Do you pirate books and why?

[wgrimm]

Easy question, no? Just like the question Should microsoft hate software pirates?

Not so easily answered. Piracy of windows 3.1 made ms the leader by far in the pc operating systems market. They lost some dollars because of piracy, but in the long run benefitted immensely because of the market share piracy gave them.

So, what happens if a writer's books are massively pirated? Well, that means popularity, and that translates into sales, and might even get the guy a movie contract. I am guilty of pirating, in that I have tried software before buying to make sure it works, and have bought music after listening to a downloaded mp3. In neither case would I have bought otherwise. And in the states I can have a digital copy of a printed book I own. If I can buy that copy reasonably, and it is well formatted, I would do so. But I would not feel bad about creating my own if it were not.

If I was a writer I would love to see my books massively pirated. That means popularity, and that will in some way translate into income.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by wgrimm

If I was a writer I would love to see my books massively pirated. That means popularity, and that will in some way translate into income.

Perhaps, but why not simply give your books away then, would that still translate into income somehow?

[wgrimm]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Perhaps, but why not simply give your books away then, would that still translate into income somehow?

Why do that? Because some people pirate does not mean everyone pirates a product. Take windows 3.1 as an example. Although an estimated 40% of all copies used were pirated, that still means that 60% of the copies resulted in revenue for the company. And that was hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.

Compare the music world. Can you name a single musician whose works are massively pirated that is not earning a good income?

And with books, pricing connotes value. How many non pd books are given away free? Not many, except in promotions. A sticker price means, for most people, that the book has value.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by wgrimm

Compare the music world. Can you name a single musician whose works are massively pirated that is not earning a good income?

But who's to say that they wouldn't be earning a much better income if their works were not being pirated?

[wgrimm]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Perhaps, but why not simply give your books away then, would that still translate into income somehow?

A few more thoughts on that. Book piracy in the digital age will never be stopped, unless it were illegal to own computers and scanners. What can sellers do? Something like amazon does with kindle. Have good pricing, good selection, and make it easy to shop and buy. Piracy has not put kindle out of business.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by wgrimm

Piracy has not put kindle out of business.

There's no way to prove this, but Amazon may be the world leading maker of devices used to read pirated books.

Originally Posted by wgrimm

Can you name a single musician whose works are massively pirated that is not earning a good income?

I don't have a clue as to how you would know piracy volumes. But I'm guessing that the cast album of each recent year's Tony award winning best musical is massively pirated. And while the stars make a good income, others who get a share of the revenue do not.

[wgrimm]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There would be only one set of circumstances in which I'd consider it ethically justifiable to pirate a book:

1. If no commercial eBook was available.

and:

2. I'd bought the paper book.

In those circumstances, I'd have no qualms about downloading a pirated eBook. However, if a commercial eBook did then become commercially available, I'd buy it.

So I'd have to answer "on occasions". Very rare occasions.

Well, that occasion existed for fans of Harry Potter. Many had bought paper copies of Harry Potter, no ebook available. They created their own. Rowling was throwing small fits at the time....

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by wgrimm

Well, that occasion existed for fans of Harry Potter. Many had bought paper copies of Harry Potter, no ebook available. They created their own. Rowling was throwing small fits at the time....

True. And I hope that all those people have now bought the legit eBooks.

[wgrimm]

[QUOTEAnd while the stars make a good income, others who get a share of the revenue do not.[/QUOTE]

Well, here you are telling us that not only the artist deserves his share, but that we have to guarantee that others, like publishing and record company execs, get their share too. That is kind of why music piracy got so big- people were tired of paying the record companies big bucks so the executives could get their share.

[wgrimm]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But who's to say that they wouldn't be earning a much better income if their works were not being pirated?

You are engaged in fallacious reasoning here. Just because a person has pirated something does not mean that he would have bought that something if he had not been able to obtain a pirate copy. So, if piracy were eliminated, more sales are not guaranteed.

And for me at least, drm schemes have the effect of making me buy less, not more. I regularly read on several devices- a couple of tablets, my desktop computers, a laptop. If a drm scheme interferes with reading on any of these devices, I will not buy the product.

My conclusion is that piracy in the digital age is unstoppable without using extreme measures that would kill the ebook market. So work around it. Accept piracy as a market factor, just like shoplifting or shrinkage, and deal with it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by wgrimm

You are engaged in fallacious reasoning here. Just because a person has pirated something does not mean that he would have bought that something if he had not been able to obtain a pirate copy. So, if piracy were eliminated, more sales are not guaranteed.

I didn't say that they were. I was asking a rhetorical question, to which the only answer is "nobody knows".

[wgrimm]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

There's no way to prove this, but Amazon may be the world leading maker of devices used to read pirated books.


I don't have a clue as to how you would know piracy volumes. But I'm guessing that the cast album of each recent year's Tony award winning best musical is massively pirated. And while the stars make a good income, others who get a share of the revenue do not.

I don't know what you mean by piracy volumes. If you are referring to the amounts of piracy that are occurring, one can guesstimate. Look at activity and requests on the newsgroups, try google searches for certain items. This is what the movie companies do- search pirate websites for their products, then notify the filesharing service that a copyright violation has occurred and to please remove the files. So first run movies don't stay up on the pirate websites for long.

There are so many channels for pirated books, and they are much smaller in size, so it is harder to stop book postings. Books can be posted in a newsgroup, on websites linked to the file in a file sharing service, via email, on irc, etc.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by wgrimm

There are so many channels for pirated books, and they are much smaller in size, so it is harder to stop book postings. Books can be posted in a newsgroup, on websites linked to the file in a file sharing service, via email, on irc, etc.

They technically can be of course, but the primary question to ask if why anyone thinks that it's right to take stuff that they haven't paid for?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I didn't say that they were. I was asking a rhetorical question, to which the only answer is "nobody knows".

No, the answer is that there is no goal to maximize income to people in the copyright law system. So the question is irrelevant and actually fallacious.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

They technically can be of course, but the primary question to ask if why anyone thinks that it's right to take stuff that they haven't paid for?

That questions seems to have the same answers as the question why bankers and others feel they can get absurd amounts of money were there is no correlation between the amount and the actual useful work they do.