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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://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!
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.
Really? Who the fuck is LeGuin, anyhow?
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.
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.
A writer of trite, wanky fantasy who gets extremely litigious when someone borrows from her work as much as she borrows from others.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Apparently she authored the Earthsea series among other things. Don't feel bad - I had to Google her name.
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 was going to say:
"Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?"
Because they can.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
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.
High sales can be brought by more than just a sucessful business model.
A large store in a town with no or very little other commercial entities that compete with it will be more sucessful than one with an established commercial sector, for example.
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.
If you write something and let it loose upon the world, you no longer have control over it.
The sooner that "artists" get over their Napoleon complexes, the better.
The only real relevant question is how can we ensure that artists
are encouraged to create and contribute to the culture they have
drawn from themselves. Letting them run around like little Napoleons
is ultimately counterproductive.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
Wait until you get to page 216. There are also several pages missing in the bibliography.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
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'm not a big fan of either one, but there's just no comparison between the two. Le Guin's works just have incomparably more depth and experience behind them. She's won two Hugos, and also managed to not only finish undergrad, but earned an ivy league Ph.D. in anthropology as well... as opposed to her "competition". (Please, don't bother "pointing out" that a Ph.D. outside of the hard sciences is worthless. It's not. Heinlein wouldn't dedicate a novel to a soft-minded pseudo-thinker...)
Doctorow is a small-fry gimmick writer compared to le Guin, and he knows it. Not that there's anything wrong with that per se. Doctorow's ideas and attitude are important; as they said about McLuhan, "even if he's wrong, it matters." But purely on authorial merit... please.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
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!"
The Lathe of Heaven anybody?
if I write a book and don't want it freely copied, I think I should be allowed to have that right
The problem is Rights aren't immutable and at least have to have some correlation to their being enforceable. Rights are a by product of society and when society changes our rights and obligations change as well. Unfortunately peoples opinions and expectations often suffer from 'lag', and for the really stubborn my not change at all, which will just lead to a whole bunch of pain - here's looking at you Ursula!
Ellison stands on his own tiny pedestal in that department.
They did: 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?"
Seems like they did exactly what you wanted.
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.
Heh, reminds me of a story I heard about Ellison.
Ellison is notoriously short. Seems he was at a party and approached a beautiful young lady and (charming as ever) said, "What would you say to a little fuck?"
The lady looked down at the diminutive Ellison and replied, "I'd say, `Hello, little fuck.'" 8^D
Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
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.
What is it now - creator's life plus 75 years or some such ridiculous period? And they wonder why copywrite is getting violated more and more...
You don't get to make this choice for other authors. If you want to write a book and distribute it freely, go ahead. You don't have the right to give other people's property away just because you would want to share yours.
Freedom is about freedom of personal choice; it is not about being forced to give something away because somebody else thinks it would be a good choice.
It might rather suggest that the optimal strategies for authors differ, depending on their market, level of exposure, and similar factors.
If you are a well-established author, as LeGuin is, whose works are a standard recommendation for young adult fiction(one of the largest book markets out there), the value of additional exposure is likely to be lower than the cost of would-be-buyers downloading instead.
If you are not a well-established author, or are well established only in a comparatively narrow niche, as Doctorow is, the value of additional exposure might well be substantially higher than any loss in sales.
Another difference might be with target market. Someone trying to appeal to children or teens, a tech-savvy but fairly cost sensitive(and often credit-cardless) demographic, might worry more about piracy, since if downloading or copying from a friend at school is easier than whining for mom's credit card, they lose a sale. Someone trying to appeal to twenty-something techies with online buying power might not face the same hurdles.
Now, it could simply be the case, as you suggest, that one author is right and the other is wrong; but it is, I think, reasonable to suspect that authors in different places might have different optimal strategies.
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!
Yes, but then this was added:
"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."
This tipped the balance largly in favor of Doctorow, at least with respect to the submission (the article itself is more neutral).
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.
