Why Your e-Books Are No Longer Yours

Predictions Market sends us to Gizmodo for an interesting take on the question: when you "buy" "content" for Amazon's Kindle or the Sony Reader, are you buying a crippled license to intellectual property when you download, or are you buying a book? If the latter, then the first sale doctrine, which lets you hawk your old Harry Potter hardcovers on eBay, would apply. Some law students at Columbia took a swing at the question and Gizmodo reprints the "surprisingly readable" legal summary. Short answer: those restrictive licenses may very well be legal, and even if you had rights under the first sale doctrine, you might only be able to resell or give away your Kindle — not a copy of the work.

Comments

I got a better lawyer

[gnutoo]

I think I'll stick with Lessig's opinions and the surprisingly readable US Constitution.

How to sell your copy of Hary Potter only touches on the madness of paper based copyright applied to digital files. If these books are no longer mine, they are no longer the library's either. Do we really want a future where anyone and everyone can be cut off of knowledge at the flip of a switch? Where "owners" must be trusted with the raw material of history? No.

The answer to all this is very simple. The lower cost of publishing should bring lower protections and fewer created rights because fewer incentives are required. Advertising costs have not declined, so it is easier to recoup publishing investments now than ever. Worse for high cost, established publishers technology makes old laws contradictory and insane. Publishers want to make "unwet water" and outlaw the normal stuff by dominating the channels of distribution - the no real library future. We should allow people to make exact copies of almost all works and distribute them freely. It's really that easy and companies that can't live with that kind of freedom should look for a new line of honest work.

Re:I got a better lawyer

[StreetStealth]

That's all very well and good, but legal protections do you little good when technological measures in the market are present to prevent you from exercising whatever rights may be in question. Even if the supreme court says sometime next year "Ok, you can totally resell digital files you paid for!" the downloads in your Kindle are still trapped there, bound either by arcane cryptographic systems, the DMCA, or, as it stands now, both.

Re:I got a better lawyer

[Metasquares]

I don't know about entertainment authors, but many scientific writers already do this. Certainly we give our publications away freely, if not our books, and most of us are perfectly OK with that. (The publishers tend to lock the works up for profit which we don't receive any of, which isn't OK, but that's a whole different issue).

Give your works away for free if you want the greatest exposure to your ideas. Sell them if you want to monetize them. But at least have the decency to allow fair use.

Re:I got a better lawyer

[Creepy Crawler]

How sad you must be..

So, only books count as content in your world? I see many a ways to make content that builds upon others, expanding all. Cooperation is almost always better than competition, except in cases that all sides gain from ones work. Consider it, if you will, a challenge of ideologies: a Vi vs Emacs, or KDE vs Gnome, or KOffice vs OppenOffice.. Advancements in one lead to advancements in all, at the detriment of none.

And, I guess we can't count on creators to make content freely available, can we? Something about Trent Reznor rings a bell.. or that sci-fi publisher that gives books out online.. or a multitude of short story writers that freely write because they enjoy telling a story... These people most assuredly do not exist.

True, we do enjoy eating, but people who have that need to create will do so, monetarily or not. It is our best interest that they continue to do so, without the parasites that live upon them currently.

Re:I got a better lawyer

[Oligonicella]

"I think I'll stick with Lessig's opinions and the surprisingly readable US Constitution."

The surprisingly readable clause:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

"The lower cost of publishing should bring lower protections and fewer created rights because fewer incentives are required."
"We should allow people to make exact copies of almost all works and distribute them freely."

It doesn't at all sound like the copyright clause of the Constitution. You might reread that clause and notice the word exclusive.

Re:I got a better lawyer

[erroneus]

You don't read much fan fiction do you? There's a lot of written work out there that is written by individuals and put out there free of charge; small stuff and large stuff alike. Some people just want to be read and some people write because they enjoy it. Not every 'artist' does it for money and it could be argued that it's not art if it's done for money in the first place. (Kind of like prostitution isn't making love...)

Re:I got a better lawyer^Widea

[tomhudson]

Embed advertising in ebooks, the same as in magazines and newspapers, and give the ebooks away.

Advantages

1. "Content is king" - it'll be seen
2. Targeted market
3. Reflects the lower cost of production/distribution
4. Easier to disintermediate - greater portion of the revenue ends up in the authors' pocket/purse/wallet/bank account

Give it time

[Anonymous Coward]

"Surprisingly readable" because the authors ain't actually lawyers yet.

WARNING:PARENT IS LINK TO FINAL MEASURE - NIMP.ORG

[tomhudson]

Last part of url: http%3A//members.on.nimp.org/

Re:Not only that...

[Adradis]

Nimp.org link, yet again.

The Madness Continues

[Whuffo]

Copyright was intended to provide a compromise between the needs of those creating works, and the needs of the public. The deal was that we'd give the authors a monopoly for a limited time in exchange for them releasing their works to the public domain.

