Piracy Experiment

[TheSFReader]

Originally Posted by TGS

You are equating copyright violation with stealing - people who conflate these two things are scum.

Yep, I have had that discussion already : copyright infringement =/= theft ... Even the Supreme court agrees @see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyrig...nt#.22Theft.22

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by Duiker

I'd also like to say that I have read "stolen" copies of ebooks and gone on to buy many of those authors other books. Had I not been turned on to that author by the darknet I likely would never have gone on to legitamitely buy his/her books. In fact I would say that at least 70% of my legit purchases are directly related to the books I've read on the darknet. In my case I would say that the darknet has actually INCREASED book sales.

Why is it OK to deprive writers of their choice? Even if a writer is cluelessly missing untold sales by not being on the darknet, aren't we all entitled to make our own decisions about our work? If I think you're not doing the best job with your career, whatever it is, is it OK for me to start making choices for you?

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by Duiker

I'd also like to say that I have read "stolen" copies of ebooks and gone on to buy many of those authors other books. Had I not been turned on to that author by the darknet I likely would never have gone on to legitamitely buy his/her books. In fact I would say that at least 70% of my legit purchases are directly related to the books I've read on the darknet. In my case I would say that the darknet has actually INCREASED book sales.

If everyone who used pirate sites performed your same actions, I don't think authors would be concerned at all.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Maggie Leung

Why is it OK to deprive writers of their choice? Even if a writer is cluelessly missing untold sales by not being on the darknet, aren't we all entitled to make our own decisions about our work? If I think you're not doing the best job with your career, whatever it is, is it OK for me to start making choices for you?

In an ideal world they would get that choice, but we all need to play with the hand we are dealt with. But they still have the choice to have them removed from Google results should they prefer people read someone else's books instead.

[bucsie]

Originally Posted by ruel

People that know how to find pirated materials do not use Google to get them. They use the search engines within the torrent websites. The only affect of Google not indexing certain pages is that people who have no idea how to download a torrent file won't be able to find the file. So, it doesn't even matter.

Actually that does not apply to ebooks as much. A few months ago I was curious about ebook torrents so I browsed the pirate bay's ebook torrents. I was surprised to see there were few torrents compared to other media. So as a next step, I asked google - and I found out that not torrent sites, but forums are where ebooks lie. So google was actually the gateway to the dark net.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

If everyone who used pirate sites performed your same actions, I don't think authors would be concerned at all.

Excluding the file-collectors, buying other books by writers you have discovered through a free dowload isn't that uncommon. It's no different to discovering a writer through other means that don't directly pay the writer.

[jlmwrite]

Wow -- this thread made for an amusing read this frigid winter morning while waiting for the missus to finish watching the news.

I am simply amazed at the loose definitions of legality and morality bantered about by some of the posters. My feeling is that ebooks -- much like digital copies of music, movies, and TV shows -- tend to be regarded as ephemera rather than tangible goods. One poster even stated that "his" generation is being raised to feel that it's ok to download copies of music and books simply because they aren't real, tangible objects.

Would any poster here would feel it within their right to walk into a bookstore and slip a copy of a paperback into their pocket or backpack because they didn't have the money to pay for it (as one poster justified to himself earlier) or it wasn't available in their country (as several posters have rationalized)? Of course not! That's because we have all been raised to understand that taking a tangible object is legally and morally wrong, no matter how rich or how poor a country in which we were raised. (The eastern bloc country rationalization made me laugh -- wonder if his grandparents waited in hours-long lines for toilet paper as was common in certain eastern countries years ago, or if they just stole it because it wasn't commonly available?)

Simply because digital files are available on the internet and therefore aren't tangible objects don't mean they should be taken any more than taking the physical copy from a store is ok. Sending a small donation to the pirate site that hosted the illegal copy doesn't justify downloading an illegal copy, nor does the argument that it's so poorly formatted that it's ok.

I wish the greedy publishers would take their older titles and use their unpaid interns and lowly paid junior editors to turn those books into ebooks. Every single new book published in recent years is already on a computer, so turning them into an ebook takes zero effort. There are no associated publishing costs (ie, ink, paper, etc), nor storage and transportation costs. The authors could still be paid their usual fees/commissions, and the publishers could still make a handsome profit (typically more than the authors receive). And we, the ebook consumers, would benefit by much lower prices that weren't subject to economic demands such as rising fuel costs!

Still, no matter how cheaply or widely available ebooks become there will always be people who will download copies of ebooks and music and movies they didn't pay for. My teenagers and their friends have spent small fortunes (at least for kids without jobs) on .99 cent mp3 downloads through iTunes, yet they freely swap enormous archives of pirated mp3s. Go figure.

The pirating ain't gonna stop, and neither will the arguments here!

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

In an ideal world they would get that choice, but we all need to play with the hand we are dealt with. But they still have the choice to have them removed from Google results should they prefer people read someone else's books instead.

