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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."
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.
For sure. MemoWare has thousands of free ebooks for handhelds. Reading on a PDA instead of, say, a laptop also doesn't hurt as much when you fall asleep and drop it on the dog laying next to the bed.
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?
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.
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 main reason books on computer suck is because of the way computers are set up by default. when most people think of books on computer, they dont immediately think of putting a book on a PDA. also, it kinda strains the eyes after looking at the screen so much, because of the default colors. change the colors to white text on black background, and youll feel much better after a night of reading when you should be sleeping. which would be an advantage for computers, as you dont need an external light source for that. of course, there was an older slashdot sotry about electronic paper. looks just like regular paper, but when you send an electrical signal to it, it prints a new image on the paper. the image stays for something like 10 years when the power is taken away, but a new signal will re-write on the paper. i imagine ebook piracy will become a bigger problem once they start making ebooks out of those.
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!"
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Freely adapted from the parent post.
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...
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!
I don't really know how long it took Jim Dale to get 23+ hours of Harry Potter laid down on tape, but it must have been months of work. I have no objection to seeing him get paid for that (and since the CDs are available for under $50, only a few bucks per CD, it seems quite reasonable compared to music.)
Other recorded books are, of course, much more expensive. Overall I've found that Order of the Phoenix could have been priced much higher than they did based on demand, in any format. I assume this is an economic decision rather than a friendly one, but I know that it enabled married friends of mine to purchase two copies rather than one so neither had to wait.
Now, that's just to point out that this is more than just a "golden voice"; it's a major effort by an actor with rare talent. If you want to put together an Internet project to read books aloud, I think that would be noble and interesting. For out-of-print books, you might check out AudioBooksForFree. Just don't be too disappointed when your efforts don't sound nearly as good as the professional ones, and take more work than you expect.
For copyrighted works, well, the publishers wouldn't be happy if you're competing with their efforts, especially if they have their own recordings. But I'd press you to think about the value of new books versus old; if you'd rather record a new, copyrighted book than an old one, maybe you'll see why that book has value to the one who paid to publish it.
Disclaimer (too late): I am an actor and do recorded readings (and am unbelievably jealous of a voice like Jim Dale's).
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.
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