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Are We About To Enter The Age of Book Piracy?
theodp writes "The speed with which the 4MB e-mail hoax purporting to be the new cookbook from the Naked Chef streaked across the Internet suggests to Slate that a new, disquieting era for the publishing world may be in sight. Indeed, the latest Harry Potter tale made the rounds on the Web just hours after the book went on sale, its 870 pages apparently scanned in and distributed by rabid fans. The old argument that no one likes reading on a computer has pretty much eroded. Just because publishing people can't conceive of book piracy doesn't mean it can't happen."
alt.binaries.ebooks
I'd much rather pirate these things if I didnt have to read them on a non-passive surface. Come on, Pirates, come to my aid!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
reading converted fiction ebooks on handhelds is better than reading them on paper.
Lots of advantages like being able to read on the go or in bed with the lights out and than being awoken by the Handheld in the morning...
Not only books, but comics too. Already I've seen complete archives of all X-Men, Spiderman, etc. I think that might actually become a bigger problem, because comics are easy to scan and distribute, and their readers probably fit very well the profile of your typical "downloader".
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Book piracy is too much of a pain in the ass. Plus, people want to own the book and feel it in their hands.
Like someone wants to have a stapled stack of recycled copier paper in a fuzzy inkjet font. Even worse is the suggestion of reading it off the screen. The whole concept is just silly.
In the case of music, I seriously doubt most people get the mp3 and then buy the CD. I would suggest in this case that anyone interested in reading an 870 page book would go out and buy it, or at least borrow it from the library.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
It's copyright infringement, not a bunch of people sailing around with their swords in the air looting the natives and stashing thier booty (ARRGH!)
It's been my observation that sites that distribute pirated books have far, far too many to read -- and many of the books there are obviously scanned through OCR, with no attempt made at legibility. And yet they're still offered.
For most book pirates (and pirates in general, really), it's not about getting books to read for free -- it's all about having the book. To these pirates, if you don't have a bigger collection than everyone else, you're nothin'.
I get all my books from #bw (hi guys!). sure, it's sort of illegal, but you could similarly get it for free from the library, and if I really like the book I buy it anyway.
IMO, more interesting than the fact that book "piracy" happens is the fact that with todays "electronic entertainment systems" people are actually willing to read a book instead of playing repetative action games.
I was under the impression that some of the pdfs were made from the printer's source postscript file or something to that effect. I know a guy who pull D&D manuals off KaZaa that are perfect copies. I think he's the reason that the campus computer labs instituted printer quotas.
It was also remarkably similar in plot, probably due to both authors reading fan discussions on what will happen for the last couple of years.
In the 16th and 17th century actors and stenographers would conspire to rush off unlicenced copies of popular plays. The most famous example of this is the 'Bad Quarto' of Hamlet. This appeared in print several years before the authorised edition, and was based on the memory of two or three of the principal actors, with much filling from other popular works.
In the 19th century the USA was the piracy centre of the English speaking world -- bootleg editions of every popular British work would be printed, with no money getting back to the original British writers. You can read many complaints from English authors of the time about this situation.
Even if we restrict ourselves to illegal distribution through the internet, this is not a new phenomenon. The alt.binaries.ebook newsgroup has been around for many years -- the only thing which has changed is the mass availabilty of scanners which would have cost thousands only ten years ago. So, instead of having to manually type a book to copy it, we can now scan and OCR.
Just as with music distribution, we need to emphasise that there is an incredible amount of *legal* book distribution on the internet. The standard bearer is Project Gutenberg -- creating free electronic copies of out of copyright texts since 1971.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
So instead of Kazaa, Gnutella and Napster, book piracy will be by email? God help us! Just when I'm trying to convince my higher-ups that emailing that graphics-laden instruction manual (10 MB) to everyone in the company is NOT a good idea.
Hey! Maybe then they'll outlaw email and it will give us a chance to revamp SMTP!
But why is the rum gone?
Books have been pirated for years and in just as wide distribution as any of the other illegal obtained pirated items, such as games and software. I have seen them in pdf, text, and even help file formats. I just don't see how this is news at all, maybe it might have been five years ago, but now it is just a waste of front page space.
What's worse is that the printed word has no recourse for copy protection at all. There is no way whatsoever you can discriminate between a human eye and a scanner, so how can you say it's okay for one and not the other? They'll have to jump straight to cease and desist letters.
At the end of the day when I read some pirated book I simply equate it to borrowing it much like I would from a library (but without the effort of actually going there of course).
Publishers can also turn this to their advantage such as Baen.com which had released many free published sci-fi books. As a result of this I am actually likely to be purchasing further books in the series I have read because I like them and want to give something back to the author - especially when they have been so kind as to release a lot of their books for free.
I'm sure I'm in an extreme minority, but I read books on my Palm but only after buying the book. I get a lot more book reading done if I always have a book with me, and the only way that happens is if I put a couple on the Palm. However I always buy a copy of a book if I'm going to read it, just to stay legal.
Since I get my books from usenet, I have to grab anything that I might someday want to read when it's passing through, so I do have thousands of books on my machine that I haven't paid for. However, if I decide to read one, I go to the used book store and grab a copy (most of what I read is older SF).
That's the common term for it. You're annoyed at that? Tough. I'm annoyed at people that use cold, clinical words like "infringment" so that it won't sound as bad; the implication being that since they don't agree with the notion of copyright in the first place, they'll try to make piracy sound as harmless as possible.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I've already seen people who are trying to do raw text versions of the Harry Potter books. (The link on Geocities is gone anyway.) What's there to stop people from otherwise OCRing (or for those with buckets of spare time, typing) large books such as the HP series?
This sig no verb.
Is a very old thing. It has been going on for a very long time.
An illegal translation of Harry Potter was being sold here (Chile). They regularly decommision tens of thousands of books at a time here.
Books suffer the same type of overcharged price fixing as CD's, so most people here can't afford them. Does that mean that the poor are denied the right to read? Libraries are basically non existent here too. Book piracy is not bad in the developed world because of fairly good libraries and greater affluence. One cannot expect a person making 200 bucks a month (or less) to buy a 10 dollar (minimum) book. Pirate copies sell for around 2 bucks. An affordable price. Your 10 dollar paperback could still make decent profit if sold for 3 bucks.
computer storage could easily store the full text file of a book years ago, so why didn't it take off like movie piracy did when computers got powerful enough?
yes, book piracy on some scale is inevitable, but given the fact that its incredibly time consuming to 'rip' a book, compared to the time and effort it takes to rip a movie or music track, and given the fact that for many many people the charm in reading a book is that its on paper and it can be taken literally anywhere without them worrying that the batteries might run out, i don't think its going to impact that much on the book industry.
MilkMiruku
From the quality of most of the books scanned in that way, the problem will be self-correcting. Those that spend hours reading low quality novel images may end up blind, and not able to read at all. 'Sides, if you drop a book in the bathtub, you set it out on the porch to dry for a few hours. You drop a laptop in the bathtub, you're out a grand or two. Is that really worth the $30 you didn't want to spend on a hardcover book?
Piracy against the RIAA is still ilegal, but considering the way that the RIAA screws everyone (the artists included), it's understandable.
Piract against the Movie Industry is again ilegal but it can be rationalized when you consider some of the dodgy things they want to try and pull against the consumers.
Piracy against the book publishing firms makes no damn sense. They don't screw the customers, price increases for books have been very slight and can be explained by the normal rate of inflation (my personal average is $1.50 over the past 10 years) and if you really want to read the book for free there is a *legal* way to do it. Just go to the local library and check it out
There is no "robin hood" rationalization for this, there is no way to justify it, this is just a bunch of cheap fuckers who can't be bothered to fork over $18 on Amazon.com for a pre-order.
In my opinion it's *now* a case of the consumers (the ones sharing the books on the web) screwing the authors. Remember, JK Rowling was a starving single mother when she wrote HP:ATSS...Think about *that* when HP #6 comes out
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
perhaps... but PDAs on the other hand, are very compelling platforms on which to read ebooks...
Hopefully, "book piracy" won't suddenly catch on. I suspect it will slowly rise, but a sharp increase will only prompt publishers to have a knee-jerk reaction and jump towards some kind of lock-down attempt. A slow increase will give publishers time to think about the most sensible way of altering their business model in the face of copyright infringement. Some have found that giving away electronic copies is profitable.
I don't think there are many people reading books on their computer screens. Many of my friends got their hands on the latest Harry Potter book, but used it only to show off, nobody's going to sit behind their screen for hours to read a book.
On the contrary, I love reading on my PDA. I haven't touched a paper book in years (heavy, no backlight etc.), my Sony Clie is just fine for reading ebooks.
The old argument that no one likes reading on a computer has pretty much eroded.
:)
I dont think it has eroded. I cant stand reading books or long articles/essays on screen. Although I do have numerous books in electronic form its just not the same...
I read when I go to bed. I can curl up with a book as they say, I can hardly do that with a crt screen
Besides the people that buy books will still buy books. The recent harry potter book proves that. Even though it was on the internet people didn't wait for a 0-day warez copy. They went out en masse to purchase a real book
Print all the books in X11 fonts. Those font suck so bad that my OCR program segfaulted when trying to read in a chapter.
Although my method involves going to the local public library and signing them out.
For those wondering, the scans of Amazing Spiderman issue #0 through #214 fit on one CD
Tell me that's not handy :-)
is the official reason the Harry Potter phenomenon is labelled A Good Thing.
The other reason is that it also encourages adults to read. I've got few objections to literature being pirated on the internet, and although they wouldn't admit it in public, I'd imagine the books authors don't object much either. If you really love a book, you'll want a hard copy.
It makes a change from all the "How To Drive a Woman Wild in 30 Seconds.pdf" crap circulating on Kazaa anyway.
Would you object to your kids downloading Shakespeare's sonnets from th'Internet?
Then what's wrong with downloading modern literature from a personal development point of view?
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
I love books. Always have. I can hang out in a bookstore all day long. I love the smell of them (even the musty smell of older books), the feel of good books in my hand. When you find a book with really nice paper and binding, you've found a treasure. This even goes for paperbacks.
There is no substitute for holding that book in your hands, and having the pleasure of turning the pages. It's slow, perhaps (unless you're one of those heathen speedreaders; reading was meant to be enjoyed), but it's a satisfying expirience.
As much as I love computers and all things gadget-like, no electronic contraption with a small sreen will ever replace my books. And having a personal library is just plain damn cool.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The old argument that no one likes reading on a computer has pretty much eroded.....
Why ? Maybe for some lucky guys with a laptop, and a fine LCD screen, this is true, but for me, especially when reading non-technical material, like a good science fiction book or my favorite magazine, holding paper, while reading is much more better than sitting in front of a monitor. Even if with a fine LCD screen, paper gives the feeling of reading like no other medium can.
Of course they will! Textbooks are one of the few types of book that people are forced to buy. And students are usually both pov and tech-savvy. The added benefit of having an electronic version of a textbook on CD rather than lugging around a textbook would actually be a big advantage.
I managed to get a few copies of Jamie's latest book in a Word Doc sent to my work account - none to my personal accounts which I get about 50 times as much email to.
Firstly, it seems that particular "book" primarily propagated itself through company email addresses - most of the old email addresses left on the email were from investment banks, consultancies or PR agencies.
Talking to people about it, I was surprised how completely oblivious all these highly paid executives were to the concept of copyright and IP law. Firstly, there was no moral conundrum of "should I take it" and secondly there was never really any thought about whether it was copyright infringement or not.
This is worrying for groups like the RIAA who want people to be as afraid of copyright infringement as they are of saying to their friends that they'd like to murder the President of the US.
It's also positive from the point of view of people who would like to see a better definition of "fair use" and impose a slightly greater burden on the IP owner to actually retain the copyright to the products (for example that the product has to be available to purchase for them to stop the product from going into the public domain).
SCO wi... oh, never mind.
Seriously though, I think that as new generations are increasingly accustomed to reading stuff on a screen, perhaps today's teenage MSN junkies will be tomorrow's book pirates? That is, if reading survives as a pastime against competition from trashy, lowest-common-denominator TV and (as someone said) video games.
I still love the feel and appearance of a shiny new book, though. A PDF is much harder to cherish and try not to get all dog-eared.
Books don't ALL cost 20 bucks (in fact much much less normally) and there isn't just one page that is good.
...for preventing book piracy. While scanning and OCR'ing isn't all that tough, it usually takes a while and is more trouble than your average citizen is willing to go through. Plus, the resulting quality sucks most of the time -- lots of OCR errors and the occasional missing page. Once digital distribution becomes the norm for books, and it will (just like movies and music), then piracy will take off (just like movies and music). So when we see the major publishers dragging their feet on digital distribution models, you know they think they're staring at their own funerals (just like movies and music). Too bad there aren't any real visionaries in that industry.
"At the end of the day when I read some pirated book I simply equate it to borrowing it much like I would from a library (but without the effort of actually going there of course)."
