Paul Coelho on Piracy and Publishing

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Allen (the CEO), was a first offender. It is a moral judgment that first offenders should be treated more leniently than people who have seven previous convictions (based on five separate episodes).

Right, he just decided one morning to steal 3 million from unsuspecting people.

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

You have a couple of things wrong. For one, paying for an ebook doesn't give you ownership. For another, Robin Hood was an actual thief, and while I agree that painting pirates as Robin Hoods is dishonest I don't think that it was your intent to insult yourself.

In most cases, the bolded part is 100% correct. But some cases, all too rare but still real, it is no more true than it is for paper books. I present some text from the copyright page of an ebook from BeWrite Books:

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s consent in any form other than this current form and without a similar condition being imposed upon a subsequent purchaser.

As long as it is in it's original form as issued by the publisher, it comes with all the rights of a paper book. This statement protects the integrity of the IP while still granting rights of transfer to the purchaser. BeWrite actually SELLS ebooks.

It's a novel idea in the publishing world, and I love them for this. ( Sorry, but the pun stays.) If only more publishers thought this way.

[Ninjalawyer]

/a polite interject

Jesus, this thread has run itself off a cliff (as far as the law vs. morality sub-sub-topic goes), and taken a good number of you along for the ride screaming.

There are a number of justifications for the law, and there's a number of schools of thought on the subject; whether or not the aim of the law is morality, the result of power struggles or status inequality isn't going to be determined here since there's mountains of academic paper on it. During a philosophy undergrad, I took not one but two courses about the philosophy of the law and spent a good deal of time on a paper after that about the legal and moral dimensions of sex clubs, all of which is to say the topic is bigger than whatever your gut feeling is.

And even if suddenly you all realize that yes, the main function of law is to enforce morality (or social norms if you like), then you've still managed to come up with nothing of import. Just because laws are aimed at morality, doesn't mean a particular law is moral (although a fairly famous philosopher argued, whose name I can't remember, that all laws are inherently moral).

/end polite interjection

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

Jesus, this thread has run itself off a cliff (as far as the law vs. morality sub-sub-topic goes), and taken a good number of you along for the ride screaming.

Can we call all Mobile-Read derails a slow-motion crash of a train over a cliff into a plane and then there's a rainbow explosion of smiling kittens?

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Can we call all Mobile-Read derails a slow-motion crash of a train over a cliff into a plane and then there's a rainbow explosion of smiling kittens?

Careful, you have to ask permission from the copyright holder of the "rainbow explosion of smiling kittens" if you legally can use that or not. Better check with Disney - we don't want this to turn into a Mickey Mouse dilemma ....

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by SilverBear

We sit around the fire after it gets too dark to hunt or dig tubers. Some of us tell stories. Sometimes the stories are ones we make up --whether they really "happened" or not. Sometimes we repeat "good ones" that we've heard.

If Giggleton tells a story he originally heard from me, nobody gives me a drink tonight. But if taosaur (say) remembers that I've told some good ones, he might invite me to supper in his hut, expecting to hear my new thriller about killing an elephant in my pyjamas.

In the first case, Giggleton is reproducing a story in the public domain. In the second, tausaur is supporting the creation of a new story.

[Any names used in this Episode are strictly co-incidental and do not portray the actions of any real person, living or dead.]

Now that is another story that I support so I may be able to hear another one. Do you pull those out of your hat? If you do, let me please borrow your hat, that seams to be a very entertaining one.

But I have a serious question: Why pyjamas? I can believe the killing an elephant part, but it is hard to imagine you in pyjamas in a long bygone time probably before you even had clothes

Maybe you lied and what you told is just science fiction and there was no elephant.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

a polite interject

Jesus, this thread has run itself off a cliff (as far as the law vs. morality sub-sub-topic goes), and taken a good number of you along for the ride screaming.

I disembarked at the first station

[TGS]

Originally Posted by sbroome

I disagree in every way possible. I think people just get into cutesy lawyer mode when they refuse to acknowledge something pretty basic, which is that you're supposed to pay for consumption and instead choose to partake for free. Sneaking into a movie theater or amusement park is dishonest; whether there were seats that were going to be unused or not doesn't matter. If an item is up for sale and you and 20,000 other people get the free version via download you're not in any kind of gray area, it's just taking something that doesn't belong to you (belong in the ownership sense of purchasing).

