Do you pirate books and why?

[sbroome]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

FWIW: I don't buy digital download music, just CDs.
And then I rip them myself. The reasons?
1- I buy the CDs on sale or used, so they're cheaper.
2- I rip them to high-quality compressed files for my portable player with a high-quality ripper app.
3- I also rip them to a lossless format for my home entertainment system and for PC use.
4- I get to keep the CDs as archival copies and home decoration.

Depending on the tools you use, personally-ripped files will be of a higher quality than even commercial downloads. It doesn't take long.

Way cheaper, especially if you buy used lots online.

[Fozzybear]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

FWIW: I don't buy digital download music, just CDs.
And then I rip them myself. The reasons?
1- I buy the CDs on sale or used, so they're cheaper.
2- I rip them to high-quality compressed files for my portable player with a high-quality ripper app.
3- I also rip them to a lossless format for my home entertainment system and for PC use.
4- I get to keep the CDs as archival copies and home decoration.

Depending on the tools you use, personally-ripped files will be of a higher quality than even commercial downloads. It doesn't take long.

I still buy music on CD for some of the same reasons. Although I rarely listen to the original CD and usually listen to the ripped mp3s on my computer or ipod dock/headphones I know that if I ever get back into hi-fi I'd rather have music on CD than a big collection of mp3 tracks that don't sound very good on a decent stereo. Plus they're often cheaper in sales (Queen Greatest Hits 1 and 2 remastered cost me £9 in Asda recently, would have been twice as much on mp3/apple).

If I don't want an album anymore I can sell the CD on or give it to charity... can't do that with an MP3!

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by ProjeKtWEREWOLF

How is ebook piracy THAT different to buying used paper editions? After all, the authors/publishers don't see a cut of the money from these either.

Do a quick search or wikipedia check on "first sale doctrine." That should answer all your questions.

Xenophon

[dongi]

I have more than one thousand physical books, most of them inherited
from my parents and a few hundreds bought by myself.

I have never bought an ebook in my life but I have loads. My ebooks are
divided in 2 categories Technical (Computers, Electrical, Electronics,
RF_Microwave, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics, Systems etc.) and Fiction
(all the literature books).
I keep all the technical books in PDF and DJVU formats while the Fiction books
are all EPUB, MOBI and occasional PDFs. I have over 6000 unique titles of
technical books and over 30000 fiction books (I read in several languages and
this allows me to cover a lot of authors). Each of these categories occupy some
35GB in size but I have downloaded probably 3 times as much and then erased
duplicates and uninteresting books. While I have at least flipped through a
few pages of every technical book I have, most of the fiction books are virgin.
I usually just pick randomly a fiction book and delete an author entirely if I
don't like it. There is no risk for me running out of read material this
lifetime.

I have spent a lot of time writing various Perl scripts and arranging books in
categories, changing their names in a consistent way, fetching metadata from
the internet (based on ISBN), inserting covers etc. This allows me now to
serve my own books from my private network and to search through ebooks metadata.

I have all the tools to remove ebooks DRM but the irony is I seldom use
them because I only get DRM-free versions. Occasionally I might remove
PDF file protection just to edit them: split, merge, crop white margins.

I've been collecting technical books for at least the past 10 years while
the fiction books are all just 1-2 years old. If publishers wouldn't have
been so greedy with ebooks I would have probably bought the books instead
of pirating them. When I see on Amazon, Kobo an the like prices like
10-15£ for a fiction book or 150£ for a technical book I always wonder
who pays that kind of money for one file with DRM on top. I would have bought
all my books if the prices were a tenth of what they currently are at the time
I've started to acquire my e-ink readers and tablets. Now they have completely
lost me as a client. If I want a book it is usually already on my drives, if
not I know all the places where I can get it: torrents, newsgroups, library.nu
(now defunct), IRC. I will probably only occasionally buy paperback books for
the rest of my life.

I have a large income and I can afford any ebook I want (not the above numbers
but at least the ones I will ever read) even with today prices. I don't buy
them because I feel the current prices are over inflated and I prefer to spend
the cash on tangible stuff like electronic gadgets.

Book publishers are probably in the worst position when it comes to piracy
because books have the smallest size of all media. I can share my entire
collection on memory sticks and portable drives. An entire collection has
the size of a single Bluray movie.

Books are not the only media I pirate. I have all the music I ever wanted;
some from my own CDs but most from the napster and allofmp3 era. I don't
pirate music anymore - there's nothing new out there that I want. I can
play non-stop 2 months worth of music without repeating a song. My music
also accompanies me where-ever I am. I can redirect the music to any room
of my house and my car computer synchronises wirelessly when in the driveway
so I have my entire collection on the road.

I pirate console games too, I have hundreds of burned PS2 and Wii DVDs and
some 5000 DS games. I don't play games anymore - it's a terrible loss of time,
I used to years ago but now I'm just collecting them.