Ahem? If you borrow a book from the library you paid for it...out of the taxes that maintains the library hance you have a reasonable expectation to be able to read the book.
Borrowing the book from someone you know who has bought it is another thing, you're borrowing the book from someone who paid for it and you'll give it back to them and either never read the book again or consider buying a copy for yourself (as what happened to me when I got into the Harry Potter Series)
Downloading a copy from a group of pirates means that there is an extremly good chance that the person you downloaded it from isn't the one who paid money for it. Plus there's the fact that you're not likely to get rid of your copy when you're done...if you like it you're going to put it onto a CD-R or other long-term storage media...all without paying for it.
There *is* a difference
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
I download quite a lot of books. Now, most (if not all) are books I already own; this goes for fiction as well as non-fiction. I have also considered getting a scanner and OCR software to scan all those books I don't already have in machine-readable form (no good OCR scanning software for Linux as far as I've been able to tell, though). I also have several directories filled with papers downloaded from databases or from the authors' homepages.
So, if I already own the books, and books are nicer to read on paper (and they are), why have them? Convenience. Say you are going on a two-week trip. You could bring one, maybe two, books with you before it gets cumbersome. If I have my laptop with me, on the other hand, I have more or less my entire library available. This is great, both for having reference litterature with me, and for whiling away a few hours with a novel in some hotel.
The benefit is not only when traveling either. WHerever and whenever I have my computer, my books travel along. And they are searchable - this is absolutely invaluable.
A small note to other researchers: if you are putting up your papers for download, would you _please_ not just have them as PDF:s of scanned images of the pages in the paper?! They become utterly opaque to searching and indexing, and when I search through my collection for relevant stuff, I will miss your paper and you will miss a citation.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I remember seeing some articles about 2 or 3 years ago saying how they were working on ebook readers. The "paper" had dipole magnetics - if polarized one way, they would appear black; otherwise, they would appear white. The only time it needed power was to switched the paper -- IE, load a new book. Whatever happened to those?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Sorry, read my list wrong. That's three CDs. Still handy enough. The issues aren't tiny.
Actually I think that maybe the comic industry should look into some way to make vector-versions of their comics available. Searchable text. Small footprint meaning they're easy to sell online.
Baen has make a point of releasing its books free online. Their reasoning includes such as this "Losses any author suffers from piracy are almost certainly offset by the additional publicity which, in practice, any kind of free copies of a book usually engender. Whatever the moral difference, which certainly exists, the practical effect of online piracy is no different from that of any existing method by which readers may obtain books for free or at reduced cost: public libraries, friends borrowing and loaning each other books, used book stores, promotional copies, etc." and they note that "After all, Dave Weber's On Basilisk Station has been available for free as a "loss leader" for Baen's for-pay experiment "Webscriptions" for months now. And -- hey, whaddaya know? -- over that time it's become Baen's most popular backlist title in paper!"
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
With books, the price isn't so high - really. The price of printing out a whole book for convenient consumption would be high for most individuals already. And no one wants to show up anywhere with a huge pile of large black-and-white pages binded together, complete with scanning artifacts and no cover. The effort and time to wait for the book to print would be prohibitive also. And books still have the advantage of being easier to use than an handheld electronic device while sitting in, um, random places. The only advantages to an electronic device is searcheability, backlight, and weight - most of the time, those aren't needed.
The only real role I could see for "piracy" for literature is:
1. Books on audio - those things are EXPENSIVE. And because they are mostly just a golden voice over a work you can get for much cheaper, the price seems a bit silly to most people. The most appropriate way to semi-legally "pirate" such a work would be to have individuals form an online community to make their own recordings, as a media transfer mechanism. After all, if reading a book to a group of friends is legal, and reading a book over a phone to a friend would be legal, why would not reading a book over a network to many friends be legal?
2. College textbooks - also very expensive. Here, searcheability and weight would be the key issue. If it were available, expecially at a cheaper cost than real textbooks, I'd definetly prefer to have my textbooks on laptop. I definetly wouldn't be surprised to see a community of textbook scanners spring up eventually if online books are not made available.
3. Archiving. Already being done. See Project Gutenburg and other sites.
4. Translating works not available in other nations/languages. Also known more popularly as "scanlating". See ToriyamaWorld, and many, many others to find sites that generally respect the copyright of authors, but want to share works that have not been licenced in the U.S..
Ryan Fenton
I worry more about the near-death of small, independent book stores, at the hands of large chains (Borders, B&N, Chapters) and the retail giants (WalMart, Costco). So I buy books from small independent booksellers when possible.
I just dl'ed the entire D&D 3rd edition, for example. I only own the player's handbook!
I think some readers are missing some of the benefits or reasons for downloading books off the Internet.
How many people here have read spidermen #1? Or an out of print first edition book.
It gives people the ability to read books/comics that they would never be able to find, or own. Plus, if you're in need of a book for a school project, (or a book for collage) you now have access to many resources off the net.
And finally, what about libraries? Sure the library did buy the book, or received it through a grant, but their are many ways to get books for free, or near to nothing.
I'm not saying that stealing/downloading copyrighted material is right, but I'm pointing out the reasons why some people would.
TruePunk | Games
How is the originator making money out of the deal? Unless its the ISPs charging by bandwidth...
alt.binaries.e-book,
alt.binaries.e-books
alt.binaries.e-book.flood,
I am the first fucking post daddie-o!!!
Freely adapted from the parent post.
Methods of distribution are changing. There is no way to hold back the tide. It is that simple. This isn't about morality or hurting someone's business. It's about a sea change that is overall beneficial, eventually to all. What is the alternative? Shutting down the Internet?
But I am trying to hold back on my buying habits, because I hope that digital books (made out of digital paper) will come around soon.
I don't mind buying books, but they do take up a lot of space. And taking several books with you is also not very interesting.
So I am hoping that I can buy that digital book soon, and buy, download, store on HD, load up in digital book all those books I want to read sooner rather then later.
If piracy is so widespread how it can make tens (or hundreds) of millions in sales?
Besides, you can always go to your local library and borrow books for free.
I own the Harry Potter book but I read the whole thing on my laptop.
I like to read in bed and I found the 766 behemoth unwieldy (or I would if I tried it, I've found shorter books unwieldy).
With my laptop I just stuck it on my bedside table, turned down the brightness, chose acceptable font and background colours in Acrobat, flipped the page 90 degrees and went full screen.
A pleasant reading experience in a comfortable position with no book to support and reposition with every page turn.
My only fear was that some joker might edit the book and interject with a spoiler part way through. With a song if a track is spoiled you can chuck it and still enjoy the track from other sources. If you get a book from an untrusted source and it spoils it then it could ruin your enjoyment of the book completely.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
And if you agree with copyright, that's exactly how you should call it.
Unless you want to be a dope promoting the big publisher's propaganda.
Once again, the FSF tells it as it is...
Ironically this is the same place you can get movies, and CDs legally; the problem is people have to return them.
You don't have to return pirated copies.
Mod parent up it's fucking hilarious!!!
...because I seem to remember that text were some of the first things you could download off BBSs in a reasonable amount of time, even before porn .gifs became the latest fad.
Sure it happened, and I'm sure it still happens, but compared to actually reading a book, e-books are terrible. Tell me when they make some good electronic paper, and maybe I'll change my mind...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Next thing you know, some group will buy up a bunch of books and loan them out to people free of charge. That's gonna really upset the book publishers.
Is the only reason I have any 'bookz' at all. Being able to find a particular quotation instantly is priceless.
"The number of Unix installations has grown to ten, with more expected." (Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd ed.; june 1972)
Lots of people out there, particularly those living in island nations, have to suffer with real piracy. Why, in the last 6 months alone, there have been 234 pirate attacks. Using "piracy" to mean copyright infringement is insensitive.
The post which you are replying to is clearly a parody of its parent and the source is acknowledged. So I did not infringe on anyone's copyright (or 'pirate', if you insist), I merely exercised 'Fair Use'.
My understanding was that it doesn't appear to be electronic. That's the whole idea -- you're not reading off a CRT or LCD, which hurts the eyes after a while. You are reading it off of paper (or a reasonable facsimile thereof).
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Horrors! If the big corporations let people get away with reading anything freely, they might read more. This could definitely have a very negative effect on the literacy rate. You heard me right. If people read more, they might become more literate. Things can only get worse from there. Next thing you know, the people might start to think for themselves. This book piracy thing must be stopped. Nobody should be able to read text without paying for it.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I find this a lot more odd than for example software piracy. I mean, books are SO cheap that the small price is worth it just to get a feeling of not breaking the law. Although software piracy is not justifiable, it is "explainable" with the high price of a lot of software. Book piracy, I believe, is not really explainable.
Why did man make libraries?
To store all his information.
Why will man not share his information?
To hold power over other men.
God spoke to me
When will the publishers realize that a little sharing (what most call piracy) is a good thing? They accept that promotional copies generate buzz, and more sales, but electronic copies, which don't cost them to distribute, automatically destroy sales?
I've read all of the books in the Honor Harringtion series by David Weber, either through the library, or borrowing from a friend. When the latest book came out, my friend who introduced me to the series, had just moved to Washington (from Boston), so he took the CD that came with it, and sent me an e-book version of the book. (From the CD: "This disk and its contents may be copied and shared but NOT sold", emphasis not mine.)
After reading it and enjoying it, I picked up a copy next time I was at the book store, and to my great surprise, it included not just the other books in the series on the CD, but 26(!) other books by Baen authors. Some of which, no doubt, after reading, will cause me to buy more books because I enjoyed the authors' writing style. These are authors I would never have been exposed to, if not for a little sharing. Check out the Baen Free Library to read some books from a publisher that gets it...
Ahem. Mod this down to -1.
Slate is an M$FT publication, who is all about protecting the content by any means neccesary - which usually means some type of (their implementation of) DRM.
That aside, content *should* be protected - within reasonable limits - (fair use anyone?).
However, I find it very interesting that now that everyone is aware (when my folks are aware, that *is* everyone) of MP3s, there are discounted new releases at Circuit City, Best Buy, Target and the like. I don't mean a 14.99 discount, I mean 6.99 and 7.99 - quite a reasonable price for a CD, and about what we were promised years ago when this new 'CD' format came out.
Books are also too pricey for their own good - especially those used in academia. I think that if you offer a decent product at a 'fair' price, you don't have this 'piracy' issue. Its when people feel they are getting shafted that they seek to 'stick it to the man'.
I think its the age of "free fnformations"
:)
It is this way:
You buy a book (or cd, or software, whatever...) read it and then you see that the quality of the book is bad but you have paid!
It should be that way:
You download the book (for free) read it and THEN you choose, if you pay money (and how much) to the writer.
You can easily do it like the last way, but primaraly its illegal because you have to steal/download the book
I think in this way the quality MUST be good, otherwise the people don't pay money. And with the internet it is possible to publicate a book (e.g.) and you dont have to pay (as writer) much money for printing it etc.
Bruce Eckels e.g. do it that way... http://www.bruceeckel.com/
In less regulated markets, such as those that seem to exist in the east, and in places where large sums of money are not readily available, it is often easier to violate the copyright than purchase the book under 'proper' license. In some cases, it would be nearly impossible for an average person to purchase the book under proper license because the publisher chooses not to create an affordable edition. Of course, it is no more the responsibility of the publisher to create an affordable edition that it is for the consumer to pay the publisher.
So, why are publishers now worried about copyright infringement of books. The same reason music publishers are worried. The publishers are becoming less efficient at publishing books, and therefore are charging more. At the same time is it cost much less to print out your own copy, and nearly nothing to read it on the screen. Add to this that the days of the dirt cheap paperback are long gone, and you have a situation where people will choose not to buy.
The sad thing is that instead of using free market tactics like coming up with innovative ideas to add value to hardback editions, or releasing quickly cheap paperbacks, they use state controlled market tactics like heavy regulation and government enforcement. Even the idea of creating a subsciber service in which electronic editions can be downloaded for a fixed monthly fee seem to inexistant, even though such a scheme would generate cashflow with the expense of paper publishing.
I was just reading a article in Fortune on how name brand manufacturers have become so massively inefficient that they can no longer compete with the store private label quality or price. The major brands also have lost the power to force the retail stores to carry their over priced low quality products, so these brands are losing market share. I think it is the same in publishing, and the majors probably need to be more worried about Barnes and Noble than individual book sharers(and, of course, unless they steal the books off a boat on the high seas, it is not piracy).
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It's just not popular, coz...as a society we don't read nearly as much as we watch movies or play games.
But believe me, any book you'd want is available in text format and pdf.
I mean, seriously, a insane number of classics are already available legally from Project Gutenberg - how many people use that regularly?
There's just not as much prestige in releasing a pirated book, when the most highly anticipated movies can make a group famous.
That's just my 2 cents.
First off, I agree that it is Piracy and is wrong. But the effects may not be what you would first expect. Baen books has an experiment with their Free Library, www.baen.com/library where they are giving away some of their books and watching the results on sales.
