that we decided not to delete the comment you flagged recently." [emp mine]

Now is this an actual Goodreads.com issue, or a specific group problem? Moderators of groups are just regular members of GR, correct? Because at least 1 group I'm in has said that no file sharing email/messages/sites could be discussed AT ALL. Which I found harsh, but I did understand.

So why drag the whole site into this instead of just complaining about the group. Seems like you'd have better success if you focused on the group, not GR as a whole.

Which group was it, btw?

Originally Posted by elemenoP

I don't know how you can "leave piracy out of it" because this is piracy. Assuming the person who offered to share the book is not the author or publisher, they don't have the right to do this.

Depending upon how you interpret copyright law, sharing is either legal (assuming you destroy your copy when you pass it on) or everyone on this forum is an unrepentant criminal (because the nature of technology means that we make copies of an ebook simply by reading it).

Overall though I agree, sharing ebooks probably represents piracy in most cases since very few people would be diligent enough to destroy the copy they pass on.

[dreams]

Just a note that the original topic was an issue on another site and the thread was started and ended in December of 2010, until it was brought up again yesterday.

The OP of the thread had stated that

Please try not to bring piracy into this. And by this I mean don't start a 30 page thread where the two sides of the issue froth at the mouth and one screams "theft" while the other screams "unfair". I feel this is a different issue, where one person is offering to distribute a book to a book club for reading and discussion. I think it changes the moral reasoning involved.

MR has numerous threads on the past issue of lending ebooks when it first started to be a topic of interest and numerous threads on the topic of piracy/copyright infringement, etc., some of which are currently still ongoing.

If this topic is of interest to anyone, please do a search and join those ongoing current discussions.

Thread closed.