Slashdot Mirror
Copyright Infringement of Books
Maximum Prophet recommends a NY Times piece on the growing phenomenon of unauthorized digital versions of copyrighted books showing up online. The problem has been growing exponentially, fed in part by the popularity of reading devices such as the Kindle and the iPhone. The article features the odd photographic juxtaposition of Cory Doctorow and Ursula K. Le Guin, who take opposite views on electronic editions, authorized or not. Ms. Le Guin: "I thought, who do these people think they are? Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?" Mr. Doctorow: "I really feel like my problem isn't piracy. It's obscurity." "Doctorow, a novelist whose young adult novel 'Little Brother' spent seven weeks on the New York Times children's chapter books best-seller list last year, offers free electronic versions of his books on the same day they are published in hardcover. He believes free versions, even unauthorized ones, entice new readers."
http://books.google.com.au/books?printsec=frontcover&id=zmpxV1ygjvsC
"To the end of the solar system .. the story of the Nuclear Rocket." By James A. Dewar
Every page appears to be there. Thanks Google!
How we know is more important than what we know.
http://ebookshare.net/
Go to Usenet, get just about everything you could want. Build up a personal library of hundreds of texts that would match a (small town) library.
The book publishing industry will go the way of the music and movie industries, just a bit slower since reading text on a monitor is still not quite as easy as a real book.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Doctorow's argument can be easily countered by pointing out the fact that he sells an order of magnitude less books than LeGuin.
re:"Mr. Doctorow: "I really feel like my problem isn't piracy. It's obscurity.""
I think his real problem is he can't write. Might explain the obscurity.
... there is really so much competition for peoples time these days it's little wonder companies like to blame lack of sales on piracy.
I'd really like someone to add up all the hours it would take to experience x's book or y's product and they'd soon begin to realize it would take someone an ENTIRE LIFETIME not even to get through a fraction of what is out there.
I usually only buy books that I think are worth something over the long term. People have way too many options today to fill their time. Also with the advent of the net discussing and sharing insights, any book that is published quickly becomes out-dated.
One thing I hope electronic books allow is real-time updates to books so that they can stay fresh, with a wikipedia like revision system that tracks version and revision history (for those that need it).
Personally electronic books when done right (when the software gets there) will allow copying and pasting a whole bunch of different things that you can't do with a real book. Both will have their place I think.
FTFA:
"The question is, how much time and energy do I want to spend chasing these guys," Stephen King wrote in an e-mail message. "And to what end? My sense is that most of them live in basements floored with carpeting remnants, living on Funions and discount beer."
Parent poster:
Go to Usenet
Sounds about right.
Mr. Doctorow: "I really feel like my problem isn't piracy. It's obscurity."
There, there, Cory. People are paying attention to you now. It's okay.
Poor damned kids.
Back in his day they had this distributed network of his plays called Uyznettee. Only Uyznettee used horses as the transport. They would stick a small cannonball up the horse's backside for a "one." An empty horse was a "zero." Occasional errors occurred if a horse voided before the transfer was complete, but a parity horse took care of that.
"Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?"
Because ultimately books are supposed to be "spread around", and not hidden away.
Should I put you on my list of "Big Jerks of Sci-Fi" next to Ellison now?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Why do artists always keep complaining? Write good books, make good music, make interesting movies, and the money will flow in, piracy or no piracy. Write crappy books, make more crappy pop songs, and make boring as heck movies and your income will dry up. Piracy or no piracy.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I'm a two-bit, small time computer book author with just one book to my name so far. I love seeing my book get pirated. It's sold reasonably well for its niche (approaching 10,000 copies) but for the second edition I pleaded with my publisher to allow the e-book version to be free. Of the, say, 10,000 copies sold, only a couple hundred have been of the e-book edition, and I'm convinced that the wider exposure a free e-book would gather would result in increased print sales. When Seth Godin gave away the free PDF of his Ideavirus book, it led to me buying his various other books in print throughout the years. Doctorow is right that obscurity is a bigger hurdle than piracy, but I'm pretty convinced that even big name authors could benefit from extended reach thanks to freely distributed content.
My argument rests on people preferring paper to e-books, and I think they do. I sure do. Sadly, big name publishers tend to disagree, despite a number of convincing social media experiments, but over time perhaps change will happen.
Since Jim Baen isn't around any more, maybe Eric Flint could moderate.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I'm sure Cory is right that, at the moment, electronic versions entice more readers. However, that's because currently there aren't so many electronic versions of popular recent books. So if you're reading e-books, you're quite likely to find Cory's work, and perhaps start reading more of his stuff. But what happens when the market is flooded with e-books? You read your favourite authors and Cory gets nothing if you haven't already found, liked and are prepared to pay for his writing.
Honestly, lets all give up making unauthorized copies of books. I mean, when you do that, its almost like distributing them in a fully public medium, for free- readers don't have to pay a DIME.
Well, that, sir, is the worst form of terrorism. Certainly neither I nor our great US&A government could support an endeavor of such despicable intent.
Besides, you cant beat the independent authors industry- they're too powerful.
When you stop and consider that the typical author's royalty is less than 10% of the cover price, you realize how inefficient the distribution model is. If that doesn't do it for you, take a look at the price of classics that have long since been in the public domain, as they're not cheap either. What exactly is the value add of the publishers, distributors, and retailers? For today, it's the inherent complexity in forecasting demand and then printing, warehousing, distributing, and selling books.
People still buy books and newspapers because the portability and physical experience is better than a notebook or even a Kindle. That's the opposite of the situation with CDs and DVDs, where the physical media just adds to the nuisance.
While the book publishing industry has nothing approaching the expense structure the record labels had during the glory days, I'd still be looking for a new career if I were a junior editor or sales assistant at Doubleday.
I understand that expecting any kind of objectivity on Slashdot is really asking too much, but why is is that Doctorow's quote is in the submission by itself? Either publish both Doctorow's quote and something from Le Guin, or don't publish a quote at all.
They would stick a small cannonball up the horse's backside for a "one." An empty horse was a "zero."
Up the backside, huh? I guess that should be called "rear-to-rear sharing" then.
Oh no... it's the future.
From TFA: "Until recently, publishers believed books were relatively safe from piracy because it was so labor-intensive to scan each page to convert a book to a digital file. What's more, reading books on the computer was relatively unappealing compared with a printed version."
I spent a few minutes looking for a legitimate, for-sale e-book version of The Left Hand of Darkness; there isn't one.
So the publishing companies are simply repeating the mistake of the record labels: being slow to release legitimate downloadable versions of their product while bemoaning the demand for a product they refuse to produce.
Cry me a river...
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
I have an app on my phone that lets me download/read free ebooks. I read Little Brother because it was freely available for me to read. I had never read anything by Doctrow in the past and had been only passingly aware of him before. So... so far as becoming less obscure goes, I think he's dead on. I had easy, legal access to his work and so I gave him a chance. OTOH, I've heard of Ms Le Guin and I haven't read anything she's written - so she's probably not too worried about obscurity.
I think it comes down to the fact that the internet can be used for self-promotion on a scale that other media cannot match. Doctrow (as a somewhat niche author) gets this and uses it (to his advantage, it is assumed). Le Guin (as an already established author) doesn't have the same need for promotion and so is more concerned with the (perceived) economic loss.
Makes sense to me.
Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
"I thought, who do these people think they are? Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?"
The People. The ultimate holders of authority. If they decide to amend the Constitution to abolish your and everyone else's copyright, they can, so I suggest you show them some respect.
