I have found numerous pirated ebooks for free online. Please tell me the benefits of

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by darryl

@Zod @Hitch. You both make very good points. My experience, like Zod's, is that most people don't bother with justifications at all.

Well, hard to argue about people's experiences, eh? :-)

However, it is a fact that copyright infringement is a very different legal concept to larceny. Copyright Infringement is quite literally not theft so far as the law is concerned. The question is whether the two are ethically equivalent or close to it.

I'm aware that there's a legal distinction. I wish that the scribers had made things a bit clearer, because the use of that "distinction" as an excuse drives me nuts. I do think that they are largely morally equivalent.

I must confess that one of my pet hates is "rights holders" and publishers and the like continually hiding behind authors and other creators. Authors are of course entitled to be paid and should be paid. However, the fact is that it is almost invariably the case that the author is losing only a tiny amount from each lost sale compared to the other parties to the transaction. And, of course, time and time again we hear of publishers who have taken steps to cheat their authors even of these tiny payments. This does not of course in any way justify customers not paying the author. However, it is a dishonest and annoying tactic.

You know, Darryl, there was a time when I might have thought as you do. However, in the last decade, I've come to know a lot--an awful lot--about publishing. I've seen the day-to-day grind of it; I've seen up close and personal what's involved, what it takes to bring a book to the public, market it, etc.

And I have to say, this bias (I'm not speaking about you, personally; I realize that you are reacting to what's been said about this, anecdotal evidence, etc.) about "Eeeeevil publishers" is pretty much unwarranted. In more than 3800 customers, over 4,000 books, you know what I've found? Not one author ever thinks that their publisher did "enough" for them. They didn't market their books well enough. They marketed to the wrong demographic. They created the wrong cover. They used the wrong editor. They didn't understand the book. They were lazy. The people in marketing never listened to the author. They cut a crucial disucssion from the book. They did this, didn't do that, and yadda-yadda-yadda. Oh, and yes, my fave--they weren't paid the right amount of royalties.

This narrative is repeated, over and over and over. I would probably faint dead away, if someone ever came in and told me how incredibly wonderful their former trade publisher had been. I'm still waiting for that mythical beast, the happy author. Oh, sure, they're happy when they get that first signing royalty, but after that? Fuhgeddaboudit.

You know how many, of that 4,000+ books that we've done, that we've seen deserve to be top-sellers? Would you like to make a wild guess? How many would you think? 100? 200?

Wanna try 10? Maybe? With proper editing and marketing?

Now, you'll say, "oh, but, yeah, those are self-published authors" as if that means something, but it doesn't. Many--many--of our clients are or have been trade-pubbed authors, so that's not it.

The truth is, most books aren't going to be big sellers. Or even mediocre sellers. They're going to sink into obscurity, ne'er to be seen again.

The idea that somehow, publishers should do all this work, to bring a book to fruition (and don't think for a MOMENT that it's not a lot of work), and then somehow, turn all the profit over to the person who created the original story, is simply daft nonsense. There's no way to do it, and keep a publishing house in biz. Can't be done. Do the math. Assume, on the uber-cheap side, that for a trade publishing house, it takes $5K to bring a book to market, sans marketing of ANY kind. Assume the real-world numbers; that not 10 out of 100 are going to make a profit. You've got $500K invested, in bringing those 100 books to the market; you probably need to spend another $250K to market them, even if you're a teeny publishing house, and 10 of them, maybe, if you are very, very lucky, are going to make any money at all.

How much profit, from those 10, are you going to be able to spread around? Seriously? How much money will those 10 earn, when it's all said and done?

In short--ha!--the "evil publisher" thing is a freaking myth. It's nonsense. It's a blame game. I mean, is there any possibility that a publisher, ever, ripped off an author? Of course, but I just don't believe it's the norm. Not based upon what I've seen. Publishers earn that damn money, and they take all the risks.