I find attempts to paint pirates as care-free Robin Hoods to be far more dishonest.

I didn't see taosaur saying there was a gray area - simply that copyright infringement is not theft: Which it isn't, but it serves the rhetorical purposes of the publishing industry and their hysterical apologists to declare it so.

[CyGuy]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

... For one, paying for an ebook doesn't give you ownership.

That is simply not accurate. Purchasing an ebook gives you ownership of that copy.

[azazel1024]

Originally Posted by sbroome

I disagree in every way possible. I think people just get into cutesy lawyer mode when they refuse to acknowledge something pretty basic, which is that you're supposed to pay for consumption and instead choose to partake for free. Sneaking into a movie theater or amusement park is dishonest; whether there were seats that were going to be unused or not doesn't matter. If an item is up for sale and you and 20,000 other people get the free version via download you're not in any kind of gray area, it's just taking something that doesn't belong to you (belong in the ownership sense of purchasing).

I find attempts to paint pirates as care-free Robin Hoods to be far more dishonest.

Yes you are supposed to pay for consumption and that is in part what the law is attempting to do, allow the people/person who created something to control in part how it is used and also to profit off of it and encourage them to create new things.

However, you must acknowledge (or should) that PART of piracy is driven because a lot of rights holders are inflexible in how they are allowing their IP to be used as much if not more than it is by cost associated with using that IP.

Lots of people who spend a significant amount of money on forms of entertainment are also massive pirates. The limited studies you can find on such matters find that the largest pirates are also the largest spenders (typically) in those areas that they are pirating.

A lot of anime pirates don't pirate the material because they are unwilling to spend money on it, or even the money that companies are asking for. They are the same people spending $300 on a limited edition, 3 season blu ray collection of some "rare" anime show that they love. Or $1,000 on that replica Cloud Strife sword. A lot of the pirating they do is because

A) The companies refuse, for whatever reason, to release the product in the overseas market that the person lives in. Or the lag between release in the home market and the overseas market that the person lives in is considered unacceptable to that person (often times releases are delayed by 6 months-4 years in overseas markets for things like Anime).

B) The quality of the release is abysmall. Subtitles are often botched, inaccurate, etc and fansubbed material is much more accurate thus significant value added in some cases to the pirated material because the IP owner didn't bother doing it right (which takes little financial investment to do a good subtitling).

I am speaking of that solely of my knowledge of the anime pirate world (not being one myself, but having plenty of friends who are, and being interested in anime and frustrated at anime production companies).

So does it make it right that any of them are pirating anime? Absolutely not. However, they have INCENTIVE to pirate. First because they cannot in some cases obtain the materials OTHER than by pirating it, or the preceive the lag in their ability to purchase it being unacceptable. In other cases what they do have available for purchase has dramatically reduced value due to poor subtitling, again leading them to want to pirate material due to the much high quality subtitling.

Part of reducing how much people pirate, just like using drugs, smuggling, etc is the stick AND the carrot approach.

Simply making a bigger stick only reduces piracy, drug use, etc so much. If you have a big carrot out there too, fewer people are going to want to go the less legitimate approach. That doesn't mean giving things away for free. It does mean attempting to provide a product in the ways that most people are going to want it and ideally at a price that most people are going to find resonable to pay for it.

If you can't do that, you are going to "drive" more people in to piracy. There will always be some, but if you have the right carrot, with at least a little stick, then you will see a very small amount of piracy in comparison to what you would otherwise.

You as an IP holder have to weigh what exactly that carrot is going to cost you versus how many more legitimate purchasers you might gain by reducing piracy.

Frankly in a lot of industries, they still haven't figured out the carrot bit.

[sbroome]

Originally Posted by azazel1024

However, you must acknowledge (or should) that PART of piracy is driven because a lot of rights holders are inflexible in how they are allowing their IP to be used as much if not more than it is by cost associated with using that IP.

I agree completely. In the early 2000s I needed to have my usual set up (movie playing from my computer while I work on comic book production) and was really confused on why the movie studio I bought the DVD from wouldn't help me figure out a way to rip the movie to the hard drive. My reason was completely legitimate, I needed to free my DVD rom up so that I could use it to open work files from clients. Back then most of them still weren't using FTP, so they'd Fed-Ex us the files to work on, and I was responsible for organizing them and putting them on our servers, etc. I couldn't keep swapping discs in and out. But when I asked about it on forums everyone said it was considered copyright violation, which was idiotic because I owned the disc.

