Sherman Alexie still hates ebooks

[Xerxes]

If it wasn't for ebook readers, I probably wouldn't be reading.

I mean I still could, I just wouldn't.

Well I mean signs and stuff... Who wants to fall in a man hole.

[EatingPie]

Originally Posted by ggareau

Secondly, regarding natives (Native Americans, Native Canadians) they really have been screwed over enough for special consideration. There's a lot of prejudice that still goes on between people in rural areas and people on the reservation (some of it warranted, some of it not) and I have no issues with them calling themselves Indians - I know a few who do. Happily Indian isn't so much a grenade as the n-word is though. But no, you shouldn't call natives Indians, though them calling each other that is a non-issue.

Why is it okay for American Indians to call themselves "Indians" but for me not to? One of my good friends is an Indian. My family and friends refer to him as "The Indian." Not because we're judging him. Not because we think less of him. He just happens to be an Indian, and that sets him apart, makes him unique.

To say that's somehow inherently wrong -- when no malice or judgement is involved -- bothers me.

Thirdly, you cannot stop piracy and there's no point trying. Anyone can digitize any book and once one person does, anybody else can access it. DRM can't and won't fix the problem since it's fundamentally flawed from the start. Besides, borrowing books from libraries and other people has led to me spending thousands of dollars over the years. Getting MP3s for free over the internet has led to me spending close to $500/year on music.

You can't stop all thieves, pedophiles and murderers either, so why try? That's the exact same logic, just applied to more... socially unacceptable crimes.

With Internet Piracy, there may be other solutions than we have in place. But to say "why even try" is somewhat demeaning to the artists themselves. "You can create this great work, some people will compensate you fairly, but once it hits the Internet... tough luck buster!"

-Pie

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by BenG

Of course you could say the same thing about the folks who say they would only read ebooks and have to buy the newest gadget that comes along.

(This from someone who owns a Kindle, Sony and iPod Touch. But I regularly buy paperbacks also. )

I dunno about *other* ereader owners, but *I* prefer ebooks because they're so much easier to deal with. I've cut my dead-tree purchases down to about 12 per year - and then it's only TPB and HC versions of my favorite works/authors. I've lived too long with having to lug boxes and boxes of MMPB books (and then finding sufficient bookshelf space for them all) to want to clutter up my life with more dead-tree editions. Long Live E-Books!

Derek

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by markbot

I agree with Alexie on a few fronts. The despicable "open source" culture that pervades the internet and 75% of the world's population, especially in Asia, will lead to fewer incentives to innovate and to create. I have no doubt that book pirating will become as bad as music pirating once books go all digital. Sure, you can digitize a paper book and sell it illegally in paper or digital form.....but the consumers of that pirated copy will have a new powerful tool in which to steal: the ebook.

This is why ebooks must have ironclad DRM.

That's a bunch of bullpuckey! In the suburb of Sacramento in which I live there are over seven used book stores within a 5-mile radius. Each and every copy sold in those stores is a complete rip-off of the authors and publishers (using the same definition as they have created about ebooks) because neither publishers nor authors sees a dime of income on the used-book sales. I know several dozens of people who buy, then trade in for 'store credit', which they then use to redeem other traded-in books. If treated carefully, a used book can allow readers to 'steal the income' several dozen times over. Do you suggest we ban the operation of used book stores simply because they don't enrich the publishers?

Then how can you, even sarcastically, make the same claim about ebooks?

Derek

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

There's a difference between insults used by a person of a more privileged category, and one used among peers.

My children are welcome to call each other brats. Their teachers are not welcome to call them brats, no matter how annoyed the teachers are. People in positions of authority or social privilege should not abuse their power by insulting those who cannot react freely without potentially vile consequences.

"More privileged category"??? The flip are you talking about?!?!? *MY* parents are - on my mother's side - dirt-poor immigrants from Potato Famine Ireland and - on my father's side - peasant and serf stock from the Austria region. They settled in Montana and northern Ohio where they busted their collective butts off to survive. Privileged? I wish! The only time I've ever had a silver spoon in my mouth was the one time I got to stay over at a well-off friend's home for a week. In the US, I've lived and held the same jobs as those "unprivileged" minorities. It's not their minority status which has held them down since the 1960s, it's their belief that they deserve handouts rather than putting in the same work the rest of us do.