They are finding that sales actually go up on the author's other books! Having freely available books gives readers an introduction to authors they may have never picked up before, they tend to buy other books written by the same author. According to Baen the life-cycle of your typical book really isn't that long.
This isn't to justify book piracy, but just as we have seen in the Music industry we may be dealing with a bit of exaggeration on the part of the publishers (and on the part of some authors who seem to have gone a bit rabid on the subject).
Brian
Remember Lexington Green!
Recent tecnological and socialogical advancements in have allowed people everywhere to share in cultural works across the borders of class and nationality.
--
When industry first begins it can provide wealth to the people. Self-empowerment makes those who seek control obselete. Then you have neighborhoods with stray dogs. Who is doing research on their place in society?
"Piracy" has been fed into common usage via the media by the FUD-slinging industries that want to disguise their real motives for inhibiting legal media distribution. You're not annoyed at that?
I'm annoyed at people that use overblown, emotional words like "piracy" so that it will sound of life-or-death importance; the implication being that most people can be mind controlled to agree with their notion of copyright infringement - they'll try to make it sound as harmful as possible.
- Brian
1) Why would a "fan" want to consume ripped-off copies of his or her faviorite author's works? (What fraction of Linux or (Free|Open|Net)BSD users have paid for at least one box set?)
2) Isn't the Harry Potter author already a multi-upon-multi millionaire? Has she been knighted or sainted, yet? Personally, because I am not a money addict, if I were a successful author I would release old instances of my work into the public domain. Why? Well, why not?
Even if the Harry Potter books are good (I haven't read any), it seems they are just another commercial monetary black hole, there the singularity of accumulated money is in the author's, publishers', and promoters' pocket books. Sort of like Disney, it seems.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
Yes, but some can't.
The whole concept is just silly.
The last 200+ books I've read are all .rtf or .pdf files. If it doesn't suit your taste, don't say it's silly. My PC is a laptop and I'm having it *always* in a sac on my back. Everywhere I go(and I travel a lot, say I even change countries from time to time), I have all my books with me. Know of any other way to take care of a large personal library???
that anyone interested in reading an 870 page book would go out and buy it,
Be my guest. I devore books and I'm a poor guy(read: *very* poor student(which travels a lot, but that's another story...;o), I can't buy 2-3 books a week, and respect to the publishers I read scanned versions. Yes, without a doubt having a large library is a dream, but it's simply unaplicable to my lifestyle, so don't dismiss e-books so easily. They're the right option for me, and I'm sure there're other guys that enjoy them...
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
& their cronIEs on capitollist hill..
that's it. the scammage is overt. how many fauxking georgewellian billyonerrors do we need anyway?
conservation is not just for po' folk. there's already not enough to go around, despite the lament of the media that we are 'sluggish' in resourcefulness.
never mind the walking dead. back on task.
the lights are coming up. we're in crisis mode. you can help.
yOUR intentions/behaviours ARE relevant.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator. get more oxygen on yOUR brains. vote with yOUR wallet. that's the spirit, moving you.
pay attention. that's affordable, & provides immesurable returns.
'invest' in yOUR community (possibly starting next door). be very careful of/thoughtful towards, each other. you're all we've got, here.
pay no heed to the greed/fear based misinformers. your well being is not on their agenda.
the current task remains planet/population rescue. yOUR intentions/behaviours are the recipe.
each harmed innocent carries with it a bad toll. the felons are NOT going to be the wons who must do the reparations. it is you/us.
On April 24, 2000, the writer Harlan Ellison filed suit against an individual named Stephen Robertson, a Usenet company named RemarQ, and AOL over four of Harlan Ellison's stories posted on Usenet by Stephen Robertson.
If I understand it correctly, AOL was sued only because that happened to be the service provider of the two who tracked down the identity of Stephen Robertson.
Read about it here
Here's a 2002 story on zdnet about it
The following is from this article:
1) Everything that can be digitized, will be pirated. People just don't believe in copyright any more. The law, RIAA, etc can either like it - or stand in front of the stampede yelling "stop", and be stomped into mush. There is no third option. DRM will fail. Legislating will fail. Sueing will fail. Whining will fail. People just don't care, and they're willing to play the odds.
2) The presence of freebies need not wipe out sales, in fact it can drive sales. I know I have bought music albums because I heard the song for free, and books because I read them in the library and wanted my own. Provided the price is plausible, people prefer a pretty, professional hardcopy to a hackish ugly computer-file.
(Same person as above btw)
Well I haven't actually downloaded and read or kept any pirated books, my point is that if my taxes have paid so that I can borrow something than if getting it thid way is more convenient I might use it. However, as I pointed out with the Baen.com books thing - if a book is useful and enjoyable to me than I will buy it to support the author and also because I prefer print format.
I do actually do some temp work at a publisher so I understand their need for people to purchase books (obviously). However, usually the Ts&Cs of the book say that you shouldn't be allowed to lend them to friends etc. which happens all the time anyway.
I have to agree with this. After reading 1632 for free online, I went out and immediately bought a copy of 1633, in hardcover. I probably would have bought a paper copy of 1632 as well, but it was out of stock. I still might, should I need to pad up an order for free shipping purposes.
I've written two books, so don't dismiss this as the rant of a recovering Amazon addict (maybe) with overflowing bookshelves (definitely).
I love books, but I also think the whole copyright thing is 'way overblown. Copyrights can amply compensate an author if they only last 20 years instead of lasting the better part of a century, and then passing along to children.
Although I love tangible books, I'm also an avid reader of e-books. I've downloaded just about every smarmy 19th century novel I could find onto my palmtop. I'm always reading or re-reading one of them while riding a plane, eating a solitary lunch, or waiting for an appointment.
It's the story, stripped of everything else, and that's what matters. Otherwise paperbacks would have never flourished.
Long term, publishers have to come to grips with the fact that they can't milk properties for decades, since it's just too easy to download them and pass them around. We just need the law to catch up with reality.
Rick.
As monitors get bigger, and go LCD, resolutions will go up and reading for long periods of time on a computer will become, and has become, less irritating. This combined with better readers, whether they are built as book readers or are high-res PDAs, is making book piracy more of a reality.
Books can be expensive, at least when they are released in hardback only (which many are at first) and so many people are doing what they did with music, i.e., saving money by downloading off the web and not making the rich (e.g., J.K Rowling) richer. The problem is that this "peccadillo", this "little vice" might come back to haunt all of us if it gets as out of hand as have music and movie piracy. If all the content providers of the country simultaneously lobby congress and complain that their copyrighted material is being pirated and that they are losing money, congress *will* pass a (another?) draconian law to remedy the situation and the freedom of all of us online will be compromised.
the textz manifesto
a spectre is haunting the corporate world -- the spectre of organized world-wide file-sharing. mp3, to name the most common synonym for the becoming-distributor of millions of former customers, has clearly shown that the flows of digital data are much more driven by people and formats than they are determined by legislation, ownership or the new global rules of the corporate-political. napster has reverse-engineered the ideology of a whole industry, and it has finally proven its total, complete and absolute obsolescence. the transnational companies that are now trying to break it up have started a war they will never be able to stop. there are going to be thousands of napsters. textz.com is not even zero-point-five of them.
we are not the dot in dot-com, neither are we the minus in e-book. the future of online publishing sits right next to your computer: it's a $50 scanner and a $50 printer, both connected to the internet. we are the & in copy & paste, and plain ascii is still the format of our choice. it shouldn't require a plug-in to read a book on the net, nor should it require a credit card. the text industry is a paper tiger. along with the mass erosion of their proprietary rights goes the vanishing of their digital watermarks. packed today, cracked tomorrow. whatever electronic gadgets they will come up with -- they are all going to be dead media on their very release day. forget about your new kafka dvd. i already got it via sms.
this is not project gutenberg. it is neither about constituting a canonical body of historical texts (by authors so classical that they've all been watching the grass from below for almost a century of posthumous copyright), nor is it about htmlifying freely available books into unreadable sub-chapterized hyper-chunks. texts relate to texts by other means than a href. just go to your local bookstore and find out yourself. the net is not a rhizome, and a digital library should not be an interactive nirvana. the conceptual poverty of today's post-academic, post-corporate public online services -- and we haven't seen dot-museum yet -- is not and has never been a desirable alternative to a future that will be controlled by the super-pervasive data-streams of the upcoming military-entertainment complex. there are still other options. nostalgia is slavery. stay home, read a book.
information does not want to be free. in fact it is absolutely free of will, a constant flow of signs of lives which are permanently being turned into commodities and transformed into commercial content. textz.com is not part of the information business. they say there was a time when content was king, but we have seen his head rolling. our week beats their year. ever since we have been moving from content to discontent, collecting scripts and viruses, writing programs and bots, dealing with textz as warez, as executables -- something that is able to change your life. this is not promotional material. facing the unified principles of information -- the combined horror of global communication and so-called guerilla marketing -- there is no more need for media theory or cultural studies. the resistance against corporate culture can itself no longer remain in the cultural domain. you make a mistake if you see what we do as merely apolitical.
we are studying the coils of the serpent, watching the walk of the penguin, mapping the moves of our wired enemies. intellectual, digital and biological property -- cornerstones of the new regimes of control -- are the direct result of organized corporate piracy. they are not only replacing such obsolete notions as freedom, democracy, human rights and technological progress. all these new forms of ownership are, in the first place, attempts to expropriate people's work, data and bodies -- just as the they begin to acquire, for the first time in history, the technical means to organize them differently. today's global media and communication conglomerates are mafia
My next comment will be ready soon, but moderators can beat the rush and mod it up early.
To be honest, I have to put my vote with "no."
I can go and search the thrift store for 25 or 50 cents per book. I can get most new books for around $5 on paperback, or up to $25 for a just-released-hardcover.
In return, I get a product that I can read and take anywhere, and that is immune to intense magnetic fields (Of the kind that distort a CRT 3 feet away) from an NIB magnet I have. I can leave it somewhere for decades and not worry about it getting corrupted or erased. It doesn't need batteries.
In other words, I am NOT getting screwed by the printing company: I am getting what I want at a reasonable price.
E-books. Another technology I resented at first and came to love later. But they are really handy when you travel. You can store a large collection of e-books on your PDA. This means that you can choose from a large variety of books and are not restricted to the few (heavy) print editions you would normally tug along. At home, I still prefer to read printed books. You don't have to worry about the battery and it "feels right" (or you can smack flies with it). And yes, a PDA is to my mind the best device for reading e-books. Stand-alone reader are hard to get, rather expensive and can only read e-books. And reading a complete book on a PC is... well, "inconvenient".
:)
Another interesting point are educational e-books and e-libraries. Currently, few publishers are willing to sell e-books. And if they do, they sometimes are sold at prices that match the printed version - even though the production costs are much lower. But if students had access to e-books, they wouldn't have to wait if someone else had the book, they could get it much faster and keep it as long as they need it. Oh, and the bags would be lighter, too.
Again, I would sometimes prefer a paper copy, since I mark interesting passages, add comments and draw pictures if I'm bored. You can do that with some e-book formats, but its not as quick and easy as it is on paper.
Finally, I think e-book piracy will rise, but not to the amount of music or game piracy - simply because there are more people who play games and listen to music than those who read. But this point has been mentioned before... Best method to prevent piracy? Offer many e-books for very low prices. Maybe $3 or less. If you as a publisher are not willing to do that, other people will (either e-book pirates or maybe Apple will once again come forward and offer e-books for $1 each).
My advice: try to read one e-book, just for the experience. If you don't like it, stick with print. But maybe you'll appreciate it. And then we will all be part of a new, huge market the companies can't afford to ignore
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
"You're annoyed at that? Tough. I'm annoyed at people that use the suggestive and emotional word "piracy", so that it will sound very unethical"
Quick show of hands.
How many learned when growing-up not to take something that's wasn't theirs?
So were's the problem, again?
the harry potter that can be gotten on line is a hacked version.
there is no such chanpter called voldemort's tail or what have you, and dudly is not going to become the new hier of slitherin.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The problem isn't so much the piracy of books, but the simple fact that those of us who wish to download them can't actually buy them yet.
I'm sure this will be marked down as a troll, but hear me out. One of the things I want to download is a Hayes manual for my car. With a nice PDF I can easily print off a garage edition without fear of marking the pages with my dirty hands. Afterall it's just ink/toner on recycled paper that can easily be replaced.
But alas... they won't sell me one. The hardcopy goes for about $15.00, which I'll scan anyway unless I find an edition on kazza.
It's one thing to swap songs ala Kazaa, just because the music industry is so arrogant that they just beg to be f--- with. But doing the same thing to writers and comic authors? At some point, authors should get something for their work.
This is my sig.
In the case of the college textbooks where is the line between a fair return and extortion ? Is a $150 a reasonable price for a book that someone is forced to buy ?
