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

[neilmarr]

Daithi: Some online ebook retailers, though, do point back to your own site for paperback orders (Smashwords, for instance). So it's well worth keeping your own site and blog afloat, especially if you're open to manuscript submissions for possible publication. Doesn't need to be fancy and (although it costs us a heap), there's no longer the need for expensive merchant software to fill orders. Good luck with your own plans, Daithi. Please just holler if you think we can help in any way. Neil

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

You're spot on, Blue. But bear in mind that point-of-sale of an ebook IS the location of your download device.

Yeah, I know it isn't the retailers fault. Any retailer that would want to give up a chunk of sales like that voluntarily would be a something rhyming with boron.

Actually, with the point of sale thing it isn't. Because when you buy it, the book has to come from somewhere. It doesn't magically materialise out of thin air via quantum entanglement or something.

That is, you have to download it from a server. That server is theirs, not in the possession of the buyer, on in their house. So the junk about the sale is where *you* are is complete and utter bullcrap, when talking about network technology (or physics). That is, it is just legal sophistry with no basis in actual reality.

If the material is where you are before you bought it, you'd have no need at all to buy it, because you'd have it already. That is rather obvious.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

Basically as far as I can see, it would be because the whingeing poms and the whingeing aussies (pretty sure the Canadians can handle it) couldn't compete with American prices, so they made up the 'if you bought electronic with a credit card while sitting in your living room you bought it in your room, but if you bought paper then you bought it where you bought it' crapola.

IIRC it was the US states, more than anything else, that pushed for this. Not necessarily relating to ebook/geographic restrictions (that's just a by-product of the 'location of sale' definition) but in connection with the authority to tax the sale.

Might have been in connection with porn, too. I think I remember a case where a person in California? was charged with porn for viewing a site put up by a company in Delaware? hosted on a server in Tennessee? Each jurisdiction had different definitions of porn & the question was, which definition applied. I don't recall whether a sale was actually involved or not, but IIRC the site was legal under Tennessee rules & illegal under California's.

Unfortunately I don't remember the decision (and can't spend the half-hour needed to find the case) but it would fit the criteria of deciding the location of the 'transaction'.

[Daithi]

I remember that case. The husband and wife involved were from Milpitas, CA., and my parent's house is only about a mile outside of Milpitas. Plus, I was living in Memphis, TN., when the case occurred. I remember being shocked that the couple was convicted. I just went and looked up the case (US vs Robert and Carleen Thomas) and found out that they also lost their appeal. They were sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for running a Bulletin Board system that contained sexually explicit material. This was a truly asinine decision, and as far as I know it is still the law of the land.

Luckily, the U.S. isn't extraditing its citizens to Yemen for violating their community standards.

[K-Thom]

Online retailers -- even the most predatory -- tend to charge much smaller sales commissions than brick-and-mortar bookshps ever did, and there is no penal sale-or-return policy on ebooks, which means that, by and large, they're well worth their split.

Well, I'm an eBook publisher in Germany, and about all online retailers over here charge at least the same percentage than your average brick & mortar book shop, sometimes even more. At least those retailers with a substantial customership, i.e. which you'd have to consider for your titles to reach your readers.

You're correct about the "non-returnability" of eBooks though, which is indeed an asset.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by K-Thom

You're correct about the "non-returnability" of eBooks though, which is indeed an asset.

Maybe under German law.

But under UK law, they're returnable (under the distance selling act, etc.). They are not audio or software recordings, or programs, and hence don't fall into a non-returnable category. Which means you're stuck with doing refunds manually, most of the time. (I haven't sold books, but I have sold pen and paper RPG's)


Oh, and if you only sell ebooks via Amazon? Well, that's a great way to get on my second-hand-only list. Your choice, as an author.

[Robotech_Master]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

I love the way the author managed to work in the lie that only bulky, hard-to-find and not-really-marketable textbooks were pretty much the only thing out there *until* the rise of the Nook, Kindle and the like. Riiiiigggghhhtttt... You publishing industry apologists keep repeating that mantra - for all the good it will do you.

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

I don't think that any of these people noticed e-book piracy until they actually had e-book devices in their hot little hands. Because they never cared much about them before.

So, all of a sudden, now that they have e-book readers, it's amazing how much piracy there suddenly is.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by tompe

And the current customers has not yet switched device and noticed that they cannot read their books on another device.

Yes, I'm not looking forward to seeing that day, either. I'd bet a lot of customers will feel duped this year, when they get readers for the holidays, then discover which stores they can and cannot buy e-books from. Of course, Amazon could solve a lot of that by selling a device that reads other formats like ePub... but the DRM from other companies will probably still get in the way. And besides, expecting any e-book publisher to make it easier for you to leave them is pretty ridiculous from a company standpoint.

[schmolch]

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Maybe under German law.

But under UK law, they're returnable (under the distance selling act, etc.). They are audio or software recordings, or programs, and hence don't fall into a non-returnable category. Which means you're stuck with doing refunds manually, most of the time. (I haven't sold books, but I have sold pen and paper RPG's)

Audio recordings and software programs ARE excluded from the "right to return" of the distance selling regulations if you've opened the seal on the package.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Audio recordings and software programs ARE excluded from the "right to return" of the distance selling regulations if you've opened the seal on the package.

...*whistles* Software, audio and video recordings are excluded.

An ebook is none of those, and hence not excluded. Unless it's sold as, say, a stand-alone app for the iPhone, that'd count as software.

[David Derrico]

I like to make my work available from as many places as possible, in any format the reader wants to read it in, without DRM. Many of you are saying that you will ONLY buy non-DRM work, and some are saying they will only buy direct from the author.

