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."

Comments

'About to Enter'?

[jonathan_ingram]

Book piracy has been around for hundreds 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.

This is _really_ old news...

[Xebikr]

Thomas McCaulay had this to say in 1841 when the issue of copyright extention was before the British parliament:

I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot.

Full text here.

Re:article -1 Troll

[Jason Earl]

It's pretty clear that you have never actually read a book on a PDA. You should try it.

Personally I have gotten to the point where I am not interested in reading books by authors I am unfamiliar with unless I can read the book on my PDA.

First of all, the tiny screen on a PDA is not a problem. Small pages would be a problem in a book because it takes two hands to turn the pages. With a PDA turning the pages is a one-handed affair, and it is as simple as pressing a button. Most readers will even autoscroll for you if you so desire. Even using the largest bold font on my Visor Handspring I am still able to blaze through books with ease. In fact, if you read up about page layout you would find that narrow text columns make it easy for your eyes to find the next line.

Secondly, the coarse DPI only matters if you are using a font that is designed for paper. I, for one, don't care if the font is jaggy as long as it is perfectly clear what the letter is. It's when you start anti-aliasing the fonts that they start to be problematic.

Thirdly, my Visor Handspring didn't cost $300, it cost $80. Combined with a $30 CF springboard attachment and a cheap CF card I can comfortably carry around hundreds of books. My Visor is lighter than a paperback, and I can read it in the dark. Heck, the gizmo even helps me make sure I don't miss any meetings. Batteries aren't a problem as the Visor I have takes AAA batteries. I currently use rechargeables, but I have used standard batteries in a pinch. Even reading 3 books a week I still usually get a couple weeks worth of juice out of standard AAA batteries.