What's happened since is that the creators sold out to corporations and the corporations have been throwing their weight around with our lawmakers. The term of copyright has been extended and re-extended to the point where virtually nothing is entering the public domain anymore. They've even filed (and received) copyrights on things that were previously in the public domain.

Not satisfied with their greedy taking of the public domain, they decided to move on to getting paid multiple times for the same thing. Enter "digital rights management" and such travesties as the DMCA. That effectively puts an end to the first sale doctrine and completes the process of locking up all "intellectual property" (interesting phrase, isn't it?) and completely eliminates any possibility of anything entering the public domain.

The deal was that we'd give them a exclusive right over the works for a limited time in exchange for them releasing the works to the public domain. Our corporate government has eliminated the need for the rights holders to release their works to the public domain, so the deal is broken. They don't deserve their exclusive right over the work either; the deal is broken, remember?

This will all work out in the long term, our corporate masters will do their utmost to spin this into something that's supposedly good for us. But we're not fooled, are we?

Re:The Madness Continues

[timmarhy]

I like the idea of making them pay property tax on it if they continue to insist on calling it property.

not only that but make it law that they can declare what ever value they like for their IP, BUT anyone can purchase it from them for that price.

so they can give a true value for their IP, get all the protections of regular property in exchange for paying tax on it.

the current setup is a total free fucking ride for so called IP companys.

Re:The Madness Continues

[Microlith]

I don't pay taxes on my Playstation 2, or on my couch.

Do you want to try and estimate what the value, and tax, associated with any given open source project is? Who would pay it?

Do you want Microsoft to be able to forcibly buy out the Linux kernel? How about the Apache Project?

Re:The Madness Continues

[techno-vampire]

What's happened since is that the creators sold out to corporations and the corporations have been throwing their weight around with our lawmakers.

No, that's not what happened. What did happen is that the US became a party to The Berne Convention, which specifies a minimum term for a copyright of the life of the creator plus 50 years. I won't say that various corporations aren't happy with this, but the idea has been part of copyright law in Europe for over a century.

Caveat Emptor

[justsomecomputerguy]

It bears repeating: The RIAA, The MPAA and all the other sue-the-customer organizations really really do want to make so that eventually you the consumer have NO RIGHTS, zip, zero, nadda to own anything.

Making everyone pay a fee each and every time they want to listen to or read or view something is their eventual goal.

You will own NOTHING.

You will have NO RIGHTS to view ANYTHING unless you pay their fees.

That IS the eventual goal.

Figure out how to tell this to non-librarians, non-techies

Re:Caveat Emptor

[The End Of Days]

What I find most interesting about the argument over copyright is how it boils down to two groups justifying why their greed is more meaningful and important.

This is 100% consistent with current copyright law

[CajunArson]

Courts have expressly not extended doctrine of first sale to electronic files like mp3's and it would make perfect sense to extend that to ebooks. The thing to remember about first sale doctrine is that you do NOT own the "content" of a book you purchase. If I go out and buy The DaVinci Code I have 0 ownership interest in the story. What I DO have an ownership interest in is the actual physical book and the ink printed in that book. I can go out and resell the book or give it away and there is nothing the copyright owner can do about it (famous early case from 1909 about a publisher that sued Macy's for selling its books below the price the publisher wanted. Copyright had nothing to do with the eventual sale price because first sale doctrine meant the publisher lost control of the physical books after it had made the initial sale, Macy's was not bound by further contractual obligations either).
      However, looking at statute there are exceptions to first sale. One is rental of music: Ever notice how you can get a movie from Netflix but not a CD? The same applies to software (with a narrow exception for videogames so places like Gamestop can stay open). This rule goes way back to the '70's & 80's when it was pretty obvious that music "rental" places were just fronts for mass copying of music. You'd go in, rent a record, and there would be blank tapes by the checkout and a wink & a nudge. See Section 109 of the copyright act for more on this.
      In the digital age, the same reasoning that applies to the exceptions to first sale doctrine has been extended to digital downloads. Here the actual instantiation of the copy is merely a set of bits sitting on a drive. It is too difficult to be able to make an actual "sale" of the instance when transferring it over the Internet. Before you say "but I delete the file after I send it!", the courts considered that and do not buy the argument. That's why the article notes that selling your entire eBook would count: you are transferring a physical manifestation of the copyrighted material instead of trying to play games with moving bits around.

    Where CAN there be limitations on sales of actual physical items: Well, most of the limits in the article have nothing to do with copyright. Instead, they are contractual limitations which you agree to when you purchase the eBook. Copyright gets confused with many other kinds of law, but don't forget once you are in privity (aka you make a deal to buy a book from Amazon) then the contract will likely be much more relevant than generic Copyright law.

Disclaimer: IANAL but I am a 2L in copyright class right now.