Textbooks aren't the only class of books that are rediculously priced. In 1972 you could buy a typical paperback for 40 cents. Now it costs $8.00 for the same book. Hardbacks have had a 500% inflation in the same time period.
Papercosts haven't gone up at nearly the rate of books, printing costs if anything have gone donw, distribution costs have gone up but at less than the rate of inflation. Where the money going.
Yes book piracy is illegal, but this is one more case were a group of people have decided to wire broken laws to their advantage. The usual reaction has set in, people just found a way around the idiocy.
I'm reading a lot of speculation here, and I have some facts for you.
Just check out IRC; try #e-books on EFNet. If you wonder if book piracy has really begun, you're already behind. Thousands of books have been OCRed. THOUSANDS. And I mean that. Technical manuals, instructional books, fiction, non-fiction, comics, it doesn't matter; it's all there. Literally, just about anything you could ever want to read.
Second, a ton of people DON'T mind reading a book on the computer. Turn the brightness down a little bit on the monitor, use the wheel on the mouse. It's really not that bad.
Third, there are legal uses for OCRed books that are downloaded in semi-legal ways. When I'm writing English papers, I hate having to search through books for quotes; if I can remember a few words, it's ridiculously easy for one to just hit CTRL+F.
Just wanted to point some things out.
I beg your pardon, but "The old argument that no one likes reading on a computer has pretty much eroded" is a load of nonsense.
I have Harry Potter in eBook form. But I also have it as hardback. Why? because I enjoy reading books in physical form so much more.
I originally got into the Harry Potter series by renting the first movie. I then read the first four books on my PocketPC in eBook format, but they were pirated ONLY because it wasn't available as an eBook legally. I have now started purchasing the hardbacks because reading on the PocketPC isn't nearly as nice as using a physical book.
I think that Books are one area that you will especially find piracy has little impact. The majority of the time, those who pirate a book digitally only do so because a) they can't buy the eBook legally, or b) they wouldn't have bought the book in the first place - the choices were don't have it or pirate it.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
This was in late March, 2000, so Napster was up and running but as yet there wasn't much in the way of non-music peer-to-peer file trading going on. I would imagine that this sort of thing has been happening more frequently with the improvement of OCR software and the development of massive, organized file-sharing programs. It's not really surprising.
I bet, though, that downloads of pirated books will NEVER come anywhere close to downloads of pirated music or video files, for a number of reasons:
- You have to read books, and that requires effort. Music you just listen to, and video you stare at. Reading takes a lot longer.
- The books that are most likely to be pirated (popular fiction) are already available free of charge in hardcopy at the library.
- A major factor in music piracy is that the price of a CD is just too high. Books are much cheaper, especially paperbacks. You can get three paperbacks for the price of one CD -- more if you buy 'em used. The prices of books just aren't high enough to make it worth the trouble of downloading them and reading them on your screen.
For these reasons, I don't think it will ever be a large-scale problem for mainstream publishers. That's not to say it won't exist. There will be some piracy, especially of ultra-popular stuff like the Harry Potter books. The only place I see it becoming a major factor is within the scientific/technical field. It can be hard to get some of the more obscure sci/tech books, they tend to be expensive if you find them, and the people who are likely to be reading them are also likely to be tech-savvy and dedicated enough to not mind reading 'em on-screen.I get books from the library. I do own a few books that I routinely reference, but for most of my reading, I go the route that means I dont have to pay.
Why would book piracy put publishers in a great deal more trouble than libraries? Someone still has to buy the books. Likely there are several groups of book piraters, I am sure they all buy their own copies.
Oh, and I dont like reading on a computer. Maybe my CRT just sucks.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
The problem here is that many authors are in similar situations to recording artists, in that they are only seeing a slim percentage of the profits from their labors. The amount of books pushed out is very slim in comparison to the number of CDs sold, and unless you become the next great genre fiction writer (like TOm Clancy, or John Grisham or whatever your fancy is) then you're pretty much out of luck as far as the big millions come.
Put it on top that in the publishing industry books can be returned to the publisher, so the publisher can withold royalties to the author for the longest time stating that they are making sure that the books are not returned en masse causing a massive hit to the house. All the while, the publishing house is building up interest on the royalty payment that was supposed to go to the author.
I seee e-books as a positive solution for the industry; the middlemen are for the most part cut out, and the prospect of returning books is non-existent (after all there are no actual books, only large text files). Now the publisher has no excuse but to pay the author the money owed. Of course, I hate the way e-books work. Recently I read David Copperfield online (as it is easily availible having puhed far beyond copyright date, and even the Penguin Classics are up around ten bucks). I found myself printing out the pages most of the time, so I could carry them around and read them while lying in bed, lying on a couch, and lying in the tub. I suppose I should get an e-book reader, but it still precludes reading in the bath. [This segment brought to you by the commitern for Too Much Information]
I also thought that slashdot is made up of scanned pages from Cow Boy Neal's diary.
Maybe i'm wrong.
It's about time. I've tried raising a family, cooking, lawn mowing, sky diving, midget tossing, ferret pantsing, opera singing, and rodeo events on my computer screen. None of it panned out. Now I'm boring again, and I just do plain old reading on my computer screen.
RIAA: Cds are overpriced and add nothing of value to anything. Piracy is as good as th real thing.
MPAA: DVDs are more reasonably priced, but still overpriced for all but the best movies. I have 10x more downloaded movies than i have DVDs, but i still buy some DVDs. Piracy is as good for most movies, but not all.
Books: Books are cheap and in an easy to use format. PDFs are not.eBook readers are not as good as dead tree books. Piracy sucks by comparison.
As scanning becomes more practical.. Right now it often involves damaging the original to some extent ( the binding ).. if you want a really good scan that is..
Some people do it now, even myself.. i make copies of some of my manuals so i can take them with me easier to the workhop and not ruin my orginal... ( which is still 'fair use', for now )
But its bound to start happening even more with all the handheld PDA's floating around.
Then its *IAA all over again, only in a much more sinister form: information itself.. Attaching jail time and DRM to the basic literature in the world.. " so.. I see you are not authorized to read the constitution today, so you get to go to jail"
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I don't understand why I can't see any posts questioning the ethical and moral quality of laws, but people just to stop at the legal-illegal thing.
I find it obscene that copyrights have been perverted to these points.. you have to start thinking out of the box! Legal? Illegal? I didn't agree to these stupid laws, and I would happily go live in a really free country if i knew about it..
I don't recognize the validity of "legal". Revolt.
Well, I can see two sides of this argument.
If I'm going on holiday, then a book bought at the airport bookshop is far more convenient than a PDA. I'll still be able to read it on the flight and take it with me to the hotel swimming pool/beach. With a PDA or laptop, I probably won't be able to use it on the plane, while at the beach I'd be too concerned about it being stolen, buried in the sand, soaked by rain/drinks/the large guy jumping into the swimming pool/the little kids splashing about learning to swim, to really feel relaxed. Having any of these things happen to a $10 book is an acceptable risk. Similarly, when attending a conference I'd prefer to have a hardcopy of the paper than the author is presenting. If a cheap CD-ROM reader/LCD display with long-lasting life came along, then I would change my mind and say E-books would be a good idea.
If I'm learning technical stuff at home or in the office, then saving as much space as possible is definitely a good thing. I'd prefer not to have to lumber a large book back and forth between office and home. If I need the information from a book, then I can either buy it brand new, second-hand, or borrow it from the library, copy the relevant pages and then sell or return it. Photocopying has the disadvantage of creating as much paper as was copied. Scanning the book electronically allows me to create my own virtual bookshelf, and make backups onto CD-ROM whenever required. Having the all the relevant chapters on a single CD-ROM is no bad thing. I would consider buying a technical book electronically, if it were possible.
My preferences are based entirely on how much space is available, and how safe the surroundings are.
Anything popular and in short supply (either from limited production or local prohibition) will create a demand that pirates will readily fulfill.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
There are some differences btw book trading on Usenet and music file on kazaa: usenet newsgroups have already been accorded common carrier status (like the telephone companies). Just as you cannot sue the telco's if thieves rob you while using the phone to plan the robbery, likewise ISPs are not liable for books stored on their news servers. This case law came down years ago before Massa realized his intellectual property was in such danger from the Net, otherwise the proper case law would have been duly purchased, as it has been against the web file traders.
Also, books can be placed in quite small files, making usenet trading easier than web file trading.
Also, has anyone noticed that this particular thread of slashdot is much slower than the other threads today?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
In response to all of the AC's and the few people brave enough to post under thier account names...
Yes I know that JK Rowling wasn't really starving. It was an exageration.
By her words she was single mother living at the poverty level struggling to raise her children.
But there is one point where I am correct. Someone pointed out that JK Rowling wasn't poor when she was writing the books. Not entirely true. She wrote Harry Potter #1 while she was poor. It was the sale of that book that started her out of the situation she was in and onto the road to the sucess that she has now. She WAS poor when she was a writer...at the very begining and this is from her own words in the interviews I've seen on Tv, read in the newspapers and online.
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
1. Load up p2p program of choice
2. Search for "*.pdf" or "*.chm"
3. Download...
4... repeat wrinse lather...
Here's an interesting article from the New York Times about the Harry Potter situation.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
you could similarly get it for free from the library
I have read this argument as a justification, and I don't like it. Quite apart from the technical difference (the library only has one copy of each book, and you can only use it for a limited time), if you download rather than going to the library, you will push the library's use rates down. Politicians will take that as evidence that nobody uses the library, and cut the library's funding.
Now, the ideal solution would be an all-digital library, but publishers will not agree to that anytime soon. Besides, with libraries, everybody wins -- people who don't own computers can read the book, and authors get paid (I remember an interview in which an author said that if every library in the US bought his book, it would be a best-seller).
So, for pragmatic reasons (not to mention the idea of actually going outside!! and meeting real humans!!), support your local library -- don't use it as an excuse to download books.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Yeah and they say the same thing about CD's, VHS tapes, DVD's >
If they had thier way you wouldn't even be allowed to invite friends over and throw in LoTR:FoTR and let them see it.
Is it me or is this handbasket moving faster?
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
Through a year or two's work you can become as rich as many other talented people become in a lifetime by printing bits of paper. The reason: the government gives you excessive rights to prevent people, in the privacy of their home, from printing their own bits of paper. Isn't it obvious by now that these monopolistic powers are way excessive. If JK Rowling had been paid one tenth would her work suffer? Of course not. It's clear that these monopolistic powers are no longer serving the purpose of promoting creativity as they were intended to do. Up with piracy I say!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Book publishers aren't blindsided by piracy. They know about it, and have learned the lessons that the music, and movie industry have taught. However as someone pointed out, it takes greater resources to be a book pirate, than it does to be any other. Piracy in it's present form only took off when the source material became available in digital form, and technology made it cheap to copy on the customer end (simplifying only the distribution channel(2). Books will remain mostly in the "dead tree" format because that's presently the best defense, all things considered(1). So I predict that eBooks will not become as common, and we all will be the poorer because of it(3).
(1) Everyone talks about the analog "hole", but it's not as big as a digital "hole".
(2) Pirates ignore this point.
(3) We all then are victums, not just the one's being stolen from.
About a year ago I started downloading books to my Handspring and carrying them around with me. It took a few days to get used to the constant scrolling, but once you get past that you've got a small device which you always have with you that you can read from at a moment's notice. No more sitting around on the train doing nothing... I just pop out the Handspring and I'm reading Harry Potter V, or Michael Chricton's Prey, or Ender's Game or older books like Fahrenheit 451 or Brave New World or 1984. They're all available online and the list is growing. Publishing is in for the same thing the music world is already fighting... as soon as people become accustomed to reading digital books the industry is in trouble.
--
RumorsDaily
You're right -- i was told never to go to the library.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Yes, and there's one very important fact that everyone forgets when using this example. In piracy someone other than the copyright holder is making the decisions as to the dispensation of the works in question. In the Baen example, and in the public library example, the copyright holder is still in control. It's just that the decision made presently benifits both. If that was to change (Apples, barrel, you figure it out), then expect the present situation to change. And not for the better.
As much as corporate copyright owners would like to make us all think otherwise, I'm not sold by their arguements. Copyright laws are now so one-sidedly skewed to corporate copyright holders that they don't even come close to reflecting the natural sense of morality and fairness held by the public at large -- they aren't even laws 'in the public good'. They only reflect the fact that people with money have undue influence over our politicians (the law-makers). I prefer to think we are entering a new age of data and information freedom. Perhaps in the long term, it doesn't completely reflect the publics sense of morality and fairness either, but it is certainly no farther off the mark as what we have now (it just goes in the other direction). As for books, you have to be pretty desperate to read a book off a computer screen anyway, so I doubt publishers have much to fear...
>> The old argument that no one likes reading on a computer has pretty much eroded.
Says who? I can't stand to stare at my monitor for more than 20-30 minutes without walking away.
But then, 20 minutes probably exceeds the attention span of most Slashdot readers.
