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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."
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!)
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?
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
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.
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"
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.
Although my method involves going to the local public library and signing them out.
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
I cannot pay hundreds of dollars for classic comic books.
Having these online so that people could read from the start of the series would be wonderful.
Having them online so that you don't have to pay a couple of buck for a recent issue is silly.
Plus, comics are about collecting. I doubt this would hurt the industry too much.
Freely adapted from the parent post.
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...
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
"Having these online so that people could read from the start of the series would be wonderful."
/. crowd wants to literally put us further down the scale with the ditch diggers and that ilk.
Never heard of trade paperbacks? I have several sets of comics I was too lazy to pick up every issue (that and I hate going into the comic shop where you are guaranteed that some 35 year old with middling education is going to try to convince you that both Star Wars and the Matrix actually contain intellectual philosophies) -- all of them in trade paperbacks.
Too lazy to pick up issues 1 -20, but the story arc in paperback form. Sick of folks handling your precious copies? Get the trade paperback -- the only one actually went out of my way to collect was the Sandman (still need to find issue #4 to fill out the collection -- haven't looked too hard) -- but I won't let those out of my home.
These don't exist for every comic, but they do for quite a bit. hit the comic section of the local Barnes and Noble and you will see what is newly available...and ya can probably find the rest by order.
If I wrote something 15 years ago, one would think I was still entitled to copyright protection. Folks today think 3 years and not published in the 2 places they looked means its 'abandonware'. Then again, these are the same type of peoples as the 35 year old comic shop employee mentioned above so I don't put much credence in their logic.
People that have never created something creative will always believe that it isn't real work and this stuff comes readily to ones mind. "It only took me 30 minutes to read this comic, heck, I'll be generous and believe that it could have taken up to 2 hours to write. " Intellectual properties are much harder to develop and need far more protection than any manual labour, but the
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.
"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
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.
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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.
Comics are different. They are only on the shelf a couple of months, at most. The unsold comics either are bought by the store, or they get sent back to the publisher unsold. The ones that get into the long boxes of the comic stores, if sold, will only generate profit for the comic store itself; no additional profit is given to the publisher.
The majority of the runs of comics I've seen online are older comics that would cost an exorbitant amount of money to buy the originals from a store or collector. The people downloading these have no interest in selling them for more money, or in "ripping off" the comics publishers. They just want to read the old stories in complete chunks!
Now, there is a danger when people scan in 0day releases, or comics currently available in TPB format. But if someone wants to read hard-to-find independent comics, such as the early, gritty TMNT stuff, they should not have to pay the inflated prices comic stores want to charge.
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.
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.
Intellectual properties are much harder to develop and need far more protection than any manual labour
Yeah, sure it is. I'd like to see you digging a ditch or mining coal for a living. You wouldn't survive five fucking minutes, you effete snob.
but the /. crowd wants to literally put us further down the scale with the ditch diggers and that ilk.
Right now, I find you repulsive. Frankly I have more respect for a ditch digger since he's doing honest to goodness hard work (and badly paid for it too).
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