Derek

[EatingPie]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

That's a bunch of bullpuckey! In the suburb of Sacramento in which I live there are over seven used book stores within a 5-mile radius. Each and every copy sold in those stores is a complete rip-off of the authors and publishers (using the same definition as they have created about ebooks) because neither publishers nor authors sees a dime of income on the used-book sales. I know several dozens of people who buy, then trade in for 'store credit', which they then use to redeem other traded-in books. If treated carefully, a used book can allow readers to 'steal the income' several dozen times over. Do you suggest we ban the operation of used book stores simply because they don't enrich the publishers?

Then how can you, even sarcastically, make the same claim about ebooks?

Derek

I'm not necessarily defending DRM here, but I do want to answer your question.

A used book is a single entity. There's that used book... or those used books. Each one was bought and paid for new at one time, gaining the publisher and author their due profits.

OTOH, you can copy an ebook. And copy the copy of the copy of the copy... without any degradation. And so on and so forth. With anything pirated on the Internet, copies can go for infinity, without the e-books ever running out. And only one of those perpetually infinite copies started out as something that was paid for, only one of those perpetually infinite copies led to compensating the publisher/author. This is opposed to a used book store where every copy had some initial compensation going to the author/publisher.

-Pie

[charleski]

Originally Posted by Crowl

Technically, that was what he was on the colbert report to plug.

But why did Colbert chose him above all the other authors falling over themselves to get on? ...

It's really sad when an author opts to go to outrageous extremes to get publicity and the extra income it brings. There are plenty of others who are able to get a spot on a high-rated show like this without sacrificing their integrity or decency.

[ggareau]

Originally Posted by EatingPie

Why is it okay for American Indians to call themselves "Indians" but for me not to? One of my good friends is an Indian. My family and friends refer to him as "The Indian." Not because we're judging him. Not because we think less of him. He just happens to be an Indian, and that sets him apart, makes him unique.

To say that's somehow inherently wrong -- when no malice or judgement is involved -- bothers me.

It's not inherently wrong. No word is. However I know quite a few people who would find it disrespectful or offensive to be called that. I know a few who don't. Given the choice, I avoid grenade words (even though it's nowhere near as bad as the n-word).

Originally Posted by EatingPie

You can't stop all thieves, pedophiles and murderers either, so why try? That's the exact same logic, just applied to more... socially unacceptable crimes.

With Internet Piracy, there may be other solutions than we have in place. But to say "why even try" is somewhat demeaning to the artists themselves. "You can create this great work, some people will compensate you fairly, but once it hits the Internet... tough luck buster!"

Wow. Talk about a slippery slope. Here's the thing - it is physically impossible to stop piracy. I'm not saying "you can't stop all pirates," I'm saying that it is impossible to keep people from aquiring digital goods if they want to. DRM cannot work. Literally, cannot. The analogy is a jail cell - if you can see the lock, and someone needs to give you the key (because you need to open it), you can make a copy of the key and unlock the cell at will. Not to mention all of the analog ways of copying - I can sit at my computer and type out a book, and once it's on the net it's on the net.

So that's why there's no point to fighting piracy. You cannot possibly win. It's not so much that you can't catch them all - it's that you can't catch more than 1% of 1%. For all the press the RIAA has gotten, what proportion of people have been sued vs people who have downloaded music? Not to mention that once I have something without DRM I can spread it physically by CD/SD card and nobody is going to be able to track me down. Hell, unless I'm profiting from it, nobody is going to want to track me down.

Now to your slippery slope. A thief steals - a physical good. You can't argue that it's the same to steal a CD as it is to steal a bunch of MP3s because when you steal the CD, a piece of the supply is lost. That CD has been paid for (overhead-wise) by manufacturing, and that is money lost. With the MP3s, no supply is lost. No overhead is spent. No manufacturing costs incurred. The only way that you can argue that taking the MP3s is theft of any sort is by guessing at how many of the people who got the MP3s would have paid for the CD if the pirated version wasn't an option. And that's all it will ever be. A guess. You can say 100% or 0% and each are equally valid. There is no direct harm whatsoever. Indirect? Maybe, maybe not - some people who wouldn't have bought that band's music will in the future now that they've been able to listen to it. Some that would have bought it now won't. Will it even out? Nobody knows (or can know).