As for piracy, the solution will come with technology that prevents unauthorized copying. Say, a chip in the book (or CD) that wants to talk to another chip in the scanner or PC. If the second chip hasn't received an electronic authorization, it disables the scan.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The email hoax captured people's attention by its title. I'm unsure if every victim would have actually chose to read the entire thing on-screen.
I agree that PDA's are somewhat useful to read on. Because they can be carried around like a book. Although they aren't as good as a real paper page. You can't fit a whole lot on the screen at one time.
When you get into laptops then you can see more words and maybe read in bed. A bit klunky though.
As for a desktop PC, I can only see the proliferation of piracy for technical or other reference manuals. I don't know anybody who would sit down in their chair and enjoy a novel on the computer screen.
Books are not as passive as music or video. Books require your skills and attention. Other than the said cases, I can't see book piracy becoming a big problem on the PC because it detracts from the enjoyment of a book.
Yeah, I've notice that book piracy has becoming more of a problem lately. I mean, I saw this website crammed full of book downloads for free. These weren't old, public domain ones, either. These were fairly new fantasy and sci-fi, from authors such as David Webber, David Drake, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Larry Niven. And they weren't just crappy scans, either, these were richtext files, and HTML, and PDF, and E-Books, complete with instructions on how to view them on PDA's! Those poor authors must be STARVING after having all of these freeloaders downloading their works for NOTHING!
Oh wait, that is the publishers website, and authors have found that when they put a book up, its sales skyrocket, even if it an OLD book that has already stopped selling. And these are EASY TO GET, SMALL, HIGH QUALITY files. I doubt harder to aquire, low quality, large files will hurt authors if these not only don't, but have the opposite effect.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
i have the feeling that we realy are stuck between 2 diferent moments in history.. We re at a point where we can easily copy and distribute everything and anything that is not a physical object but we can't "easily" recreate a good copy of it at home:
..)
:-)
:)
- A book can be pirated but then reprinting it in a good format so i can read it easily on the bus is not quite there yet.
- Songs can be copied but then you have to burn them and make a standard CDDA (ok this one is getting easier but
- DVDs can be d/led and then you have to know how to make a udf/dvd-video file system etc not very easy for my grand-ma...
What i think would be needed, is a development of standard "printers" for those different kind of medias where you could go on the authors web page, pay 3$ directly to him (as that is what i think is going back to them if not less) and pay 2$ yourself to have the material (blank medias etc) printed on your device.
This way consumers could than be able to buy tangible goods from there home and have a perfect copy.
Of course we'd need more bandwidth and all, i'm just throwing ideas here
This does not adresses piracy in any way, but the point being that lazy people who stays home to pirate would probably be happy to fork 3$ instead of looking around for hours to find a pirated copy of the matrix...
The market will have to change, they will have to sell a product in every damn way possible on the day it's realeased... Like that you wont see "cam" version of movies and the like.
If i dont want to pay 10$ to go see the movie on at the theather than let me pay 5$ to d/l it the DVD! please?
Is this some sort of new thing where people hijack truckloads of books, sell the books and hold the drivers for ransom? Seems a little odd to me. If you're going to make money at a criminal enterprise, there are many better, more profitable ones to pick.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Perhaps I'm in the minority among book authors... but...
I write books and have two currently in print. If people want to share them around via email, so be it. I hope they enjoy them and find them useful. I don't write purely to turn a profit, I write because I want what is in my books to be available for people to read. Any author who writes purely for profit, or any musician who plays purely for profit, or any author who paints purely for profit... should probably become a lawyer or a bounty hunter or the CEO of SCO instead.
I don't expect to get filthy rich by writing (contrary to what most people think, having book(s) published doesn't instantly make you J.K. Rowling or cause delivery of a yacht) and so long as I am able to live my life with the basics, I don't need anything more. I suppose I get annoyed when someone plagiarizes my work online (yes, it has happened twice, once with text and once with photos), but that's not a matter of revenue, it's a matter of affecting my future ability to be published and thus to continue to "add to the conversation," so to speak.
I certainly wouldn't approve if my publisher started suing everyone in sight in my name. In fact, I'd be terribly, terribly ashamed by such activity and would probably "pirate" my own books online just to make a point. Books aren't written for petty cash. The day we start to think so is the day libraries become rental agencies. It's the day education and our own history become commodites, available only to those with the resources to pay up. I'll fight such a world.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
We need to revise our economic system in order to give benefit to those who share information.
Right now, there are a few wealthy elite who make decisions, while poor kids are basically being denied an education for no other reason than they were born poor.
God spoke to me
I have JK Rowlings books as real printed texts, I have many other. The publishing world lives well off my addiiction. Unfortunately, I often have to travel and books are bulky and heavy. My god, HP5 almost breaks the handbaggage allowance by itself. So, I find texts that I can download and carry them around on compact flash and look at them on my IPAQ. My only problem is switching back to the printed word when I'm back at home mid novel. Navigation can be painful.
I've downloaded hundreds, no, scratch that, thousands, no, scratch that ... tens of thousands of books. Why? Because it's sort of a conservation thing. I don't want there to be a remote possibility that any of these works ever get lost. So I have backups burnt onto CD. So far I haven't even read but three digital books - Origin of Species, The Invisible Man, and Brave New World. The first is out of copyright (And The Invisible Man might also be, dunno), but I own physical copies of the other two books anyway. I can't stand to read these books on the computer screen, so I convert them to Palm format and read them on my Visor.
... and someone digs up my CD's. I know that sounds ridiculous, because the data on CD's degrades in decades ... but can you please let a man dream?!
Do I feel like I'm doing anything illegal? No! I download all the latest and greatest books - Harry Potter, etc. But I read them on paperback, because I really just don't like reading in a digital format. But I have them in a digital format anyway, for reference, or, in hundreds of years, if all other copies of the books are left
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Does this indicate that our current system of laws concerning copyrights (and patents, for that matter) does not reflect the will of the people? You bet.
On the other hand, does it indicate an erosion of our system of values? Probably in most cases, yes.
I can see the need for some copyright laws, and for some patent laws. They are necessary. But the problem is, legislators forgot while they sat in their offices to keep in mind the most fundamental principle of our government- that it is FOR the people. That means exclusively, not inclusively. That means implicitly NOT for the businesses, of any size, since a business is not a person.
Here, though, is the crux of the matter: it is also BY the people. Things have gotten out of hand with patents and copyrights because WE let it happen. Now, people are beginning, on a massive level, to completely ignore those patent and copyright laws. This is as it should be. The next thing that SHOULD happen is that the legislature should see that the will of the people has changed regarding those laws, and remove them. Like Prohibition, often the ligislature does not look at the will of the people until it is too late really be doing the right thing. So bootlegging, or software piracy, or copyright infringement, or digital freedom fighting- whatever you wish to call it, is quickly becoming a duty of the concerned citizen. While I don't/can't advocate criminal activity, I do recognise such activity, on this scale, as the Voice of the People. It's the voice of change.
*end of slightly inflammatory rant*
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
You're all so out of date. Don't you know that it should now be referred to as Copyright Terrorism!
{ - Generic Guy - }
For example, Bruce Eckel makes his Thinking in Java book available for download online for free. He also sells it, apparently he's earning enough to justify not removing the download. More of his take on download availability is here
I've read the last Harry Potter book on the screen. Actually, I read most of the 870 pages on my 65dpi 160x160 pixel Palm screen. I've also read Masters of Doom in shitty PDF (not OCRed text, but low-res page scans). And I just finished reading Consider Phlebas hardcover. Let me tell you, there is no difference in reading experience whatsoever. The book is a book, no matter what technology is used to represent the text.
It takes people some time to adjust to this new technology, but eventually they will all do that, while the technology will simultaneously catch up (hi-res e-paper, etc.).
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
...and if you really want to read the book for free there is a *legal* way to do it. Just go to the local library and check it out
So the way to reduce software piracy is to make more software available at libraries. There would still be problems of people copying CD's and leaving software installed after they return the library copy, but is this any different than a person checking out a "Teach Yourself Java" book from the library and leaving the knowledge installed on their neurons after returning the book?
I myself downloaded a copy of 'arry's latest adventure. It was good. I actually finished the entire thing before the hard copy that I ordered online showed up on my doorstep. I've reread the entire "Myth" series in the past month or two. (Nevermind the fact that I actually OWN the damned things but can't find three of the books.)
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Book piracy is no big deal.
Anybody who has the patience to read a book on their computer REALLY REALLY wants the book that they're reading. So much so, that they tend to either already own the book, but have lost it, left it at home and they're somewhere else, or something of that nature.
Piracy of textbooks and, say, RPG manuals is another story, however. I think most people who acquire that stuff might actually have purchased the real deal, but because they don't want to shell out for a reference manual, as they already have it, they won't go out and buy the real thing.
Book piracy may have a negative impact on sales, however. I think that would-be book pirates should be aware of that and restrict themselves to downloading books they already own or would immediately purchase if they saw it on a shelf, and then order it immediately online before making a real dent in the sucker, BEFORE deciding if it's worth finishing.
Why?
I had the pleasure of meeting Joe Haldeman a couple years ago, and he explained the financial facts about writing.
It's important to remember that most authors are in pretty bad financial shape - they don't make a whole lot on a book, or for that matter for shorts and articles. "Bridget Jone's Diary" and it's like are the exception, not the rule. Science fiction and fantasy - minus JK Rowling and a very small set of other lucky ducks - are probably the worst paying genres.
So if you're planning on purchasing a book but find yourself downloading the book instead, whether or not it turns out the book is your style, buy it anyhow, unless you're that guy who sits for 3 hours in the bookstore trying to determine if the book is worth buying.
Counter as you will, people.
Are you trying to compare a library, which when you borrow something from it, a physical object is checked out then returned after a set time, to mass copying and distributing of digital media without the consent of the owner? Are you really trying to do that? Are you trying to imply that Copyright Infringement is comparable to a library? Do you think everyone on kazaa or bittorrent returns the stuff they download after 2 weeks?
without the consent of the owner?
Who said publishers consent to the existence of libraries? The only reason libraries are legal is that they were invented before the publishing industry discovered lobbying.
Do you think everyone on kazaa or bittorrent returns the stuff they download after 2 weeks?
What's that got to do with anything? If i borrow a book from the library, read it, and return it, i'm probably not going to buy it. From the publisher's perspective, my borrowing a book from a library is indistinguishable from my downloading a book from the Internet.
Are you trying to imply that Copyright Infringement is comparable to a library?
You got it. See my journal.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Theres already irc channels that are serving up lots and lots of books. Ive downloaded 20 books or so and read them on my pda. I just download the book put it on my pda, lay in bed at night and read away. Once in a while if i cant find the book to download buy it used for a couple bucks.
Quote from Oxford English Dictionary:
". fig. The appropriation and reproduction of an invention or work of another for one's own profit, without authority; infringement of the rights conferred by a patent or copyright.
1771 LUCKOMBE Hist. Print. 76 They..would suffer by this act of piracy, since it was likely to prove a very bad edition. 1808 Med. Jrnl. XIX. 520 He is charged with 'Literary Piracy', and an 'unprincipled suppression of the source from whence he drew his information'. 1855 BREWSTER Newton I. iv. 71 With the view of securing his invention of the telescope from foreign piracy"
Generous of you. You make it sound as if a mortgage is required to purchase entertainment.
It is the right of the vendor to set his prices, and for non-necessities, such as entertainment, he has the right to set them as low or high as he wants. He sets the price too high, he starves. Simple economics. No one is entitled to someone else's entertainment-- some people are good at making it, and the rest of us have become accustomed to having it.
It is the artist's prerogative to be a greedy bastard if he wants, and no matter how greedy he may get, it doesn't make right the idea of a bit of piracy here and there while a better deal "gets sorted out". But I don't see many greedy bastards... they don't survive long.
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
Unbeknownst to most foreigners, the ebook revolution is actually lead by Russia. While project Gutenberg might have been founded in the 70s, its size is nothing compared to the benemoth of Russian Internet text distribution.
L I B . R U
Lib.Ru was found in 1994 and today it has more than 20000 books (3 times more than Gutenberg), 4.2Gb in size. It's monthly traffic is more than a terabyte - almost half a million visitors and more than 20 million documents downloaded. Unlike Gutenberg, Lib.Ru has many copyrighted books available, many of them brand-new and many distributed with authors' permissions.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
At Baen, you see a list of books to be published about 6 months ahead. As release date comes near, you get preview chapters. You can also buy an online version; just one book or a whole month. Several times I have read the online version, then bought the paper copy. They also have an archive of past books you can read or download. IMHO, the people that rip off copies will never pay anyway, so you need to make the people that do pay happy. Baen does so for me.
Pirating books is usually a labor of love. Even if you saw off the book spine and feed the pages through an automated scanner, and OCR the thing with the best possible software you can buy or pirate, you then have to go through and manually check the thing. This process takes days, weeks, months depending on how good/fast you are. Even then you'll miss something.