If authors want other people to take the risks and do all the heavy lifting, do the marketing, etc., then this is the result. This is what will, of course, happen; the odds are simply that the very few books that do well can only support the remainders to a certain point. That means, quite simply, that the publisher cannot pay those few authors that do pay off as well as those authors might think that they deserve to be paid.

That certainly means that good-selling authors don't earn what they might, if they were the only author being published by that house--but they never are. That's the problem, the math and the reality, Darryl.

I want authors to be paid. If I were to download pirate copies of ebooks and read them without paying the author, I would be doing the wrong thing, full stop. Further, I believe that we should have intellectual property laws, though I think our current ones in many cases are working against the public interests they are meant to serve. When this happens these laws lose the respect of the public and I believe lead to more people regarding them as irrelevant.

But telling yourself-- whoever does this--that it's okay, because it's the publisher, not the author--the author still doesn't get paid. No matter what the percentages are.

And honestly, I don't think most pirates or abusers of copyright, think about it that deeply. Hell, I doubt that most even know the laws surrounding copyright. They just can't be bothered to pay for the book(s).

The Free Dictionary defines the term rationalisation in this sense as follows:

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/rationalisation

I don't think it follows that every copyright infringement is universally and without exception inconsistent with reason so that any justification whatsoever amounts to a rationalisation. Even more so if the question of whether something is consistent with reason is a subjective one and not an objective one.

Like...?

Interestingly enough as far as I am aware Elsevier has made no claim that the authors of its articles are being deprived of payment by piracy. Perhaps this is because it does not in fact pay its authors? Though it does, of course, leverage the benefits of public research expenditure for its own enrichment.

Don't know. It's an interesting question.

Hitch

[darryl]

Great post. I freely confess that I am strictly an amateur when it comes to publishing. And I am only human and therefore extremely fallible. I claim no mortgage on the truth.

So far as the law is concerned it is easy to lose sight that there are enormous differences between tangible and intangible property. Trying to draft copyright laws in a manner that pretends that they are would in my opinion simply produce a mess. As for moral equivalence? I tend to think not. I won't go further with this in this post. Certainly pirating intellectual property is still morally wrong in the vast majority of incidents, though I think usually to a lesser degree. Sometimes to a much greater degree. Large scale commercial piracy is I think much worse than an individual obtaining a pirate copy for their own use, though once again the latter is still morally wrong, at least in the vast majority of cases.

Believe it or not I only subscribe to the evil publisher meme so far as the Big 5 and some of the less scrupulous smaller houses. In the case of the Big 5 I base this largely on their contractual terms and their behaviour as reported. My attitude comes from personal experience growing up in Australia. I was a prolific reader and we were treated very poorly. Many books were not released until long after publication, or sometimes not at all. Prices were so high that when Amazon started operating I was able to purchase and import usually superior US editions, pay the postage and all charges and still come out significantly cheaper. I remember first doing this with an Alice Sheldon biography and some Science Fiction novels. Well before ebooks became prominent and widely available. Another reason I adore ebooks. But imagine what reading Joe Konrath's blog and KKR and the like did to my already jaundiced view of the Big 5. And of course many of the contractual terms in Big 5 contracts are in my view simply unconscionable so far as authors are concerned. Having said that, publishing is not, nor should it be, a charity. Publishers are businesses who are entitled to make a profit. However, I think the Big 5 realise that they would get scant public sympathy, and for this they have only themselves to blame.

Your comments on authors temperaments and attitudes and the merits of their books is about what I would have expected. Bringing a self-published work to market is very easy and cheap, but producing a professional quality work is not. The better self-published authors, and there are more and more of them as time goes by, are themselves paying for the necessary services, which are affordable to most, at least in the 1st world. And of course they are keeping control of their rights.

