Fair Use?

[GERGE]

eBooks are created by pirates. Back then, more then fifteen years ago, when there wasn't even the talk of selling eBooks, on IRC. If it wasn't for the people who scanned and proofread the books, there wouldn't even be eBooks today. If it wasn't for them I wouldn't have learned English and no business buying eBooks anyway.

I won't say I don't pirate books. I do. As much as I pirate movies and music. Everyone who knows how to do does. Even if they have money, sometimes pirating a book in digital format is a lot easier then ordering it across the ocean. Particularly if the book isn't sold in digital format. Or downloading a blurayrip and watching it on your notebook instead of buying the movie and watching it on PS3. And any geek who says he doesn't is lying.

As you can see, it is mostly about convenience and not about malignity. We are not criminal masterminds.

But there are other reasons too:

Let's take Michael Moorcock for an example. Many of his books are out of print and there are no digital editions. You can only find them on second hand market which usually doesn't sell to the county I live in. I think I can pirate them and read them and call what I did morally right. If publishers don't want me to *steal* from them, they should at least make the books available to me.

More importantly, there is also the case with the academic publishings. I have a right to knowledge. They can't preclude me from having it. They can't say that just because I live in Turkey I can't learn about deep-see microbiology. They should sell them to me, or I will reach them by my own means.

Law for law's own sake is good and well, but that doesn't mean that I must heed to it when it doesn't make sense to me. Or when it conflicts with my own anarchistic beliefs. Art or knowledge cannot be proscribed.

Let's say it again: Art or knowledge cannot be proscribed.

PS: Did some big publishing house pay something to you? Even if they did, you are not doing a good job with this posts filled with ad hominem abusives used in wrong formats.

[Fbone]

To the OP- Also, remember that the publisher of your printed edition may not be the same as the e-book version. Hard cover, mass market paperbacks and e-books generally all have different publishers in the US. I am not sure if this is true in other countries in case you are not in the US.

[SpiderMatt]

Originally Posted by HamsterRage

OK, so I'm new to eReaders and I have to say that I'm done with hardcopy books (at least stuff like novels) for good. eBooks are just much easier to deal with than paper.

Here's the thing though. I've got a couple of books that I bought in paperback but hadn't gotten to before I bought my eReader. Also, my wife is still reading books on paper so if we're both going to read a particular book, then we'll have to buy it in paper for her.

So the question is: What does everyone think the ethics are of downloading ebook copies of books you already own on paper from P2P networks like BitTorrent?

Clearly this is something that can be argued for a seeming eternity. At the end of the day, you'll just have to make your own judgement call. The chances of you getting sued for just downloading (not sharing) are pretty small, especially since publishers haven't really gone to the lengths that the RIAA and MPAA have. So if you can find the books and you see no problem with it, then go for it. This isn't a life or death situation. If you change your mind later, you can always delete the files and vow never to do it again. :-)

[Lady Fitzgerald]

So when you run out of lame excuses you resort to unfounded insults. I see I'm wasting my time on such immature minds.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by GERGE

eBooks are created by pirates. Back then, more then fifteen years ago, when there wasn't even the talk of selling eBooks, on IRC. If it wasn't for the people who scanned and proofread the books, there wouldn't even be eBooks today.

That's a somewhat "revisionist" view of history. Ever hear of "Project Gutenberg"?

[GERGE]

I was talking about eBooks of new books. Not public domain.

[omk3]

I believe knowledge and culture should be free, and paid for only voluntarily. Yes, I firmly believe that there would be many people who would pay voluntarily.

That is my personal opinion, and certainly not the view of the law.

There are places without (well-stocked) libraries. There are places where specific books never reach, one way or another. Should money and geography determine what people read? Reading broadens the mind, surely it shouldn't depend on money?

That's for the 'stealing' part. I don't agree with the term at all. I agree that it's illegal, but I have my own morality. Most people have their own morality on many things. And there are laws that are wrong. Legal doesn't instantly mean moral, nor vice versa.

For example, for me it's extremely immoral to take the work of another and sign it with your name, and profit in either money or even just reputation from it.

For me, again, it is not immoral if you illicitly acquire knowledge or, let's call it, entertainment you can't afford or can't get to because of geographic restrictions. You wouldn't have bought it anyway, so no lost sale, but still what you read gave you access to more knowledge and more points of view, which can't be a bad thing.

But this is my very personal opinion. You may disagree, and have good reasons to do so, but that is no reason to go calling me a thief. We are talking ideas and morality here, we are not in a court of law judging a specific action.

And we are off topic.

The answer to the op is, decide for yourself. Public opinion will not back you up united, as you can see. Some people think it's justified, some don't. It's up to you.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Copyright infringement is stealing. Infringement means accessing something you do not have the right or permission to access. Trying to parallel that to jaywalking and murder is ludicrous unless you were going for comparing the severity of the offense.