That's theft. I'm not going to entertain your pedophile or murder charges because we both know that comparing something that causes no direct harm to something that causes direct harm to at least one and indirect harm to hundreds of others is absurd.

I'm a freelance writer and graphic designer. I do some animation work as well. I obviously would like to make money off of my work, but at the same time I know that my stuff will eventually get onto the internet without any manner of copy protection no matter what I do. I also know that some people will avoid my work if I do put strong DRM on it, while removing my DRM isn't going necessarily guarantee less sales. It's a race between me and the pirates (if I don't just use creative commons, which I will). While I can try to delay the pirates getting my material, I will lose customers while treating my customers as criminals (let's face it, DRM is treating your customers as criminals). And make no mistake, the pirates will inevitably win anyway.

As I see it, we live in a new world - a new economy - where your work needs to compete with a free version of itself. Whether that's by value-added stuff (poster print in a physical book), just by pricing your work inexpensively enough that it's not worth the trouble to get it for free (see: DRM-free iTunes), or creating secondary revenue streams based on your work (merchandise, advertising, etc), you need to give the customer a reasonable, legal option. They need to feel your price is fair. Sure, some people will still pirate stuff. Let it go. Move on. Build a relationship with your own customers and forget about the hypothetical theoretical money you might possibly have been making if only those nasty pirates weren't a thorn in your side. You've lost before you begin.

Maybe things used to be different. You can never go home again. Live with it.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by EatingPie

Why is it okay for American Indians to call themselves "Indians" but for me not to? ...

To say that's somehow inherently wrong -- when no malice or judgement is involved -- bothers me.

Because "Indians" was the label assigned to them by the people who enslaved and murdered them, and was used for hundreds of years to oppress them and ignore their culture and deny them agency.

Why can't you use the label if you don't mean any harm by it? Because they are still being denied agency, still being oppressed and discriminated against, and by casually using the same language to discuss them, you allow that discrimination to continue unchallenged. Because "what to call them" is not, should not be, your choice.

What you call your friend, in private, is between you & your friend. (I can call my kids "demon brats" in private, and it can be a term of affection.) But what you call your friend in public, and how you refer to your friends' heritage, becomes part of the public consensus of how their culture is perceived.

The issue isn't "what should they be called?" It's *who gets to decide* what they should be called. And it's not you. Not me. If they want to say, "we will call ourselves X, and people of other cultures should call us Y," that's not some exotic unreasonable demand; that's not some horrific burden they're asking other people to carry. I call my kid "daughter" sometimes. You don't get to call her that, and I don't suspect you'd want to. Having different rules for who-uses-what-labels is no hardship.

Refusing to allow non-white cultures to define and label themselves is one of the first and longest-lasting forms of oppression.

Continuing to use the label they've rejected feeds into bigotry, allows the ones who are participating in *active* oppression to feel validated and correct about it. They take the small violations of other cultures' preferences as confirmation that they're acceptable.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by EatingPie

I'm not necessarily defending DRM here, but I do want to answer your question.

A used book is a single entity. There's that used book... or those used books. Each one was bought and paid for new at one time, gaining the publisher and author their due profits.

OTOH, you can copy an ebook. And copy the copy of the copy of the copy... without any degradation. And so on and so forth. With anything pirated on the Internet, copies can go for infinity, without the e-books ever running out. And only one of those perpetually infinite copies started out as something that was paid for, only one of those perpetually infinite copies led to compensating the publisher/author. This is opposed to a used book store where every copy had some initial compensation going to the author/publisher.

-Pie

Ummm... And except where some schlub actually *takes the time* to copy a dead-tree version into e-version, so *many* pirated ebooks come from *already-purchased-by-someone-else* ebook sources - which means that the same scenario is true for ebooks.



And given how some authors, such as J.K. Rowling, are so vehemently opposed to *any* ebook version, it only makes sense to pirate versions.

Derek

P.S. Given how many authors have found that ebook versions - even pirated copies - boost overall sales, one can, and BAEN does, that any e-copy out there is worth it in terms of generating sales. Of course a publisher has to actually PUT the ebook versions out there.

I note that so many of the BAEN books are available in CD-ROM format - for free - and have hooked countless readers into buying more books (and ebooks) from them.

[ggareau]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Refusing to allow non-white cultures to define and label themselves is one of the first and longest-lasting forms of oppression.