I'm not doubting any of you, and I'd also prefer to sell direct when possible. But the fact remains that retailers are necessary. As an independent author, I have no name recognition, no bookstore presence, no publicity machine and no money for advertising (which would quickly eclipse my royalties and I would be paying money for the right to distribute my work). In my mind, Amazon earns its 65% cut. I've had my own website up for years (where I sell my eBooks in any format with no DRM), and have always charged LESS than Amazon (except for the current 99 cent sale, where it's the same). Since I don't have to give Amazon their cut, I pass the savings to the reader. Yet, my direct sales through my website are but a TINY fraction of my sales through Amazon. The bottom line is that small authors just can't afford the time and money to get people to notice their work, and Amazon at least gives us an outlet.

In my perfect world, everyone would come buy directly through my website, but it just doesn't happen.

[Haesslich]

And in other news, B&N reported there were no complaints from reviewers regarding the nook, citing its fast page-speed turns and lack fo crashes. Furthermore, the U.S. Treasury reports that there is a 56 trillion dollar surplus...

Yeah. Geographical DRM restrictions, the fact the Kindle was American-only for several years (I couldn't even LOOK at buying a Kindle book since Amazon saw I had a non-American IP, and even then couldn't use the Kindle reader for iPhone because it was US-locked)... yup, DRM will 'fix' the piracy problem. Especially once they stop publishing paper books for other people to scan and convert...

[Harmon]

So...here we are in the time of eBook Prohibition. And what we have are not pirates, they are "bookleggers."

As it happens, I keep a copy of Blakemore on Prohibition (3rd edition) on my liquor cabinet. It makes for interesting reading. And the parallels between Prohibition and the DCMA/DRM are instructive, I think.

For example, most people think that under Prohibition, you couldn't have booze. But in point of fact, you could make your own and drink it, and share it with your friends in your own house.

This quote from Blakemore is too good to pass up:

... the result seems to be that one may set up a still in his front parlor window if he wishes, and invite his bibulous frinds to share his hospitality and he cannot be molested unless he sells or transports the liquor he makes.

If someone gave you some of that good old mountain dew, it appears that you could keep it. The person who gave it to you would be in trouble for "transporting" it from his house to yours. And the government might seize the jug as evidence. But you, your own personal self, would not be in trouble with the law.

Buying liquor was a little dicier. If you bought liquor from a seller, you could be charged with various kinds of conspiracy, which in the end amounted to conspiracy to sell the stuff. To yourself.

So here's a tip: don't buy ebooks from bookleggers. And bear in mind that a "donation" might be regarded as buying the book.

But so long as you stay clear of purchasing liberated ebooks, it looks like you are not violating any law when you acquire them, whether you brew them at home or get them for free from some other source.

The objection to owning (but not buying) liberated ebooks would seem, therefore, to be a purely moral one, at least in the USA.

Clearly, if you bought the ebook and liberated it yourself, there can be no moral objection to your having done so. You paid for the book, and it is not illegal for you, personally, to remove the DRM. What moral objection could there be to your reading the ecopy rather than in the pcopy?

Now, what if you bought the ebook, and acquired, for free, a liberated copy? I can't see that this is any different from liberating it yourself.

Okay, what if you bought a print copy? And then you scan it yourself into an etext. Obviously you have the right to do this. So it should follow that you don't need to copy it yourself, but can fairly acquire a free copy from someone else.

So, let's suppose you bought the pbook used? Same result, or so it seems to me. Nothing wrong with getting a etext, so long as you don't pay for it. And this should be true no matter what you paid for the pbook - even a penny - or even if the pbook were given to you.

What it seems to boil down to is this: if you have fairly acquired a copy of the book in any format, you are entitled to possess a liberated etext version of the book.

Notice that if you are in a situation where you buy an original of a book from someone, and at the same time get an ecopy, you are in the moral (and for that matter, legal) clear.

And also notice that it is no defense that the book has not been made available in a "legitimate" ebook version - the pbook is still out there & you can buy that to put a moral foundation under your acquisition of a liberated copy.

Are there any circumstances where you might be morally entitled to own a liberated etext copy without having first fairly acquired an original in some format?

I can only think of one. I keep coming back to the logical point that if you can acquire a liberated copy of an ebook, that means that you should be able to buy some kind of copy of the book, before liberation. But if you can't, then I believe that is not immoral to acquire a (free) liberated copy.

Aside from that, the moral rule has to be this: if you want the book, somewhere along the line you must have paid for an unliberated copy of it.

[sircastor]

I expect ebook piracy to jump this year as we move into a broader public acceptance of electronic reading. I don't know how these people will react to drm. Nobody likes it, but quite often you invest in a device for several years and I think most tend to stay with the company they're with. These people won't run into DRM problems the way we do with music for instance.

Additionally, books don't function like music. People listen to 3 minute songs 2 dozen times and then stop. Fiction, excepting that it's really good, is not read time and again. I don't think people will experience DRM on Ebooks very often, and as a result, ebook piracy will be much less a function of protest, and more likely just a matter of getting it now, when you want it.

The basis of exchange is essentially that two parties agree to trade one thing for another. As long as there is not force, or deception involved, the two parties are free to accept or refuse the exchange. Whatever the reasons are that one person might offer a product in a certain way is irrelevant. That's how it's being offered. If you don't want it, you're not being required to exchange. It sometimes surprises me is that the same people who wish to be protected by the freedom of exchange in that they avoid force or deception, utilize force when they find the terms of exchange don't meet their liking.