Also dear author, it's a *privilege* not to have your books copied, not a natural right. Learn the difference. You can control your property and lock your book inside a vault where none can see it, but you have no right to control other people's property or how it is used.
And finally that privilege is a *temporary* privilege. Eventually all your works will fall into public domain, just like Mark Twain's works. The arts are meant to be free, not locked-up forever.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
There seems to be an inherent gut-level bias against the notion of somebody getting something for nothing. Even if it turns out good in the end. No matter how many people testify that releasing free copies of their work has actually increased their net income, people like Ms. LeGuin can't get away from, "Mine! Mine! Let go!"
In general, I find the books I want to read either 1) get popular enough that they eventually drop down to a reasonable price, 2) are just popular enough that it's available without a wait at the library, or 3) is so obscure that I can buy one of the 30 copies that are actually still available for a couple of hundred bucks on Amazon.
Note that the one I would most be interested in an electronic copy of (legal or not), is the one that is least likely to have an electronic copy.
There are only a few books out there that are both popular enough that a good number of people want to read them, and yet not popular enough that buying the book is actually easier than hunting down the torrent or scanning yourself. Those writers will probably get hit hardest, and the gap between immensely successful writers and sort-of-successful writers may widen because of it. As an industry-wide problem though, I doubt it'll ever have the effect that it's had on, say, the music industry.
Guess which author these two quotes make me more likely to read?
Moderators: Before moderating a comment Insightful/Informative, check to see if a child post has already refuted it.
Wait ... Cory Doctorow thinks he's obscure? If he's obscure, what writer is well known?
Is there any SF reader who doesn't know his name?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Interesting, I just submitted a related story. It's now in the firehose, and deals with a philosophy professor in Argentina who is getting sued for posting Spanish versions of Jacques Derrida's work online.
The publisher claims - not sure how they explain it - that putting the texts online for free will harm the diffusion of Derrida's work. The philosophy professor responds that they are making Derrida die a second death by removing the texts.
"My argument rests on people preferring paper to e-books, and I think they do."
For now, but that's mainly due to the extreme slowness of e-ink. Imagine if colour video-speed e-ink. Many people would stop buying paper books even if the price doesn't come down at all.
Sometimes, just to be a jackass, I will find these illicit copies and do subtle things before I pass them on. Things like a find/replace on character names or finding the "dénouement paragraph" and putting it on the first page. I also like to get MP3s from torrents, run them thru Audacity to make them left channel only, and then seed them out to some cheapskate on the other end. They should try that....it's fun!
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Currently my pirated books include:
The complete Asimov collection. I still buy most of the books i read (even if the kindle is awesome, I wouldn't take a kindle on a night out with me)
A chemistry text book. I read this so rarely that i defiantly wouldn't buy them (hell i only downloaded them because a lecturer asked questions that were straight out of the text book).
I neither case have the authors lost anything (Infact in Asimov's case I've found a few books that i will probably buy that even my father, a big fan, had never heard of).
*looking at ktorrent it turns out I also have a chemical databook I'd forgotten about, I do wonder how it's copyrighted though? It's just tables of publicly available data.If you just removed the cover and re-uploaded it would their copyright still stand?
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
take a look at the price of classics that have long since been in the public domain, as they're not cheap either.
Here in the UK we've long since had several different publishers releasing whole rafts of Classic titles for 99 pence, which is little more than a U.S. dollar in todays' money. And they are well produced too . . .
Some reasons then why one might want a different model
Now I am not really going to make the moral judgement of how long someone should be able to copyright their works, and hold them in their own tight control. I would believe that old works should be public domain at some point, and also that creativity deserves some reward.
However, there ARE points in between in which both the artists and the public can benefit overall, and as the Grateful Dead and other artists have seen, giving to your public does not always mean taking away from yourself as the artist. Fair use can help an artist, and the public domain help cement artist in history, but "permitted use" by an artist speaks directly to their strongest fan base and evangelists of their work. Even Stephen King has given away book chapters online, on the premise that you will buy the rest. He may not have gotten much richer, but I'm sure he reached fans.
Or if you prefer, you can wait in front of a book store in the mall to sign your books, and hope to explode into fame.
Change is after all inevitable
but what if the change is within "preferring paper to e-books" and not within "big name publishers tend to disagree"
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Get real - it's a phone. Yes, it can be used as a reading device, and yes it open eBooks.
The thing is, the way smartphone processors are going, soon everything will be able to do that! Your toaster, your picture frame, your kitchen table mats!
Okay, maybe not, but the technology(such as thin & low power touchscreen displays) will be there, and I suspect some device not currently thought up will spring into existence, and then we'll have even more complaints! It's unlikely to stop there...
It's pretty clear that society at large increasingly has no problem infringing in copyright.
Rather than industry trying to change society's view of copyright isn't it about time society got together and changed copyright to something that fits its views?
Come on Stephen, your books are pretty much the equivalent.
I like the philosophy at Baen Books - let people sample the work for free, and sales will flow in. They have a great library of free ebooks in a number of formats. I have personally purchased a lot of books from Baen after I sampled from their free library and found authors whose works I enjoyed.
You spell poorly and have low standards for material to look at while touching yourself, but you are NOT a troll.
My argument rests on people preferring paper to e-books, and I think they do. I sure do.
Some do. Some don't. I prefer e-books, and I have for years now. Just this last week, I bought an e-book edition of a book I already owned on paper, because I vastly prefer the e-book.
(I've never engaged in e-book piracy, and I expect that I never will. I've spent a lot of money with Baen -- they sell DRM-free ebooks in many formats. I've also spent pretty small amounts of money with publishers that encumber their ebooks with DRM. If I don't engage in piracy, why do I care about DRM? Because I've been at this for years, and every few years the device I use to read changes, and I don't expect that to stop, and DRM does interfere with migration from device to device. My own first steps in this direction were around 1995 or so, on Apple Newton, Sony MagicLink, Poqet, Compaq Aero, et cetera. I'm a gadget freak, yes.)
Now, an important question is, over time, will more people become like me? Peoples habits will change, peoples preferences will change, book reader hardware will change. At some point will it be paper that's the niche market, and if so, when? Best to be prepared for it, rather than assume it's a change that won't happen, or fight the change if it does start to happen.
Being paid for your work is all well and good, but in the case of some authors (e.g. JK Rowling), it seems like the publisher would rather NOT be paid. Harry Potter isn't available in ebook form legally, so shutting down sites that offer those books for download isn't "losing book sales", it's not making any sales at all since there is no viable alternative from the publisher.
And keep in mind, ereaders these days are expensive, a person who can afford one these days isn't going to balk at paying ~$10 (Kindle bestseller list and that's the high end) for an ebook so if a person is downloading books illegally, it's probably a combination of the "hoarding factor" (similar to downloading every movie possible, just for the sake of having them, without ever watching all of them) and somebody who can't read the official ebook version on their device because of DRM.
Another thing, this situation isn't the same with music. Libraries allow a large selection of ebooks to be downloaded legally, is that considered a lost sale? In fact, the publishers are just angry that they aren't making more money. They hate the used book market, which they've effectively killed in electronic form because of DRM, there is no ebook used book market.
To publishers:
1. Lose the DRM on ebooks, works great for iTunes and its music. Charge more if you have to for an unDRMed ebook.
2. Actually offer the ebooks for sale! Why do you think there are so many pirates? Books aren't available or aren't available for their ereader.
3. Embrace the ebook future, works great for Baen Publishing, all their books are available and with noDRM.
http://www.baen.com/library/
There are some pretty big name authors here as well as new authors who are trying to make it. You can read the dissertation by that commie Eric Flint about "Online Piracy".