I have to be honest, I know this to be true because I've heard it a lot of times from people of various ethnicities and read about it more time than I can count - but I still don't really get it.

And I think that's the point. I'm white, and have not been oppressed by an ethnic group. I haven't had people call me "whitey" or "honkey"while spitting at me. I haven't had people try to break my accent or lose my language to "be like everyone else." I haven't had grandparents talking about being in internment camps, I haven't lived on a reservation (which in a lot of ways is effectively an internment camp), and I haven't had parents or grandparents who were forced to use a different bathroom because of their colour. I haven't been turned down for an academic position because they think I'm unreliable because I am able to have a baby. I haven't been sexually harassed or been looked at as though I cannot do the job myself because I'm of the "weaker" sex. I haven't gotten treated like an idiot at a car dealership or a mechanic. I haven't been looked at as odd because I care more about my career than being a mom. I haven't been called a fag or been beaten because of my sexual orientation.

I mean, I'm a french-Canadian guy in Western Canada, so I get the odd frog joke, but realistically, straight white guys have it easy.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

"More privileged category"??? The flip are you talking about?!?!? *MY* parents are - on my mother's side - dirt-poor immigrants from Potato Famine Ireland and - on my father's side - peasant and serf stock from the Austria region.

Privilege comes in several varieties; lack of privilege in one area (class, wealth) doesn't cancel out privilege in another area (White, male, Christian, able-bodied, heterosexual, etc.)

Privilege means you are granted certain rights and advantages, which you were told everyone had or should have--but they don't. It's hard to notice, because it's not measured in individual acts but in overall patterns. And people like to claim that, if one person can overcome oppression and get into a position of power despite societal bias, there must not be any bias.

See: A CONCISE HISTORY OF BLACK-WHITE RELATIONS IN THE U.S.A.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Privilege comes in several varieties; lack of privilege in one area (class, wealth) doesn't cancel out privilege in another area (White, male, Christian, able-bodied, heterosexual, etc.)

Privilege means you are granted certain rights and advantages, which you were told everyone had or should have--but they don't. It's hard to notice, because it's not measured in individual acts but in overall patterns. And people like to claim that, if one person can overcome oppression and get into a position of power despite societal bias, there must not be any bias.

See: A CONCISE HISTORY OF BLACK-WHITE RELATIONS IN THE U.S.A.

"White"? That's cancelled out by the 'gimme-a-job-or-access-to-higher-education-because-I'm-not-white' programs. "Male"? Oh right. You mean the 'privilege' of being told you're not hireable because the company can't get the tax breaks they can by hiring a *female*, *lesbian*, *Wiccan*. "Able-bodied"? Now *here* I *SHOULD* shine, being disabled. Guess what? No one wants to make 'reasonable accomodations' for me! Looks like I won't be working for Yet Another Year!

Tell me again about all those benefits I have because I'm white, male and Christian? Please, do! I *need* to hear a good fantasy story tonight!

Derke

[EatingPie]

Yikes two huge replies.

Originally Posted by ggareau

It's not inherently wrong. No word is. However I know quite a few people who would find it disrespectful or offensive to be called that. I know a few who don't. Given the choice, I avoid grenade words (even though it's nowhere near as bad as the n-word).

I think the reason I asked is because the N-word is a racial slur. The I word isn't. Or at least isn't in my area.

Wow. Talk about a slippery slope. Here's the thing - it is physically impossible to stop piracy. I'm not saying "you can't stop all pirates," I'm saying that it is impossible to keep people from aquiring digital goods if they want to. DRM cannot work. Literally, cannot. The analogy is a jail cell - if you can see the lock, and someone needs to give you the key (because you need to open it), you can make a copy of the key and unlock the cell at will. Not to mention all of the analog ways of copying - I can sit at my computer and type out a book, and once it's on the net it's on the net.

So that's why there's no point to fighting piracy. You cannot possibly win. It's not so much that you can't catch them all - it's that you can't catch more than 1% of 1%. For all the press the RIAA has gotten, what proportion of people have been sued vs people who have downloaded music? Not to mention that once I have something without DRM I can spread it physically by CD/SD card and nobody is going to be able to track me down. Hell, unless I'm profiting from it, nobody is going to want to track me down.