The Right to Read

[Anonymous Coward]

Just thought this was an opportune time to reference The Right to Read

Fine idea.

[gnutoo]

That sounds like a great way to do things and I'm sure there are many, many others.

What I'm interested in is preserving our rights. Publishers can think of ways to make money without robbing us of the ability to help our neighbor and without assuming draconian control of information. For them to violate our rights, we must agree to be threatened and prosecuted for doing things that are not crimes. It is better to keep them from making laws that threaten us than it is to try to do their job for them.

Publishers already know how things will work in a free society. They are not stupid and this is why they fight so hard. They understand that the broadcast era is over and with it their ability to control opinion and profit from every aspect of popular culture. There will be profits but they will be distributed and much closer to the artist than they are now. The big record companies, movie companies and paper publishers are out of luck and the damage done to public institutions will follow. With freedom comes truth and from truth we can expect justice. Without freedom, expect great injustice.

Re:Fine idea.

[shmlco]

It's all very well to speak of "publishers" in a derogatory sense, but totally ignore the fact that we're also talking about "authors". You know, the people who spend a year or so up front WRITING those books.

What I'm interested in is preserving EVERYONE'S rights.

Re:Fine idea.

[aleph42]

Oh, please.

the **AA always use that point, but everybody knows that theyare the only one who are going to lose in the new system (or in this case, the publishers are).

They only sell a centralised organisation to distribute content. And there is nothing they could invent to preserve the same insane margins that they had in the old system (well, publishers may not do as much money as Universal, but still).

On the contray, authors can find inventive new ways to reach the public and leverage the increased audiance and ease of use to get as much or more revenues.

Maybe some authors won't do as much money anymore; maybe some won't even make a living and will have to find an other job. But I don't think that there will be that many of them; and by definition, they won't be missed very much.

And if you don't beleive that the new system can reward authors, look at blogs: millions of authors getting advertising money, which is based directly on their success, and will either make them some extra cash or push them to make blogging their day job.

Re:Fine idea.

[peterarm]

I call bullshit: I have self-published a PDF-only book on Lulu, and I made $16 per copy. This book is currently for sale with a real publisher, and I would miss the PDF royalties *very* much if they evaporated. (My book is copied on BitTorrent, and there's nothing I can do about it.)

Authors are real people with families and mortgages; this isn't just some juvenile "you vs. the **AA" thing -- that may be true to a degree for records or movies where the **AA is evil, but it's not true for books. Many publishers are decent individuals, and authors aren't exactly millionaires...

Re:Fine idea.

[The Spoonman]

And they have no authority to determine how I execute mine. I want my books in a digital format so I can read them on my laptop, my PDA, my computer at work, my e-book reader...whatever. If you want to reduce my rights just to read your book, well, sorry I ain't going to buy it and you lose a sale. Only a fool would continue to release their art using "the old ways". I've purchased quite a bit of music and literature that I started out by downloading copies the author published for free on their site. I've then either donated or purchased a print copy, if it was good. If it wasn't, I didn't waste my money. These authors typically sell more copies of their books than those who go through traditional channels, indicating the marketplace is heading in that direction. It's the marketplace that decides how products are sold, not the content producers. We just want to pay them to share in their ideas, why is that a bad thing? Yes, some people are going to take advantage of the situation and never pay for everything. Boo-hooo. When I was a waiter I learned early: some people are never going to tip, but at the end of the night, my average per table was what was most important. With a little bit of work, you can download pretty much any book on the market today, yet books are still being sold everyday. Wonder why that is?

Re:Fine idea.

[Joe Tie.]

I'd say the customer is the one who gets to say how the transaction goes, or rather if it does. And if I can't read the ebook, I'm not going to buy it.

Re:Fine idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but you're completely wrong.

First of all, the only reason there is a market for the author to distribute his works is because of the artificial construct we have created in copyright. Without copyright, an author has basically two choices: sell it once or hide it. With copyright the author has two different choices: sell it lots of times according to the collective rules of society or hide it. That's basically it. Anything else (e.g. giving it away) is just a variation of those two choices.

Second, while the author is completely free within this system to do whatever the hell he or she wants, the reality is that if what he or she wants is to make money, then the market, not the artist, ultimately decides how the work is to be distributed. The only reason the market is not having its say right now is due to oligarchies such as the RIAA or because the market is relatively new (i.e. the ebooks market).

That desire is only driven by the cheapness of not wanting to pay for something you desire.

Your ad hominem argument is driven by your inability to think about and discuss the issue rationally.

Re:Fine idea.

[Mr2001]

I would miss the PDF royalties *very* much if they evaporated [...] Authors are real people with families and mortgages The folks who made a living selling buggy whips were real people too, with their own families and mortgages to worry about. Some of them, the ones who wouldn't or couldn't adapt to a changing world, lost their ability to provide for their families.

That's sad.

