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No, David Pogue, Ebook Piracy Is Not a Given
adamengst writes "David Pogue recently wrote a widely read blog post in which he explains that piracy is the reason he doesn't make his books available in PDF format. But in this article, TidBITS publisher Adam Engst disagrees strongly with Pogue's opinion, using sales numbers from the Take Control series of ebooks (150,000+ copies sold since 2004 with virtually no copying) as proof that making electronic versions not only doesn't necessarily lead to piracy, it may be the best way of preventing illicit sharing."
It might not be green, but the best reader I've found is the book. Perhaps I'm in the minority. I saw somewhere that there are people in Japan who not only read books on their cell phones, they also write books on their cell phones. Perhaps they're more evolved than me. If I found a book online that looked interesting and was available in dead tree format, I'd buy it in dead tree format, or look for it at bookmooch.com.
That applies to reference books as well, like Mr. Pogue's. I've got shelves of them. But in the case of reference books, I wouldn't mind a searchable version as well. Hm, perhaps I should pay a visit to thepiratebay.org...
Loose lips lose spit.
Here is what Eric Flint has to say about ebooks and piracy:
Baen Books is now making available â" for free â" a number of its titles in electronic format. We're calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online â" no conditions, no strings attached. (Later we may ask for an extremely simple, name & email only, registration. ) Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. Again, with no conditions or strings attached. (URLs to sites which offer the readers for these format are also listed. )
Why are we doing this? Well, for two reasons.
The first is what you might call a "matter of principle." This all started as a byproduct of an online "virtual brawl" I got into with a number of people, some of them professional SF authors, over the issue of online piracy of copyrighted works and what to do about it.
There was a school of thought, which seemed to be picking up steam, that the way to handle the problem was with handcuffs and brass knucks. Enforcement! Regulation! New regulations! Tighter regulations! All out for the campaign against piracy! No quarter! Build more prisons! Harsher sentences!
Alles in ordnung!
I, ah, disagreed. Rather vociferously and belligerently, in fact. And I can be a vociferous and belligerent fellow. My own opinion, summarized briefly, is as follows:
1. Online piracy â" while it is definitely illegal and immoral â" is, as a practical problem, nothing more than (at most) a nuisance. We're talking brats stealing chewing gum, here, not the Barbary Pirates.
2. 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.
3. Any cure which relies on tighter regulation of the market â" especially the kind of extreme measures being advocated by some people â" is far worse than the disease. As a widespread phenomenon rather than a nuisance, piracy occurs when artificial restrictions in the market jack up prices beyond what people think are reasonable. The "regulation-enforcement-more regulation" strategy is a bottomless pit which continually recreates (on a larger scale) the problem it supposedly solves. And that commercial effect is often compounded by the more general damage done to social and political freedom.
In the course of this debate, I mentioned it to my publisher Jim Baen. He more or less virtually snorted and expressed the opinion that if one of his authors â" how about you, Eric? â" were willing to put up a book for free online that the resulting publicity would more than offset any losses the author might suffer.
The minute he made the proposal, I realized he was right. 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 â" hey, whaddaya know? â" over that time it's become Baen's most popular backlist title in paper!
And so I volunteered my first novel, Mother of Demons, to prove the case. And the next day Mother of Demons went up online, offered to the public for free.
Sure enough, within a day, I received at least half a dozen messages (some posted in public forums, others by private email) from people who told me that, based on hearing about the episode and checking out Mother of Demons, they either had or intended to buy the book. In one or two cases, t
I can't agree enough. Why am I not allowed to download German or Japanese MP3s on Itunes just because I'm in the US store? The only way to get it is to pay 5 times its worth by importing the CD, or play some stupid game where I import a foreign iTunes gift card.
How about anime series and films that just don't get picked up by a licensing company? Just because I watch fansubs doesn't mean I'm not willing to pay for the series--QUITE the opposite in fact. And seriously, I'm sick of anime licensing companies packing DVDs with figures and other collectibles to jack up the price. I pick up a box thinking I found a box set of a series, only to find out that there's only one DVD and a bunch of fluff.
Putting aside foreign stuff for a second. I want all of the Dexter's Lab episodes and Courage the Cowardly Dog episodes on DVD or mp4. I can't get them in this fashion unless I get some burned bootleg DVD on eBay. Why? The series "Reboot" only offered the first and third seasons on DVD. How does that make ANY sense?
Or how about old Lucasarts adventure games? They aren't exactly rushing to put them out for digital distribution. Id, Epic, Eidos, Take Two, and other companies are offering their back catalog on steam, yet I have to rummage through garage sales to find Maniac Mansion.
I pretty much have my pick of music that was made in my country, and even some of the more popular foreign stuff. But I want access to EVERYTHING I'm interested in, not just what business deals and International Copyright Law say I can buy.
I don't pirate because I'm "sticking it to the man." I pirate because I tell the man "Let me give you money!" and he says "No."
business execs) rarely understand is that piracy usually indicates an unfulfilled market.
.. up to 10 dollars, and a per unit production cost of 2 dollars.
Monopoly pricing always creates an unfulfilled market; revenue is maximized at a pricing point far above the fulfillable market.
A classic economic example would be this: You have ten customers who would pay 1, 2, 3
Set the price at 10 dollars and you get 1 customer paying ten dollars; $10 in revenue. Lower the price, $8 gets you 3 customers, $24 total revenue. $7 gets you $28. Subtract 4 times $2 for unit costs and you get $20 profit. Try $6 price, that gets you $30 income minus 5 times $2, the same $20 profit.
Turns out $7, with 4 customers would maximize your profit. That leaves the 5 people between $2 (minimum production cost) and $7 unfulfilled. In a free market, competition would force prices down towards $2, maximizing the total wealth in the market. In the monopoly market, the wealth created by fulfilling the market is lost (well, unless the potential customers pirate the material).