Confessions of a Book Pirate

[Penforhire]

Really, Ubikzz? You don't believe in IP. What about unique configurations of semiconductor circuitry? Those designs are some of the most valuable, stolen, and sued-over IP around. Should they really be public domain, even though some of them takes teams of people years to invent? I don't think so.

Hmm. There is a fundamental difference between that IP and an e-book. A semi design has no use without being implemented "on silicon" (or other physical medium). An e-book has value because its content is enjoyed by a reader in its existing form. Oh, you might argue it has no value until being implemented "on screen" but that is a trivial conversion given ubiquitous PC's.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Really, Ubikzz? You don't believe in IP. What about unique configurations of semiconductor circuitry? Those designs are some of the most valuable, stolen, and sued-over IP around. Should they really be public domain, even though some of them takes teams of people years to invent? I don't think so.

Hmm. There is a fundamental difference between that IP and an e-book. A semi design has no use without being implemented "on silicon" (or other physical medium). An e-book has value because its content is enjoyed by a reader in its existing form. Oh, you might argue it has no value until being implemented "on screen" but that is a trivial conversion given ubiquitous PC's.

Is that IP? I thought when it came to phsyical objects, patents were used? Am I wrong?

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Ubikzz

I do not and never will recognise "Intellectual Property".

Yes, and I'm sure your local neighborhood cat burglar will never recognize those pesky "property rights" either.

Originally Posted by Ubikzz

Nobody can own an idea, a thought, a vision, ... The fact of being the first to express such intangible things does not make one the owner.

Good thing we aren't discussing patents of business processes, then. A completed books is not an "intangible thought" or "vision" or a meme. I suggest you get your categories straight before making grand proclamations about the "logic" of the situation.

Originally Posted by Ubikzz

Every derived logic from this perceived ownership is thus void. Especially the right to financial compensation (as one of the many derivatives).

Yeah, no.

Let's say I spend about a year writing a novel. I approach a publisher, who sic's an editor on it, invests in marketing, and pays to have it distributed in a digital form.

If I so choose, I have every right to request compensation for the effort I've taken; and the publisher has the right to request payment for the financial and other risks they take in presenting and distributing the work. Even if there is no physical form, there is still a tremendous amount of work and effort that goes into the text. The book didn't write itself; I may have needed to spend extended periods of time conducting research; someone needed to buy advertising and so forth. If no one gets paid for this, the chances of good-quality work going into circulation does not fall to zero, but it will definitely fall.

Putting content into digital form does not reduce the costs to zero; ergo it makes sense that people who choose to be compensated have the ability to request that payment. And the ease with which digital content can be transmitted does not excuse taking content at will -- any more than the ease of shoplifting would validate the act.

More importantly, intellectual property is no more "artificial" than any other legally constructed rights or concepts. You don't pop out of the womb with a tag on your toe outlining which rights are assigned to you by nature, y'know...

Originally Posted by Ubikzz

This misconception is a relative new thing.

Not really. Copyright laws date back to 1710 with the Statute of Anne; it's only really necessary with mass-produced works. As to your examples, copyright doesn't apply to mere "influences," only explicitly direct copies. E.g. there were no copyright issues when Phillip Glass and Steve Reich were influenced by Terry Riley's "In C." However, if you made a copy of a famous painting and tried to pass it off as that work, that act (counterfeiting) has long been recognized and, to put it mildly, discouraged.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Putting content into digital form does not reduce the costs to zero; ergo it makes sense that people who choose to be compensated have the ability to request that payment. And the ease with which digital content can be transmitted does not excuse taking content at will -- any more than the ease of shoplifting would validate the act.

It does not reduce the cost to zero, but it reduces the perception of cost to zero. And when culture is reduced to zero monetary cost, it then must achieve another, less tangible worth (such as in piracy where ratios and first-to-release becomes the object).

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Not really. Copyright laws date back to 1710 with the Statute of Anne; it's only really necessary with mass-produced works. As to your examples, copyright doesn't apply to mere "influences," only explicitly direct copies. E.g. there were no copyright issues when Phillip Glass and Steve Reich were influenced by Terry Riley's "In C." However, if you made a copy of a famous painting and tried to pass it off as that work, that act (counterfeiting) has long been recognized and, to put it mildly, discouraged.

And yet again you conflate atoms with bits. A copied painting is only discouraged because of the uniqueness and scarcity of the original object. Here's a digital copy of the Mona Lisa:



It is worth ZERO because it is infinitely copiable, there is no scarcity in reproducing this object.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Randolphlalonde

My eBooks pay the rent. If people didn't pay a fair price for them, then I would have to seek other employment and I wouldn't have time to write 3-5 books a year. I _may_ be able to get 1 out in 12 months because I'd be working for someone else.

If you are pounding out 3 to 5 books a year, I'd suspect that free downloaders ARE "paying" a fair price for them.

[Randolphlalonde]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

but you really don't get what's happening at all.

You don't seem to understand that you're talking about taking away a livelihood.

That point aside, I don't enjoy parasites. Not the physical kind, intellectual kind, or digital kind, especially when you make your argument anonymously. I'm plainly stating my opinion using my very public name, while you declare some kind of misguided self entitlement from behind a nickname and a profile pic of someone else.

If you're not willing to pay fairly for my work, then move on. I invite you to ignore me, as I do with any other potential thief.

I hope your barrier to understanding falls away before you find yourself being sued or behind bars.