Baen Publishing is noted for including a CD with some hardback novels that has free novels in it. Surprisingly enough they've not cried foul when digital editions of those CD's have ended up online.
http://www.webscription.net/p-162-freehold.aspx You can read a good friends book here.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
IMHO, it's entirely ethical to pirate a book that has gone out of print, say, in the 1960s, and for which the book publishing house has shown no interest in decades. If it's a math book, in particular, chances are the book is still useful. To lay so much knowledge to waste or to leave it to fungi and insects - now *that's* unethical. Copyright law be damned. Like so many things in history, some civil disobedience is in order sometimes.
However, I'm not so sure that pirating the latest edition of a book currently in print is such a good idea, although publishers are partly to blame. They churn out new editions that add absolutely nothing to previous ones (how many times can you rewrite your differential equations book, right?) and they write books like it's for retards, exploding with verbosity, with long-winded explanations instead of math, all so they can charge a hefty price - but that's much more true for US American books than, say, German books.
BTW, I have actually bought dead trees copies of pirated books I read, more than once, because I liked them so much. Eventually, they'll be donated to libraries.
Why? Because nothing beats paper. Laptops heat up too much, and Kindle is a proposition for idiots who don't understand they're buying an ephemeral library.
Here a hint to all of those aspiring authors. Unless you write something creative and unique you won't make a living writing books. Sorry, just how it is. There is a couple thousand years of books available, you can't justify a huge price against all of that competition unless you have something new to bring to the table worth buying. The landscape has changed and the access to the information and old books can no longer be controlled. You can blame piracy, but without the monopoly of distribution anymore, the laws of supply and demand are starting to take hold in the marketplace.
As to the FA, I'm not seeing the problem. For the longest time certain information has been hard to come by and in the hands of the rich and powerful for the most part or locked away where the average person can't access it. Having all of this text available easily online is not a problem in my book. It should be encouraged.
Am I going to defend someone who goes and downloads the latest book on Day 1, no. Am I going to shed a tear for the publishing company of someone who downloads a book by an author dead for 10 years instead of buying it? The answer is no to that as well.
I can only hope this is a huge step forward to making knowledge available to all. I fear that most will take it as a way to get the latest Stephen King books or Playboy magazine for free though.
If copyright was more sane the newer works would be respected and older ones available and people would respect the law for the most part. When you are heavy handed against your customers they revolt. You then give your non-customer a chance to take the high ground based on your actions. (Not saying they are justified, but you don't know if that downloader is someone who wants a non-DRM digital copy of their ebook for a backup or just a plain old thief)
Spelling and grammar mistakes specifically left in to give the grammar and spelling nazis a meaning to their life.
I love the comment "varying degrees of success" like there's a difference between zero success and almost zero success when it comes to stopping media piracy. As for copyright theft of books, it's a reality and there's pretty much nothing that can be done to stop it bar releasing official copies free of charge or priced so low that readers will purchase official copies out of preference to downloading illegal copies. The more freetards that end up in court defending the outrageously high fines and compensation the harder I laugh at them for being dicks. I don't really care what justification freetards give for stealing music, movies or books, they're still stealing them. If they're priced to high or you object to drm then you can always choose to vote with your wallet. Stealing doesn't make you clever or a rebel, just a dick with no conscience. Of course you can get away with it and if you choose to that's your business. You're still a freetard thief. Some people deserve the RIAA and freetards are most of them. The more freetards that end up in court defending themselves from outrageously high compensation claims the harder I laugh at them.
But does it feel like paper, can I casually flick to any page I want? Can I bend it, crease the corner of the page I'm reading or add a marginal note? Does the colour of the paper and it's smell tell me how long ago it was published? Can I look at the spine of an e-book and know the reading habits of the previous owner? Can I put it on my bookshelf when I'm done, have friends notice it and use it as a talking point? Reading books is an experience, it's not just about assimilating information. That is why we will always have paper books.
Conservation of angular momentum makes the world go round.
if I write a book and don't want it freely copied, I think I should be allowed to have that right
You have that right: don't publish it. Publishing a work and expecting to prevent others from doing the same is a privilege, despite the name "copyright".
And the right to grant/deny those permissions should die eventually, probably something like ... I don't know, when I die, since I'm the one that wrote it.
Then I take it you support a reduction of the term of copyright in domestic works from life plus 70 years to life plus zero. OK, this would open up a hole where hiring a hitman would Free the work, so let's say life plus five years to allow for investigation of foul play.
It's like Napster (original version): There are those who won't pay regardless. If it's not on P2P people will rip CDs or simply record off radio or cable music channels.
People who will buy will use copies like trial editions. I used Napster to explore, and in the time Napster was at its peak, I purchased more CDs than I did in the previous 13 years I owned CD players. I downloaded at random, explored the MP3s, went ought and bought what I liked, cleared off space on my HDD, and downloaded another bunch. I was buying several CDs per DAY. I discovered I like genres and artists I'd never have even remotely considered were I not able to try them at random for free.
When the RIAA started suing their customer base, I quit downloading, quit listening to pop radio, and most importantly, stopped buying CDs. I went almost five YEARS without buying even one CD. Now I buy maybe 1-2 new CDs per year; when I do buy I search out used CDs. Why? I am voting with my wallet.
Book publishers should take note of the backlash against the big labels; many book prices are a bit ridiculous, so it should not come as a shock to anyone that people are sharing books.
Doctorow has the right attitude; he is looking at P2P sharing of eBooks as free advertising. There sre those who won't buy regardless, so they would be likely to check them out of the libary or just sit in Borders or Barnes & Noble and read them in the store without buying them, so I wouldn't even worry about them. They aren't your target customer base anyhow; instead, leverage them to get the free advertising that only word-of-mouth can provide.
As for me, I have downloaded several eBooks. I've downloaded The Phantom Tollbooth (I own a paper copy, purchased new), The Chronicles of Narnia (I've bought three editions of that, all new, to replace old, dog-eared copies) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (again, I also own it on paper), 1984 (I've bought two copies), and Fahrenheit 451 (I've bought two copies). Why? I wanted to keep copies with me on my PDA to read in my spare time when traveling, or when stuck at work on late nights waiting for batch jobs to finish. They've received my money multiple times. No harm done. I recommend 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 to anyone who cares about Big Brother and propaganda in the media, and I recommend the Chronicles of Narnia series to anyone who has even an inkling of interest in fantasy/adventure books. I also download quite a bit of stuff off of project gutenberg.
I prefer the DRM-free format that has worked for thousands of years though (the printed page); I can hand a printed book to a friend at any time without any restrictions on who is able to read the book, and if the media is damaged (torn page) it is easily repaired (taped) and even if I do not repair it, it is still quite usable. Paper books just work, and they're far more comfortable for reading than a tiny PDA screen or even a large 24" to 26" computer monitor, and what's more, they even work without AC or batteries! :-D
But still, don't do what the RIAA did; embrace P2P and consider even seeding P2P networks with older works or older editions for the free publicity. Treat customers like drug dealers do; ge them addicted to your product by giving some out free so they keep coming back to buy more. It's simple and it can work.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
This is why I prefer to buy Greatest Hits CDs
Which saddly often are 1 or 2 well-kown commercial hit, packed together with a lot of things that is worthless crap, but for which the publisher had the license and wants to do something out of it.
"The Best SciFi of the Year" anthologies.
