E-book customer sharing with anti-piracy group BREIN faces political backlash

[Mivo]

Here's one of these studies (a report from the European Commission):

http://ftp.jrc.es/EURdoc/JRC79605.pdf

The core points are that DRM discourages sales, piracy increases sales, and that the financial losses due to piracy are not as significant as claimed by the industry. However, it is in regard to music piracy, not to e-books. While there are many parallels (more than between software and music), there are some differences, too (e.g.. you won't "hear" an e-book and then buy it -- most e-book stores do offer samples already, and we don't read the same books over and over).

[HarryT]

I don't dispute the truth of that report, Mivo; I just don't see its relevance. It's equally true to say that someone who uses the bus to get to work and sometimes pays their fare and sometimes doesn't is a greater source of revenue to the bus company than a person who doesn't use the bus at all. Does that excuse the occasions on which the person doesn't pay the fare, or do they still get fined when they're caught not paying?

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You get punished for the laws you break; you can't "balance" your law-breaking against the laws you obey.

What if I don't break any laws? Why is it that in some countries (highly civilized countries, I may add) there is no breaking of the law involved when a private individual downloads content that might infringe copyright? Does this make the entire country unlawful, illegitimate, immoral? I am still trying to understand: Are you against people who might be breaking the law, or are you against those who download "pirated" content?

Originally Posted by HarryT

Well of course any pirate is going to come out with the lame excuse "but I wouldn't have bought it". I'm afraid I find it rather difficult to accept the word of someone who's just demonstrated their fundamental dishonesty by illegally downloading in the first place. Someone like that is unlikely to have any qualms about lying.

Sounds to me as if you're shooting at the person now, not at his argument.

[Mivo]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The fact that a person buys content legally does not make it acceptable for that same person to also pirate content, any more than parking your car legally makes it acceptable to also park it illegally. You get punished for the laws you break; you can't "balance" your law-breaking against the laws you obey.

I'm not arguing the legal aspect, though. It's clear-cut in many countries: downloading e-books is as illegal as removing the DRM from books (in the EU that is the exact same regulation). I'm not saying that downloading copyrighted material is legally acceptable. It isn't. No question there.

What I was discussing was the claim that people pirating e-books, music or movies jeopardizes the livelihood of the artists. That I do question. This isn't clear-cut at all to me and I don't see evidence that suggests that it is a big deal. Certainly not big enough to invade the privacy of customers and impose additional disadvantages for buying books. This doesn't discourage piracy. It encourages it. There is something fundamentally flawed if buying a book is a worse deal than pirating it (cost aside, obviously). DRM is basically a slap in the face of the people who are willing to pay money. If I fought like this with my customers, I'd soon have none.

I do feel that it's fruitful to focus on practical aspects. The "why" people pirate instead of buying, and how that could be addressed. Punishment works to a degree (takes unreasonable amounts of resources), but I much prefer positive encouragement. It's more effective and also much cheaper. In a perfect world, people wouldn't pirate. But in a perfect world, DRM wouldn't exist and people could re-sell their e-books and digitally purchased music, too, and authors would get the biggest share of the money their works yield, and not the smallest part.

But we're not living in a perfect world, so I think it's worthwhile to look at the reasons for piracy and address those that can be addressed reasonably. Getting stuck on those who never buy anything is aggravating and unproductive. They don't matter economically.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Does this make the entire country unlawful, illegitimate, immoral?

Not at all.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

As to fair compensation I do not have any idea, and I doubt that it could be easily derived. Too much is subjective. For some it takes one hour to read 200 pages and for others it takes 12 hours. If we equate it to movies to see 2 hours in a cinema is maybe $16 (in Canada) on TV practically nothing. Buying the DVD may cost a bit, but multiple people can watch for that price.

As far as I can determine (mainly from Hennen's American Public Library Ratings) libraries pay approximately $0.78 per circulation for ebooks and around $0.75 for paper books per circulation. This is what is paid to the publisher. Many paper books are leased and I believe the cost is a bit higher then overall. Ebooks actually cost the libraries less per circulation though as there is little overhead for staff or property cost or building construction or maintenance or property rental, unbelievably high in the case of smaller libraries. Overhead for ebooks is generally what overdrive charges. Maybe I am being totally off topic here but it seems relevant.

Your guess is as good as mine, but a tax on CD's and hard drives etc. is unlikely to yield even a penny a copy to the authors IMO.

But you should also consider that the majority of storage devices are not used to store pirated material. The tax doesn't just get collected on those used to store illegal copies, it gets collected on all of them.

Originally Posted by HarryT

The term "piracy" to refer to unauthorised copying and distribution of literary works has been used for more than 400 years. It isn't a modern coinage, and there's certainly nothing in the least "romantic" in its meaning. When people used the term in the 16th century, piracy was a very real and decidedly unromantic reality.

400 years ago it was used to refer to unauthorized copying and distribution of literary works by publishers. The modern coinage is applying it to consumers.

[samy2]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There's no more "right to privacy" for someone who pirates books or software than there is for someone who parks their car illegally, or rides on a bus without buying a ticket.

Really funny what you're writing. The fact is the one who use piracy websites can be sure about his privacy. There are no watermarks an other stuff which refers to the downloader. But if you buy in ebook, you have either DRM and/or watermarks. So if you give your reader with Ebooks to another person or just lost a reader or just a USB-Stick, you may be accused to piracy, because someone else put this ebooks to a piracy website.

