Massive wave of ebook piracy?

[mr ploppy]

No, just facts. Any reader is better than no reader.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Barcy, I agree, but please note how this whole interaction started. I stated:

"The issue is that many don't see piracy as a problem or it would stop."

and got told that was a "medical solution" wtf is that supposed to mean. I didn't state a solution at all, just a statement of fact.

This statement is precisely at the core of my issue with piracy. The pirates see nothing wrong with what they are doing and to me that is abominable. Morals of the people in my society are important to me because we are all in this together. Morals and ethics make up the society in which we live. If there is no regard for law in this respect (piracy) there is little regard for it in other respects. That's why it matters. It affects all of us.

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

This lad states it well.

Sigh.

While I may agree with the 2 of you, I know that to constantly beating this moral horse on this forum is a useless expenditure of energy & typing.

Piracy is wrong, but so is what the publishers are doing. Just because they have the right to do it, does NOT make it right. The music industry had to learn this the hard way, and it looks as though the publishing industry is going to have to learn the same hard lesson.

Some people are not going to wait around for the PI to come to its senses, or wait for them to engineer their "soft landing", and simply get the books off of the net.

It IS going to happen, and there is absolutely NOTHING the 2 of you can do about it. And to constantly raise this unsolvable topic here & getting into fights about it with others who have different points of view that may or may not agree with yours is also not necessary.

Even if we ALL agreed with you the piracy is morally wrong, we STILL can't do a damn thing about it to stop it.

Why don't you two just worry about maintaining your own morals & allow the rest of the board to maintain theirs.

Agree to disagree & move on.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Sigh.

While I may agree with the 2 of you, I know that to constantly beating this moral horse on this forum is a useless expenditure of energy & typing.

Piracy is wrong, but so is what the publishers are doing. Just because they have the right to do it, does NOT make it right. The music industry had to learn this the hard way, and it looks as though the publishing industry is going to have to learn the same hard lesson.

Some people are not going to wait around for the PI to come to its senses, or wait for them to engineer their "soft landing", and simply get the books off of the net.

It IS going to happen, and there is absolutely NOTHING the 2 of you can do about it. And to constantly raise this unsolvable topic here & getting into fights about it with others who have different points of view that may or may not agree with yours is also not necessary.

Even if we ALL agreed with you the piracy is morally wrong, we STILL can't do a damn thing about it to stop it.

Why don't you two just worry about maintaining your own morals & allow the rest of the board to maintain theirs.

Agree to disagree & move on.

And yet you wrote a lengthy post on it.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Sigh.

While I may agree with the 2 of you, I know that to constantly beating this moral horse on this forum is a useless expenditure of energy & typing.

Piracy is wrong, but so is what the publishers are doing. Just because they have the right to do it, does NOT make it right. The music industry had to learn this the hard way, and it looks as though the publishing industry is going to have to learn the same hard lesson.

Some people are not going to wait around for the PI to come to its senses, or wait for them to engineer their "soft landing", and simply get the books off of the net.

It IS going to happen, and there is absolutely NOTHING the 2 of you can do about it. And to constantly raise this unsolvable topic here & getting into fights about it with others who have different points of view that may or may not agree with yours is also not necessary.

Even if we ALL agreed with you the piracy is morally wrong, we STILL can't do a damn thing about it to stop it.

Why don't you two just worry about maintaining your own morals & allow the rest of the board to maintain theirs.

Agree to disagree & move on.

Ummm dude. Neither is any other post on this forum going to change anything, but I can assure you if enough people get fed up with cheaters and thieves something will be done about it.

Now you claim what the publishers are doing is wrong, but it's not. They are not the ones breaking the law. And No I'm not just going to sit by and not say anything. Not saying anything is implicit agreement with the activity.

If you've been around here any time at all you'll know that this thread comes up over and over and over and it's generally the same players saying the same thing.

As I've said before I will continue to state my position on when this comes up. I am not going argue on it endlessly but I will state my position and point out the errors in others positions.

Oh and it's not just 2 of us.

[TGS]

How about this for a considered position: copyright violation is, in some senses, wrong, but it doesn't mark the end of civilization, it's not the greatest wrong that can be perpetrated, and it's not the worst thing any of us has or will do in their life. In some places in the world the downloading part of copyright violation isn't illegal and in some places it is. If you download in those places where downloading is illegal you are committing a crime . but it's a pretty minor crime.

[kennyc]

But...but.....but......according to the subject of this thread it's a MASSIVE WAVE!!

[weateallthepies]

I've argued the rights and wrongs too many times.

Fact is people have always copied information, it's got progressively easier to do this with a wider number of people. It's not going to get any harder no matter what DRM pedlars tell you. People will have to learn to make a living in a world where this is easier and easier whether they agree with it or not.

[Falcao]

I pirate, therefore I am.

[Xenophon]

May I suggest a pragmatic, in-between position that has nothing to do with morals?


There's no point in arguing morals on line, because (of course) my morals are far superior to your beliefs, which in turn beat the heck out of his outrageous prejudices. (Did I conjugate that correctly?) Anyway, back to my main point.

I strongly support paying for downloaded eBooks, for a very simple reason: Authors who make enough money by writing can afford to write full time. And that means they are able to produce (wait for it...) more good books for me to read. Conversely, authors who don't get money for their books have to get day jobs, which leaves them less time to write, which leads directly to fewer good books for me to read. So if I pay, I get more of what I like, and if I don't pay I get less.