I prefer to read the critique from a couple of trusted source (usually, independent small free newspapers witten by students, and I couple of mainstream newspapers which happen to often have the same impression about books and movies as I do).
Also, often when I find an author that I like (and sometime when I find a music group that I like - although I'm more a book guy than a music guy), I tend to buy/get from the library as much other works from the same author/artist that I can.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I really enjoy her novels, which I read in print form. Funny thing is I never paid a cent to do so; everything I read of hers I got from the library or borrowed from friends. Good thing she hasn't caught onto my scheme, I get a lot of free stuff that way.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
"he sells an order of magnitude less books than LeGuin."
I doubt LeGuin sells many books today.
Even in LeGuin's heyday, I doubt she made more than a middle-class living selling books. Let's look at Jerry Pournelle, arguably just as successful as LeGuin. I wrote in a magazine for an editor who knew Jerry quite well, and he said that only a handful, literally less than 10, of scifi authors made more than a middle-class living selling scifi. Jerry was not one of them (meaning he made a middle-class living). He did okay, but I suspect the reason he wrote for Byte magazine pimping himself to get free computers is precisely because he wasn't making that much money selling books.
Now all that said, I agree with part of Ursula's principle: This is *my* book, I'll decide if I want to release it or sell it, or bury it.
Where I disagree with her is I think she has that right. For 17 years. Then it's everybody's. Time to write some more books. The Lathes of Heaven was a great book, a SciFi classic. It should be readily available to whomever want it at this point.
But let's be real, Ursula hasn't been relevant as an author is decades.
Can anyone explain why there are so many people today that feel that; simply because it is very easy to copy digital things, that it is their right to copy them?
Also that there is some mandate to pass information around freely? Who and/or what gives them or anyone the right (right?) to pass the information around. Why does information want to be free?
Frankly I want to be paid to pass on important or valuable info it's value being defined by how much I can get for it. Much information is of so little value that it should be or can be passed around freely. However that does not apply to all creative work, and the quality of the work has little to do with it's being free or not.
Why can many people today not accept that you still have to pay for works of fiction or music or film/video based on fiction or fact.
there are some people that create and set it out for all to take and use and we are grateful to them for the service, but some of us still want to be paid and deserve to be paid.
So distribution is cheap, that means the artist could maybe manage to hold on to a little more of the profit, and yeah eliminating the middle man will go along toward that, it doesn't mean it should be free.
Why bother
It will destroy the writing industry the way it did the music industry.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
First rule:
When talking about your book, plug it.
Or at least name it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Your point raises a classic question in IP.
You feel (and many others agree, myself included) that a paper book - a physical copy of an electronic document - is more valuable than the electronic document itself. When you sell the physical copy of the book, you probably don't sell it at physical printing cost, right? You set the price somewhere above the printing cost, and the difference between the two prices goes to compensate you and your editor for the time spent thinking up, writing, and polishing the words in the book.
What if you worked in an industry where a physical copy of the creative work was NOT more valuable than the electronic copy for the vast majority of people? Examples: software, music, sometimes film (DVDs for example, not to take the place of going to the local movie theater). In those examples, the electronic copy is the only thing that has value. And as we all know, electronic copies cost $0 to make, and can be made by anyone with a computer. How can you "sell" such a thing, in such a way as to compensate the creator for the time, effort, and money he or she spent creating the thing, if you have no physical item to sell, and no way to mark up the sale price to cover the creation cost? The entire value of the thing is in the creation, not any physical item.
Bringing it back to your book...if a book reader like Kindle ever becomes as nice/easy to read as a regular paper book, and as ubiquitous in society as iPods or cars or something, I would expect to see the sales of paper books to absolutely dry up.
Simply put, it's a lot easier to find and use pirated eBooks than buy legitimate ones. Oddly enough, a few days ago I went hunting for places to get legit ebooks without DRM locking it into some proprietary format that may become obsolete some day.
I couldn't find anything beyond the Baen Free Library, a pretty paltry selection of "multiformat" ebooks from Fictionwise, and Project Gutenberg public domain stuff. I even did a lot of asking around, and started a thread for it on a pretty big site, but had no luck finding anything beyond what I already mentioned.
I'd love to get legit eBooks, but I'm not going to support DRMed ones. As this very article shows, it's futile to DRM books, because it's easy enough for dedicated pirates to scan the paper books and spread the results around via filesharing.
What needs to be done to fight piracy is what's been being done with digital music distribution: have stores with huge selections comparable to brick-and-mortar, sold at reasonable prices* with no DRM or a form of DRM that's flexible enough to not interfere with normal usage. (Though preferably there shouldn't be DRM at all.)
*The legit, DRMed versions tend to be very overpriced from what I've seen. The vast majority of the cost in publishing is materials, so there's something wrong with charging the same amount (or even a couple of dollars cheaper) for a text file as a paperback or hardcover. I'm not saying they should be $1, but I should think $3-$5 is an awful lot more in line with what people would expect to pay for eBooks than what most outlets are charging.
Its 2009, the world is different, get over it and adjust your business models.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Here's the best writeup on the subject I've seen by an author, at the Baen Free Library. Worth a read.
Along web their webscription.net Ebooks website, Baen seems to have a good handle on this whole digital media business.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
He seems like a reasonable guy.
First off, the events they're talking about in the NY Times article actually came to a head in September 2007. It looks like a reporter dusted off some old notes simply because the Kindle is starting to get a lot of press, so it seems relevant now. The article doesn't really depict clearly what the controversy was about.
There's a guy named Andrew Burt, who has published a little science fiction, and had gotten elected to a middle-level position in the Science Fiction Writers of America. He noticed that scribd.com had a whole bunch of copyright-violating scans of books. He did an automated search of scribd's catalog, and based on that search, and without much consultation with anyone, he sent scribd a slew of what appeared to be DMCA takedown notices. The trouble was that he wasn't very careful, and, e.g., he got them to delete some fiction by Cory Doctorow, who actually wanted it on scribd as a form of publicity. IIRC, DMCA takedown notices are also supposed to be sent by copyright owners, and signed under penalty of perjury, but Burt's notices were sent without consulting the copyright holders, and were factually inaccurate in many cases; I think he ended up claiming that they weren't DMCA notices, but scribd apparently thought they were. Doctorow got very angry, and publicized his anger on his web site boingboing. Doctorow also published a very short piece by Ursula LeGuin on boingboing, without her permission, which made her furious. Burt ran for president of SFWA after this, and lost. The whole thing exposed a generational divide between older and younger SF authors. The older ones typically were suspicious of the internet, and saw it as a threat. The younger ones typically saw it as a way to publicize themselves. An old-timer named Howard Hendrix compared authors who gave their work away online for free to scabs, resulting in an ironic response called International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. Here are some representative opinions on the whole thing:
So first off, this isn't really a controversy about whether copyright should exist. The positions of all the different parties are quite similar on that issue. Scribd, Burt, Doctorow, LeGuin, and Hendrix are all pretty much in agreement that it's a bad thing to violate authors' copyrights. What they disagree on is mainly whether the internet presents more of a threat, or more of an opportunity.
Another thing to understand about this is that scribd is just a tool, in the same way that bittorrent is just a tool. I've posted some of my own nonfiction on scribd, simply on the theory that publicizing my work is always a good thing. However, just as The Pirate Bay has an extremely heavy presence of pointers to copyright-violating torrents, scribd also has a huge amount of copyright-violating stuff. Maybe the percentage is lower, but it's still a huge presence there. It's the classic situation where the web site is willing to devote x amount of effort to policing itself, but various people would like them to devote 10x (similar to Craigslist and prostitution).
