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

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

This is exactly why you are wrong. It has already been done, but the publishers won't allow it. There is no inherent reason that the old rules can not continue for the old possibilities. It is already technically possible to lend 1 digital copy to 1 and only 1 person at a time. They have made a deliberate choice to prevent it.

Yes, new rules have to be made for the new possibilities (lending to multiple people at the same time), but that is not what we're talking about.

I'm not wrong, the technology has changed. You want ebooks to work like pbooks, they can't, they never will, they are different, the system must change. DRM has been put in place by the publishers as an initial attempt to protect their rights, and by extension those of the author (at the expense of customer rights certainly) but that is not the final answer, the entire industry is in flux and must change to accommodate the new technology, it's not there yet and will likely end up the same place as the music industry, but we're not there yet.

This IS what we are talking about. B&N and Adobe have implemented their Social DRM which allows sharing one book one time. You failed to mention the One Time thing. This is not the same as sharing or giving away a paper book.

[DawnFalcon]

Of course they can.

Baen have already shown one model to profit off them without DRM. There are others. This is a space where books are considerably behind - some of the stuff people are currently making in the games field makes a mockery of your statement in amusing ways.

And there is a difference between an Author's copyright, his moral rights and his economic interest. DRM only protects the first of those, very arguably infringes on the second* and certainly works against the third.

The music industry has surrendered the control and is treating MP3's no differently to CD's in licensing terms. So they disagree with your contention as well.


(*derogatory treatment: "treatment of a work is derogatory if it amounts to distortion or mutilation of the work or is otherwise prejudicial to the honour or reputation of the author or director".)

[Happ]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Half my library is from authors who were "amateurs" when they wrote the books in my library.

And that can be perceived as a wonderful thing if one is an resentful amateur herself. However, no sane person could argue that writing novels or history or whatever, unlike baking bread, should not be profitable enough so that one could live off that.

Of course, if one devalues intellectual work and believes that that is not the sort of work one should be allowed to make a living from, the argument is over. Let’s then bring those bastard intellectuals down, put them to do some real work in factories or writing code for Google — and if at the end of the day they still have the energy to write a good novel, great. If not, that’s because they were not that serious about it to begin with.

[Bremen Cole]

As I look through the problems people have getting their readers to work, there is a common theme. Most are related to DRM issues. The title of this thread has the word Piracy in it, interestingly that would fix most of the customers problems.

I wish the companies that create these complex schemes to protect their "rights" would understand a simple fact. Those who go to the torrents and get their ebooks, do no have these problems. It is only if you try to buy them, that the problems start. Find a "lit" file on torrent. Convert to epub with Calibre. And you are reading. No authorizing a computer or device, and no endless worry about if it will work on the reader you buy next year.

It is just amazing to me that someone in these companies is not aware of what the music industry went through the past 10 years over this issue.....

[sircastor]

One of the problems I see in this argument is that we want to treat electronic media like print media.

The publishing industry (generalization) would like to treat ebooks like print books, with some exceptions, They want to manage:
* The means through which you get the media
* How you read the media
* What you can do with the media.

They want these things because it fills in the gaps that print books fail in. Can you blame them? From their perspective, any option they don't cover is a liability to the investment they've made in a particular work.

You can do whatever the heck you want with a print book, because it's a physical object. It used to be really easy to control intellectual property because IP (generally) only ever took the form of physical objects. You weren't receiving the property itself, just a representation of it. Without significant effort, you could really only mess around with the representation of the property you have. Quick and dirty, you could cut the binding, run it through a document feeder, and have a digital copy of it, but at the cost of the original copy, and the time expenditure. It's a lot of work... work that most people aren't willing to put in.

Ebooks represent something different. The ebook you bought is no longer just a singular representation of the Intellectual Property. The barrier to entry of reproducing, manipulating, and distributing this representation is significantly small, so you have, in effect, the intellectual property itself. DRM is a means of trying to force ebooks into the functional space of print books, without the problems.

Users want to treat ebooks both ways as well. We want to be able to loan the book to our friends, but we don't want to be weighed down by DRM so we can't "Do what we want". If there's not inherent structure for the lending (as naturally occurs with a physical book) it's compensated for. Otherwise, it's really just like scanning + printing a copy and giving it to your friend and asking nicely "Please destroy this when you're done"

I don't like DRM, but I certainly understand the need for it. Tragically, people in our society don't do a great job of naturally respecting the property of others.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Happ

And that can be perceived as a wonderful thing if one is an resentful amateur herself. However, no sane person could argue that writing novels or history or whatever, unlike baking bread, should not be profitable enough so that one could live off that.