As for rationalisations, I think there is an element of the person deluding themselves, the need for the rationalisation indicating that they are aware on some level that what they are doing is wrong. This being the case, those who have a genuine belief that they, for instance, are acting for the greater good are not guilty of rationalising. Without this subjective element, consciousness of guilt on some level, I think a person may be mistaken but is not rationalising. Hypocrisy, of course, may well be involved.

If you get the chance have a look at the Elsevier situation with scientific journals.

One final point. It is easy to see how much our respective views have been influenced by our own experiences. Thank you for sharing your experiences.

[Solo1959]

First of all, I believe that it is right and proper to purchase your books and not get pirated books. And to be clear I am NOT advocating anything illegal or immoral here. I support buying books and I oppose pirating them.

However ...... Maybe we have been looking at this wrong.

It has always been my understanding that copyright law applies to the distributor. If I own a book that is copyrighted, then I can not sell copies of it, or distribute it for free to others, without permission from the copyright holder.

I do not see how copyright applies to a person who aquired a copyrighted book.

It is a thin line and very unclear where exactly that line is drawn, but it is not necessarily a copyright violation to 'get' an ebook from someone unauthorized to distribute it. The violation is on the unautorized distributor.

It is perfectly excusable for a consumer to purchase an ebook from a company that later turned out not to have the rights to sell it. But that buyer can not distribute it because it is copyrighted material.

This is why the crack down has been on people distributing copyrighted materials and not people who simply aquire the material.

There have indeed been cases of people who were prosecuted for having downloaded music from unauthorized sources, but they were prosecuted because the music they aquired was in a 'shared' directory whre they were sharing the music, probably unaware that they were doing so.

This is a very difficult discussion and very nuanced. And numerous very intellegent legal minds have very different opinions that can only be decided in the courts.

First of all, you should never share copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holder.

Second, if you aquire such material, you are denying the creator of his legal due.

[leebase]

Interesting viewpoint. Let's take photography. When you buy a photo from me, you are not buying the copyright to the photo. Even if you pay me to take your photo...you are not getting the copyright to the photos just because you paid for them. This is true in the US.

Every now and then I'd get a client who wanted the copyright. The most I'd ever negotiate is to give them (for a price) the right to copy for personal use. But I still retained the copyright to all my work.

Buying a copy of a book does not give you the copyright to that book.

It all comes down to money. We want to protect the money making opportunities of the creator of works to encourage people to create works. Patents, copyrights and trademarks are all just different takes on the same notion. We balance the desire to protect the creator with the desire to benefit society by putting limits on patents and copyrights.

When you access, use, consume content whether physical or virtual -- without payment -- you are violating the social construct that patents, copyrights and trademarks are set up to protect.

Take music. When you listen to songs on the radio, you aren't paying royalties...but the radio station is. To cover their costs and make money the radio stations play ads. Listening to the ads is the price you pay for the music. If you record the songs off the radio so that you can listen to them without listening to the ads....you are violating that social contract (let's just use stealing).

The rest is just details. But the basic principle is easy enough to understand.

[Solo1959]

So I think both of us agree that the laws apply primarily to distributors of copyrighted materials. And, morality aside, it is likely not a copyright violation to acquire copyrighted material from a source not approved by the copyright holder.

So, back to the original poster, if the OP has, or should reasonably have, knowledge that the material was pirated, then acquiring that material would not be fair to the copyright holder and should seek another distributor.

But, if the OP finds a source for free copies, and has no knowledge that the material was pirated, or does know that the source is approved, by all means yes, please get your free ebooks from that source.

For example if the OP did a search for a particular title, found it on Amazon for $5, B&N for $5 and LegallyFreeEbooksLegitimate.com for $0, then the OP could go to the free site and acquire the book. There have been MANY times that I see free books on Amazon that B&N is not offering for free, and also the other way around. It is also very probable that the site does pay the copyright holder, but from money received elsewhere. It's really none of my business what payment agreements other people make.

If I did a search for one of my titles and (unlikely) found it on a site I didn't know about, I would surely pursue the issue. And, I might try to collect payment - from the distributor, not the party that acquired it.