Find free books.
The publishers aren't completely stupid. Yes, paper has a better UI than electronic, but electronic is a lot more portable. So as ebook readers get better, paper's advantage will go away. The latest Kindle is pretty sweet, aside from the DRM.
The problem for the publishers is, okay, paper's going the way of all things. What to do? I think that what Richard Sarnoff said was the most insightful thing in the NY TImes article: release ebooks at a fair price, like on iTunes, and people will pay. Too bad Amazon isn't able to follow that strategy.
Just like with music and video consumers of books can be broken down into 3 categories; people who actively looked for your book, people who don't know about your book and people who know about it but aren't willing to spend money for it for whatever personal reason.
The first category are the people who will usually buy your book, even if there's a pirated version out there. I'll go ahead and guess that the bulk of this group are returning customers or people who've had your book recommended to them by a friend. We can also include people who'd rather have a physical book in their hands in this group (and I'd wager that's still the majority of the population).
The second group of people had no idea your book even existed before they came across it on a filesharing site. You've lost no money to them. In fact you can only stand to gain money you otherwise wouldn't have gotten; they'll either buy it, buy your future books or at the least recommend your book to people they know. If they liked it of course. Even if they do none of these things you still haven't lost any money, because without that filesharing site they may never have seen your book at all.
The third group wouldn't have bought your book anyway. Maybe they're not that into books and only wanted to download yours for a quick skim over, maybe they have no money to spare on books, maybe they use their library card and downloading it was just more convenient, who knows. Point is you're not losing money here either.
tl;dr: a download != a lost sale.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
I have absolutely no ethical qualms about downloading the electronic version of a book I've purchased in dead-tree form. I paid for the words presented in text form. Whether I read them on paper or a screen, it's the same performance of the same work. It's like ripping my own CDs so I can load them on my MP3 player except someone else did the ripping. In fact, I don't even have many of my physical books or CDs on hand. They're tucked away in boxes at a relative's house. (A relative who has a lot more storage space than me.) I ripped all my CDs years ago and haven't touched the physical media since. If I want to read a book I own (and I know which books I own), I download a pdf, prc, rtf, doc, html, etc. I haven't resold or disposed of any of them so, legally, I still own a copy and nobody's using the physical copy at the same time that I'm using the electronic copy. But I'm sure what I'm doing would piss off some copyright holders.
If I owned a kindle, you can bet I'd use my ethical loophole to bypass their $10/title charge for most books. I'd rather pay $5-7 for a paperback and download a "pirated" electronic version. Heck, even if they only charged $2/title for ebooks, I'd still download a pirated version after paying my $2 so I could be sure I'd have access to the product after the DRM screws me 5-10 years down the road.
Copyright holders and IP distributors need to clue in to the fact that reproducing information is cheap and easy. They can't legislate away that reality. Produce a quality product at a reasonable price and it'll sell. Try to charge more than people feel an easily-reproduced product is worth and they'll steal it or ignore it. Refuse to provide the product in a form that they want or make the process too cumbersome and they'll bypass you entirely.
This never worked well because the "zero" horses would always arrive first and the order was unknown.
They tried a range of solutions reaching a pinnacle at having the "zero" horses be "one" horses on the return trip, and vice versa, with the hopes that over time the horses would all achieve about the same pace regardless of cannonball status due to equal damage having been done and the horses having achieved a certain acceptance of the indignity.
Eventually they just had riders.
http://inklingbooks.com/googlesettlement/googlesettlement.html
Why can't people just respect the author's wishes, and let the market decide?
There is nothing stipulating that you must read LeGuin's books, just as there is nothing compelling you to read Doctorow's ebooks. You read their stuff because you want to.
If you are driven to read one of their books, then you will do so even if it only comes in dead tree format. And yes, The Left Hand of Darkness is probably one of those books worth digging up even though that limitation exists. In a way, reading LeGuin's books electronically (or at least the two that I have read) seems to be inappropriate. To read them electronically would be to defy the cultural setting of the novel.
Likewise, you may feel that Doctorow's books are worth the read. I can't think of anything as compelling as LeGuin's aforementioned title, but they are certainly entertaining and convey messages that are relevant in a contemporary context. Sometimes that message is carried by the body of the work, and quite often it is accompanied by how the work is distributed. (Doctorow works seem to be very much about freedom, and he expresses that both in his stories and how he lets other interface with those stories.)
Of course, it goes beyond how the authors want to express themselves. It also delves into how the authors make a living. LeGuin seems to have met a lot of success in the medium of print. She wants to continue with that type of express because she probably measures her livelyhood by the number of copies sold and the royalties earned off of those copies. Doctorow, on the otherhand, seems to have built his success by writing contemporary stories in a contemporary medium. He seems to earn his livelyhood by earning the goodwill of his readers, and using that goodwill to propel him forwared.
Just because LeGuin's measure of success is based upon hard measures (copies, dollars, whatever) and Doctorow's measure of success is based upon soft measures (goodwill of the readership translating into readership support) doesn't mean that one system is inherently better than the other.
Though I do find it kinda ironic that LeGuin's measure of success is almost diametrically opposed to her writing, while Doctorow's measure of success is almost diametrically opposed to his writing.
Score:2, Troll. Awesome.
We had it - it was a 17-year copywrite period within which authors & composers could reap the exclusive benefits of their labor. Once Congress started endlessly extending that period it was inevitable that "the people" would push back.
Oh please, do you really think the people posting these unauthorized copyright give a damn about the principle of copyright length?
That's why you may feel it's justified to do this, but I'd guess the cheap bastards doing the copying are there to "fight the man", but simply because they're assholes.
I agree that the length is too long, but let's not pretend this is why people download the books.
Scribd.com and other web sites offer free eBooks with or without the author's signed consent.
Some companies give away old books as free eBooks like the old Wrox Computer Books all around the Internet and it is legal. They give away the old books to promote their new books.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
isn't le guin like 120 or something? is it any wonder she doesn't get it? maybe it's time to revive "don't trust anyone over 30"....
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Text books, computer text books and howto books are the prized online titles because it's easy to cut and paste or reference them while working on your projects. Don't have that SQL syntax you need? click click.. there it is!
What? Buy a book at $39.99 to $59.99 to complete my JAVA project? No fucking way...
Need portability? Buy a thumb drive.
USENET LIVES!
This is exactly my gripe. The books that I want to read are either not available in electronic format at all, or they're not available in a format that suits my electronic reader, or they're available at a cost that's hardly less than the hardback price (or the paperback price). In this last case, what stupid idiotic publisher imagines me to be dumb enough to pay such an exorbitant amount for a text file with some specialized formatting? I guess they're INVITING me to go find a digital copy that's at a more realistic price range.
It seems to me that the publishing houses are locked inside their old business model, without any imagination to grasp the future. Piracy exists because there's an eager market that's being under-served -- whether because you haven't made your product available to that market, or it's not at a price-point that that market is willing to pay.
Kind of interesting that someone who had a bestseller a year ago is more open to the idea of digital publishing than an author that hasn't written much worthwhile since the 70's. Don't get me wrong Le Guin is far more prolific writer but if part of the crowd that grew up without the technology we have today and have refused to embrace the times.
The irony will be that as online publishing and ebooks become more and more prevalent the technology frightened authors like Le Guin will disappear into obscurity by their own efforts to protect themselves and you can bet they will whine about that too.
If things continue as they are a huge gap of world literature from the "copyright reform" era will simply vanish.