Copyright infringement is copyright infringement, nothing more, nothing less. You really don't do yourself any favours by pretending otherwise. An infringement would occur when someone uploaded content without permission of the copyright holder. The copyright holder could then take the uploader to court in order to receive damages payment from them. But more likely they will just file a DMCA notice and have the content removed from the internet.

As to loss of income, entertainment industry funded research shows that internet piracy is resonsible for a loss of profits. Meanwhile independently funded research shows that internet piracy is responsible for an increase in profits.

Can you guess which of those two studies was recently debunked as being untrue by the US government?

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

A party may seek to protect his or her copyrights against unauthorized use by filing a civil lawsuit in federal district court. If you believe that your copyright has been infringed, consult an attorney. In cases of willful infringement for profit, the U.S. Attorney may initiate a criminal investigation.

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html


What is copyright infringement?
As a general matter, copyright infringement occurs when a copyrighted work is reproduced, distributed, performed, publicly displayed, or made into a derivative work without the permission of the copyright owner.

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-definitions.html

Question: Why are copyright holders concerned about piracy?

Answer: Free speech is protected by the U.S. Constitution but so are property rights. Copyright law provides incentives for creating. One of the incentives for creating software, music, literature and other works is being able to reap the financial benefits as the creator. Illegitimate distribution of copies may prevent the copyright holder from benefiting from the sale of legitimate copies of the product. The theory is that significantly fewer people would buy copies from the copyright holder if other copies were available cheaper or for free.

http://www.chillingeffects.org/piracy/faq.cgi#QID143

steal   /stil/ Show Spelled [steel] Show IPA ,verb, stole, sto·len, steal·ing, noun
–verb (used with object)
1. to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, esp. secretly or by force

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/steal

I know bloody well what the words mean. Obviously you do not.

The dictionary definition of steal is to take something that isn't yours. Copyright infringement is taking the product of someone without permission. If you don't have permission to take it, it isn't yours. If you take something that isn't yours, you are stealing. Maybe the concept is too simple for you to grasp? Or are you just trying to rationalize your own thefts?

This isn't about DRM and defeating it so you can freely use what you own. This about taking something you don't already own. Backing up or replacing (including media shift) a paper book with a digital copy is legal. Getting a copy from someone who legally owns a copy and is making the copy for you to replace a damaged or destroyed copy you legally owned is probably legal (it's a gray area legally but since the copy you are replacing was legal I seriously doubt it would be a problem; I replaced a CD a friend had damaged in a car break in based on that since I knew she had owned a legal copy--I had given it to her). Getting that backup or replacement copy from a pirate is very questionable since the pirate doesn't have the right to reproduce and distribute that product, assuming the pirate even owns a copy of the book.

Btw, the passages I copied from various websites were done legally under fair use which permits me to make a copy of part of a work for educational purposes.

I'm not sure if you noticed or not, but none of the official government sites call copyright infringement theft/stealing.

[nursedude]

One thing we need to keep in mind is that being a world wide forum users come to mobileread.com from all over the world. Copyright laws in the US are different (at present) from those in canada and other countries.

Personally I have no real problem in downloading ebook copies of works I already own in HB or PB formats.

I collect certain authors because I enjoy their work. I believe in supporting them by buying their product. I know that not everyone feels the same way or has access to the resources to do that.

The legal/ethical/moral debate will go on forever.

[kya]

Originally Posted by nursedude

I collect certain authors because I enjoy their work. I believe in supporting them by buying their product.

I do the same borrowing books in a library and buying only the ones I really care/support and I think that "piracy" could work like that as well.

Talking about music, I see that my behaviour became pretty much the same but it was a process that started with "illegal/unmoral" piracy.

When p2p was something new I remember downloading lot of songs... it was too alluring... I didn't have the time to think if it was legal or not, I practically had immediate access to all the songs I could imagine by turning my pc on and so I did (I don't want to imply this is legit, I'm only telling that's what happened).

Thanks to that huge impact, the marked was forced to change, and now we have many more ways to buy music that are more ethical even from a seller point of view. I don't need anymore to waste my money on a cd that maybe has 2 good songs and 6 poor ones. I can buy a single song for a reasonable price (0.99€ and not 6€ for a single) and now that on iTunes they are DRM free I am more willing to support the artists that I think deserve it to be by buying their songs or CDs. I don't even need to download for preview anymore because I can listen the majority of new albums by streaming on Youtube (which has also some copyright issues but nobody cares because they know that advertising pays so for many labels Youtube was good even when it was illegal...).

I think something like that is starting right now for books... now when an author becomes famous with a book that is not his/her 1st one, editors are publishing his/her previous books (already available in paperback editions) as they were new and if people besides complaining about that would be able to get a copy for free (legal or not) they we'll be forced to rethink their selling policy. And let's not talk about translations quality which is an even more delicate question... (at least in my country).

Sure that's how the market works: more demand means a higher price, but since we're also talking about ethic I think we should also talk about that from a seller point of view.