Pages 211 and 216 must have been really good!
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
I'm not a big fan of either one, but there's just no comparison between the two. Le Guin's works just have incomparably more depth and experience behind them.
I wouldn't be surprised. I like Doctrow's work. However, it's more due to the subject matter and general concepts than the work itself. There are plenty of times I've felt something Doctrow wrote was more like story notes than finished story. But hey - still like his stuff. And I know who he is. ;)
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.
how can we ensure that artists are encouraged to create and contribute
The society as a whole should pay authors, possibly in form of grants, and the higher your readership is the more you get. Books then become free (or just to cover printing, if you want a paper book.) This way the writers would be directly employed by the people, as long as they keep writing, the copyright is assigned to the people (work for hire) and the whole problem disappears.
If the government doesn't have money for this scheme it could stop its wars for a day or two, this will free enough cash to cover a century of such grants.
Yes. It clearely is your fault if you don't know ahead of time influential and/or famous people that you may or may not be interested in to begin with.
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.
Sigh. Please learn what "force" means. Hint: it involves guns and courts and jails. No-one is telling authors they must "give something away because somebody else thinks it would be a good choice" or they will be thrown in prison. However, authors are saying they have the exclusive right to make copies of their books and that other people should be imprisoned (after refusing to pay hefty fines) if they dare try to step on that exclusive right.
You simply cannot make a freedom argument for copyright.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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
Hmmm. Desiring profit from a good work (or a bad work, but let's presume a good one for the sake of the argument) to enable one to continue exerting effort to producing more good works... that's bad control?
Of course, at least in the music publishing business, most publishing houses TAKE the rights to your work. You no longer have it. Can't even copy it yourself. That's frustrating.
But we seem to be talking about even the author not having control over it. It's not really about "having control," it's about being able to profit from from the work I did, isn't it?
If we're talking about publishing houses and not authors, then I think the discussion changes...
I'm sure some people have had to google Stephen King too.
Not me. I know who he is. Not that I'm a big fan.
Ursula LeGuin is a top-selling author who has won numerous awards and accolades and is considered by many to be one of the great authors of 20th century science fiction. ...
That you have not heard of someone so important is your fault.
Apparently I'm missing out. I'll keep her in mind when looking for something to read.
Having said that... my fault, huh? How do you figure that? I'm sure there are a lot of good authors out there that I've never heard of - that none of us have ever heard of. Who's fault is that?
I'd say it's not anyone's "fault" but rather an example of how these things work. That I know Doctrow and not LeGuin (at least by name) is just a blip of a data point. I'd say being "known" is actually pretty import in that business and Doctrow is right. Whether one author is better than another doesn't really enter in to it; that's not the point.
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.
But just because I wrote something doesn't mean you have my permission to copy it. And just because you feel that books should be able to be copied doesn't mean I feel the same way... so why should your view trump mine?
Because your view requires that you be given veto power over his speech. His view, on the other hand, doesn't require anything from you. I say let's go with the view that results in more freedom, not less.
In other words... if I write a book and don't want it freely copied, I think I should be allowed to have that right. The right to forbid it from being copied.
I don't think you should. If I want to use my own scanner to make a digital representation of a few hundred pieces of paper than I own, then I should be allowed to have that right. And if I want to use email, FTP, P2P, or whatever else to distribute the file that came out of my scanner, I ought to have that right as well.
You don't own my papers, my scanner, or my computer, so what gives you the right to tell me what to do with them?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Or to give the same answer in the form of a question: "Why do dogs lick their balls?"
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Please, don't bother "pointing out" that a Ph.D. outside of the hard sciences is worthless. It's not.
Worthless, no. Worth little, quite possibly.
WTF?
... and then they built the supercollider.
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.
Last I checked it was life+75 years, yes. I agree, that's silly.
I disagree.