If you really wanna fight against this you have to control the complete internet and every site every person looks at, and very file one download or send to other people. And thats for sure a matter of privacy.

[Toxaris]

Most e-books in the Netherlands are now DRM free (exception is Google Play) and according to BREIN that is only possible if they have the information of buyers. They have not given any details what they want to do with it, but they have hinted. They will monitor the version circulating to see if some buyers frequently upload books they buy. If they will, they will get sued by BREIN.
So far only BOL has mentioned they will not give the information, but as this seems strange as the distributor of the books has it in the contract. So in theory BOL would not be able to sell the latest books...

BREIN is known for not being too smart, but winning a lot of cases. They have near unlimited funds, as they are paid by music publishers and now apparently also book publishers. They only start cases where a judge resides that is also part of commissions doing investigation after piracy and so on. Some things are really fishy...
They also claim that all scientific investigations regarding piracy are false and not done correct. They claim their own investigations, which of course show that piracy is a big issue and results in great losses, are the only ones that are correct. However, they do not specify their own methods, so nobody can check it.

It is a scary, corporately funded group that thinks they are the law.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

It is a scary, corporately funded group that thinks they are the law.

This. And even scarier is that they get away with acting like it too.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

What if I don't break any laws? Why is it that in some countries (highly civilized countries, I may add) there is no breaking of the law involved when a private individual downloads content that might infringe copyright? Does this make the entire country unlawful, illegitimate, immoral? I am still trying to understand: Are you against people who might be breaking the law, or are you against those who download "pirated" content?

Personally I think that such laws are wrong, Alex, but:

a) I have a personal stake in this, so I am extremely biased.
b) Every country in the world has laws which some people think are bad.

Does it make the country immoral? No, of course it doesn't.

I am against those who download pirated content, and the reason I am is that I see my software, which I've worked damned hard on for 20+ years, illegally offered for sale on eBay, uploaded to Usenet newsgroups, etc, on a virtually weekly basis, and it hurts to see that, so I hope you'll understand that I do take it personally .

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Why is it that in some countries (highly civilized countries, I may add) there is no breaking of the law involved when a private individual downloads content that might infringe copyright?

In Canada, there is, of course, the fee paid to music copyright holders when you buy blank media:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadia...ing_Collective

But, if the above link is correct, authors, and both book and software publishers, get nothing from that fund. And, as far as I can tell, the Canadian free pass on some downloading does not apply to books. So, if Canada is typical of the high civilized countries you are thinking of, this may not apply to the thread.

When an author writes a book, and a publisher releases it, there is an implicit social contract that their intellectual property will be protected in roughly the manner prescribed by law. The author couldn't reasonably think that there will be zero shoplifting and piracy. But there's a reasonable expectation that some effort will be made to keep down the rate at which books are appropriated contrary to copyright, especially in the more prosperous nations, and especially in the country the book is published in.

Compare this to the situation where paper books are borrowed and sold. The author, when writing the book, had no expectation this would be restricted, so there's no unfairness involved.

Legislatures could fairly pass a law stating that, going forward, all new eBooks can be freely pirated. While fair, I don't think it would be kind to authors, and editors, and the families they support. And I think it would harm me as a reader.

Originally Posted by samy2

Everytime i read here something like BREIN or other think there is a other way fighting against piracy other than better prices ...

Suppose my boss tells me he isn't planning to pay me for the work I did last week. But if I agree to charge what he calls "better prices" for my labor, he might pay me next week.

Putting aside my emotions concerning the boss, it's just not rational to think my boss is going to pay me that "better" wage. If I am willing to work for zero wages, the official price of my labor becomes irrelevant. We as thrifty readers are that boss. Personally, if I was allowed, in all senses of the word, to download a book for free, I wouldn't download it for $10, or $5, or $1, or one cent.

Originally Posted by samy2

All of my life a bought used paperback books. So the authors and others does not get a penny.

A mistake. More used cars, or books, sold means higher resale value. Higher resale value and used item cost means publishers can charge more for the new item.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

400 years ago it was used to refer to unauthorized copying and distribution of literary works by publishers. The modern coinage is applying it to consumers.

400 years ago consumers had no way of copying a work (except by hand).

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Mivo

So already 400 years ago, content providers deliberately used an incorrect term to make an action seem more severe and serious.

But anyway, it seems that courts clarified the "theft" issue decades ago:

Is not the primary exclusive right the right to copy? Not exclusive if anyone can do it.

Helen

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by samy2

Do you really think that copyright guarantees the livelihood of anyone else then companies and performance rights organisation etc.? And does i take the livelihood of anyone if i borrow a book from a library, friend etc. or just buy a used one?

Far less so than with ebooks as it is only one copy you are borrowing and only one person can hold that copy at any one time. Eventually most reach a slace where they will not or can not be passed on any more. They are lost, wear out or languish on a shelf. Someone must buy another copy eventually if they desire to read it. Not so with ebooks.

Helen

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

What if I don't break any laws? Why is it that in some countries (highly civilized countries, I may add) there is no breaking of the law involved when a private individual downloads content that might infringe copyright? Does this make the entire country unlawful, illegitimate, immoral? I am still trying to understand: Are you against people who might be breaking the law, or are you against those who download "pirated" content?

Those are cases where a majority has voted to take away rights from a minority (the content creators and sellers). Is that highly civilized?