But you know what? Our society is better off now, because we were willing to bite the bullet and tell those people, "You're going to have to find another way to earn a living." If we had used the force of law to protect their incomes, those few people would've been better off -- at everyone else's expense.

We're in the same situation now. Some people won't or can't adapt to a world where they can't make a living selling copies of information: a world where their talent as artists and authors is still valuable, but only when it's applied directly, not indirectly via copyright.

Some of those people will be left behind, and that'll be sad too, but it's necessary. And just like the era of the automobile brought in a whole new set of jobs to replace the ones that were lost, so will this era.

Re:Fine idea.

[wall0159]

Yeah. Unfortunately, most people base their actions on selfishness, and try to justify them later by moralising...

While it makes sense to revise some of the ideas of copyright for internet distribution - I don't think it makes sense to advocate the wholesale destruction of 'Intellectual property' as a concept. I don't believe that cheapskates and freeloaders should define public policy.

While I have shared original music on Jamendo (for example), I also know that my day-job is dependent on the fact that I am creating value for my company by creating new ideas and writing software. These are not tangible, and in the absence of IP protection would be nearly valueless (in a monetary sense, to the company - I realise they would likely have some value to society as a whole. But then, isn't that the point of copyright - to reward those that contribute to society, and hence hopefully encourage more to contribute. If there were no IP laws, my company would likely not exist)

Re:Fine idea.

[WNight]

What's the link? If it's any good I'll talk about it at least, and may buy it if I really like it.

As for how you make money, why do authors deserve a perpetual income from a one-time creation?

Write a book, get lifelong monopoly rights. Write a song, get lifetime royalties but no control. Build a chair, sell it once. Design a neat house, watch everyone design their own with your neat idea while you get nothing. Do someone's accounting and have no rights to the figures. Spend time and resources compiling a factual text and find all the facts duplicated on someone's website.

It's a little arbitrary what's blessed.

Why do you, by virtue of the specific way you make marks on paper, deserve society footing the bill for your copyright protection?

Without chair-builder's monopoly rights, do carpenters stop making chairs? Without control over similar designs, do architects stop designing houses? Without protection for facts, do news agencies quit reporting?

Some profit motives (like writing games) goes away, but others remain (sponsoring a game to sell console hardware). id Software wouldn't have the incentive to write Quake, but what if Sony had them write it for the Playstation, to encourage gamers to use their product? Sony payed a lot for temporary exclusivity of Grand Theft Auto (not technologically enforced - simply because only the playstation port was released).

Re:Fine idea.

[toriver]

The point is that the anti-consumer industries - that is, the industries trying to restrict more and more what someone who bought their products can do with them - forget that copyright is a government-granted monopoly and not a "natural right". Copyright stems from back in the day when "work" was stuff like smithing and tilling fields. Sitting around on your ass writing books or painting did not put food or tools into the community. But the lawmakers saw that cultural products had intrinsic value, and thus created an incentive for creators to make a living from their art but also ensured that those works would eventually enter the public domain and become part of the shared culture.

Then we got the industry (where "art" is replaced by "product") and the lobbyists (who fight to keep works out of the public domain) and now "the artists" have been superseded by organizations that cry their crocodile tears over the plight of the artist, while in reality representing soulless commercial entities who provide crappy contracts unless you are very smart or very famous and can dictate your own terms.

You are right that we "do not get to determine how someone else distributes their work" - but Congress (in the case of USA) does.

Re:Fine idea.

[rolfwind]

You're wrong. Some buggy whip manufacturers didn't have to change, some made a successful dive into S&M products.

Re:Fine idea.

[cpt kangarooski]

Yeah. Unfortunately, most people base their actions on selfishness, and try to justify them later by moralising...

While it makes sense to revise some of the ideas of copyright for internet distribution - I don't think it makes sense to advocate the wholesale destruction of 'Intellectual property' as a concept. I don't believe that cheapskates and freeloaders should define public policy. ... But then, isn't that the point of copyright - to reward those that contribute to society, and hence hopefully encourage more to contribute.

Sadly, you sound selfish to me. But don't get me wrong; that's perfectly fine.

Copyright is based on selfishness. The public is greedy; it doesn't care about authors for their own sake, it only cares about having more works created and published, and having those works for free, sans any kind of restriction or protection, so that it can do what it pleases with them. Copyright is simply a policy to try to satisfy that greed, by stimulating creation and publication, with as few restrictions as possible, for as little time as possible. If the benefit to the public of the stimulus is outweighed by the harm to the public of the restriction, it isn't in the public interest.

There's no intent to reward authors at all. The idea is to exploit their selfishness so that they'll do things -- create and publish works -- that are in the public interest. Copyright is no reward; it's a bribe. And it's not meant to be a generous bribe. If an author would create and publish a work in exchange for a 5 year copyright, it would be idiotic to offer him a 6 year copyright; it'd be idiotic, even if the author would prefer it.