When you publish a book, you are loosing it upon the world. Back in the days when a printing press and paper was the only way of distributing a book, it made perfect sense for "the publisher" (the owner of the printing press) to sell copies of the physical items he was making. Seeing as the publisher needed manuscripts to print, it made sense that they'd pay authors to buy a licence to their work.
That business model makes no sense in a world of e-books. There is little reason why a publisher should be taking a majority of an inflated price for a download of an item which (torrents allowing) doesn't cost a thing.
The ideal is that a person writes something (which is set loose, and allowed to roam the intellectual world), and is rewarded an appropriate amount to make it worth their while. There's little reason why a person providing a free torrent of their work and asking to be paid whatever people wish to give them (Radiohead style) couldn't make vast amounts of money if they were a good writer.
Trying to apply a paper-based business model to an electronic business is an awful idea, and always has been. Other companies learned that lesson the hard way, but the creative industries are unwilling to make the logical leap.If the publishing giants want to stay relevant, they'll need to learn the new ways of the world, the same way as every other company in the world has or is.
Sure go ahead and I'll place you in the "Asshats and other plagues" category and ignore you vigorously too!
Feel free to spread them around but make sure she gets the coin she is due. If you want to read her books, buy them or go to the library.
I still can't fathom people who think copying these works is OK and can somehow justify it.
Why bother
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
STFU!
Why bother
Citation needed!
Why bother
It will destroy the writing industry the way it did the music industry.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Arsefuckers, I got her confused in my mind with Anne McCaffrey. LeGuin is actually really rather good -- The Left Hand of Darkness is a masterpiece...
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
First rule:
When talking about your book, plug it.
Or at least name it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
David Weber, Eric Flint, and John Ringo all beg to disagree with LeGuin.
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.
Perhaps we should just put the entire article in the submission, to ensure we eliminate bias.
Of course, then people may actually RTFA before posting. I'm not sure /. is ready to go down that road.
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.
Ellison stands on his own tiny pedestal.
Fixed that for you.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
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.
Doctorow's argument can be easily countered by pointing out the fact that he sells an order of magnitude less books than LeGuin.
Do you his argument that his problem is obscurity rather than piracy? How exactly do his smaller sales figures counter that?
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
One more author I won't bother reading since all they can do is whine about "piracy."
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.
so why should your view trump mine?
Because there are 6,779,433,891+ of us and one (1) of you. Artificial scarcity is a pain when it blocks the free speech rights of 6.7B people so that a single person can increase (not have) their profit. We should abrogate people's free speech rights as little as possible. Because many people create information/entertainment/software with no explicit payment at all and because we are already suffering a massive entertainment/information/software glut it is not at all clear we should have any explicit, additional incentive for people to create at all. Additional incentives on top of kudos and other incentives such as live shows, book readings, mind share etc.
---
It's not piracy, it's sharing. Didn't your parents teach you to share?
In an ideal world, yes. In our world, social control over who gets paid to write = very bad idea.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
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
Yeah - there were loads of pirated editions of books in previous centuries, too. You'll often find a first edition published in London and then a couple of editions published very soon after usually in Dublin - seems to have been a centre for book piracy in the eighteenth century.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Hehe, failed artist. That would imply I had tried to succeed already. ;)
And would also imply I am blaming copyright infringement for my failure. If I could point to illegal distribution of my work as lowering my income from those works, it'd imply I had works that were making money. Which I don't. And the fact that I don't has nothing to do with copyrights...
Because it excites them sexually? Man, I'm gonna get onto this copyright-violation thing if it's as good as licking your own balls...
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Don't let people tell you what's good or who's better when it comes to fiction. Treat them as recommendations, but never as a rule.
The story that moves you is the best story and that author is the best author.
Ever notice in Anne McCaffrey work, that often the twenty-something woman ends up with the 50-60 year old man? Creepy.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
'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?'
No, you really shouldn't.
Partly because Le Guin is quite rightly regarded as one of the greatest of all SF authors (just the other day, aged 79, she won yet another Nebula), and deserves a bit of respect.