And why would you assume that removing DRM would do that? The evidence is that it increases online sales. When you're starting out, you need a obscurity is the enemy. By the time that's no longer true you have a dedicated following who will evangelise for you...



sircastor - "Can you blame them?"

Yes. Yes, I can.

All they are going to achieve by DRM is driving customers to the Darknet. Oh, and losing sales.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Bremen Cole

As I look through the problems people have getting their readers to work, there is a common theme. Most are related to DRM issues. ..


It is just amazing to me that someone in these companies is not aware of what the music industry went through the past 10 years over this issue.....

To the first yes, absolutely true. I've spent a significant amount of time on here since Christmas trying to help people get things working and a large part of it is DRM related (the rest seem to be firewall related).

As to the second, I just can't believe they are not aware. I mean these are not idiots that run the publishing companies, I think the issue is more that they are so entrenched in the "process" that they can't turn the battleship or can't navigate the corporate waters and fight the battles that would let them handle ebooks differently than pbooks.....at least not until the entire profit chain is at risk. Currently ebooks are still only a percentage of the total take.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by sircastor

One of the problems I see in this argument is that we want to treat electronic media like print media.

The publishing industry (generalization) would like to treat ebooks like print books, with some exceptions, They want to manage:
* The means through which you get the media
* How you read the media
* What you can do with the media.

They want these things because it fills in the gaps that print books fail in. Can you blame them? From their perspective, any option they don't cover is a liability to the investment they've made in a particular work.

You can do whatever the heck you want with a print book, because it's a physical object. It used to be really easy to control intellectual property because IP (generally) only ever took the form of physical objects. You weren't receiving the property itself, just a representation of it. Without significant effort, you could really only mess around with the representation of the property you have. Quick and dirty, you could cut the binding, run it through a document feeder, and have a digital copy of it, but at the cost of the original copy, and the time expenditure. It's a lot of work... work that most people aren't willing to put in.

Ebooks represent something different. The ebook you bought is no longer just a singular representation of the Intellectual Property. The barrier to entry of reproducing, manipulating, and distributing this representation is significantly small, so you have, in effect, the intellectual property itself. DRM is a means of trying to force ebooks into the functional space of print books, without the problems.

Users want to treat ebooks both ways as well. We want to be able to loan the book to our friends, but we don't want to be weighed down by DRM so we can't "Do what we want". If there's not inherent structure for the lending (as naturally occurs with a physical book) it's compensated for. Otherwise, it's really just like scanning + printing a copy and giving it to your friend and asking nicely "Please destroy this when you're done"

I don't like DRM, but I certainly understand the need for it. Tragically, people in our society don't do a great job of naturally respecting the property of others.

Well said.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I'm not wrong, the technology has changed. You want ebooks to work like pbooks, they can't, they never will, they are different, the system must change.

The technology to make eBooks work like pBooks with regards to the consumer rights we're talking about is trivial, and in at least one case already exists. Whether it only lets you do it one time, or one at a time (like pBooks) doesn't matter. That's just an artificial limitation. They could certainly support the latter if they wanted to, and it would give consumers the exact same right they already have today with pBooks.

Technically, there is nothing that would prevent the design of a DRM system that would allow for the transfer of a license to 1 person at a time, and then when they return it transfer it again, just like pBooks. The only reason DRM systems don't support that is because they choose not to, not because they can't.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I'm not wrong, the technology has changed. You want ebooks to work like pbooks, they can't, they never will, they are different, the system must change. DRM has been put in place by the publishers as an initial attempt to protect their rights, and by extension those of the author (at the expense of customer rights certainly) but that is not the final answer, the entire industry is in flux and must change to accommodate the new technology, it's not there yet and will likely end up the same place as the music industry, but we're not there yet.

This IS what we are talking about. B&N and Adobe have implemented their Social DRM which allows sharing one book one time. You failed to mention the One Time thing. This is not the same as sharing or giving away a paper book.

You're both trying to fit a new technological world back into the old mold. Just doing it differently.

It's like trying to discuss how to return to medieval chivalry twenty years after cannons have started blasting castles into rubble, and blowing knight out of their saddles....

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

It's like trying to discuss how to return to medieval chivalry twenty years after cannons have started blasting castles into rubble, and blowing knight out of their saddles....