So maybe I'm naive but I don't see a value for someone to just put up a site and give away free stuff. Again, I am (not too) naive, but I would imagine that most ebook sites are legitimate. Again, who runs a business, illegal at that, where they do not get anything in return.

So, in my thought process, most copyright violation sharing of ebooks is probably done individually, one at a time, from friend to friend. Yes, this is against the law. But it's probably not too big of a problem. I won't try to justify it because you can't make that case.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Solo1959

So I think both of us agree that the laws apply primarily to distributors of copyrighted materials. And, morality aside, it is likely not a copyright violation to acquire copyrighted material from a source not approved by the copyright holder.

It could still arguably be considered illegal, regardless of what it's called. It's not a copyright violation to steal a physical book from the bookstore, either, but both deny the rights-holder their legal due.

I'm not looking to debate whether or not "theft" or "stealing" semantically applies to intellectual property--that's been talked to death. I'm just saying that it's probably a mistake to assume that "it's not copyright violation" equals "there's no potential legal repercussions for the 'acquire-er'." You'll get no argument from me that downloaders aren't very likely to be pursued by authorities, but I'm just not willing to go out on that limb and say that "questionable morality" is the only thing the downloader is technically "guilty" of. Not just yet, anyway.

Originally Posted by Solo1959

So maybe I'm naive but I don't see a value for someone to just put up a site and give away free stuff.

Advertising. Remember the "old" internet adage: if you can't figure out what someone is selling ... then they're probably selling you.

[GlennD]

Originally Posted by Solo1959

But, if the OP finds a source for free copies, and has no knowledge that the material was pirated, or does know that the source is approved, by all means yes, please get your free ebooks from that source.

For example if the OP did a search for a particular title, found it on Amazon for $5, B&N for $5 and LegallyFreeEbooksLegitimate.com for $0, then the OP could go to the free site and acquire the book. There have been MANY times that I see free books on Amazon that B&N is not offering for free, and also the other way around. It is also very probable that the site does pay the copyright holder, but from money received elsewhere. It's really none of my business what payment agreements other people make.

If I did a search for one of my titles and (unlikely) found it on a site I didn't know about, I would surely pursue the issue. And, I might try to collect payment - from the distributor, not the party that acquired it.

So maybe I'm naive but I don't see a value for someone to just put up a site and give away free stuff. Again, I am (not too) naive, but I would imagine that most ebook sites are legitimate. Again, who runs a business, illegal at that, where they do not get anything in return.

So, in my thought process, most copyright violation sharing of ebooks is probably done individually, one at a time, from friend to friend. Yes, this is against the law. But it's probably not too big of a problem. I won't try to justify it because you can't make that case.

I believe most websites that offer free ebook downloads are making their money from ads. That would apply to both legitimate and illegitimate sites. But if you do encounter a site with a ton of popups and a gazillion ads, I'd suggest that may hint at an illegitimate site. Even(or especially) if their URL includes "legally free" and "legitimate" in their domain name.

I suspect most long-time Mobileread readers have either seen or read discussion of books on legitimate sites like Amazon that are not legal copies. It does happen, despite their best efforts.

I do think it is incumbent on an individual to make a reasonable effort to make sure what they're downloading is legal. And there are legitimate sites that it may still not be legal in your country of residence to download their material.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by GlennD

And there are legitimate sites that it may still not be legal in your country of residence to download their material.

Absolutely. MR’s ebook library operates under “life+70” copyright law, for example, meaning that there are numerous books in it that a person in the US would be infringing copyright by downloading.

[Rbneader]

Copyright in the US was established as a temporary monopoly that maxed out at 28 years.

Through borderline legal and over-the-line illegal lobbying activities by media conglomerates that was extended to life+70, a functionally indefinite period of 2 average human lifespans.

No discussion of the morality of piracy is accurate without acknowledging the behavior of media, including book, publishers successful perversion of US copyright law and the detrimental effects that came from that (one of which is more widespread piracy).