Partly because her annoyance at noticing violation of her copyright is perfectly understandable, and would be shared by the vast majority of authors (Cory Doctorow is writing in a subgenre and is active in a subculture where free distribution provides useful publicity - full marks to him, but not everyone can make this model work for them right now).
Partly because Le Guin is not as 'unenlightened' about copyright and sharing ideas as you might imagine, e.g. here:
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Copyright.html
she describes the Sonny Bono act as "the recent excessive extension of copyright term by the U.S.A, which has imperilled the international copyright system", and here:
http://nerdworld.blogs.time.com/2009/05/11/an-interview-with-ursula-k-le-guin/
(on JK Rowling) "It's great that so many people have enjoyed her fantasies and thereby rediscovered the genre. I could wish she'd been a little more generous about admitting influences, but so what. A lot of borrowing always goes on in an active, vital art form, not plagiarism, just learning from each other. No harm in saying so."
But mainly because Ellison is really in a class of his own...
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.
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
who would organize such a thing? The government would, of course! That would open a new can of censorship worms.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
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, the government would have no way to censor writers. The grants in my scheme could be given only based on readership multiplied by the book volume. Basically you, as an author, would tell to the administrator of grants:
"I plan to write a book, probably $a words, and my current ranking in the country is $b."
Then the administrator says: "Once written and published we will pay you $c for each word, as row $b in the table 1 indicates."
The administrator would have no control over the content of your book. If it is bad it will hurt your ranking, and your next book will bring you less money.
Or "long experience".
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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.
The print industry may not be sexy, but it is colossal...over 10 times the revenue of all other media (movies/tv/music/videogames/etc) combined. If this surprises you, consider J.K. Rowling. She wrote a few books and became an overnight billionaire. How many billionaire artists can you name? In no other industry can this happen...there is simply not enough money to go around.
So far, the book industry has been spared because dead-tree-format is still preferred, but that will change as soon as the iPod-equivalent of the ebook readers hits the market. Then we will see a copyright war bigger that you can imagine. Music and movies were just the boring undercards. This will decide the future of copyright, and it will be bloody.
mind to share the whole list of Big Jerks that you collected so far? thanks
I find it telling that much the same description and accolades are given for Harlan Ellison, who is also quite...adamant about defending his copyright. Oddly enough, I dislike both authors; I find their works not so much deep as opaque.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
His position is pretty much smack down the middle between the two -- that's why I suggested him.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
"The law gives authors the right to choose who can and cannot make copies of their work, and under what terms. Are you suggesting that authors shouldn't have the right to choose? Are you suggesting that you have the right to make that choice for them?"
The law gives authors the artificial 'right' to 'choose' who can and cannot exercise their *natural* right to copy works, yes. And gives them the 'choice' as to whether or not people who exercise that natural right should be literally arrested and thrown in jail.
Some, naively perhaps, might think that a natural right ought to trump an artificial right, and that 'choosing' to deprive someone else of physical liberty is... perhaps a choice that *should* be taken away.
"You can't make a freedom argument against copyright - you never had the right to take what isn't yours to take."
You can't make a freedom argument against slavery either - if you're owned by another person, by legal definition you don't have the right to take what isn't yours to take. Circular argument.
But on what ethical foundation does such a llegal definition rest?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
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
Oh, I don't doubt it. But the true irony is that the book industry will actually cause these ebook readers to come on the market, cause they know they can make insanely more profits if they can stop the second hand book market, and enforce subscription models, with DRM.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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."
One thing to point out about this is that the optimal strategy may depend very strongly on technological trivia that could change tomorrow. Right now, the average person has no easy way to take a pdf consisting of pages scanned from a novel and convert it into something more convenient for readers, like a plain text ASCII file. Similarly, the TV studios didn't have much to worry about until technology got to the point where a large number of people started to see the internet as more convenient than cable for watching TV shows.