Piracy and DRM are separate issues. Your attacks on DRM assume it's the only possible "solution." That's analogous to saying the death penalty doesn't work, so we shouldn't try to stop murder.

And no, that's not a slippery slope either. It's an analogy, just like in my previous post.

I stand by my previous question. You can't stop murder, pedophilia, theft. You cannot possibly win. How is that different than what you're saying? It certainly is not clear to me here. Again, the crime is separate from the deterrent.

Now to your slippery slope. A thief steals - a physical good. You can't argue that it's the same to steal a CD as it is to steal a bunch of MP3s because when you steal the CD, a piece of the supply is lost. That CD has been paid for (overhead-wise) by manufacturing, and that is money lost. With the MP3s, no supply is lost. No overhead is spent. No manufacturing costs incurred. The only way that you can argue that taking the MP3s is theft of any sort is by guessing at how many of the people who got the MP3s would have paid for the CD if the pirated version wasn't an option. And that's all it will ever be. A guess. You can say 100% or 0% and each are equally valid. There is no direct harm whatsoever. Indirect? Maybe, maybe not - some people who wouldn't have bought that band's music will in the future now that they've been able to listen to it. Some that would have bought it now won't. Will it even out? Nobody knows (or can know).

That's theft. I'm not going to entertain your pedophile or murder charges because we both know that comparing something that causes no direct harm to something that causes direct harm to at least one and indirect harm to hundreds of others is absurd.

Again, I made an analogy, not a slippery slope (this leads to that, which leads to that, which leads to that).

By US laws, to copy a work without permission is theft. There is not a physical item involved in the case of digital works, but it is, by law, theft none the less.

Theft, murder, pedophilia all cause harm, but different kinds of harm. Similarly, the theft of music, or books, or any other digital works also caues harm. It causes yet another kind of harm, financial harm -- more similar to that of theft than murder or pedophilia, obviously -- but harm no less.

You may not want to address these, but they serve the analogy in terms of all being crimes, all causing harms, all having potential solutions with varying degrees of success, all having legal repercussions. Just like digital piracy.

I'm a freelance writer and graphic designer. I do some animation work as well. I obviously would like to make money off of my work, but at the same time I know that my stuff will eventually get onto the internet without any manner of copy protection no matter what I do. I also know that some people will avoid my work if I do put strong DRM on it, while removing my DRM isn't going necessarily guarantee less sales. It's a race between me and the pirates (if I don't just use creative commons, which I will). While I can try to delay the pirates getting my material, I will lose customers while treating my customers as criminals (let's face it, DRM is treating your customers as criminals). And make no mistake, the pirates will inevitably win anyway.

I'm in a similar boat. But, again, DRM is not the only solution. And DRM being wrong does not mean we should suddenly say piracy is not wrong.

As I see it, we live in a new world - a new economy - where your work needs to compete with a free version of itself. Whether that's by value-added stuff (poster print in a physical book), just by pricing your work inexpensively enough that it's not worth the trouble to get it for free (see: DRM-free iTunes), or creating secondary revenue streams based on your work (merchandise, advertising, etc), you need to give the customer a reasonable, legal option. They need to feel your price is fair. Sure, some people will still pirate stuff. Let it go. Move on. Build a relationship with your own customers and forget about the hypothetical theoretical money you might possibly have been making if only those nasty pirates weren't a thorn in your side. You've lost before you begin.

All of these are great solutions to piracy. I thought you said there was no point in fighting piracy.

-Pie

[EatingPie]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Ummm... And except where some schlub actually *takes the time* to copy a dead-tree version into e-version, so *many* pirated ebooks come from *already-purchased-by-someone-else* ebook sources - which means that the same scenario is true for ebooks.

You did not read my post, or you missed the point. I bolded it above.

I actually note that the original copy was paid for. But only the very original, one time. Where as used books are paid for... every single one.

And given how some authors, such as J.K. Rowling, are so vehemently opposed to *any* ebook version, it only makes sense to pirate versions.

Agreed, but that's beside the point.... or a different issue than we're talking about here.

P.S. Given how many authors have found that ebook versions - even pirated copies - boost overall sales, one can, and BAEN does, that any e-copy out there is worth it in terms of generating sales. Of course a publisher has to actually PUT the ebook versions out there.

This is a very interesting statement! Do you have a source to actually back it up? If it is true, the industry should take notice and change their methods of sales overall.

-Pie