So, I think we could really discuss about the ethic of downloading a copy of a book only when the market will be adapted to the new course. Now it's only a transitional phase and nothing is really ethical or unethical, it's only really confusing

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

What is copyright infringement?
As a general matter, copyright infringement occurs when a copyrighted work is reproduced, distributed, performed, publicly displayed, or made into a derivative work without the permission of the copyright owner.

Question: Why are copyright holders concerned about piracy?

Answer: Free speech is protected by the U.S. Constitution but so are property rights. Copyright law provides incentives for creating. One of the incentives for creating software, music, literature and other works is being able to reap the financial benefits as the creator. Illegitimate distribution of copies may prevent the copyright holder from benefiting from the sale of legitimate copies of the product. The theory is that significantly fewer people would buy copies from the copyright holder if other copies were available cheaper or for free.

The dictionary definition of steal is to take something that isn't yours. Copyright infringement is taking the product of someone without permission. If you don't have permission to take it, it isn't yours. If you take something that isn't yours, you are stealing. Maybe the concept is too simple for you to grasp? Or are you just trying to rationalize your own thefts?

This reasoning is symptomatic of disease that's plaguing people's thinking for the last century or so.

The author of creative work doesn't create it out of nothing. The author first learns language, tools, previous ideas, takes the whole culture of society he lives in. Only then he remixes those elements in some way, makes a collage of them, and that's his creation. How much of it is author's doing... well, it would be everything only if he could produce the same thing as a lone caveman raised by animals. It's usually just a tiny bit of the whole. So it's natural that such creations become part of the culture, so next authors can build on them. This is how works of Homer were created - over a period of hundreds of years, by bards taking parts of other bards' songs, throwing away unneeded bits, adapting good ones, re-forming the work. Just as culture belongs to everyone, it's obvious that any new additions to it also belong to everyone.

Enter late middle-ages. Books can be mass-produced, and their creators for the first time in history can receive money from many sources as a result of creating the work. They start to consider the work their "property", in the dark corners of their minds. It's not a problem then, because every work needs to have a physical media to be stored in, and the process of copying the work is hard. No one's protesting, or even laughing at this "property" idea. Copyright law is invented, as temporary monopoly of the creator to copy the work, granted by the state, and so temporary compromise is reached.

Then late XIXth and XXth century. Businesses that base their model on copyright manage more and more money. They think of the licences to copying granted to them by authors as their assets. It's one small step to think of them as "property". New laws are passed, terms like "intellectual property" and "creative control" invented, in spite of the fact that it's not property, and the only control is over the copying. Some people are indoctrinated as well, into thinking ideas can belong to a person. To other people the concept remains a joke it's always been, only more and more bitter as the newspeak flows freely in the news of the world.

Now Internet makes copying as easy as possible. This will at some point lead to confrontation of those who think ideas and thoughts can be property with those who think culture belons to the whole society. The former can only win this by raising and controlling planet-wide totalitarian state in which every move of every human is controlled and monitored all the time. Otherwise the latter win.

You can't steal something that is not and cannot be property. You can infringe on someone's state-granted privilege, but that's it.

Copyright law is currently one of the biggest obstacles to creating - it locks away all newer parts of culture for centuries, preventing them from being transformed further, kept alive, evolving. It's probably hard to imagine what Internet would become if most people weren't scared away from creating by lawsuits waiting at every line of text. Practically all new material that's being produced now is produced only because hundreds of small violations of someone's copyright are not acted upon. I sincerely hope copyright will be reformed or abolished entirely soon, because otherwise creativity will become impossible.

[HamsterRage]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

It's not a problem then, because every work needs to have a physical media to be stored in, and the process of copying the work is hard. No one's protesting, or even laughing at this "property" idea. Copyright law is invented, as temporary monopoly of the creator to copy the work, granted by the state, and so temporary compromise is reached.

That's something that I was thinking, although you've rounded out the idea nicely.

It occurs to me that when copying is difficult and expensive, then the only reason to do it is in order to profit from doing so. So, in the past, the main purpose of copyright laws were to prevent someone from mass producing and distributing copies of someone else's work for profit.

But now, copying and distribution are easy and essentially free, so their is no profit in copyright infringement. And there's way more of that activity taking place today, and nobody is making any money from it. Anyone who would have been willing to buy a bootleg copy of something for, say, half the price of the real thing in the past is now more likely to just download it from somewhere for free. So copyright infringement for profit is now gone.

And of course the same thing holds for authors distributing their original works. The same costs of copying and distributing meant that they had to turn to publishing companies, but that isn't true any more.

Which does make me think that maybe we need some kind of fundamental shift in the way we look at copyright. I just don't know what it should be.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by HamsterRage

So copyright infringement for profit is now gone.

Make it hard enough online, and it'll come back. That's one of the ironys of big media's stance.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Copyright infringement is copyright infringement, nothing more, nothing less. You really don't do yourself any favours by pretending otherwise.

Typically, people like this fall into two categories. They are using the wrong terminology because they don't understand it, or they are using the wrong terminology on purpose because the associations it brings serves their agenda.

Generally speaking, arguing with someone in either category is a waste of time.