Another thing to consider is that a lot of established authors seem to see free distribution as being in their own best interests. For instance, check out the list of titles available in the Baen Free Library. A bunch of these authors are extremely commercially successful, but they seem to be convinced that giving away texts for free in digital form will actually increase their sales of printed copies. And Ursula LeGuin arguably has more to gain from free internet exposure than, e.g., Mercedes Lackey. Try browsing the SF shelves of your local chain bookstore to see which author is better represented, and which one's books are oriented face-outward rather than spine-outward. Lackey probably sells more than LeGuin. I suspect that the reason Lackey makes some of her work available for free is more a generational issue than a matter of cold calculation of economic self-interest.
The plain, cold truth is that probably nobody knows how this will all work out in the end. People are just trying stuff to see what might work.
Find free books.
"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.
Don't let people tell you what's good or who's better when it comes to fiction. Treat them as recommendations, but never as a rule.
I think the quote goes something along the lines of "I don't know much about art - but I know what I like." I concur. What makes you happy... makes you happy. Others shouldn't define that. Especially when their recommendations are not only subjective (which is the nature of "like" and "dislike") but lacking detail.
Which, of course, doesn't mean I must refuse to see the flaws in whatever it is that makes me happy.
Hmm half a million quid for a movie option before the first book is published.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1362097/Rowling-vs-Tolkien.html?mobile=true
Sorry about that. There were no corncobs in the outhouse.
West Texas Redneck
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.
Yes, it is called copyright for a reason. Who has the right to copy? The author or the publisher. Not hordes of grasping internet users.
By your argument that books should be "spread around" I should be able to take your private journals release them onto the net, yes? Or would it be fairer to ask first?
Straw man fallacy. You're mixing private journals (which were meant to be read only by a closed circle of people) with books that were written so ANYONE could read it.
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.
Heh, reminds me of a story I heard about Ellison.
ObPA:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2005/09/26/
...Stu
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?
How can she tell the difference between me reading them at the library or me pirating them?
Truth be known. If I can't read it on a PC or on my old Palm handled, I don't read it. Unless her material ie easy to get online. I won't read her. All of her works just die to me.
If a tree falls in the woods and no-one hears it did it happen? If an author writes a book and it can't outlast a short sighted copyright, will it ever be read again?
vi +
But if we'd stuck with the original copyright law time of 14 years, lot of her earlier works would now be in the public domain.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
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.
Have you read "Tehanu"? An awful, man-hating book.
I've read pretty much everything Le Guin has written, but the only book I really liked was the first parth of wizard of Earthsea.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
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.
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... ;)
This comparison is an irrelevant Red Herring. Being more read or having more degrees does not make one speaker (yes, authors are speakers -- just because their words are "fixed in a tangible medium" does not mean they are not words) better than another. The point of Free Speech is that each speaker has an equal right to express his or her opinion. These opinions should be judged upon their merits, not upon from whence they originated.
How do you expect there to be equal rights if people are judged in such a prejudicial way?
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
For the record, I think I should mention that I do not in the slightest like any of Doctorow's works. I agree with many if not most of the things he says about copyright, though.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
I still fail to see how subjectively judged prowess as an author has anything to do with these two authors' views on copyright. What does it matter if they write good books or bad? Popular or not? How does this have any relation to their opinions on how the law affects them? They are just the opinions of two people.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Yeah, that and currently, at least, the publishers often decide who is popular and who is not. The traditional filtration works for some and not for others. It is entirely possible and indeed probable that a great number of excellent authors have been passed over or buried because of publishers' perception of current market tastes. The Internet provides a way out for these authors.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Another difference might be with target market. Someone trying to appeal to children or teens, a tech-savvy but fairly cost sensitive(and often credit-cardless) demographic, might worry more about piracy, since if downloading or copying from a friend at school is easier than whining for mom's credit card, they lose a sale. Someone trying to appeal to twenty-something techies with online buying power might not face the same hurdles.
