Brian Keene on piracy

[jessicalynn]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Hello there,

This is a bit OT but I noticed that the graphic at the bottom of your posting listed a number of your novels with a tagline of "available for $2.99 or free." So I went to your website but there was only one book out of your collection that was available to read for free, a bit of a bait and switch if you ask me. But of course you did not ask me.

At any rate have you considered making all your books available for free and then including a donation button on your site and within your books?

I feel like one free book is reasonable. I can certainly decide whether I like an author or not after reading one book. Also, $2.99 is a very reasonable price for the other books, in my opinion.

Also, would you be willing to stake your livelihood on the good will of others through donations? I sure as hell wouldn't!

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

If laws are unjust, they should be changed. But claiming a law is unjust is not a good enough reason to just ignore or violate it at will.

Steven,

I submit that not following a law is exactly how it gets changed. It's called Civil Disobedience... which can lead to Jury Nullification and also Supreme Court rulings.

The courts don't just review rules on a whim.

BTW: I think "fair" and "just" are pretty much the same thing. And yes, I think there are very many un-fair/un-just laws on the books.

BOb

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

BTW: I think "fair" and "just" are pretty much the same thing. And yes, I think there are very many un-fair/un-just laws on the books.

"Fair" and "just" are short versions of "fairness" and "justice," which I'd say are not the same things; for latter being a more formalized version of the former. (Yeah, it's a fine line in most cases.)

I'm not questioning that there are unfair/unjust laws; but "civil disobedience" is something that is saved for serious offenses. We're talking about ebooks, and let's face it... there's nothing serious about them. You buy or you don't... end of issue. There is simply no call to apply "civil disobedience" to ebooks.

[no.guru]

The Rosa Parks analogy is a good one but, no, I wouldn't equate the two.

However, when an author or company DRMs their works and - probably, I haven't checked - makes buying the book contingent on using only on one device all I can say is the rule/law is only as good as their ability to enforce it.

In Keene's case that ability is obviously nil or he wouldn't be complaining.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I'm not questioning that there are unfair/unjust laws; but "civil disobedience" is something that is saved for serious offenses. We're talking about ebooks, and let's face it... there's nothing serious about them. You buy or you don't... end of issue. There is simply no call to apply "civil disobedience" to ebooks.

Only big, life-altering laws can be unjust?

I'd say that "the future of the concept of literary heritage" is a reasonable concept to commit civil disobedience over. If the current model is allowed to grow unchecked, publishers will establish 1 purchase = 1 reader and destroy literary culture as we know it.

I don't think that'll happen, in part because I don't think people will tolerate the restrictions publishers want to put on ebooks. Copies will never be harder to make than they are right now, and files will continue to be shared. If something massively internet-killing like SOPA gets passed, they'll be handed around on flash drives and discs; it is far, far too late to make file sharing too difficult for the average internet user.

I'll grant that most people doing filesharing aren't thinking of it as civil disobedience. Part of this is because the laws involved were developed as obscure matters of business contracting; until a few decades ago, the average person barely knew copyright law existed, and would have no idea how to break it. And today, the laws involved make no sense; there's no way to know how much is too much to share, and the TOS phrasings often insist that copyright law prevents you from sharing your purchase with anyone, which is false. (Copyright law prevents you from making copies. It doesn't prevent you from allowing someone else to read a book on your reader.)

However, not all forms of civil disobedience are matters of conscious ethical choice and weighing the value to society of the laws in question vs the costs of enforcement. Some civil disobedience is just a lot of people deciding "that's a stupid law; I'm going to ignore it." And if it doesn't get enforced, that shows that society doesn't really value that law.

I'll take seriously the "problem of piracy" when the government takes seriously the problem of spam email--which *does* cost notable amounts of money. The idea that kids sharing their favorite songs is more dangerous to our society than tens of billions of dollars worth of time every year spent dealing with unwanted unsolicited email is ridiculous.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I'll take seriously the "problem of piracy" when the government takes seriously the problem of spam email--which *does* cost notable amounts of money. The idea that kids sharing their favorite songs is more dangerous to our society than tens of billions of dollars worth of time every year spent dealing with unwanted unsolicited email is ridiculous.

What does spam (a very serious issue, no doubt) have to do with piracy? Why should the existence of some other problem make piracy a non-issue?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

What does spam (a very serious issue, no doubt) have to do with piracy? Why should the existence of some other problem make piracy a non-issue?

Piracy: unauthorized copying & distribution of copyrighted works, made tremendously more problematic by the technological advances of the internet.

Spam: unauthorized communication often with a commercial or hostile intent, made tremendously more problematic by the technological advances of the internet.

