ebook piracy

[rcuadro]

Originally Posted by fugazied

Honestly I think people who shell out $300 for a reader don't mind paying for books.

I don't know about that... Look at the price of MP3 players out there and people still download music if people can get it cheap or free they will do it

[ahi]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The currently best format for that is ePub ad more and more devices take on board ADE with DRM.

I thought you said BooksOnBoard (or whoever else) was going to make ePub irrelevant...

... you are confusing me!

- Ahi

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ahi

I thought you said BooksOnBoard (or whoever else) was going to make ePub irrelevant...

... you are confusing me!

- Ahi

We had been told that Fictionwise was going to try to mess with ePub and add yet another DRM to it. This would cause all kinds of havoc (IMHO). BooksOnBoard sells ePub using Adobe's DRM.

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

We had been told that Fictionwise was going to try to mess with ePub and add yet another DRM to it. This would cause all kinds of havoc (IMHO). BooksOnBoard sells ePub using Adobe's DRM.

Although I feel like I'm cheering the sympathy horse, I'm rooting for Fictionwise's ePub version of DRM. I hate Adobe's DRM scheme and would like to see it die a quick death.

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

Although I feel like I'm cheering the sympathy horse, I'm rooting for Fictionwise's ePub version of DRM. I hate Adobe's DRM scheme and would like to see it die a quick death.

No chance of that happening soon! ePub with the Adobe flower is quickly becoming the de facto standard the whole world over (except for Northern America, of course)

[dadioflex]

Edit.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

I'm not going to get into a debate about piracy but......

I find it very easy to leave my computer running and downloading while I'm out in the lounge room reading.

Cheers,
PKFFW

Ok, you read one book and download about 100 more in that same time. You now have 100 books to read. So, you read another book and again download another 100 in that same time. You now have 199 books to read!

A song takes 3-5 minutes, a movie 90-120 minutes. You can download one in the same time and keep listening. With ebooks, the amount of downloads will be much higher than you can ever hope to read. So, most books won't be read (as you just won't have the time for that...)


I liked this phrase:

If they want to share files, they can get somebody to lend them a copy, or go to a place for sharing this information that's wholly supported by the industry (you might know them as libraries).

And I wholeheartedly agree with this:

I suspect that the real change will come as more authors who are already part of the digital age push for new things. But that's a generational shift, and we're still a long way from it.

I liked it!

[Lord KiRon]

At least in Russia the main reason to buy eBook device is to read books free from services like LINK REMOVED and so on .
Not sure it's the reasoning in US and Europe but that quite undestandable , especially given the fact that many books there not published in eBook form but bought in paper and than scanned and OCR-ed by users (the site is WiKi style - anyone can upload).

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Lord KiRon

At least in Russia the main reason to buy eBook device is to read books free from services like LINK REMOVED and so on .
Not sure it's the reasoning in US and Europe but that quite undestandable , especially given the fact that many books there not published in eBook form but bought in paper and than scanned and OCR-ed by users (the site is WiKi style - anyone can upload).

Whereas in some other countries, like Hungary, thousands of the most popular works from the body of national literature (both classical and some still recent/under copyright) are made available freely and legally by the national library in electronic format for the benefit of all.

- Ahi

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

No chance of that happening soon! ePub with the Adobe flower is quickly becoming the de facto standard the whole world over (except for Northern America, of course)

Even in N. America some publishers, while not axing other formats entirely, are making ePub their main format offering.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Even in N. America some publishers, while not axing other formats entirely, are making ePub their main format offering.

Ah, the gospel of ePub!

How is it for formatting Shakesperean plays?

- Ahi

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by rcuadro

I don't know about that... Look at the price of MP3 players out there and people still download music if people can get it cheap or free they will do it

I think it's more about seeing value for their money, not specifically the price itself. Right now, many publishers are ripping people off with their eBook prices, and consumers know it. When they see eBooks for $15, they're not necessarily mad because they can't afford $15, they're mad because they can buy the same book in paperback for half that. Current pricing make eBooks look like a scam, rather than a serious attempt at a business model.

[jament]

Shaggy's right. And the only morally valid reason to illegally download books is as a form of protest and civil disobedience against the publishing industry.

If you object to the availability, pricing, DRM and restrictions of e-books not only do you have a responsibility, as Rawls argues, to communicate your objection by illegally downloading as many books as you can find, you also have a responsibility to publicize it and make sure that the public and government know what you're doing and why.

[numtini]

There's something in that article that's not (directly) about piracy and that's the notion that CDs led to Downloads. And that's partially about the ability of pirates to rip their CDs and upload them. But it's also about the ability of people to take all their CDs, spend an afternoon in front of the PC, and rip them to their new mp3 player and have their library collected over decades, available to them.

I have an entire basement of books. I'm not paying for them again. I might pay for a few. But I just don't make enough money to pay for all of them. I think that's a big barrier to adoption of e-readers.

And if you get into the whole concept. I've paid for all of them. Is it legal to download them if I already own them? Is a physical book a license for the book or is it the sale of a physical object? Is it legal to chop them apart and scan them myself? If it is, why isn't it legal to download them?

But either way, when I first got an MP3 player a week later I had every CD I owned ripped to it. And I sure don't have that to my kindle.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by numtini

And if you get into the whole concept. I've paid for all of them. Is it legal to download them if I already own them? Is a physical book a license for the book or is it the sale of a physical object? Is it legal to chop them apart and scan them myself? If it is, why isn't it legal to download them?

The first thing you have to look at is... is downloading actually illegal? Copyright is about the right to distribute, not receive. Lots of people (with varying agendas) will try and tell you that it is illegal, but that's not really what most laws say (depending on what countries laws apply to you). That's a whole different topic though.

Beyond that, depending on what country you're in and the relevant laws, it may be perfectly legal to scan books you own for personal use. There's really no difference as far as the user is concerned between scanning vs downloading. It does make a big difference as far as the uploader is concerned though. If you scan your own there is no other party involved. If you download, then the person you download from is committing copyright infringement since they presumably don't have rights to distribute.

Personally, either way I don't think the book owner would have done anything wrong. In the download example though, the person on the other end is most likely breaking the law.