I do think its rather sad that in a genre like science fiction and fantasy there are people without the foresight to see a day when dead tree's will no longer be practical reading material.
No one here can read...
Not so long ago I pulled out a box of books (sci-fi novels, comics, nat geo, adventure books) and records that my Dad had growing up. It occurred to me, how exactly are my kids going to inherit anything from me? This for me is the primary reason DRM is evil, and that the ebooks phenomena is possibly evil also.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
She is 42 years his senior. And most of her work was published DURING those 42 years.
Now... As we can't compare any of the books they have not yet written or published - we are left with their work during their first 37 years of life.
For Le Guin, that is all her books published up to 1966. Which comes down to 3 books.
So, Doctorow wins hands down. Hey, it's not my fault she pissed away half of her life before getting serious about writing.
It's nonsensical to try to quantify and/or compare two authors or their work based on anything but personal preference. Aaaand... that kinda does not count because of the Asshole Paradigm.
Can't compare numbers published or read or bought - just think of all those copies of The Da Vinci Code or all those Sidney Sheldon books.
Can't compare number of fans (or their quality) for the same reason.
Can't compare critiques or critics (personal preference again)...
We are left with only comparison that can't be called out as unfair - personal preference. Because it is your, mine, his, her, their... PERSONAL MATTER.
I can't tell you which books to like any more than you could tell me.
So, whose word counts more base on the authorial merit?
Neither. It's their personal thing if they see people reading their books for free as fans or thieves.
Only it is smarter to look at them as fans and threat them so.
Fans tend to eventually own the copies of the things they are fans of.
Even the cheapest asshole out there has friends and/or family who will eventually figure out that he really likes that book/music/game/movie and buy him a copy for his birthday or Christmas or whatever.
But threat him as thief and he might just say "Hey fuck you Mr. High And Mighty Too Good For His Own Fans Writer".
Just think of all those people who don't listen to Metallica anymore.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
> Ever notice in Anne McCaffrey work, that often the twenty-something woman ends up with the 50-60 year old man? Creepy.
It probably means she likes older men.
If you want to talk about creepy, I'll let you decide what Piers Anthony's choice of subject matter implies about his tastes on your own...
His position is pretty much smack down the middle between the two -- that's why I suggested him.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
People read based on personal preference and/or obligation (required reading for school etc.).
If he has fans, those fans will continue to read (and buy) his books. If he doesn't... well... then your theory on "obscurity through ubiquity" works.
But I can tell you right now - it doesn't.
Popular and new books (in English) get OCR-ed and put on the internet in the matter of weeks if not days.
Remember those Harry Potter snapshots from couple of years ago?
What doesn't get as much OCR coverage are books in languages other than English, books by obscure authors (try finding some African authors in .txt format) and obscure (or just not that famous) books by "hard literature" writers like Sartre.
There are plenty of unauthorized copies of popular e-books out there at the moment.
If anything, it is cheap and easy to use (and easy to read) readers that are missing.
And by cheap and easy to use I don't count iPhones and Kindle.
Cheap would be at about the price of a single paperback.
And easy to use would be just copy any text file on a SD card, stick it into the reader and click on it. And bookmarks should be automatic and easy.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You're quite wrong. The book belonged to you (period), until the moment when you published it. Note the root of that word, pub- , it's very important.
From that moment in time, the book became part of public culture, progressively less and less yours and more and more a part of the public mind as its community of readers expands. And eventually, when it passes into the public domain, the work will not be yours at all, despite the fact that you will still be its author. See, there's a difference.
For a writer, you're curiously unaware of the relationship between a written work and the minds of readers. A book isn't the paper it's written on, but the words and ideas contained within. When a person reads your book, those words and ideas are inevitably donated to that reader, every last bit of them (the paper is irrelevant). Dwell on that a while, because you don't appear to have absorbed the implications.
For each person who reads your work, your "codified super insightful knowledge" (as you put it) becomes ever less exclusive, and if you are really popular then your exclusive hold over that knowledge drops close to nil: your work has become part of popular culture, and gained a momentum of its own. You are then no longer its owner but merely its author, and your earnings from it will be far more a product of the work's cultural significance than of your publisher's marketting. It will no longer be a "product", but an element of culture with earnings as a side effect.
You might wish to reflect a little on this essay from Baen: http://www.baen.com/library/ . As long as you are at war with your readers, I predict a future of hand-wringing and unhappiness.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I buy all of the BAEN books I read because they sell them in formats I like (HTML w/o DRM) and they sell them at prices comparable to the same paperback book I'd buy in the store.
For the rest, I either own the physical book in tandem with the electronic version or I'll backfill my collection once they're published in an acceptable format at a paperback price.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Not so fast...
If you sell 10,000 copies of a paper book that costs $40, chances are you get $2 per copy (10% of the publisher's $20 in revenue), leaving you with $20,000 royalties. Not bad.
If, however, you sell 2,000 copies of a PDF at $20 copy, and you get $16 per copy, you get $32,000. That's better. Furthermore, that assumes $0 in print royalty revenue. Similarly, if you sell 3,000 PDFs, and you get the same $16 per copy, you get $48,000. Much better. Plus, with print books, there's the annoying aspect of returns, etc.
Don't be so sure that PDF books should be a marketing tool for paper books. I like to think about paper books as a marketing tool for PDF books: if you sell 1/3 as many PDFs you're more than twice as far ahead...
So it's highly ironic that I've never read a Le Guin and one of the last books I purchased retail walk-in was "Down and out in the Magic Kingdom."
"If you put your hand in my pocket, you'll drag back six inches of bloody stump" - Harlan Ellison
"do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?" - Ursula K. Le Guin
Yes, why don't you try threatening pirates and see what happens.
"Nope. There are genre giants that end up making less than the waiter at the local Dennys."
Name some, then post facts to support your assertions.
I'll wait. A long fucking time though, since you're full of shit.
"Hint: it involves guns and courts and jails. "
No, actually, it doesn't, you're lying to support your "point"
It's no wonder though, that thieves have to resort to lies to support their thievery.
"You simply cannot make a freedom argument for copyright."
Funny he just did, you're lying again. And he didn't have to resort to "Hint: it involves changing the meaning of a word to support my stupidity, because logic fails to do so" like you did.
I'm going to let you in on a secret. The world isn't the echo chamber you live in on Slashdot, and outside of your stocked pond, your argument is routinely dissected and crushed, with the purveyors of that argument roundly ridiculed for their lack of intelligence.
Wait til these authors hear about libraries. You can borrow books for free. Tens or hundreds of people can read the same copy of a book and the author only gets paid once!
Well, I'm both an author and a publisher here, so I do have the perspective of both sides. A lot of people here seem to think that publishing is more or less equal to the recording industry - it's not. Frankly, it's a lot more fair to the creative artists, far more technologically savvy (anybody who thinks publishers haven't made a concerted effort to make e-books work hasn't been paying attention - I was part of the first big push back in 2000). The book industry today has been revolutionized several times, and it's about to be revolutionized again by the Expresso Book Machine, which is essentially an ATM for books. It's very exciting, and I hope it does well.
And around here, frankly, a lot of people love to hold out a sense of entitlement. They are quite clear that no author has any right to their own work, and they should be thankful that they get the handout they do, but god help you if you challenge the idea that they have a natural right to copy whatever they want (and I challenge you to find the words "natural right" and "copy" in the same sentence anywhere in the U.S. Constitution or Declaration of Independence). Hopefully reality will be self-correcting when it comes to them; it's hard to hold onto a sense of entitlement when you have to fight to keep what you have, and this recession/depression will have a lot of people doing that.