As for movies my drives are full of them. I have a dozen or so computers around
the house, most of them servers with more than 10TB of storage space in total.
I have access to a thousand or so channels (via multiple LNBs and cardsharing)
and I'm recording movies directly from the satellite DVB or terrestrial DVT feeds.
Beside those I'm also using newsbin for titles not yet available as broadcasts.

As a positive note I don't pirate software because I'm using only open source.

I am confident that I will see in my lifetime legal sharing of all internet
files. Civilisation and science are better served by sharing knowledge and
culture rather than making some people rich. I want to see all publishers,
record and movies companies go bankrupt and only after that I will directly pay
the authors.

I also vote with the Pirate Party and I am a true pirate.

Argh Matey!

[sbroome]

I've been collecting technical books for at least the past 10 years while
the fiction books are all just 1-2 years old. If publishers wouldn't have
been so greedy with ebooks I would have probably bought the books instead
of pirating them. When I see on Amazon, Kobo an the like prices like
10-15£ for a fiction book or 150£ for a technical book I always wonder
who pays that kind of money for one file with DRM on top."

Why do people think they're only paying for format instead of talking about paying for the effort put into creating the content? Do people think it's easy to create fictional worlds and characters?

Books are not the only media I pirate. I have all the music I ever wanted;
some from my own CDs but most from the napster and allofmp3 era. I don't
pirate music anymore - there's nothing new out there that I want. I can
play non-stop 2 months worth of music without repeating a song. My music
also accompanies me where-ever I am. I can redirect the music to any room
of my house and my car computer synchronises wirelessly when in the driveway
so I have my entire collection on the road.

I pirate console games too, I have hundreds of burned PS2 and Wii DVDs and
some 5000 DS games. I don't play games anymore - it's a terrible loss of time,
I used to years ago but now I'm just collecting them."

I appreciate your post, because after all the BS finally somebody is here to represent the "I just like free things" group which comprises most of the pirates.

[HarryT]

Coming to MR and boasting, in your first post, about how much stuff you've stolen, is not a good way to win friends around here.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by sbroome

I appreciate your post, because after all the BS finally somebody is here to represent the "I just like free thing" group which comprises most of the pirates.

And first post of this forum member being "I pirate everything"... Plus it's very "convenient" that it also says "I have a large income", playing into the hands of those who say "but everyone could afford everything, they just don't want to pay".

Might be true what has been said, or might not be true - but I really doubt it represents the majority of everyone who ever pirated anything. And to me it sounds like trolling...

[sbroome]

Originally Posted by Jaden

And first post of this forum member being "I pirate everything"... Plus it's very "convenient" that it also says "I have a large income", playing into the hands of those who say "but everyone could afford everything, they just don't want to pay".

Might be true what has been said, or might not be true - but I really doubt it represents the majority of everyone who ever pirated anything. And to me it sounds like trolling...

Yes I'm sure that in reality, they're a bunch of orphans begging for food and new episodes of Game of Thrones. Give us freeeeeeeeee.

[Joykins]

Originally Posted by dongi

I have more than one thousand physical books, most of them inherited
from my parents and a few hundreds bought by myself.

I have never bought an ebook in my life but I have loads. My ebooks are
divided in 2 categories Technical (Computers, Electrical, Electronics,
RF_Microwave, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics, Systems etc.) and Fiction
(all the literature books).
I keep all the technical books in PDF and DJVU formats while the Fiction books
are all EPUB, MOBI and occasional PDFs. I have over 6000 unique titles of
technical books and over 30000 fiction books (I read in several languages and
this allows me to cover a lot of authors). Each of these categories occupy some
35GB in size but I have downloaded probably 3 times as much and then erased
duplicates and uninteresting books. While I have at least flipped through a
few pages of every technical book I have, most of the fiction books are virgin.
I usually just pick randomly a fiction book and delete an author entirely if I
don't like it. There is no risk for me running out of read material this
lifetime.

I have spent a lot of time writing various Perl scripts and arranging books in
categories, changing their names in a consistent way, fetching metadata from
the internet (based on ISBN), inserting covers etc. This allows me now to
serve my own books from my private network and to search through ebooks metadata.
...

Books are not the only media I pirate. I have all the music I ever wanted;
some from my own CDs but most from the napster and allofmp3 era. I don't
pirate music anymore - there's nothing new out there that I want. I can
play non-stop 2 months worth of music without repeating a song. My music
also accompanies me where-ever I am. I can redirect the music to any room
of my house and my car computer synchronises wirelessly when in the driveway
so I have my entire collection on the road.

I pirate console games too, I have hundreds of burned PS2 and Wii DVDs and
some 5000 DS games. I don't play games anymore - it's a terrible loss of time,
I used to years ago but now I'm just collecting them.

As for movies my drives are full of them. I have a dozen or so computers around
the house, most of them servers with more than 10TB of storage space in total.
I have access to a thousand or so channels (via multiple LNBs and cardsharing)
and I'm recording movies directly from the satellite DVB or terrestrial DVT feeds.
Beside those I'm also using newsbin for titles not yet available as broadcasts.

...


I also vote with the Pirate Party and I am a true pirate.

Argh Matey!