Hey, the Japanese managed it.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by sircastor

The publishing industry (generalization) would like to treat ebooks like print books, with some exceptions, They want to manage:
* The means through which you get the media

Which is a right granted to them by copyright law

* How you read the media
* What you can do with the media.

Yes, they want to mange these, but there is no legal basis for it beyond what's already protected by copyright for physical books. What is allowed by law they are attempting to take away with DRM.

The ebook you bought is no longer just a singular representation of the Intellectual Property. The barrier to entry of reproducing, manipulating, and distributing this representation is significantly small

None of which is what we're asking for.

DRM is a means of trying to force ebooks into the functional space of print books, without the problems.

No, DRM could be a means of forcing eBooks into the functional space of print books, but it is instead deliberately forcing ebooks into a smaller functional space than print books.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

The technology to make eBooks work like pBooks with regards to the consumer rights we're talking about is trivial, and in at least one case already exists. Whether it only lets you do it one time, or one at a time (like pBooks) doesn't matter. That's just an artificial limitation. They could certainly support the latter if they wanted to, and it would give consumers the exact same right they already have today with pBooks.

Technically, there is nothing that would prevent the design of a DRM system that would allow for the transfer of a license to 1 person at a time, and then when they return it transfer it again, just like pBooks. The only reason DRM systems don't support that is because they choose not to, not because they can't.

Now who's talking about something that doesn't exist.
If the publishers/industry can implement something like that to force ebooks to emulate pbooks and everyone agrees this is how it should work and it's a common format etc. I'm all for it. But my point still stands and is correct. We are currently in a state of flux. The inherent differences in the formats require different methods of managing it -- currently various forms of DRM are in place in an attempt to do this. That may change, the DRM may change to allow selling, lending, or burning just like pbooks but it's not there yet and unlike you I don't think it's a conspiracy or intentional on the part of the publishers, it's just that we are not there yet and if you think the current drm is invasive, then the enhanced ability to forcibly ensure only one copy of a purchase is allowed to exist while simultaneously allowing sharing, selling, or burning of that copy in the same manner as a pbook then expect much more serious invasive behavior by the DRM.

On top of that you know as well as I that there is no such thing as "perfect" drm and it will be cracked and the multiple sharing (pirating if you so choose to call it) will continue. The publishers know this too. They really just want to somehow reach a means of making money and a reasonable way of insuring their rights and by extension the authors rights in the process.

I don't claim to know the answer, but the only one I see is the one reached by the music industry.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Happ

I would like it that more and more small businesses like Baen could thrive. That was, after all, the Internet promise, in the beginning, remember? Authors alone, and small publishers, would get a piece of the pie. This was a dream that died early when the ‘free’ business model killed it. Now unless you have lots of people around to click your ads you make almost no money.

But more and more businesses *are* surviving - as long as much larger corps don't get together with their paid shills in the legislatures to create a legal framework to force said new-method businesses out of business. Almost all the problems with doing business on the internet comes from increased efforts by the legislatures (who only want to steal more money - through taxation) and their moneybag contributors (who see the legislation as a way to beat up on the innovators) to force regulatory burdens upon the internet business models.

Baen would prove great if its business were so good that everyone started to copycat it. After all, e-book publishers are trying to copycat Kindle which in turn is trying to copycat iTunes. And this all is for a reason: money. These models suck to you and me, but make money. More than Baen. What does this tell you? That Baen’s model has a future and that iTunes’ model doesn’t?

The main reason most publishers aren't heading to the BAEN model isn't because it's too pie-in-the-sky so much as because the *other* publishers are so wedded to their 'We must have a total lock on customer loyalty by trapping them from using their ebooks in any way or on any device we don't like' philosophy. It's a severe form of 'buggy-whip-factory' mentality.

So, my verdict is that Baen has not gone bust yet just because it is publishing trade paperbacks and there is money in this. Without that, Baen would cease to exist. So if e-books become more a more common and trade paperbacks more and more cumbersome, Baen will go bust. Unless it changes its business model.

Baen, that lovely publisher of trade pb, *HARDCOVERS* and *MMPBs* is still in business because it puts out *quality* product. That, of course, brings in money. And Baen is already at the forefront of the ebook wave, so it will survive. I cannot say the same of the more regressive 'traditional' publishing houses.

Derek

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

You're both trying to fit a new technological world back into the old mold.

That's not what's happening though. It's not being fit into the old mold (which I wouldn't mind), the publishers are also taking the opportunity to change the old mold in their favor. DRM goes way beyond preventing new things that are possible with eBooks. It also takes away things that were possible with pBooks, which should still be.