E-book piracy is a fact of life - there are people with scanners who will upload books. There's not a lot one can really do about it. Particularly when you're a small publisher like I am, the cost of trying to fight it is much higher than it's worth. The good news is that most people don't actually consume books that way, so the potential damage in lost sales is pretty minimal.
That being said, people will also download just about anything that's free, regardless of if they actually need or want it. So, that being the case, free electronic copies of books or excerpts of books can be a good low-budget means of advertising product, and that is how I use it. The public domain reprints are produced as full .pdf e-books, and the new books are produced as online samples - then they're all put on filesharing websites and torrents the minute I have the Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble websites for them.
Is piracy a big problem when it comes to books? Not really. With an e-book market that's only managed to peak at 1.5% of the total book market for one month over the last ten years, there's not a lot to suggest it's anything more than a niche that's best used for marketing anyway. People just don't usually consume books that way - they may test them out that way, but if they really want to read them, most of the market is going to buy a printed copy. Should that change, online piracy will be a bigger issue, but until then, it's a side-note.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
And it gets released first in Hardcover. For somewhere between 20-30 dollars. I like the author, I like the series, however I refuse - REFUSE to pay an extra 15 dollars for the hardback version of a book I will read at most a few times. Reference books of any kind I'll pay the premium, I'll use those puppies a great deal - the extra durability is needed. But newly released fiction? Please. Especially considering the vast majority of my pleasure reading is scifi/fantasy. Moby Dick? Hardback. The Road? Hardback. Ahab's Wife? Hardback. All of these are books of literary merit that I would love to pass on to my family/children. The most recent Twilight novel? Dresden Series numero 11? Not so much.
Pirate Bay is the first place (since textbooktorrents shut down) that I go to for textbooks required for class - because I do not WANT the actual book. For the most part, the official course book does not contain any information that I can't get in a more accessible form for free online. I just need the table of contents (so I know that "read chapter 16" means "read about sql injection") and the couple pages of problem sets per chapter from maths texts (if the instructor wants to buy exercises instead of writing them, that's fine, but I fail to see why each student should have to purchase his own set of homework problems individually). No way am I voluntarily buying a heavy brick that holds virtually no value - I try to avoid paying for things I resent having to use at all.
On Ursula LeGuin's web site, you find the motto: "A book is just a box of words, until a reader opens it." It's kind of ironic that a writer who uses science fiction primarily to talk about social issues is so blind to social change and the social good that actually comes from being able to share information.
It's her choice to get upset, it's our choice not to read her. I vaguely recall that I found the few things I read by her to be long-winded and boring, and I'm certain not to bother correcting that impression now.
Piratizing books = equalizing access to knowledge I could never have read all those books if there weren't ocred and shared. I couldn't afford the prices, the transport costs and my understanding of world would be so minor that it would be my nightmare now. I am truly grateful for all those efforts that are made in sharing all those books. But that doesn't mean that I still do not order books from Amazon or buy from Baen. There are some obscure book that no one reads , so no one has shared it already, or they are just gone out, or they are in ARC edition . So what ever the reason there are still books that I buy. But then I could not afford to read in such quantity as with all those books that are shared on the Net. At the end I can only say. so many books, so litlle time
Ms. Le Guin: "I thought, who do these people think they are? Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?"
This is really ironic, coming from the author of the following (great!) book.
"Blah blah blah." - [citation needed]
Le Guin: "I thought, who do these people think they are? Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?
I'm certain libraries have to pay for the right to lend books somewhat to someone. Does any of that money ever reach the authors, I wonder? If so, I can't imagine it will be much. My subscription to the public library is less than 30 euris a year and I read dozens of books each month.
Getting to my minor point: as a teenager I read most of Le Guin's books that were available at the public library at that time, almost for free. I doubt she ever got any money for that. Did that hurt her? I ended up buying three of those books I already read, because I really liked them.
Even today I mainly buy books of authors which I got to know through reading their work almost for free first. In fact, with regard to SF I know only one author who's books I bought whiteout ever having read some work first. I just bought a fourth book of Alistair Reynolds, having been introduced to his work through a few books that just happened to be left in the English section of the public library here. As it happens, as a result of a reorganization most of the SF in the public library here (in Leiden, the Netherlands), only with exception of really big names, and then mostly Fantasy - has been removed from the main collection in Dutch - and they hardly seem to want to acquire any new SF titles, either Dutch or English. I'm certain I'm missing new authors as a result of that. Maybe I should turn to usenet?
Not to continue to make money from old rope, but to ensure that they can reduce the amount of product out there so you have to buy one of a limited set.
A set limited so that you cannot be in the situation of there being more than you can see in your entire lifetime.
The publishers DEMAND copyright so that they can hide all the old stuff.
Pray tell me, for example, where I can get a copy of Steamboat Willie which is still under copyright?
Or a copy of Locostript, still under copyright.
A friend of mine likes books. Wants to re-buy ALL the Terry Pratchett books in hardback in a standard form (so they look good on the shelf). But the publisher (NOT THE MARKET) decides that they should go out without the Josh Kirby covers and only in paperback.
You CAN NOT ask us to let the market decide when copyright is being used to stop the market from deciding.
Well, paper books have the big advantage that they are robust. Have a book lying in the rain for a few days: It will suffer, but it's still readable. Drop the book as many times as you want: While it may get some damage, it's generally as usable as before. I wouldn't try either with an ebook.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Currently I prefer to have the paper version of a book, and buy ones to the extend that I can afford it. But in the case that e-readers would become as practical and nice as books, not only should pricing be really different from the paper version, in addition I would like to have an (easy and convenient) option to be able to cancel the purchase within a certain period of time in case the book is a real dissappointment. As far as a can see, that would be great way to be get to know more authors of which to buy books.
Coming back to the price: I've got some experience with the dilemma between electronic dictionaries (either software or hardware) and their paper versions, and online subcriptions. Software dictionaries seem to always just be the same price as their paper equivalent (and you don't get both). Weird. So far I have decided to boycot both as a result (not to mention online subcriptions, which are much much more expensive even) (example: the 5th edition of Kenkyusha's Japanese-English - pity I can't use it, but instead I use and help improve the open dictionary wwwjdic, which get better every day).
I did buy a hardware electronic dictionary with 15 or so (other) dictionaries in it though.
Mr. Leo Tolstoy gave up all royalties for his books. He did not write for money, but for his own satisfaction. Is it what makes him a better writer than those who write for money?
"If you can abstain from writing, do not write." L. Tolstoy.
"If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn't hesitate to do so." André Gide.
Convenience...
Just make available in a legal and affordable way the books... in digital form... and those that want... will buy them.
Those that don't want to buy them... will not buy them whatever the cost anyway.
Implying that all copies made are lost sales is the biggest lie around... ;)
I know!
The only way we can enforce those evil pirates to stop pirating content, would be to put surveillance on all of their digital communications!
Lets have the government listen on to their p2p, email and other Internet communications.
And if they're encrypted, lets arrest them, and confiscate their computing equipment so that we can decrypt the communication and know if they're pirating with their buddies!
After all, copyright infringement is more important than privacy, or protecting people from unreasonable search&seizures.
And yet it's been SHOWN that inexpensive, DRM-free books can be profitable. You need but look at Baen Books and Webscriptions.net to see that trusting your customers and not using DRM sells you even MORE e-books and dead tree books. But that, of course, requires some changing of business models, and we can't have THAT, can we ???