I think the problem with this argument is the point of view. Looking at individual sales seems absurd to me. One by one, one might say, "I lost a sale there and gained a sale here." The balance will always be negative. However, if you gain 100 fans and lose 10 sales, you are sure to profit. Teenagers actually have a lot of disposable cash -- often more than their parents. No one is ever going to get 100% of their fan base to pay. This is just a fact of nature. However, another fact of nature is: The bigger the fan base, the more money will be paid. More fans, more money.
This is just like the problem with the First Law of Robotics in I Robot. When taken individually, the law was excellent. When applied to the human race as a whole, the law required (even increasing) tyranny. "Lost sales" are the same: When taken individually, they seem catastrophic. When taken as a whole, they are more likely profitable (as advertising expenditures are).
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
I'd accidentally found the Baen library via webscriptions, but didn't know what it was. It was mostly because I was looking for a legit ebook from one of my favourite authors. I was quite gratified to find that there were a couple of books there, available for free as well. I didn't actually grab the free one, as it was the first in the series that I wanted the whole lot of, but ... I can confirm their notion that exposure means more sales - I've spent more money through their site than I would have done if some of the authors on there didn't have a sampler. And in all fairness, there's a few I've grabbed, read, didn't like, and thus didn't bother.
But either way, that particular author has got more cash from my direction than they would have done otherwise, which I think would be rather the point - I'd actaully prefer and e-copy of 90% of the books I own - there's only a few that I'm so fanatical about that I need a hardcopy on my shelf, and those are the ones that I've bought several times over the years already. k
Speaking personally, I don't actually mind paying 'hardback prices' for a brand new release of a book I've been looking for, even if it is electronic distribution - just to not have to have a bulky hardback to cart around and fill up my bookshelf.
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.
And Ursula LeGuin arguably has more to gain from free internet exposure than, e.g., Mercedes Lackey.
Particularly since in my experience people who read LeGuin's work and dislike it just find her dull, whereas people who read Lackey's work and "dislike" it tend to want to gouge out their eyes.
I _loved_ the PBS movie adaptation! I saw it 'back when' in the 80's. Now I'll have to read the novel. Antwerp!!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
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.
Which, of course, doesn't mean I must refuse to see the flaws in whatever it is that makes me happy.
Stark Reality rarely makes people happy. People who are unaware are often happier than others.
A moment of carelessness, a lifetime of regret.
A lifetime of carelessness, a moment of regret.
--- The American Book of the Dead
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
...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_
Check out www.mises.org and look up IP copyright and patent. The difficulty in IP lies in the issuance of positive rights. Positive rights are imposed on others by decree. It is a right that infringes on others by fiat. Negative rights are things like, "You can't hurt me and I can't hurt you." We have a right to do as we wish, so long as we don't infringe on the same rights as others. The other problem with IP is that unlike other forms of tangible property, IP is not lost at all if the material is copied. As far as the financial aspects of IP are concerned, there are two areas to consider: 1. IP MUST be made known to others for it to have any value to them, so they already are aware of it's content and meaning. 2. Because of #1, there is no market for the IP until it is disclosed. What is slowly being discovered in the music industry is that the music itself is not the product that generates sales in and of itself. It is the followup sales of CDs, T-shirts, higher quality production releases, posters and performances that generate revenue from product. (See NIN) With books, it's the book itself that is the product, signed copies, lectures etc. that are the true product and property. The content is the draw to purchace. Doctrow is right when he says Obscurity is worse. Copyright, his right, prevents his work from reaching his audience. Creative Commons was created in part, to circumvent the restrictions that Copyright places on the options of the author, because of the restriction placed on the audience. Copyright and patent are a double edged sword! They open the door to litigation that ultimately favors only those with deep pockets and big lawyers. Many authors have no right to their own work anymore, or there is no access to an author's work, because Copyright prevents those works from being distributed by other means, even though the author was the originator of the IP. There are numerous works lying in obscurity because the publisher owns part or all of the rights, and refuses to publish because of the percieved limits of the market and the capital it would take to enter, or re-enter production. And rather than return the rights to the author, they just sit on the work until he dies. Patents are even worse. Even if you think of a device yourself, and produce a product, which you have every right to, I can prevent you from utilizing your own invention because I won the race to the patent office. How is that a right?