Lots of people who spend a significant amount of money on forms of entertainment are also massive pirates. The limited studies you can find on such matters find that the largest pirates are also the largest spenders (typically) in those areas that they are pirating.

Too many of those studies have been conducted (a) in very small samples by (b) pirating sites themselves.

So does it make it right that any of them are pirating anime? Absolutely not. However, they have INCENTIVE to pirate. First because they cannot in some cases obtain the materials OTHER than by pirating it, or the preceive the lag in their ability to purchase it being unacceptable. In other cases what they do have available for purchase has dramatically reduced value due to poor subtitling, again leading them to want to pirate material due to the much high quality subtitling.

Look at the top pirated music list from 2011. Most of the titles are widely available for legal download, I just don't see how scarcity is blamed so widely when the reality seems to be that a lot of people just want shit for free, and consider their 40-50 dollar internet costs to be their paid access to whatever they can find on the internet. I think a large part of what's being missed is the ability to access entertainment all day everywhere (Netflix streaming, etc.) which has led to such greater consumption that people need stimulus more often than the days of just having walkmen at most. That desire for more consumption still doesn't equate to being owed more stuff to consume, and people's refusal to demonstrate anything resembling accountability has to be addressed at some point before the government starts making decisions for them.

Part of reducing how much people pirate, just like using drugs, smuggling, etc is the stick AND the carrot approach.

While there are many improvements these old people at companies need to make, the reality is entertainment has never been easier to access, and people are still whining. I just don't buy this argument.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by sbroome

While there are many improvements these old people at companies need to make, the reality is entertainment has never been easier to access, and people are still whining. I just don't buy this argument.

Do you draw a line between entertainment and non-entertainment? Where do non fictional and technical books fit into this thing?

[karunaji]

Netflix streaming actually decreases choices in some very essential ways. First, DVDs usually have several audio and subtitle tracks in several languages. Streaming don't have these choices. And the second aspect is that I need an internet connection which make it impossible to watch a movie in my summer house that has only a limited 3G internet connection as apposed to a broadband line in my city flat.

You can make a case that some people pirate stuff to get things for free. What is still missing in the equation is how much would they be paying if they couldn't get it for free? I suspect that not that much. Most people who engage in piracy are either unemployed or poor college or high-school students. Of course, there are exceptions but I have a feeling that most hard working people on the lower side of income scale (which are majority) are technically inept and wouldn't know how to pirate stuff in the first place.

[sbroome]

Originally Posted by karunaji

Netflix streaming actually decreases choices in some very essential ways. First, DVDs usually have several audio and subtitle tracks in several languages. Streaming don't have these choices. And the second aspect is that I need an internet connection which make it impossible to watch a movie in my summer house that has only a limited 3G internet connection as apposed to a broadband line in my city flat.

You can make a case that some people pirate stuff to get things for free. What is still missing in the equation is how much would they be paying if they couldn't get it for free? I suspect that not that much. Most people who engage in piracy are either unemployed or poor college or high-school students. Of course, there are exceptions but I have a feeling that most hard working people on the lower side of income scale (which are majority) are technically inept and wouldn't know how to pirate stuff in the first place.

It should also be noted that streaming options are way more limited in areas where people have data limits/charges for their internet connections.

[karunaji]

The economic crisis in Europe has hit very hard. In fact we are in a deflationary spiral and young people are especially vulnerable:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...ation-young-eu

In essence I agree that the sense of entitlement is the cause of all this, including piracy. But I think that it primarily comes from the people on the top. Rising unemployment is certainly not because working class has become lazier but because greedy billionaires have squeezed the economy too hard. There is no point to squeeze the working class even further unless the balance of public good is restored.

Yesterday Fred Goodwin, the former CEO of the RBS bank, was stripped of his knighthood in the UK for his role in creating recession. This is a significant case because it appears that he was not formally convicted of any wrongdoing. While the title is largely ceremonial, many think that it should reflect moral values. So much for the law implementing moral values.

There is a saying: fish spoils from the head.