This post (bolded items especially) indicates to me that this "pirate" is a data hoarder and not so much of a reader representing significant lost sales to the author. It would take me over 60 years to read 30,000 fiction books and I read a very large number of books per year; in fact, this "pirate" spends a lot of time (and presumably draws significant pleasure) from acquiring, cataloging, and manipulating their collection of books, leaving little time left for reading; they probably also own/manipulate/catalog more movies than can realistically be viewed in a person's lifetime. They own thousands of video games but never play one.

ETA: I also take pleasure in book acquisition, but not to this extreme; I own a few hundred books I have not yet read, mostly freebies and bargains in genres that appeal to me, and I manage my collection in Calibre. However, I insist on acquiring my books by legal means, have at least a passing interest in the book subjects, and I do actually have time in my life expectancy to read them all.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by sbroome

Yes I'm sure that in reality, they're a bunch of orphans begging for food and new episodes of Game of Thrones. Give us freeeeeeeeee.

No, all of them are eeeeeviiiil pirates that want to destroy the poooor media companies that earn so little money and make them starving beggars by taking the food out of their mouths (and out of the childrens' and wives' and great-grandmothers' mouths, too).

Meanwhile back on planet earth... There's no such thing as a completely evil or completely good person in the world.

I didn't say "go ahead and pirate", but I'm mighty sick of all the people that believe the story that stopping piracy will increase sales by billions and will finally make being in the media industry worth the while when there are movies like "Avatar" that has a box office result of 2.782,3 millions...

There might be people who pirate everything and will never buy a book, CD, pay for their TV access, will go to the movies, theatre or whatever, you name it... but I think these are rather the minority than the majority.

[Apache]

I own some where around a couple of thousand physical books. Both paperback and hard bound. But it took me over 40 years of read and buying to get there.
Apache

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Apache

I own some where around a couple of thousand physical books. Both paperback and hard bound. But it took me over 40 years of read and buying to get there.
Apache

Yes. Some of us are honest. Karma coming your way.

[spindlegirl]

Originally Posted by Apache

I own some where around a couple of thousand physical books. Both paperback and hard bound. But it took me over 40 years of read and buying to get there.
Apache

I own/have owned several hundred physical books. For over 90% of the books, I have likely been about the second to fourth owner, and likely won't be the last. (I pass paper books around a lot, except for my most special and sentimental - that remaining ten %) Judging by the price on the cover of some of them, that may even be the conservative estimate. I've bought a lot of second hand books. The author was compensated by the first owner, and have been given and passed on many other books as a result.

I know a few authors who appreciate and place a lot of value on being promoted and are always looking for low-budget ways to promote themselves without being spammy., They are honored to on some level be a name that people talk about and can recognize. A person doesn't have to be the first generation buyer to do an author they love a world of good. I have loaned books out to people who have gone and bought brand new copies for themselves. I am sure if the authors knew of this personally, they'd be just as thankful as if I did the buying myself.

[sbroome]

Originally Posted by Jaden

No, all of them are eeeeeviiiil pirates that want to destroy the poooor media companies that earn so little money and make them starving beggars by taking the food out of their mouths (and out of the childrens' and wives' and great-grandmothers' mouths, too).

Meanwhile back on planet earth... There's no such thing as a completely evil or completely good person in the world.

I didn't say "go ahead and pirate", but I'm mighty sick of all the people that believe the story that stopping piracy will increase sales by billions and will finally make being in the media industry worth the while when there are movies like "Avatar" that has a box office result of 2.782,3 millions...

There might be people who pirate everything and will never buy a book, CD, pay for their TV access, will go to the movies, theatre or whatever, you name it... but I think these are rather the minority than the majority.

Increase by billions? No. Stop people who aren't paying from consuming through sites that don't have any rights to distribute the content? Yes. Make sure that traffic is directed to legitimate sites instead of letting a bunch of lazy parasites make ad revenue off of thousands of creative works that they didn't actually create? Yes.

To me, as a creator, those are things worth fighting for if people won't simply stop doing it on their own.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by sbroome

Stop people who aren't paying from consuming through sites that don't have any rights to distribute the content? Yes. Make sure that traffic is directed to legitimate sites instead of letting a bunch of lazy parasites make ad revenue off of thousands of creative works that they didn't actually create? Yes.

Thing is that people like "dongi" don't consume, they hoard. And if they are stopped, they might not react the way that sounds logical (start buying the stuff), because what they do is hoard "free" stuff. That's like the people saving all the legally free music and books and the like they never intend to use.

Hoarders will hardly start to be consumers.

To me, as a creator, those are things worth fighting for if people won't simply stop doing it on their own.

There will always be people assuming they have a right to own everything and for free. It's also something the advertising companies make us believe. That we need all of that, want all of that and have a right to own all of that. They hardly ever say "but only if you can afford to pay for it".

Of course there is not such thing as a right to get everything for free.

Can't and won't blame anyone for wanting to make money. And I don't understand people pirating stuff they can get easily (legally!) and reasonably priced, either.