I do not need to live in an ideal world to respect other people's choices. If I use a book without an author's permission, I'm actively violating his choice. It comes down to each user choosing whether to violate an author's choice.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by TGS

You are equating copyright violation with stealing - people who conflate these two things are scum.

Stealing is a moral category, not a legal category. There is no "crime" of "stealing". But people who steal from authors are scum. Not because of what they believe, but because of what they do.

Seriously, I can't believe that you can come out in public and acknowledge that, yeah, the author worked for months or years on this book, but I'm going to steal it and not pay him/her because I can.

Originally Posted by TheSFReader

Yep, I have had that discussion already : copyright infringement =/= theft ... Even the Supreme court agrees @see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyrig...nt#.22Theft.22

I was talking about "stealing," which is a moral category. But what would clearly be copyright infringement under federal law is going to be "theft" under state law. Federal and state law are different.

Under *federal law* there is a crime of copyright infringement. It is different and distinct from the federal law of theft. That's what the supreme court was saying in its opinion. And that's all that it was saying - you can follow the analysis in part II of the discussion, where the court is determining whether congress intended for the federal theft statute to cover copyright *in light of* the copyright act's criminal provisions.

98% of criminal prosecutions in the US are *state* proceedings. The supreme court's determination of congressional intent with respect to the federal crime of theft has no bearing on the meaning of state laws. States have different laws, using different words. And in every state that I know of, using someone's IP without their permission is defined as "theft" (or "larceny," in states with the older nomenclature). It's clearly the case in my state.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Seriously, I can't believe that you can come out in public and acknowledge that, yeah, the author worked for months or years on this book, but I'm going to steal it and not pay him/her because I can.

Wait... isn't it the publisher's job to screw the author?

[Duiker]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Seriously, I can't believe that you can come out in public and acknowledge that, yeah, the author worked for months or years on this book, but I'm going to steal it and not pay him/her because I can...

What I can say is that if the author wants to make money on his/her work that he/she has slaved over they need to work with their publishers on a fair price for ebooks. For me this goes right back to the costs associated with ebooks. If an ebook costs more then aits paperback version then its ludicrous to expect people to buy it. Yes, it is illegal to steal books and it should be but making it illegal doesn't stop it from happening and yes there will always be people who steal digital files regardless of pricing in the market but I bet there would be a huge decrease if ebooks were priced fairly. I know, I know, now I've started a whole new argument about what is fair pricing for ebooks.

I would also like to see some well established authors selling their own works through their own private websites.

[bucsie]

Originally Posted by jlmwrite

. (The eastern bloc country rationalization made me laugh -- wonder if his grandparents waited in hours-long lines for toilet paper as was common in certain eastern countries years ago, or if they just stole it because it wasn't commonly available?)

You know what, I actually had to wake up at 5 in the morning and stay in line for hours, once every couple of days back when I was 5 or 6 yo, because they gave milk rationalized by household members, and you had to show up to get your .5 liter of milk.
You could never relate to this reality unless you lived it. I'm not laughing when I remember it.
Out of 100 people in that line, if one guy would show up and say "hey, I've got a cow I stole from the communist party - want milk for free? come and get it!" I wonder how many would. Sure, most would say "stealing is wrong, how could you?". And certainly one can live without milk products. If you can't afford it, you won't starve. But you can't bake a cake either .
It's easy to be moral and point fingers when you have plenty.

But that rant above was about milk, not ebooks.

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by Duiker

What I can say is that if the author wants to make money on his/her work that he/she has slaved over they need to work with their publishers on a fair price for ebooks. For me this goes right back to the costs associated with ebooks. If an ebook costs more then aits paperback version then its ludicrous to expect people to buy it. Yes, it is illegal to steal books and it should be but making it illegal doesn't stop it from happening and yes there will always be people who steal digital files regardless of pricing in the market but I bet there would be a huge decrease if ebooks were priced fairly. I know, I know, now I've started a whole new argument about what is fair pricing for ebooks.

I would also like to see some well established authors selling their own works through their own private websites.

So you're saying the reader gets to decide what's a fair price, and if the reader decides a price isn't fair, it's OK to take the product without permission.

No one thinks that what we post here will stop piracy. We're discussing why some people think it's OK to pirate and some people disagree. For me, reasoning that "Well, other people do it, or have done it for a long time" sounds like an excuse for doing what you want and not accepting responsibility for it. If I choose to steal, it's my responsibility.

[Duiker]

[QUOTE=Maggie Leung;1375746]So you're saying the reader gets to decide what's a fair price, and if the reader decides a price isn't fair, it's OK to take the product without permission....QUOTE]

I'm saying that's the way it is, and if publishers want people to pay for what they're selling then they'd better not be too greedy cause there are many alternatives for the consumer nowadays. Welcome to 2011 and the digital age, for better or for worse.

Out of curiosity, what are your feelings on friends sharing ebook files with one another as they would share a DTB?

[bucsie]

Originally Posted by Duiker

I would also like to see some well established authors selling their own works through their own private websites.

Yeas, this I'd love to see. Probably the contracts with the publishers forbid it, but if possible it would make an interesting experiment.