So basically, we have a system that is geared around public selfishness, but with a recognition of the fact that immediate gratification might be quite weak, and that a delay can produce vastly greater results (like allowing cattle to mature, be milked, reproduce, and then be eaten, instead of having lots of veal but causing cows to go extinct). It functions by exploiting the selfishness of authors, who in some cases will not create and publish works without a bribe. (Those that would create and publish anyway don't deserve to be bribed, obviously)

Selfishness is the very heart of copyright. It's a system that works best -- for the public, I don't care about authors -- when cheapskates and freeloaders administrate it, since we want to maximize the net public benefit. Generosity would interfere with that.

Your position is understandable as an author; you are selfish, and want to increase what you get, regardless of the effect on the public. You wouldn't respond to copyrights at all if you weren't, so no one is upset with you. It's just important that we ignore you for the most part, and only give you the bare minimum that it will take in order to get you creating.

Re:Fine idea.

[cpt kangarooski]

Why should I spend months or years researching and writing a book, if there's absolutely nothing to stop people from freely distributing it once its out there? Sure, some people are still going to writem but it'll be fewer, and I fail to see how our culture would benefit from that.

The public benefits from having more works created and published. The public _also_ benefits from being unrestricted with regard to works, so that they can be republished for minimal cost (rather than the monopoly prices charged by copyright holders), altered, etc. In an ideal world, we'd have both.

This isn't an ideal world, though, so we wind up trading a bit of the latter kind of benefit in order to get a more than proportionately larger increase in the latter. The idea is to get as close to that ideal as possible, so we look to maximize the public benefit: terms that are just barely long enough to encourage creation and publication, but by all means so short that they don't interfere much with the public.

completely taking away any creator's rights is not the answer, either

It can be. Copyright is artificial, and a lack of it is the natural state of things. It's our baseline for judging how good a copyright system is: does it produce a greater public benefit (more works created and published and unrestricted) than having no copyright at all? I think that some form of copyright (much less than we have now) would produce a greater benefit, but it's certainly possible that none would. So abolishment always has to remain on the table as a possible option.

Re:Fine idea.

[hairyfeet]

Please mod this guy up.Despite what these distributors and the *.AAs of the world say about "pirates" what these bozos are pulling is what every robber baron has tried to do since the beginning of time,which is to control the market.Make no mistake,to these people money is strictly hoarded and carefully applied toward the primary goal,which is POWER.After all,once you have made yourself the gatekeeper and sole distributor you can always jack up the price later.These bozos want everything wrapped up in shiny DRM with nice prison terms for those that dare break it,not to protect the "creators",but to ensure that all content has to go through them for any chance at a mainstream audience.

Be it books,music,games,movies,etc they simply don't want there to be a free market,because then you could choose not to play in their DRM games.When you purchase DRM,you get absolutely nothing in return.The maker of the DRM can take away that which you have paid for at any time.After all,you didn't actually "buy" the content.What you "bought"(rented) was a license to "use"(until they say different) the file containing the content according to a EULA that nearly always gives the distributor the right to change the rules at any time.Sad to say that if ebooks of this type end up the defacto standard we could very well end up with libraries becoming nothing more than Blockbuster videos for words.

We can only hope that the world at large doesn't buy into their shell game,because sadly here in the US they can get any law they want passed by whipping out their collective checkbook.And our media will happily parrot whatever the suits want them to say.I am just waiting on the newsspeak to become as bad as the scene in Airplane II "Four alarm fire makes way for glorious new tractor factory!" or in this case "New eternal copyrights and digital defenses are paired with ten year mandatory prison sentences to protect poor starving artists against rampant organized Internet thievery!" But as always this is my 02c,YMMV.

Re:Fine idea.

[sempernoctis]

The difference is that the government wanted to stimulate the production of creative works. That's why copyright (and patent) law was created in the first place. If you compile facts into an original work, that also gets copyright protection (though the individual facts may separately be used...you didn't create them, you just compiled them). But of course, nobody enforces this outside the academic community because researchers don't pay RIAA or MPAA dues. The real problem here is that with the comparatively massive resources the MAFIAA has and their ability to use them to lobby the government, the rights of a few corporations are being prioritized over the rights of the individuals buying and producing the content, so copyright law now serves more to allow publishers to extort money from consumers than to reward artists for their work.

Re:Fine idea.

[Mr2001]

What exactly are you saying? That *writers* need to find another way to earn a living? Yes, exactly.

The analogy isn't between buggy whips and writing, it's between buggy whips and selling copies. Fewer people want to pay for copies in a world where they can make their own copies for free, just like fewer people want to pay for buggy whips in a world where they can get around without a horse and buggy.

Writers, musicians, and everyone else who makes a living by selling copies needs to wrap their head around that. Their talent -- the act of coming up with a story and putting it into words -- is still valuable, and if they charge directly for using it, they can keep making money, because people will always want to read new stories.