Good luck.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

*sigh*

You may as well have just written 'Please don't read my works because I consider most of you thieves. Please, please, target audience, please note my name and make sure that you never, ever read my stuff again.' You may have consulted lawyers, you may be able to write a thousand books on the subject, but you really don't get what's happening at all.

No he did not write that. This is your interpretation of it. My interpretation and that of many others is different.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by kennyc

No he did not write that. This is your interpretation of it. My interpretation and that of many others is different.

'May as well have', you see how important that modifier is to the sentence. I wouldn't expect you to see it any other way than the wrong way, Kenny C. You're still making the same ridiculous atom-bits comparisons and burying your head in the sand.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by Randolphlalonde

You don't seem to understand that you're talking about taking away a livelihood.

That point aside, I don't enjoy parasites. Not the physical kind, intellectual kind, or digital kind, especially when you make your argument anonymously. I'm plainly stating my opinion using my very public name, while you declare some kind of misguided self entitlement from behind a nickname and a profile pic of someone else.

If you're not willing to pay fairly for my work, then move on. I invite you to ignore me, as I do with any other potential thief.

I hope your barrier to understanding falls away before you find yourself being sued or behind bars.

Good luck.

The last thing I am is anonymous. My name is Paul Lyon (middle name John). I gave away the intellectual property fully on over 50 of my short stories to Mobileread in a thread under writers corner. I write under the names P.J. Lyon, Paul Lyon, Jo Morriss, Sam Luka and some others.

No need to worry about me 'stealing' your work either or having me 'put behind bars' (now that is really laughable considering you're talking about copyright infringement). I wouldn't read your hackneyed tripe if you paid me to do so and I certainly wouldn't share it with anyone, Gods forbid I would have to put them through reading one word of yours.

[Randolphlalonde]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

The last thing I am is anonymous. My name is Paul Lyon (middle name John). I gave away the intellectual property fully on over 50 of my short stories to Mobileread in a thread under writers corner. I write under the names P.J. Lyon, Paul Lyon, Jo Morriss, Sam Luka and some others.

My hat's off to you. I hope to some day be able to afford to give away more work for free. I'm just not there yet.

Originally Posted by Moejoe

No need to worry about me 'stealing' your work either or having me 'put behind bars' (now that is really laughable considering you're talking about copyright infringement).

The law is headed towards prison time for all intellectual theft. For the record, not even I agree with some of the measures that are working their way up through the system. From the looks of it, right or wrong, big business will have their way, and there are laws - and amendments to laws - that I'm sure both of us would disagree with, it's just a matter of time before they're in place.

Originally Posted by Moejoe

I wouldn't read your hackneyed tripe if you paid me to do so and I certainly wouldn't share it with anyone, Gods forbid I would have to put them through reading one word of yours.

My work isn't for everyone, nor would I pretend it is. I'm sorry it wasn't to your liking.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Because we'd like to encourage people to publish, even late in life, and if their heirs can't inherit those rights, why should someone on his deathbed bother publishing his memoirs? Why put his (hypothetically beloved) family through whatever media attention might result from them, if they won't get anything but stress from it?

Copyright is an *incentive* to produce & share creative/artistic/scientific content. Allowing inheritance of copyright is supposed to provide some incentive to publish in a case where there's little to no possibility of personal gain.

(That said, I want copyright lengths to go back to no more than a few decades, regardless of whether the author is alive.)

Except... Unless the contract between the writer and the publisher specifically deals with heirs and assigns, once the publisher buys the book, all rights belong to the publisher. So the heirs may not be collecting a dime from late-in-life works. Sure, bigger name authors and agents of authors, may well remember to carefully delineate which rights the publisher gets, but often a new author, or one who's yet to get an agent, ends up assigning all rights because s/he does not know better.

So why should the publisher be able to extend copyright protection for decades after the author's death?

And before someone goes off on the need for the publisher to recoup profits - well, if the publisher doesn't do any marketing to move the initial release from lower-midlist status, then why do we think it's okay for the publisher to 'rediscover' the author's works after the author's death solely to generate profits for the publisher???
Derek

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Randolphlalonde

That point aside, I don't enjoy parasites. Not the physical kind, intellectual kind, or digital kind, especially when you make your argument anonymously.

Parasitism involves one organism causing active harm to another. What you are describing is commensalism, where one organism derives a benefit and the other is nether helped or harmed.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Except... Unless the contract between the writer and the publisher specifically deals with heirs and assigns, once the publisher buys the book, all rights belong to the publisher.

The contracted rights belong to the publisher. The publisher doesn't get automatic assignment of copyright in case of author death--unless that's in the contract. (Is Smashwords a publisher? I'm pretty sure they don't own the rights to the books published through them, if the author dies.)

The fact that most publishing contracts today are manipulative and over-broad doesn't change the purpose of copyright after death: to encourage the author to publish, even though s/he won't see personal gain from it. Allowing the author to assign potential gains to someone else is an incentive we don't need to remove.

What we need to remove, is copyright durations that mean 85+% of all works will be obscure and unavailable before they ever enter the public domain. (That's the amount of books that aren't republished in 28 years.)

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Parasitism involves one organism causing active harm to another. What you are describing is commensalism, where one organism derives a benefit and the other is nether helped or harmed.

Well then that's not it either, cause the owner of the copyright is definitely harmed when his property is taken without permission.