Both are digital versions of long-standing problems that exploded with the internet. Online, both are hard to track down the origins of; both have been entrenched in the internet since the earliest days of usenet and possibly before. Both are impossible to identify the damages from a single act; any real damage from them can only be measured in aggregate.

I
1) Do not believe the publishers' (nor the MPAA's, nor the RIAA's) estimates of the money they are losing to "piracy." I'm not sure "digital piracy" is costing *any* money to the entertainment industries, although I believe individual creators are sometimes losing money to it. (And it's their right to seek recompense for that damage--but we don't pass laws against wearing shoes because one guy's lawn gets destroyed when people walk on it.)

2) Do not believe it is possible to make "piracy" more difficult without crippling the usefulness of the internet as a whole.

3) Believe that spam costs businesses, and therefore economy in which those businesses exist, billions of dollars a year in designing software filters, coping with viruses, and individual attention.

4) Believe that spam could be effectively destroyed by removing the "corporate free speech" protection and being willing to prosecute it as large-scale harassment, or encouraging class-action suits against those ISPs that allow it. (And a few other things to deal with overseas havens.

5) Refuse to believe that the governments involved are actually concerned with "lost revenue due to people exploiting technology online," as opposed to making big media corporations happy, if they're not willing to put effort and research into stopping the *other* internet exploits--spam, viruses, malware--that are costing more money than can be shown, by any remotely objective measure, to be lost to "piracy."

[HansTWN]

As I said, of course spam should be addressed. Same for Aids and cancer. But it makes no sense linking issues.

[no.guru]

Putting aside any possible metaphors, biological diseases aren't transmitted online.

[enzo94]

Culture is free.

Books are free.

Music is free.

Knowledge is free.

There owners are all the people living in this planet.
I will continue using all the methods I know to get informations, pleasure and entertainment for free. As it should always have been.

It is a way like any other to say that this system is bullshit, and should change for the greater good of all mankind. Not only on copyright purposes anyway.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by enzo94

Culture is free.

Books are free.

Music is free.

Knowledge is free.

There owners are all the people living in this planet.
I will continue using all the methods I know to get informations, pleasure and entertainment for free. As it should always have been.

It is a way like any other to say that this system is bullshit, and should change for the greater good of all mankind. Not only on copyright purposes anyway.

Perhaps when you grow up and start having to work for a living, you'll start placing a value on the work that other people do, too.

[sabredog]

It is all about agenda. The entertainment, music and publishing industries simply have no interest in changing the way they do business in the digital age, hence the need to "control" what customers do online. Do it all our way or not at all and the SOPA bill is proof of this. If only they spent the millions they spend on copyright trolls and buying off US senators on new business models.

No, they continue to lie, falsify survey findings to reflect their point of view and manipulate the process of government to justify their anachronistic businesses.

Meanwhile governments need to spend funds on combating spam, making the fines higher, making gaol sentences higher, so they reinforce the will of the people they claim to represent.

They have no interest in attempting to reduce spam or unsolicited email, which is pure invasion of privacy, often a thinly coated attempt at phishing regardless. I firmly believe some companies sell on private details of customers to the highest bidder.

I use mailwasher pro at home, deleting and bouncing unwanted emails directly from my ISP's server in order to make my email address less "inviting" It does work and for several months at a time I get little if no spam at all. Then suddenly it ramps up again and I need to keep the process running again. Coincidence. Nope. Someone has sold my private info again.

The sad thing is that nothing is going to change.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

True fans, of course, would never share a book with someone who can't afford it right now, or who live in an area where it's not sold. They'd tell them, "this is an awesome author, and you will realize that if you just buy one of his books for full retail price--as soon as it's available in your region--and read it."

Because that's how most of us discovered our favorite authors, right? We walked into a bookstore and bought something by an author we'd never read before.

Brian Keene doesn't want fans; he wants customers. That's a reasonable goal for an author to have, but he should perhaps consider that there are almost always easier ways to make money.

I choose all my authors by Ouija board. Is that not totally the norm?

[HappyMartin]

I find this all amazing. The author puts stuff on the Internet for free and then is surprised and hurt when after removing it from his website it starts popping up all over. Has he been living in a cave I wonder.

Personally I would not pirate a book or aid in the pirating of a book but really, how naive do you have to be.

Now he will never publish another ebook? Reminds me of a photographer that got burnt in the early days of digital photography and swore that he would never shoot digital ever again. He never did either. He sells houses now for a living

[cfrizz]

He should ask JK Rowling how not publishing her books as ebooks has worked out for her keeping her books off of the web!

Originally Posted by HappyMartin

Now he will never publish another ebook? Reminds me of a photographer that got burnt in the early days of digital photography and swore that he would never shoot digital ever again. He never did either. He sells houses now for a living