The idea that a writer's job is to sell books is a relic of a time when copying books was difficult and copyright was easy to enforce. Now, copying is trivial and copyright is virtually unenforceable. That doesn't mean writing won't be viable anymore, only that selling books won't be a viable way to make money as a writer.

reduced rights for reduced price

[fermion]

When I bough a record I had the 'right' to copy that record onto tape and other medium, and, normally, I kept the record as a backup. I could in fact sell the original item, under the assumption, not always true, that I did not keep the copies The same is true for CDs. I do not think anything in the constitution or copyright law gives me the right to sell the copies and keep the original or vis versa, though I know many people did. Likewise giving copies to friends was not protected behavior, but it happened.

With the VHS tape, we are not so lucky. Though VHS was relatively easy to copy, people want to put you in jail for ripping a DVD. Madness. Waste of police enforcement resources. But people are happy because frankly, in inflation adjusted terms, movies are comparatively cheap now, unless you pay the early adopter fee. In addition, studios add original content to DVDs so it not just the same old stale product.

What I can't understand is how they expect to move towards downloaded movies, that cost more than a DVD and has less content, or ebooks that have nothing but restrictions. It is not that first sale doctrine should necessarily apply. We are not buying a physical product, at least not in most cases. But If I the lowly consumer must give up some flexibility, then so should the publisher

And herein, I believe is the problem. We see overall that publishers are not making equal sacrifices. We here that studios are still charging packaging and return product percentages when there are not packaging or physical product. Likewise newspaper prices have been going up, allegedly, because of the increasing price of paper, ink, and transportation, yet many publishers refuse to leave those expensive relics behind. Evidently those items are not so expensive when compared to the loss of physical ad revenue. The NYT Times want $15 a month for the electronic edition.

So here is the issue we are going to see with E-Books. Cost of a paperback, $8. Cost of an E-Book, $10. Fine, there is a connivence fee, but if I can't resell it, if I can't put it on whatever device I want to use a the moment, I can;t return it the next day, then why the hell am I a paying the same amount for a book? To maintain the luxury corporate offices in New York, Paris, and London. I don't think so. Just like iTMS, Just like the DVD, if you are going to restrict use, give me something in return. For books the logical thing is price. No paper costs, no overstock costs, no shipping costs. I know the publishers are saying, well, a hardback is $30, so we are giving you a 60% discount. But you are not. I could wait a month or two and buy that hardback second hand for $10. Now I can't. The publisher will be getting all the money for every sales. So compromise and don't be the greedy bastards that never learn and put this country on the brink of financial crisis every 40 years of so. Sell the ebooks for $5-8 and I bet that all this will go away. If you are going to create a market where you control everything, be a compassionate fascist and give your peasants a break.

Garage Sales

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Garage sales sell lots of books for oft near a dime.

I have at least a years backlog built up to read.

If people turn their backs on the cash grab, then the folks trying to grab cash will painfully learn the lesson.

Re:This is 100% consistent with current copyright

[icegreentea]

Wouldn't that run into some problems with reproduction? This is why photocopying and book and then selling the photocopy isn't allowed, or why the DVDs on sale in Chinatown for 3 bucks are illegal.

Easy solution: hard copy

[MasterC]

The Kindle is $399. The books listed on the Kindle page are $9.99 each. Picking a random book: Sue Grafton's T is for Trespass. Kind price: $9.99. Hardcover price: $17.79.

(Something I find extremely interesting is Amazon compares the kindle price to the hard cover list price ($26.95) AND does not link to any other versions of the book, but the hard cover sure does. It seems they are intentionally wanting to give the false sense of "what a deal!" and making it harder to jump to a non-kindle version.)

$7.80 may look like a lot (Amazon will tell you $26.95-$9.99=$16.96 ...more than double the market price difference) but is having the ebook worth the difference? Grafton's previous book -- S for Silence -- is $7.99 for paperback ($4.24 if you buy 3rd party to Amazon) and $6.39 for Kindle (again, Kindle page doesn't list other editions). A whopping $1.60 difference. $1.60 to [legally] be permanently locked to that copy with your Kindle with no rights to sell that copy to any one, nor transfer to other devices, etc. (I don't think I need to list them).

Is $1.60 (or -$2.15 if 3rd party) or $7.80 worth it to switch to Kindle? Not to me, so I'll stick to being a tree-killer. I won't ever switch to ebooks that trap my money and ability to do as I please.

(I also don't own HD DVD (hah!) nor Blu-Ray and never will until I can play them under my OS of choice, but I digress.)

Honestly, if it comes down to DRM books and DRM movies where I can't read/play on the device of my choice then I'll happily give them up. But it won't be for long because the time will come when good creators of books and film will not be hamstrung by those who demand DRM. That is if the recent digital "experiments" by known musicians are of any indication.