The people I know who do this usually want to preserve their favorites that are no longer in print and never will be. The book will many times be falling apart and start having black mold taking over. It's farenheit 451, but against economic factors, and environmental factors.
Now obviously, other people want the latest and greatest. so they'll nag someone to scan it for them, and they agree to proof it. Or many other arangements.
But now down to the nitty gritty, Harry Potter was
the rare exception to the rule. It took a 16 hour marathon proofing by one guy to get the thing out.
I have no idea how much dexadrine you have to eat to pull that one off. But that's 800 pages in 16 hours, I don't think I'd even try to read it that fast. But for the bulk of the books, it's usually
been months or years after the author has milked all they are going to get out of the book. And for
most of the book series ones, either you wait years for it to get online, or go down to the store and buy a copy. Many times that last book in the series sucked too much to be scanned.
And I doubt most of the people pirating books are slowing down on actual book purchases. That if they save a hundred bucks on books they actually read, its just another hundred they can spend on MORE books. In an average year even I will spend something like $400-500 on books, and that's nothing compared to most who are really into it. Even when I discovered local used book stores, if I got $20 to spend, it's gonna be pretty well gone.
And what of the books I've read and no longer want ? Why some poor souls end up with a 2'x 2' brick of em every so often. These people get them for FREE, and the author gets NOTHING! They then pass theses books on and on. Why I remember a copy of fear and loathing in las vegas a friend loaned me.
It was a first print run in paperback, had been lent to dozen of people. Was pretty beat up and close to falling apart, then it got left in my trunk for a few months, and reaked of gas fumes. The original owner hated gas fumes and said just keep it, so eventually it ended up with on old roomie who was a Hunter S Thompson fanatic. First edition, reeks of gas, and falling apart, sure he'd take it. Another $1.25 Hunter didn't make on that book, but at least the guys cat was named after him.
". fig. The appropriation and reproduction of an invention or work of another for one's own profit, without authority; infringement of the rights conferred by a patent or copyright.
So as long as I don't resell these books then I'm not a pirate.
-Reid
You let go. I'll push back. I refuse to be a tool.
I prefer not to let propaganda change my speech. The RIAA aren't nazis. If you aren't a Democrat or a Republican, your opinion is still meaningful. IP is a bullshit term that oversimplifies a complex issue. Copying something that isn't yours, while wrong, isn't piracy.
But go ahead. Let someone else oversimplify the issue for you because it's convenient. There are lots of people happy to think for you.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
in order for this to become widespread: 1. the pirated eBook needs to be reasonably close to the original in form, function. mp3s sound pretty close to the original cd recordings ... close enough that people don't care about the slight loss in quality. pirated eBooks have to be the same way. Just getting the text isn't enough. You'll have to remember, the pictures, the fonts, the layout, the "feel" of a book ... all this is important.
2. ease of piracy. The programs for mp3 ripping are so simple a kid can do it. Pirating a book, currently, is a pain in the butt. Scanning in all the pages? Pain. So the length of most books, plus this barrier to entry converting a physical book into digital form is holding the pirates back.
3. piracy format "openness". Whatever format the book ends up in has got to be transparent enough that people can get the data in and out and do with as they please, easily. It's easy to convert an mp3 to any other audio format without too much trouble. Now compare that to an eBook format that's in pdf ... more painful. You can get the raw text out, but the images / layout? Harder. Or you have to have an Adobe program. Or, say you have all the pages of your pirated eBook in image form. How do you get the raw text out? Run it through an OCR program? Then go back and fix all the inevitable mistakes? Hard.
Right now, conversion from a printed book to a digital form is not super easy. The book industry is not putting books out in a digitally easy to pirate form like an audio cd.
Heard it before! I used to hear back in the day, "Plus, people want to own the CD and feel it in their hands and have the cover art and little booklet."
But, FREE is a word that will quickly make you forget about how nice it feels to hold a paper book in your hands or what cover art looks like.
If this is going to be a serious problem, then it would already be one. The technology to "pirate" books via the internet has been around 10 or more years now, and reading extensive texts on a terminal hasn't really improved to the point that people would be willing to read "Anna Kerennina" or "Gavity's Rainbow" on a screen. Web pads and tablet PCs are unlikely to change that as long as bound paper is still available.
My guess is that someone in the industry (think big, DRM friendly software vendor) has come up with a solution to sell, and is now looking to create a problem. The "Harry Potter" leak has all of the earmarks of a media stunt engineered to prevent the inevitable downswing of popularity that the trendy serial will (and already has) expirienced.
Alarmist Crap.
Keep your DRM, thank you.
And no, SMTP works just fine for me, thank you. If you think you have something better, then release it and see if anyone switches.
Read, L
1. people don't like reading long books on a computer. You may be the exception, but most people don't. A lot of this might have to do with the fact that voracious book readers on the average, don't spend a lot of time on computers period. 2. Fear of piracy. publishers put their content out there in digital form, it gets cracked, stuff gets sent all over the place.
But she definitely isn't starving now and it would take a fucking real Francis Drake to take that billion dollars from her, not a bunch of people downloading ebooks for free. Nobody owns her anything, she already got orders of magnitude more than she deserves. Damn, Isaak Asimov made a contribution to the humankind that was hundreds of times greater than what Rowling could ever hope to achieve, but was he a billionaire? Heck, I am not even sure he was a millionaire.
People of Slashdot! Feel free to share, pirate, steal and generally do whatever you want with Rowling's books, even with hard copies in the stores. You don't owe her anything, don't let anyone convince you overwise!
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Obviously Baen is going to use this strategy for it's authors, authors that the average person has never heard of and would never run across anything by them at their local bookstore. But take JK Rowling for example. She has absolutely no need for additional publicity through free eBooks. It's pointless. Her copies will sell easily, so there's simply no point in giving copies away for free ... might as well get every penny you can from every copy. Most big name authors from big publishers (Stephen King, Robert Ludlum, etc) simply have no use for this kind of promotion.
Is it really that insightful to fight a use of the word that entered our language 400 years ago?
As someone's already pointed out, a PDA is a reasonable ebook reader. But what's really going to make ebook reading take off is the coming wave of cheap devices with cholesteric LCD screens, that run on one set of batteries for months. Here's a review of an early device aimed at the Chinese market:
http://www.blackmask.com/archive/argosyrev.htm
Once the bugs are ironed out, this thing and a few format conversion utilities will be all you need to get your bestsellers from Kazaa rather than Borders.
The publishing houses will have to rely on P2P hassles like crappy OCR and the number of fucktards putting ebooks in PDF and .lit formats to make people fork out for hard copies. Either that, or they'll realise that they can compete by offering cheap, well-indexed versions of their books with fair DRM (or none at all).
Unfortunately, at the moment, most big publishers see ebooks as some sort of premium service, and in many cases they're actually more expensive than the hardback.
Once these readers become common within the small proportion of the public that actually buys books for its own use (and not as gifts), we'll see a big change. Publishers will have to sell cheap ebooks with fair DRM, or fold. Physical books will still be around, but hardbacks will probably die.
So as long as I don't resell these books then I'm not a pirate.
Wow, you really weren't kidding about this ignorance thing--you really DON'T know how to read a dictionary definition? Take a look at what follows. A semicolon. And then read what is after the semicolon. This is a "dictionary" -- you may want to freshen up on how they work :)
Not to mention, I guess you don't realize that by getting something that you would normally pay for, for free, you profit?
You know actually, your post reassures me. I thought that people here advocating piracy were like new world order type people--radicals. But now, if you're representative, they're just ignorant.
Thanks!
The anti-copyright minority on /. .
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
From a political stand point this is almost a non-issue. The difference is that music is a BIG industry. Most of the piracy that takes place occurs with technical literature. Even if all of the publishers got together, and complained about rampant piracy, no one would care. Why? Because BIG BOOK doesn't have enough lobbyists on capital hill to make a fuss about it. The kind of book publishers with enough pull to compain are probably already attached to the music and movie industry anyway. There's also the great irony that a few authors might actually appreciate the spread of literacy even if it is through illegitimate means. Libraries exist to provide legal and free access to literature. Libraries exist to promote and advance the spread of knowlege through reading. Geeks like libraries.
Another reason this is a non-issue:
The music industry isn't really loosing customers because of music pirating. I don't pirate and I don't buy contemporary music CDs too often. Why? Because the AOLTIMEWARNERBRITTNEYSPEARSN'SYNCPREFAB music SUCKS! Maybe if you improved the content I would buy some modern music CDs. We don't have a modern day equivelent of Elvis and the Beattles. The publishing industry doesn't have an issue with content. People don't "wear" literature like fashion. In fact, it has become quite fashionable to be incompetent and illiterate. So the next time some one complains about the fact that the poor music and movie industry is losing money because of pirating, just point out that the reality is that they may be losing money because the content is rapidly becoming non-existant.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
They don't make a trade paperback series that collects all the spider-man issues, that I'm aware of. They have the early ones in black & white (sorry, I want them as they were originally - in color), and some selected ones in color, but not the whole thing. I don't think they collect all of X-Men either. Classic X-Men is (was?) good for getting old issues, but you still have to go about tracking them down.
Really, if a company decides it's not worth it to distribute material, it should become legal for others to do so. And if they decide later on that they want to start producing their stuff again, fine, let it be illegal to distribute once again.
c-hack.com |
Seems to me that an "Age of Piracy" is the next step in the evolution of society. Right now, ideas (Intellectual Property) only have value for a very short time. After a certain point their monetary value drops extremely rapidly. Think about the ideas that have value right now - current headlines, new video games, new ideas. (Video games can go from $50 to $20 in less than a year, music can go from $17 to bargain bins in about the same time. Newspapers and magazines are completely worthless after a few weeks) I think we're approaching a point where the only way you can make money from Intellectual Property is if you're doing something that's never been done before.
Piracy cannot be stopped, I truly believe that it can't be stopped, and I truly believe that free distribution of intellectual property will be hugely beneficial to mankind. I also believe that the "creators" can still have careers creating Intellectual Property, but again, only if they are pushing the limits, changing things, and re-inventing. There is no future for Britney Spears and her breed of watered-down, lowest common denominator media.
I've recently started an archive of most of the newspaper and magazine articles that I enjoy, and I've also started to hunt for my favorite books. I am confident that having instantly searchable (.txt or OCR'd pdf files) access to my favortie writings will drastically affect the way I think, the way I reason, and the way I formulate arguments in the very near future. Imagine 5 years from now, having a discussion about politics at a party. A simple statistic is a sticking point - say, the death toll in the Gulf War. Both arguers have PDAs with wireless internet, and both connect to their home networks to download articles or books that can resolve the dispute. While this is a poor example, it is obvious that such access will have an enormous effect on our lives.
I'm writing a book for O'Reilly, to be released under the Gnu Free Documentation License. Will people copy the book instead of buying it? Oh, surely. But even more people will hear about it and eventually buy it.
For new authors, obscurity is a bigger enemy than "piracy".
-m
Disclaimer: Clicking on the above link will show your support for O'Reilly and Free Documentation, but also amazon.com. Moral dilemma, huh? If you just want to read it, use the free link in my sig. And stop calling me Shirley.
--- Learn XForms today: http://xformsinstitute.com
Well, nothing is free. It costs me money and effort to download things. I can determine whether I profit for receiving something for minimal cost and effort, I have that much sense.
And as it relates to infringing on copyright. Legally, I obviously am. Morally, I am not. There is negligible difference in downloading a book, or getting it from the library. Both come at a very small cost, and allow me to use the book in the manner in which it is intended.
-Reid
The doctor that stuck a needle in your ass to keep you from dying of something nasty as a child probably makes more money than you, should you be able to "generally do whatever you want" to his/her house and belongings?
Yeah, because he ripped it off of SomethingAwful.com, who is currently very pissed at SPEWS after being blacklisted.
"Have you read a full ebook?"
|- "Yes"
|- "No"
|- "The thought of Cowboy Neal distracts me"
A blog I run for the wealth
One thing I always hated, was the College book scams. Every year they'd make slightly different versions of books containing knowledge over 200 years old, and every year students would be required to buy books that were so expensive, they could have been coppied at a copy shop for less than 1/10th the price. I for one would love to see copyrights go away on books.
Well, nothing is free. It costs me money and effort to download things. I can determine whether I profit for receiving something for minimal cost and effort, I have that much sense.
But the point is that the legal ownders of the book, the authors and in most cases a publisher DON'T profit from your piracy of a book. Just because it costs you money doesn't mean that money somehow magically goes to its rightful place.
And as it relates to infringing on copyright. Legally, I obviously am. Morally, I am not. There is negligible difference in downloading a book, or getting it from the library. Both come at a very small cost, and allow me to use the book in the manner in which it is intended.
Wow, what a terrible argument. Since I've seen this specious argument several times now, I will lay it out very simply:
1) Libraries don't photocopy books and give them out to anyone who wants them.