Most people are mostly good most of the time.
The plain, cold truth is that probably nobody knows how this will all work out in the end. People are just trying stuff to see what might work.
That's reality. But publishers and (some) authors don't want that uncertainty, so they opt instead for control. Most people prefer control to uncertainty, so they trade liberty for safety.
The US Constitution is clear:
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
Patents and Copyrights exist for a purpose, not simply to give control to Authors and Inventors. "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
Everything that people are trying should be evaluated by the courts and congress as to whether it promotes "the Progress of Science and useful Arts", not whether is gives someone or some company more control or money.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
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.
Are you suggesting that authors shouldn't have the right to choose?
Yes. See, that was easy.
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.
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.
ANYONE meaning those that paid for the privilege, or were otherwise given permission from the copyright holder, or owner of the journal.
Sweet. Next time I'm on a cruise ship and need to go to the bathroom, I won't have to scramble to find one if I'm on the poop deck. I can just go right there.
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
I actually heard this story before reading the account on PA. I think it was in a book of humorous recollections by Asimov, but I can't recall the title.
Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
Or an interesting sense of humor.
Asimov adds that "vonts" is Yiddish for "bedbug".
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?
I can think of one. H. Beam Piper committed suicide in 1964. In an introduction to one of his books (which had been given to me by a fellow science fiction enthusiast in my youth), obviously written posthumously by a friend (Pournelle maybe?), the circumstances were laid out in saddening detail. The poor bastard had been reduced to shooting pigeons out of his window for food. He probably killed himself in despair over his career, although the Wikipedia article mentions that his beliefs were in fact partly erroneous, as Piper was unaware of some book sales.
The Wikipedia article also does mention that Piper was hugely influential, mostly of other science fiction writers. I'd argue that Piper was a "genre giant" who died in poverty.
I'm sure other enterprising souls out there can think of more examples.
Hey.. PP started talking about comparing them and their "authorial merit".
How does this have any relation to their opinions on how the law affects them?
It has nothing to do with the law itself. Law affects them both equally. It also fails them both equally just as DMC fails makers of music and video.
But, as sole creators of their work they have far more control over their relationship with their fans.
And it is solely up to them how they will threat them - like friends, like fans, like customers, like thieves, like terrorists...
Hell... I've read most (or at least a great deal of) books I've read without paying a dime to the publisher or author.
Through libraries, borrowing books from friends, used books...
If it is all about the money - I've stolen millions in revenue from hundreds (maybe thousands) of authors and their kids (in case of dead authors).
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Free Speech is not limited to "political speech" by any means. It means governments do not have the right to restrict speech. Exceptions are supposed to be limited and few. The Berne Convention -- and by extrapolation any copyright law that implements it (in other words, almost all current copyright laws) -- has two portions that are very hostile to Free Speech.
The first is the lack of formalities (applications for copyright and documentation upon precisely what materials are copyrighted). Basically, by making all written communication copyrighted, speech cannot be Free. If I write you a letter, can I sue you when you copy a portion of it? How large a portion? Online speech is all subject to copyright because of this badly designed legislation. Every IM conversation is a copyrighted work. Because servers cache everything, even voice conversations on the Internet could be considered copyrighted works.
The second is derivative works. Derivative works rights give authors the power not only to censor reproduction of their original speech, but also any speech that was a "derivative" of it. You could technically claim that a response to a Slashdot comment you made was a derivative work even if your comment was not quoted in the response. How is that not a threat to Free Speech?
Copyright used to apply to a small fraction of a percent of speech. Now, it applies to all non-face-to-face communication. I will ask my old question once again: How can speech be Free when all speech is "owned"?
All data is speech. All speech is Free.