Media distributors should not be asking "why are people copying media", or "how do we stop people from copying media", but "how can we make money from people copying media?" Making copies of music, movies, and books is human nature. It's a battle that cannot and will not be won.
It's been proven that consumers are less and less willing to support the exorbitant prices historically, and currently charged for music, movies, and books on physical media. Media distributors need to ask themselves how they will compel consumers to continue paying $25.00 for a HD version of a movie they've already seen? $15.00 for a new paperback that can be bought for $4.00 at a used book store, or read for free at a library? $15.00 for a CD contining music that's been played on the raido for 20 years? I'm a consumer, and my opinion is that the products are overpriced, not original (for the most part), and quite frankly something that can be had for free with very little effort.
What is compelling me to go purchase these products? Nothing at the moment.
Guess which author I won't be considering purchasing in dead tree or reading in any medium? With the amount of competing options for your free time, the less these authors need is pushing people away. King Ludd would be proud to have such followers. Proud and surprised. Who would have expected science fiction writers to join the ranks?
Wait, covering both sides of the issue is "odd" now? What happened to journalists giving a balanced view of the issue being the norm?
I must be new here...
I thought Apple already proved the best way to fight digital piracy is to offer an extremely well stocked library that is shinier and easier to use than torrents. People will pay for convenience.
A year ago, it was reported Apple made 556 million in music sales on iTunes.
In fact, if you actually learn the lessons of the music industry, going digital is extremely profitable. Frederick Stamphammer, the RIAA Vice-President of Digitization says this is how the music industry is weathering the economic crisis.
...for someone who paraphrased English translations of the Tao Te Ching as though Chinese was a dead language. Chill out, dudette. Who cares that the right hand of darkness doesn't know what the left hand is doing?
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
That is the number of books I've purchased from each of these authors. Because I read Cory's stuff online for free, and therefore knew it was worth buying.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Exactly! You should read Jeffrey Tucker's work at www.mises.org on IP. He changed my mind and agrees with you on the economic benefits of IP free artistic production. So does Trent Reznor, who has the #1 spot at Amazon for Paid Downloads of CDs, even though he gives them away on his own site for free! Once people know you are there, they will generally pay for your work in some way.
Most people are mostly good most of the time.
If you believe the rumors.
Cory Doctorow is right on as usual. I am guilty of downloading books, but I hate reading the electronic copies. There are countless times when I have downloaded a book to check it out, and if I liked it, I would buy a hard copy.
The author seems to have been a little lazy. When he says:
"Until recently, publishers believed books were relatively safe from piracy because it was so labor-intensive to scan each page to convert a book to a digital file. Whatâ(TM)s more, reading books on the computer was relatively unappealing compared with a printed version.
Now, with publishers producing more digital editions, it is potentially easier for hackers to copy files."
He seems to have done no research into how difficult it currently is to scan books or whether the online texts that he uses as a jumping off point for the story were actually made from existing ebooks or traditional physical books.
If he had, he might have run into bkrpr.org and gotten something of an education.
That's pretty much the only reason I haven't started pricing eBook readers. I'm usually very careful with my books to keep them in good condition. But accidents happen and I don't live alone, soon I'll have rugrats utilizing my belongings. Heck even my wife, who is always careful, drops things like cell phones all the time. Technology just isn't sturdy enough yet to really replace books.
I guess you could say that this is like the issue with people wanting electric cars that completely replace modern gas engined cars. Except with the car problem most people can rent a car with longer range or use some other form of transport. I can't predict when my eBook reader will be dropped or rained on and swap it with a book for that period of time.
You'd think Science Fiction authors would understand the consequences of exact replication. I don't remember the author, but there was a short story about aliens who gave earth replication machines. The first thing people started replicating was the machines themselves, then everything else. The economy collapsed, but the protagonist was confident that everything would sort out. Star Trek had food replicators. Anyone know when the first matter replicator appeared in print?
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
I HAVE taken my Sony Reader to the beach.
The screen is perfectly readable on the direct sunlight.
I have use cheap vinyl protective bag (sold at Tecso as a "protective cover for maps") to protect it from sand and splashing water. A good old "ziploc" bag will work just as well.
Welcome to the Anarres library, Mrs. Le Guin.
OK there are so many holes in the whole copyright argument, mostly because it an archaic system used to solve a problem we used to have many many years ago. It has been modified and altered to try and keep up with modern times, but it hasn't been able to keep up, partially because industry is constantly lobbying it to stay in the dark ages so that can squeeze a little more profit.
You can pretty much say the same thing about the music and movie industries. None have tried to actually plan into the future.
Also there are some gray areas. Used Book store, Radio, Movie Rental places, heck throw in Game Rentals to grab another industry.
Though really what makes me mad is being asked to spend 50$ on a book. or 13$ for a softcover, and making me wait over a year for the freaking privilege of buying it at 13$. Don't even get me started on the price difference for US/Canada, it is criminal and discriminatory. Canadian currency was worth MORE than US, and we were being asked to pay 30% on top of that... Because yeah, that won't make your consumers furious.
Anyway I am a AVID reader and read a LOT. I buy almost exclusively used. I refuse to spend and waste my money. It actually makes me feel sick when every once in awhile I don't want to wait and shell out the big bucks for the book. The only other time I buy new, is when someone gives me a gift card for Christmas or something, as then I can rationalize it as I am not spending my money, only someone gave me a lavish gift.
Anyways I emphasize with Le Guin, and I have read many of her books, and enjoyed them (all used). However do not turn your gaze upon your readers and consumers, and think the fault is there. The fault is in an industry that has not kept in touch, and is horrible in every sense of the word. I remember hearing about an insider tell all about how truly messed up the distribution system is and the relationships between agents, distributors, retailers, and all the rest.
Don't look at me and point the finger in blame. Fix your own bloody system so it works.
I prefer reading on Kindle to reading on paper.
But so long as your book is available for sale reasonably conveniently at a price cheaper than the dead tree edition, it's not worth my time to pirate it.
Also, I've already purchased stories by an author because I liked some free stories he gave away for download.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Or an interesting sense of humor.
The People. The ultimate holders of authority.
"The People".. the righteousness of that post makes me gag. Speak for yourself, don't hide behind "the People" with capital P.
I read a lot of books by Ms. Le Guin over the years, had a lot of fun and insights doing so, and gladly paid for ever single of those books. She of all authors certainly deserves better than to be bashed this way.
People who don't agree with the principles in the Declaration and writings of the U.S. Founders should move to the E.U.
Who are you to decide who stays and who has to go?
Btw, I am from the E.U. I guess you don't get out a lot of your country, do you?
Same AC here that you commented on. I know this is way after-the-fact, but in case you check your old postings...
I realize that once a book is published, it is no longer "mine." Please note that in the original post I made, that statement precedes publication. As in "before I share it, it is mine, wholly." Afterward, I can choose to share it or not. I choose to share it based on the conditions I stated, just like the vast majority of authors do.
So, your entire explanation about what happens to knowledge and ownership of it at it propagates throughout the public mind are kind of wasted on me. I already know it, and I don't disagree with you. I think the mistake you made was in thinking that the "it's mine" bit came after publication. It doesn't. It is the starting point of the creative endeavor. My point was that I believe the compact between author and reader (i.e. you get the book as long as you promise not to copy it verbatim) is both moral and ethical, and expect that it should be followed. What happens to the knowledge (hopefully) imparted by the book after people read it -- that's the magic. I WANT that knowledge to filter through to others. I WANT people to get better at what they're doing. I WANT what I said to become a part of the general knowledge base.