Re:I got a better lawyer^Widea

[Fael]

What a stup

(PLEASE WAIT FOR AD TO LOAD ...)
(ENLARGE YOUR PEN1S NOW ASK ME HOW)

endously great idea.

Truth in advertising

[LihTox]

What lets companies get away with this is that consumers don't know about it, and stores toss around words like "buy" and "sell" when the more appropriate term might be "(indefinite) lease". Let's pass a law forbidding e-book sellers from saying in their advertising "Buy this e-book!" or "We have e-books for sale!"; if they are forced to say "Buy a license for this e-book!" or "Lease this e-book!" and consumers will get the idea that something is up, and become informed.

Ditto for DVDs, music, software, or anything else where the manufacturer claims to be selling licenses.

Re:I got a better lawyer^Widea

[popo]

Until someone develops an AdBlock for eBooks.

I just removed AdBlock from my system for exactly this reason. One can't bitch about draconian efforts to extract money from consumers, and then circumvent the one last option left to content producers: ad revenue.

.

Mod Parent Up and REJECT BOOK ADVERTIZING!!!

[RobBebop]

Actually, don't mod parent up because he was an Anonymous Coward, but as an aspiring author I would say that anybody seeking to use their writing to shill for advertisers does not deserve to be read.

I am in support of the business model where readers can experience an author's work from a free digital download... and then vote with their pocketbook by making a "donation" if they think what they "experienced" was worth it.

That is --- "read now, pay later". I think the days of "pay now, read later" are numbered.

Then again, I am continually refining my manuscript so that it will be readable for a mass audience. As is, the compliments I get are that the "story" is awesome but the actually story-telling is lacking (which I am, of course, working on).

Re:Mod Parent Up and REJECT BOOK ADVERTIZING!!!

[tomhudson]

What is so bad about having, for example, a mention in the acknowledgments or preface "this book sponsored by so-and-so"?

Just because web advertisers overdo advertising to the point that we're all pretty much "ad-blind" doesn't mean that, properly done, an ebook won't be effective.

Most books don't even earn thair advance money - which is typically less than $5,000 http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2005/10/05/author-advance-survey-version-20/ - note the comments about self-selection that would tend to bias the reported amount upward.

So, rather than having a seriously limited run, why not make it so that it's free for people to pass around, etc? The books that are little more than ad-paks will be displaced by the higher-quality books with only one or two ads, since people are more likely to find the latter more useful and more likely to pass a copy or 5 along to friends and coworkers.

"Free is good" - free as in cost, free as in the right to make copies and pass them along, free as in the author can choose who and how the sponsor is presented in his or her work.

Re:Mod Parent Up and REJECT BOOK ADVERTIZING!!!

[RobBebop]

What is so bad about having, for example, a mention in the acknowledgments or preface "this book sponsored by so-and-so"?

I want to answer your question with one of my own. What is so bad about having legislators or judges in the government who are sponsored by so-and-so? I admit that the comparison between entertainment and politics is extreme, but hopefully you agree that ensuring a stream of money to finance future projects is as important for writers as it is for politicians. A writer who takes money from Exxon might be tempted or persuaded to change minor points in his or her plotline to be more oil-friendly.

"Free is good" - free as in cost, free as in the right to make copies and pass them along, free as in the author can choose who and how the sponsor is presented in his or her work.

I agree. In my original post I mentioned giving readers a "read now, pay later" option. This would benefit the economy by ensuring that only authors with good stories will develop readerships. And *those* readers with tell their friends. And a fraction of the satisfied readers will click on the appropriate "Donate now" links on the novel's website and the author will get a very clear idea whether people are "buying" his (or her) work or not. In theory, writers who sell well will get the coveted opportunity to quit their day jobs and write full-time.

I even encourage giving interested parties the freedom to develop derivative works, but only on stories which have produced a certain level of revenue to satisfy the needs of the author (i.e. to prevent Hollywood from producing a film and profit from it without paying a dime for the rights). You can read more about that theory here.

Re:Mod Parent Up and REJECT BOOK ADVERTIZING!!!

[Original Replica]

What is so bad about having legislators or judges in the government who are sponsored by so-and-so?

If I have a book that I find to be offensive or a failure, I can burn it. Extend that to legislators and judges and I would have no problem with them being publicly sponsored by so-and-so.

Re:I got a better lawyer^Widea

[WNight]

You've got the right to hit mute, even if ads are how the publishers make their money in the long run.

Turn it back on and clear the block list. Then block only annoying ads.

They'll be able to see viewing statistics for the ads and they should realize that some users are blocking some of the ads. Blocking the real garbage keeps from rewarding the jerks, and gives the people who play nice a better chance. If they investigate they might find that giant pulsing banners aren't popular...

Re:I got a better lawyer^Widea

[tomhudson]

Which would you rather have?