2) Libraries BUY books.
3) Were libraries to photocopy books, only one library would need to buy a book and the rest could just leech off that. Likewise, popular books which could sell multiple copies to a library would no longer be needed. FURTHERMORE, since there would be no limit to how many people could use the book at once, the library would be breaking copyright (remember that "All rights reserved" ?) and there would be no need for ANYONE to buy a book ever as they could just get a copy from their library.
Does this make sense to you? The library system is not a very hard one to comprehend, but I can see how if you've never thought about it you make draw such a fallacious analogy.
Actually let me address your last point "and all me to use the book in the manner in which it is intended" -- what's that? To be read. NOT to be copied. NOT to be freely available on the web. All rights reserved means that the AUTHOR keeps the copyright. You don't have permission to make copies and share them with your friends.
Have you seen the prices of textbooks lately? They keep making unnecessary new editions (that actually degrade the texts) so they can keep jacking up the prices. Even after the authors die they let other authors desecrate it to keep selling new editions. Few textbooks are under $100 nowadays. There is no way they can cost anywhere near that much to publish. They've also tried suing libraries numerous times. And the publishers are constantly screwing authors. Look here for an example: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/erics_commentary.html
No, the point is that I don't profit. I don't really care about the publisher, and the author, in the case of books I download, is dead.
And yes, I understand that libraries buys and receives donated books. But then an entire town of people LEECHES off of the 1 or few books a library buys or has been donated. Holy shit we're all pirates! Libraries don't photocopy them no, but they do give them out to anyone who wants one.
-Reid
Ok, mods, this is not a troll...
I don't think we've 'arrived' anywhere. Books that are truely valuable (I'm thinking on classics such as "Unix Network Programming by the late Richard Stevens) people will always look for a good paper bound copy.
For media-hyped books (such as the Harry Potter books out there) who wants to pay the exorbitant costs to get a book that doesn't really last beyond the few weeks of hype?
Granted I don't want to dis Harry Potter or say that Unix Network Programming is remotely in the same league as Harry Potter but the comparison stands.
I remember growing up (not that long ago) that to evaluate a book, I would go ask for it at the local Library - then if it was worth owning I would buy it. I don't think this model is obsolete rather it seems that publishers use a few bad cases to (a) charge even more for books (b) encourage more waste by mass producing everything out there. (c) create a false public perception that they must 'buy' more...
I was hopping someone would post about Baen. This is the best example I saw on the subject. Better than "MP3 makes you buy albums". (I do buy album based on MP3, but since 99% of the music sucks, I don't buy as much albums as before, foiling the RIAA "Buy Crap" plan.)
:)
Almost 2 years ago I Looked for information on the next "Honnor Harrington". I stumbled upon a 'draft' of the book posted on-line by the author/publisher. I could not believe it. I printed the draft, and read half of it. I did not finish it as I could feel it was a 'draft', mainly story-line jumping strangely, surely some text would be added to fill gaps.
So with my craving satisfied I waited a few more months and pre-ordered the book. It came with a CD of Baen's "Free Library" that I legally placed on Kaza
I don't read as much in 2003, but when I search for good SF, I open the library, browse thru the titles and start reading. When I find something I feel like reading this month (time travel? Monsters? solo hero or armed mercenaries?), I buy the trade paper backs (better for travel, more comfortable in bed, and costs less).
OK, I must admit that their stance on the subject also influence my support for them.
Closer to our own time, Taiwan did not sign the international copyright convention until late in the 1970s. Up to then, Taiwanese publishers routinely ripped off popular books and sold their editions for a fraction of the what the legal editions cost.
My point is that book piracy is nothing new.
[this
"The old argument that no one likes reading on a computer has pretty much eroded."
I know plenty of people who read books, but I have yet to meet a single person who has read an entire book on the computer.
This reminds me of those morons who spend days downloading all of the needed rar files to watch a crappy Hollywood movie in Divx format. Some may do it, but the vast majority will not.
Think about how and when people read books. On the way to work, on their work break, waiting at the DMV, sitting on the couch with their feet up, sitting outside in the park on a sunny day, etc. In other words, book publishers have NOTHING to worry about.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I don't this will be too large of a problem for the publishing industry. I would much rather read a novel on paper rather than on a computer screen. And who wants to print out 870 pages?! No, I will not be downloading books anytime soon. The reason that movies and music are pirated extensively is that they are designed to be put onto a digital format (burn to CD or DVD). A burned CD of pirated music is the same as a legit CD. This is not the case with books.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
I would gladly pay to have entire collections of comics on DVD. I bought the Mad magazine collection on CD (disturbing).
I would much rather buy the stuff on media than download it. Are you reading this Marvel?
It looks like you are politely trolling, but I will respond anyway. :)
First, I never suggested doing whatever you want to Rowling's house or belongings. Contrary to what you may think, she doesn't own any of her books (a hundred copies at most). What she may own are the copyrights, or so-called "intellectual property". So sharing or pirating her books (especially in the digital form) does nothing bad at all, since depriving that "starving single mother" from additional income does not constitute bad according to any reasonable set of morals.
Second, I do not advocate taking stuff from people with more money than me. I am just saying that market economy is not perfect and by any realistic estimate we, as a society, already gave to Rowling more money than she will ever deserve. Even though we can't reverse what was already done, it would be a good thing to stop paying her more money, these money should go everywhere else.
Third, the doctor, who stuck a needle in my ass, in all likelyhood earns several times less money than I do, thanks to a fucked up Russian economy. Rowling, on the other hand, makes millions of times more than he does. I suggest we stop paying that [expletive] Rowling and start paying more to useful members of the society, who are currently underpaid as a direct result of the Harry Potter craze.
P.S. In addition to all that, Rowling is a bitch. Suing little kids who make websites about Harry Potter is repulsive and disgusting.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
No, the point is that I don't profit. I don't really care about the publisher, and the author, in the case of books I download, is dead.
WTF? You're saying that because it cost you money to break the law, you're not really breaking the law?! And you know what? Nobody gives a fuck if you care about the publisher or not. Fortunately "caring" (what does that even mean?! You choose to break the law because you "care?!") is completely irrelevant to breaking the law.
Please note that if the copyright is expired, I'm all for stuff like project Gutenberg. But if it's not... You're a thief. plain and simple.
And yes, I understand that libraries buys and receives donated books. But then an entire town of people LEECHES off of the 1 or few books a library buys or has been donated. Holy shit we're all pirates! Libraries don't photocopy them no, but they do give them out to anyone who wants one.
Which is perfectly legal! You can lend a copy of a book to anyone you want to. Publishers and authors alike are ECSTATIC to sell books to anyone. Libraries LEND books out--they don't copy them and give them away. This is extremely simple copyright matter, and if you don't understand this (which your continually irrelevant arguments and offtopic tacks prove) you breally need to get a grounding in what is copyright.
Well I never claimed not to be breaking the law, I admitted that straight off the bat. I was speaking of the morality issue.
-Reid
"Author Harlan Ellison and his attornies have been fighting a legal battle since April 2000 TO PROTECT WRITERS' CREATIVE PROPERTIES. To aid in this battle, KICK INTERNET PIRACY has been set up to help pay the Ellison's costs and legal fees in this battle ONLY."
http://harlanellison.com/kick/
Information wants to be free...
and so will you if you copy books/cd/dvd!
But ebooks still have one fatal flaw for me: paper reads 10%-30% faster. (Two flaws if you count vulnerability to jacuzzis.) I'd found this out on my own at work. If I needed to read 200 pages of reports I was better off sending print-jobs to every printer in the building (splitting reports to prevent irritated coworkers). My time saved was worth the additional printing costs.
That speed difference is like driving 45 instead of 60... ok for short distances, dreadful on roadtrips. As a dedicated (nee addicted) reader, this could mean 100 fewer books read per year. Ouch.
If you must read on a monitor, this advice helps. But until they get electronic paper right, the crushed tree system is the way for me.
From the article
-- this is not a
One hurdle to widespread book piracy might be the effort required to digitize the book. With music, almost everyone has the tools on their PC and it takes very little effort to rip a CD. Scanning a 200 page book on your home scanner however, requires a certain amount of dedication.
I think that somebody has a problem, if it takes them 30 minutes to read a comic.
I finish the Sunday Non Sequitor in just under 18 minutes. If it takes someone thirty minutes, they need to switch to an easier one. Maybe Ziggy would be a better start. That one only takes me 5.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
You really have to differentiate between two main 'types' of music today - The one-hit-wonder versus 'real music'. The RIAA is all upset because they can't sell the one-hit-wonder anymore, people can just download it, listen to it until they are sick of it, wash, rinse, repeat. In this case, I agree with your mp3 categorization.
In the case of real music, that is, music that is a collection of tunes that you like and not just a ploy to get you to pay 17$.99 for 1 song, I disagree. I recently got into punk music, downloaded some tunes from the official pennywise website, and have since bought 3 of their albums to put on my mp3 player. When the music is good and not just a BS marketing ploy, I for one am ready to shell out some cash and I think others probably are too. Part of the reason is that with good music, you turn the corner from casual listener to _fan_ which to me seems to make all the difference.
BTW: Pennywise is a non-RIAA band.
All your base are belong to us!
The problem of book scanning and illegal distribution has been stated and debated by thousands of people, but so far nobody's come up with any _workable_ solutions. That's because there aren't any workable solutions other than the same one that applies to just about anything else; make piracy more effort than it's worth. NOT 'trouble'. 'Effort', as in 'Work'. Who's going to scan 870 pages if you can buy a professionally produced ebook version for $10 or less? Only some pathetic geek without a discernable life or income. Who's going to actively search for pirated copies of such an ebook? The same kinds of people who'd scan 870 pages instead of spending ten bucks. People to whom ten bucks is worth more than a few hours of their lives. The results of busting pirates and taking them to court won't cover the costs of tracking them down, and you'll never get 'em all that way. BUT... the point is moot, because a reasonably-priced solution can't happen for such things as first-run movies, new music, and Harry Potter books. Current high-end publishing and marketing industries aren't designed for flexibility or innovation; they're designed to milk the public for maximum-possible bucks for a product and to control all possible methods of acquiring a product. They won't die off; they'll just adapt into other industries. It's unlikely that the net will disappear, so publishing and distribution methods (and policies) WILL have to change. We should be discussing how to make those changes happen as quickly and painlessly as possible WITHOUT altogether removing the incentives for publishing. No profit = No New Stuff. The HP and other books, music, and movies now being pirated were first _published_ by some company. That leads us back to "more effort than it's worth", because when publishing no longer turns a profit, publishers will seek other - uncopyable - products. Ed Howdershelt - Abintra Press Science Fiction and Semi-Fiction http://abintrapress.tripod.com
simply a different point. look at safari. subscribe and gain access to readily available copies of technical books. why can i not refer to an electronic copy of a work. i buy a hell of a lot of books and cds. why can i not get rather than burn mp3 tracks from the label site. just like i want a hi res version of music, i sometimes want a physical copy of a book. to me there should be a cost difference, but currently there is not. uses for music, movies and books are changing rapidly. just as the short story was created to meet new markets, we will witness new forms of current media types. until the publishers recognize these different forces, they will be fodder for the warez croud. get a clue.
We switched our Java textbook to Bruce Eckel's book, which he has posted on his own site as a free PDF.
Some students just use the PDF file, and print what they need. Most students buy the book and d/l the PDF.
Last year our university computer labs moved from free printing to 5 cents a page, after admins found students printing thousands of d/l'd book pages.
Blows my mind, as students tend tom copmlain about the weight of textbooks as much as the price.
This is why Palladium is being sold to universities and publishers as a means of renting licensed ebooks to students. After the term is done, must renew their subscription to the book or DRM refuses to open the ebook.
www.baen.com and check out the free books.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
My point isn't whether or not one agrees with the Author/RIAA/MPAA/Whatever. The point I'm trying to make is what happened to society that it now believes that the proper solution to every little injustice (real or percieved) is to steal content from them. To punish the criminals, we're commiting a crime is the way it seems to be going.
Why should we stoop to thier level and steal and gouge others. It only really effects us with higher prices and companies that feel that they need to fight back to protect thier interests...which makes us fught back harder...it's a cycle and it's a right nasty bugger of one at that.
Phoenix
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
The word piracy is inofficially and officially synonymous with copyright infringement in one of its meanings. Unofficially, because everybody uses it. Officially, because it is documented as in common use.
Look up piracy in Merriam-Webster and you will find the following definition (among others):
3: the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright
You can't turn the clock backwards. People have always resisted the evolution of language and it's about as useless as trying to stop the grass from growing.
If you want to truly change the language, then take the word back instead -- claim you're a pirate, bear the title with pride, and portray it as positive. Several minority groups have done this successfully with terms that have been seen as derogatory in the past.
You can evolve, but never make unevolved.