[BookCat]

In reply to Solo1959 regarding the person downloading copies of books under copyright: yes that person is guilty of a crime. They are effectively in receipt of stolen goods. The claim that they didn't know those books were under copyright etc is no defence: ignorance is no defence in law.

So presumably they could be prosecuted for receiving?

[shalym]

Originally Posted by BookCat

In reply to Solo1959 regarding the person downloading copies of books under copyright: yes that person is guilty of a crime. They are effectively in receipt of stolen goods. The claim that they didn't know those books were under copyright etc is no defence: ignorance is no defence in law.

So presumably they could be prosecuted for receiving?

Interesting...so if I go to a pawn shop and buy something that later turns out to be stolen...am I committing a crime? What about if a seller puts a book onto Amazon that they don't have the rights to sell, and I buy it, am I committing a crime then?

Shari

[darryl]

Originally Posted by BookCat

In reply to Solo1959 regarding the person downloading copies of books under copyright: yes that person is guilty of a crime. They are effectively in receipt of stolen goods. The claim that they didn't know those books were under copyright etc is no defence: ignorance is no defence in law.

So presumably they could be prosecuted for receiving?

It's impossible to talk about every jurisdiction, but this is not the case in any jurisdiction I am aware of. Copyright infringement legally is not theft. Nor in most cases is it even criminal. So a downloader is not in receipt of stolen goods. A downloaded file is neither stolen nor goods. A civil action for copyright infringement is possible if the downloader has done any of the acts protected by copyright. If, for example, the act of downloading a file is interpreted by the law as making a copy, then such downloading without permission may itself breach copyright. The rights holder could sue and recover damages, which in most jurisdictions is the actual loss, which will be the retail value of the goods. Certainly not worth pursuing except for very large scale infringements. The US has statutory damages which makes it unnecessary to prove actual damages and are set at a high enough level to make a suit possibly worthwhile. It also encourages copyright trolling, which I regard as a form of blackmail. The Federal Court in Australia certainly took this view with Dallas Buyer's Club, when it demanded specimens of the proposed letter and held that most of the heads of damages sought were not applicable. It then demanded a bond to ensure that only permissible heads of damage were sought, which would have left a large number of individual claims for very small amounts. It was simply not worth their while to pay the bond.

Please bear in mind that I am talking about the legal situation. I have expressed my view on the morality previously, and have no desire to repeat it yet again. I will only add that no discussion of morality in regards to copyright is complete without a detailed look at the business model of Elsevier and other companies publishing academic journals.

[BookCat]

Originally Posted by shalym

Interesting...so if I go to a pawn shop and buy something that later turns out to be stolen...am I committing a crime? What about if a seller puts a book onto Amazon that they don't have the rights to sell, and I buy it, am I committing a crime then?

Shari

I think in the case it would be the pawn shop owner who would be prosecuted for receiving, because he's acting as a fence: buying from someone he (probably) knows to be a thief, then selling this on to the public.

[BookCat]

darryl: Interesting, so you are saying that copyright infringement is not a crime, but can be fought in civil courts. I wonder if this is the case in the UK, where I have the distinct impression that it's a criminal offense, but I may be wrong.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by BookCat

I think in the case it would be the pawn shop owner who would be prosecuted for receiving, because he's acting as a fence: buying from someone he (probably) knows to be a thief, then selling this on to the public.

But...that is completely the opposite of what you said before.

Originally Posted by BookCat

In reply to Solo1959 regarding the person downloading copies of books under copyright: yes that person is guilty of a crime. They are effectively in receipt of stolen goods. The claim that they didn't know those books were under copyright etc is no defence: ignorance is no defence in law.

So presumably they could be prosecuted for receiving?

If a person buying from a pawn shop is not committing a crime, neither is the person downloading from a website that is (or appears to be) a legitimate book seller.

Shari