There you go. A purely selfish, pragmatic, real-world reason to pay for the books you download. I am not, however, so self-centered as to believe that you—all of you out there—want to pay so that I get more books. Rather, you may decide that it's more important to have more books that you wish to read. If so, you should pay for those books so the authors you like produce more of what you want to read.

If you want to complain about wrong-headed, stupid, bleeping publishers who can't see their own best interests even when we hit them with a clue-bat... I'm right with you on that one! I'll even add some strongly worded statements about recto-cranial inversion and the like.

Meanwhile, I'll leave the moralizing to those on either side who... um... never mind. I can't go there without diluting my point.
for your patience during this brief digression from your regularly scheduled flame war.


Xenophon

[GA Russell]

Xenophon, I understand your position regarding living authors, but what is your position regarding deceased authors?

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Barcy, I agree, but please note how this whole interaction started. I stated:

"The issue is that many don't see piracy as a problem or it would stop."

and got told that was a "medical solution" wtf is that supposed to mean. I didn't state a solution at all, just a statement of fact.

This statement is precisely at the core of my issue with piracy. The pirates see nothing wrong with what they are doing and to me that is abominable. Morals of the people in my society are important to me because we are all in this together. Morals and ethics make up the society in which we live. If there is no regard for law in this respect (piracy) there is little regard for it in other respects. That's why it matters. It affects all of us.

"Piracy" isn't going to stop unless everyone recognizes it as a problem and that's not going to happen. It's always been there and it always will be.

Many people in this thread aren't arguing in favour of "piracy" they're just recognizing the cause and effect.

My perspective is that there are people that are willing to pay for access to reading material and there are people that aren't. It's entrenched in our societies that you can and should be able to read for free. What is important is getting the people that are willing to pay to continue to pay. People that don't want to pay are never going to and you can't make them.

When paying customers decide not to pay then yes that's a problem and that's the cause and effect argument that saberdog was making. It's not the symptom of "people not thinking piracy is a problem".

In my opinion real piracy is when companies like Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada sell artists music without compensation (as they are accused of doing). It's also when people sell movies in flea markets that look like the official release. This is a problem because they're taking money from paying customers and not compensating the rights owner.

People violating copyright to download a book they've already bought isn't a problem. People violating copyright to download a book they can't afford anyway isn't a problem. I guess in your view I'm the problem.

The absolute stance on the morals and ethics and the downfall of our society just doesn't fly with most people. Well not any more then it has with the same arguments about smoking marijuana or drinking alcohol during prohibition.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

I strongly support paying for downloaded eBooks, for a very simple reason: Authors who make enough money by writing can afford to write full time. And that means they are able to produce (wait for it...) more good books for me to read. Conversely, authors who don't get money for their books have to get day jobs, which leaves them less time to write, which leads directly to fewer good books for me to read. So if I pay, I get more of what I like, and if I don't pay I get less.

That would only be relevant if it was a choice between downloading or paying. The choice is really about downloading or not downloading. If your book is downloaded you might gain a reader that you wouldn't otherwise have, but that in itself is a pretty slim chance because you would be in competition with every other book they downloaded. If they do read it they might give it a good review or recommend it to someone else, or they might buy something else you have written. If not, they won't. So everything to gain, nothing to lose.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

That would only be relevant if it was a choice between downloading or paying. The choice is really about downloading or not downloading. If your book is downloaded you might gain a reader that you wouldn't otherwise have, but that in itself is a pretty slim chance because you would be in competition with every other book they downloaded. If they do read it they might give it a good review or recommend it to someone else, or they might buy something else you have written. If not, they won't. So everything to gain, nothing to lose.

This excuses lawbreaking how?

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by Barcey

It's entrenched in our societies that you can and should be able to read for free.

It looks to me like the anti-piracy folks here do not agree with that statement.

[NVash]

See thats the main problem Im having here. We can agree to disagree that piracy is wrong. Let me put out an example where I would argue its right.

- You check out a book from the library. Its great, you enjoy it but dont finish it in time and end up returning it.
- You buy that e-book. Its a LIT file that runs perfectly on your computer because Word is licensed and everything is good.
- Said computer crashes. You get a new one in which Word is no longer licensed. Because of that you cannot read said e-book. You do not have the $400 or so dollars to purchase Microsoft Office so it looks like that e-book is trash now. Good old DRM, aint it great?

Tell me, what would you do? From your strong moral stance Id assume youd go purchase this e-book somewhere else or just buy the actual paperback. Problem is not everyone has that kind of money. You already paid once and weve established how exorbitant the prices are. You want to go out and pay that again for the same book, knock yourself out. Im pretty sure most people wont and would either give up the book, go back to the library or try to find it somewhere for dirt cheap if not free.

I know, same old argument.

I counter with you have the same old argument as well. The same tired argument. To you the publishers can do whatever they want whenever they want because its their right. Good enough, okay. But what about us? Do we not speak with our money? Can we not say that we think their practices are unfair and make no sense most of the time? I guess none of that matters, they make the rules and we can only deal with it and give them our money. Cant say I agree with that philosophy.

And you still havent answered. So what if the pirates are wrong. Who cares about that anymore? Why not try to stop the very reason they are pirates to begin with? I know some will pirate no matter what, but some things brought up are very good points. The only answer Im seeing is 'They have the right to do whatever they want'. So then the people dont have the right to decide to not purchase the same book over and over again because of some stupid DRM? People dont have the right to decide to not purchase e-books at all because the prices are crazy and just pick them up at the library or somewhere for cheap? I dont know, seems youre more than willing to call out the pirates and even resort to name calling but cant at least admit that the publishers are wrong as well. Thats quite a double standard you have there.