(As an ending note, the partial copying from Merriam-Webster above was not authorized by the publisher.)
Since we can, for example, go to the library and read the same book for free, what's the incentive? There's nobody in the lower 48 states who lives so far from a decent library that it isn't possible to go there.
The only time I use an eBook is if the hard copy is not available. This pretty much means out of print books and illegal books.
Unless PDFs become the publishing format de-jure, I don't see books being pirated the same way all-digital stuff is. In the worst case you can rip video or audio in real time. With books, you need to sit down and scan every page. With huge releases like Harry Potter, I could see it happening, but it'll never be like the situation with MP3s, where you can get *every* song ever recorded
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I beg to differ. Both David Weber's and Lois McMaster Bujod's (two of Baen's authors) latest books made the NYT bestseller lists. David Weber's book was available in eBook format before it hit the stands. (And was reviewed here on /.) Both authors are featured in baen's free library.
I won't go so far as to say that David Weber or Lois McMaster Bujold have the name recognition of Steven King or Robert Ludlum, but to relegate NYT bestselling authors to:
is to grossly misstate the actual sales volumes and market penetration of said authors.One of the things Eric Flint (another Baen author) talks about in his 'why are we doing this' intro to the library is that most people have little to no desire to steal.
All that being said, I don't condone or advocate stealing books. I do think it is a good idea to allow people to obtain such things in a format they thing convenient. I think it an even better idea to do so in a way that gives feedback to publishers and authors as to what the end customer actually wants to read. The best thing is to have some way to pay the author for their work, even if you can't find a physical copy of their work in a first sale retail book store. (The only place that has even a chance of showing up on the publisher's radar.)
Paul
Because copyright (together with patents) needs to be destroyed. It served it's purpose during the 19th and the 20th century, assisting in the unprecedented technological development of our civilization. But it outlived its usefullness. Out of the ashes of copyright will rise a new order. The spirit of unfettered scientific quest for knowledge will be extended into business and art. Coupled with Internet and later advanced technologies such as nanotech and AI this will bring forth the new Renaissance and propel the humankind into the posthuman era.
Honestly, complaining about piracy is like complaining about workers' unrest in the early 20th century. When the situation produces such serious contradictions, the only way to resolve them is conflict (not necessarily violent, but conflict nevertheless). Our struggle with copyright will continue to escalate until it is finally destroyed. Extending the analogy with early 20th century, it is possible that only one victory will be enough (say, against RIAA) and the MPAA, BSA and book publishers will be able to voluntarily change (like it happened with the US and Europe after the Great October Revolution). May be it will be more difficult, but in the end copyright will die.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
It's amazing to flip through the project Gutenburg list of books. Pretty much any English (and increasingly other languages) classic is available. Completely free because copyrights have long since expired, and legal. Who really wants to pirate "pop fiction" anyway?
Actually many PocketPCs offer better battery life than your average Tungsten.
Palm battery life (minutes)
Tungsten T = 271
Clie NX70V = 235
PocketPC battery life (minutes)
Asus AD600 = 488
Ipaq 3970 = 368
Dell Axim X5 = 284
The addition of the color screens but the use of the same small batteries to maintain the small form factor has really killed battery life in PalmOS devices.
Course you could just get the b&w no-backlit Zire, which lasted nearly 1900 minutes on battery. Just remember to bring your flashlight ;)
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Yeah, yeah. For a free society, etc. etc. media have to accept leakage. And that works to a point. If you want to see T3, you want to see it in a theater, right? Takes away the redeeming qualities (the special effects in that case) to watch a screener on a monitor for gosh sakes. And if you are happy with a screener, you probably wouldn't have paid to see it anyway. All well and good -- at least cosmically.
.pdf technology? True, somewhere I've been saving my copy of cyberpunk Metaphage (? - I think) the author released a few years ago -- guess I'll have to print it out. :)
But what do book publishers do -- anti-scan paper? Fuzzy sample
But what about reference and non-fiction? People have to be so used to Googling for answers to computer questions and such that reading reference material on the screen must be second-nature by now.
That was very well said, Sir.
well, I can say this, I have never heard of David Weber or Lois McMaster Bujold. So take that for what it's worth.
Granted that the current state of copyright and patent in the world is rapidly going to hell in a handbasket and something needs to be done. And your comparasion to with the worker unrest in the turn of the century is a good analogy.
...But how would the Author make money off thier product if someone could (without copyright) take thier ideas and make it into a movie without thier permission. Or without copyright, how could an author like JK Rowling, Mercedes Lackey, or Anne McCaffrey keep some one from turning one of thier characters into something that they aren't supposed to be, *and* then selling it?
However I'm having a problem seeing how an author can make money at thier talent without copyright. GNU works because companies like RedHat aren't really selling thier product, but they're selling thier support on the product. Indie Musicians are getting paid for performing at clubs and other performances as well as via T-Shirts and CD's...
I agree that something needs to be done, but I'd love to hear how to do it without copyright and keep it fair and honest for everyone...author included.
Phoenix
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
Book piracy on the internet wouldn't surprise me at all. People love getting what they can for free...even if it is illegal. I just hope that publishers can control this before it turns into another disaster.
has it occured to anyone that all of this cookbook email thing may have been started by Jamie Oliver's publishing company to drive interest up during a slow market period while their boy doesn't have a current TV series to tie in to?
'Nuff said.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
As they say, those who do not know history are bound to repeat it.
The parent post definitely deserves more credit than it has been given by the moderators -- it is probably one of the most interesting things I have read linked from a slashdot comment for a long time.
Dave Weber's a bit of a hack, IMAO. read some of the free ebooks and make up your own mind about him. Lois McMaster Bujold, however, can *really* write a good story - you're missing out by not knowing of that author.
I think that even without copyright full-time professional writers (good ones) will have no problem selling their books to the public (see King's Internet experiment), especially if some form of legal protection against large-scale unauthorised commercial distribution remains. Other authors could get a job that would provide them financial support without demanding a lot of time. Tolkien was not a professional writer, he was a university professor, remember? I think that current socio-economical developments make this entirely possible. As we venture further into post-industrial society, people need to work less and less time, making it possible for them to write (or be creative in other ways), while easily supporting themselves through an interesting, but not very time-consuming work. Writers of textbooks and reference books, for example, can easily be employeed at the universities.
You can also look at other countries, for example, at Russia. Only a tiny minority of very popular writers can make a living only through their books. But doesn't stop people from writing and there is a lot of pretty good literature made today. During the Soviet time, writers were also paid peanuts, but again, that didn't stop them from creating many exceptional works. Will Rowling stop writing if she isn't paid hundreds of millions for each book? I guess no, after all when she wrote the first part, she didn't have any particularly high expectations and still managed to do a pretty good job.
As for the movies and turning the characters into something else, I think to some extent this is actually a desirable thing. Hopefully, writers will be rewarded by the movie producers, but even if they won't, it still would be better than to have a corporation like Disney control your favourite stories and characters. And if someone makes an "undesirable" version of the story, like an adult Harry Potter fanfic, some of which are very well-written and enjoyable, this just fulfills the public demand and is therefore good. Even now the characters are often turned into something the authors didn't intend, when the books are turned into films, but at least without copyright, people would have the same or greater degree of control and will be able to decide what is desirable and what is not by themselves.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Currently available on the internet, if you know where to look: 32000 fiction novels (Non-pulp) 15000 pulp. over 10000 non-fiction books. Lots of romance, young adult. Many PG+ rated books. I can't even THINK of how many. I would estimate, and this is just a rough estimate, that there are over 100,000+ books scanned, OCR'd, or stolen from the publisher in PDF form and redistributed as ebooks. I dunno about you, but to me, 100k seems like a decent number. The local library district has a collection of 500k volumes, spread over 10 libraries throughout a 200 mile area. You can easily fit the entire 100k collection on 20 CD's, or about 4 dvds. in relative numbers, this means I can hold 1/5th the information capacity of 150k square feet of library space in my laptop. If they were available as e-books, I could have the total information available in all those libraries and carry it in my coat pocket.
Our solution was to find them in the library or order them ILL and then photocopy and distribute them among ourselves. I suppose there might be some fair-use argument to made in support of this (academic use, minimal monetary damage to the author, etc), but probably not, especially as many authors scan their own old books and sell copies of them (mostly to libraries) for high fees.
Point is, people have been pirating books for a long time, just not very many copies at a time. Of course books like I'm talking about often only sell a few hundred-a thousand copies anyway, so 20 illegal ones might matter a lot more in this case than, say, to J.K. Rowling...
Now I can just sit back and wait for the PIAA to subpoena me....
Dear God-of-all-Slashdotters,
.. Yes, I have used Limewire. The new version is sooo fast, on OS X, it hardly feels like st-- Yes I'm in stealth mode, thanks for asking. But listen, could we hold off on the print thing just a little bit? Say (counts on fingers) a year? Is that asking too much?
Jesus, this is sooo depressing. I *just* got an agent interested in my novel last week! .
Yr humble servant yada yada,
Zo
If you have a flash card for your Gameboy Advance you can use the fantastic program PogoShell and its built in text reader to read them in bed.
I have a few here and there. Most of them look like crappy OCR versions, converted to text, and all paragraph breaks removed.
.txt version, I can SEARCH for something. Don't remember when a character was introduced (the book was like 1100+ pages) I can find it easy.
However, I have them for Cryptonomicon, which I have the several inch think paperback version I read. But with the
I pulled the new Harry Potter down right after it came out - nice PDF. Only reason is I didn't believe it was the book. Deleted it after looking at it for 5 minutes. Never read the first 4, and if I did and read this one, it'd be hard copy.
Comes in the form of libraries! Oh my God, people can go in an read almost any book they want, FOR FREE!!! Dear God save us all from this scourge! How can we control the masses if they have access to reading materials and knowledge! Hurry everyone get a torch and burn down these houses of terrorism and theft!
"But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong" - Dennis Miller
Why has no-one made a passively lit computer screen yet??? Do that and you will save reams of paper, and reading on a computer screen will not be like reading the label on a floursent lightbulb while it's on.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That's an amusing rhetorical stab, but that's the literal word of the law. And interestingly enough, that's all laws are --words.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Gilad.
One comic is scanned into jpeg, page by page usually, sometimes a couple of full spreads are scanned also, if the format requires it.
A one page scan is around 700x1064 and a spread around 1400x1064. These jpegs are of course full-color and compressed to be around 130-600KiB -- usually higher res/less compression is used for covers.
The individual files are then archived using rar or pkzip (simply to keep them all in one place) together with an optional NFO file with metadata. This package, name something like "New X-men 114.cbz" where .cbz is a pkzip archive and .cbr is a rar archive can then be read directly using the "CDisplay Comic Reader".
Depending on the number of pages, a full scanned issue can be anywhere from 2.5MB to 10MB or more. Around 5-6MB/issue seems typical. Specials can be around 20MB.
well, I can say this, I have never heard of David Weber or Lois McMaster Bujold. So take that for what it's worth.
At a guess you aren't particularly interested in the science fiction genre. Weber in particular is regarded as one of the most popular science fiction authors publishing today. I must admit to not having come across Bujold either, but for SF books to make an all-genre best seller list is a rare occurence, so I might have to wander over to baen's web site and look into it...
"After all, Dave Weber's On Basilisk Station has been available for free as a "loss leader" for Baen's for-pay experiment "Webscriptions" for months now. And -- hey, whaddaya know? -- over that time it's become Baen's most popular backlist title in paper!"
While I agree with the sentiment, I have to wonder if there isn't another reason for that. It is the first book in a series which has become extremely popular over the last few years, and possibly one of the best series that Baen has published.
On the other hand, I have to agree that having heard of the series I did go straight over to Baen's site to get it, and after reading it did decide to go out of my way to get the rest of the series...
Calling a pig a pigeon won't make it fly. It's unauthorized copying. And you may not agree that those who claim that right in fact have the right to prevent others from making copies. Copyright(TM) is a legal fiction that millions of people just don't and WON'T take. Deal with THAT.
``L'imagination au povoir.''
But frankly, whenever I travel I find one of two situations frequently obtain;
I looked at Eink's site (google for eInk and it's the first one), and they've got pictures of prototypes I'm drooling over... :)
I read books EXCLUSIVELY on my Axim 5 PPC. Why? I don't like caryimg around 5 lbs. of book, I have nowhere to store paper books any more. I'm 56, a geek, and I'm proud of it. I've been reading books on my pda since I got my first Handspring. I will never switch back to paper again. All my books are stored on my HD and take little space. When wanted I transfer them to a CF or SD card and read using MS Reader, Acrobat 1.0, or Mobipocket. Best sellers are becoming available in ebook form from a number of sources Micro$oft is even giving away 3 books a week this summer as a promotion.
This parrot has ceased to be!
Movies and Music are a relatively media compared to the printed word. Any book lover will tell you that there is no subsitute for having the real book in your hands. This is why books will never share the same eventul fate of movies and music.
The Good Life