• Option 1: A proprietary format eBook that you can't copy, share, pass around to others, back up to other media, etc., even after you paid for it?

• Option 2: A free eBook that you can copy, share, pass around to others, back up to other media, etc., and that didn't cost you a cent?

Having a business act as your books' sponsor doesn't mean turning it into the eBook equivalent of an ad-jammed web page. That would be counter-productive. A notice that "this book is sponsored by xyz corp" on the front page, and an ad on one the inside cover pages for the same sponsor, with no other advertising by the sponsor or anyone else (so as not to dilute the ads' value) should be sufficient if the eBook is any good.

Now which of the two above options appeals more to advertisers? An eBook that has only limited distribution rights, and that they can't give away ... or one that, if it's any good, will be passed around all over the place? And which of the two will they be more likely to promote?

Free (as in freedom) wins every time, if done right.

Its a revokable right to read

[nurb432]

Don't forget that at any time ( if you are using some sort of online-DRM system ) that what you purchase a right to read for can be yanked from you in an instant.

All it will take is one judge to declare the 'book' violated some copyright and it suddenly disappears off readers all over the country. Or how about the government decides its 'forbidden information', once again causing 'books' to disappear. ( after reporting back who had the copy for further investigation. how dare they want to learn about the forbidden fruit ). Your so called contract is null and void at that point and you possess something that is considered illegal.

Oh, and that little clause in all contacts that lets THEM change the terms... "now we are moving to a pay pre read model, id you don't accept this agreement all previous contracts are null and void" and then once again, poof goes your 'book'.

No thanks, ill keep my paper thank you very much. ( even self-scanned unencumbered books will eventually get bit by the 'not licensed to view' DRM bug once they lock all machines down to were ALL content must be authorized by a central body or its rejected and reported )

Setting the record straight...

[Garwulf]

Sorry that I'm not replying in a specific thread, but I'm seeing a lot of misconceptions in this discussion, and I want to hit as many of them as possible with just one post. I am a published author, as well as an editor, and I am now also the owner of a small publishing company that recently put out its first book - so understanding the ins and outs of this is very important to what I do.

First of all - the issues with e-books and first sale doctrines. When it comes down to it, copyright law is in regards to how copies are made (while this does involve the public to some degree, it's far more about how creative artists deal with their distributors and keeping one group from ripping off the other). If you buy a print book, and then resell it, or give it away to somebody, you are not making a copy. However, that's not something you can do with an e-book - if you give a copy of a Kindle book you just bought to a friend, you are actually making a copy, and that does violate copyright law. So that's where the problem lies. It is not a conspiracy to take people's rights away.

(Think of it like this - it's the difference between buying a book and giving your friend a copy, and buying a book, photocopying it, and then giving your friend the photocopy.)

Second - where e-books are going. A few people here are talking about how DRM on e-books are going to wipe out libraries. This is complete garbage. It is absolute nonsense in part because libraries are protected under copyright law in most countries (even in the United States, the "Sonny Bono" act had special dispensation for libraries). But, it is mostly nonsense because in order for e-books to wipe out libraries, the e-book would first have to wipe out the print book, and that just isn't going to happen.

I'm speaking from experience here - e-books are really a lot like radio. They're great for getting samples out, but if somebody really likes what they're reading, they want a copy of it on paper. The last time people were talking about how books were going to go digital, I was there in the ranks of e-book authors in the great "e-book revolution." And I had absolutely everything going for me - I was the author of Diablo: Demonsbane, the e-book launching the entire official Diablo fiction line, and Diablo II had sold millions of copies, which back then was almost unheard of for computer games. Advertisements for Demonsbane were showing up on Battle.net, so pretty much every Diablo multiplayer fan had at least some inkling that the book existed.

To this day, eight years later, I don't think the book sold more than 1,000 copies. And I was one of the e-book authors who did WELL - about the only thing I didn't have going for me was that I wasn't Stephen King.

By 2001, the e-book revolution had fizzled, and a bunch of publishers, Pocket Books included, stopped releasing them. And Demonsbane was released in every read-only format you could get, including Acrobat Reader. And it wasn't DRM that killed it, believe me. I've had a lot of time to think about why the print book didn't even notice the e-book assault was happening.

Frankly, it all comes down to barriers to entry. If you think about it, most of the technology that has caught on has been reducing barriers to entry for something. Take music, for example. We started off with the record, and then moved to the tape, which was smaller and more compact. Then came the CD, which had no moving parts. And now there's the MP3, which doesn't require a CD. But there was always a barrier to entry in music. That's not the case with a print book.

A print book requires only the ability to read, your eyes, and a light source. An e-book requires more - you need a power source, and a reader of some sort, be it a computer or a Kindle, etc. The readers are subject to obsolescence, as are the file formats. So, instead of removing barriers to entry, an e-book raises them.

Now, an e-book does have its purposes, and if you're on a long trip, it is far more handy to