The reason you don't hear about ebook piracy is because of the lack of reporting, no other.
I own a ebook, and just casually googling to find books to buy I've found TONS of pirated books on the web. Often these come up very high on google too.
This is not new, either -- about a decade ago I recall someone posting a book on USENET. The author also read USENET and was very upset, naturally.
Those arguing that "alternate" ways of selling ebooks will work have to deal with Steven King's experiences. He started writing a book making each chapter available on the net with no DRM but merely a request to pay him a small amount. He never finished the book because too few people paid him. Steven King is one of the most popular authors ever, and yet even he couldn't make it work.
And just to forestall someone using the Baen Free Library as a counter-example, notice that there are very few books on that site, other than Eric Flint's own. The other books seem all to be quite old and out of print.
Slashdotters often make comparisons with RIAA and the music industry. However, the differences between the music and book markets make the comparison rather doubtful. For instance, when is the last time you saw a musician extensively praise his recording label? Yet in almost every book you will find the author thanking their editor, and often other people in their publisher's organization. The Writer's Guild of America is VERY aware of ebooks, to the point that they were threatening a strike over the issue once. With the music industry it is the RIAA pushing for DRM, while with the book industry it is usually the authors. Very different.
At the end of January I bought an Irex Iliad ebook reader (more expensive than the Kindle, but with a larger screen and with the ability to use a stylus). See Irex Iliad
I love it! I use it every day. I can read technical two-column pdfs on it for work, as well as tons of novels. You can plug in CF flash cards or USB drives, and if you attach it to your computer the internal memory appears as if it were another drive. I also use it to take notes in meetings or jot down things while working.
Seriously, it is one of those things that you find more and more uses for, once you have it.
I'd rephrase this argument somewhat: "Content producers", read musicians, novelists and reporters do spend a lot of time and effort producing things, and do have a reasonable expectation of being able to feed their family as a result. I doubt that most "consumers" think that anyone could produce this, but instead just want something for nothing. There are an awful lot of "fans" who don't what to support the artists that they supposedly love. Admittedly, when you talk to these people you often get nasty anti-artist rants.
The tragedy of all of this is that if authors, reporters and musicians can't earn a living, then there won't be any new books, or good news coverage, or highly professional music. Such a world is very sad indeed, and not one that I'd enjoy living in.
Once again, we see the common pattern of people being targeted not because of anything that they've done, but because they are a "bad group". The proposers of things like this, and those people who make those "if you've nothing to hide..." arguments, always believe that THEY are GOOD people. Their plans are for BAD people, and will never affect them. Their kids will never be slightly ill and cranky, and throw a tantrum in kindergarten. Their kids will never be blamed for something that they've never done. Never!
Notice also that this plan is for identifying people -- who someone is. This is a good thing if you are trying to identify the evil "them". However, its not much use for stopping crime, is it? After all, the 9/11 conspirators had perfectly correct and valid visas, so its hardly the case that better means of identification would be useful.
Do you really think netflix could offer non-DRMed movies without permission of the studios? And, just look at the recent writer's strike -- there's no way in hell the studios are going to allow mpeg streaming!
There's more meanings to "impossible" than just technologically impossible.
It is ironic that the parent post claims that copyright is somehow destroying constitutional rights. (Presumably the US constitution.) In reality, it is the constitution itself that establishes copyright!
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 states that Congress should "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".
Now, you can try to argue that copyright is somehow immoral, but be aware that you are arguing AGAINST the constitution, not for it.
Baen leaves it up to the authors, bypassing a lot of the issue, which is nice. (And, indeed, for older books the electronic rights usually ended up with the author, as the old contracts didn't specify otherwise.)
I just grabbed the first (paper) fiction book that came to hand, and its copyright page has a lot of text about electronic rights, as well as a plea not to pirate the book.
Amazon says that their PDF handling is currently experimental, but that you can convert it.
If you look around, you'll find that PDF support is an issue for pretty much all of these devices. Sony's reader, for instance, can view PDF, but it is unreadable. This isn't a coincidence.
Years ago in the e-book business there were heated debates between the reader-first and the publisher-first groups. The former wanted readers to be able to enlarge, shrink or reformat books however they want. The latter want to be able to control every pixel on the screen, so that it will actually look good. For instance, the classic Alice in Wonderland illustrations flow around the text, which only works if the formatting is fixed.
These e-books are reader-first devices: they let readers reformat books to whatever they want. PDFs are publisher-first. And how do you fit a 8.5x11 inch PDF page on a small screen? If you scale it, then it'll likely be unreadable. If you force everyone to scroll around the page, that'll likely make it irritating to use. There's probably a reasonably good solution, but it certainly isn't going to be easy!
A lot of the same kinds of comments are coming up here as in other forums about the Kindle.
Firstly, even though this article points out explicitly that you can put your own content on the Kindle, lots of people still seem to refuse to believe it. You can! And you can use USB to backup the files, as well.
Secondly, DRM isn't really Amazon's fault. All publishers are really, really aware of electronic rights. There are major disputes between the Author's Guild and publishers because of this. Recently, in particular, there was a big fight with Simon & Schuster. There is simply no way that anyone, either authors or publishers, are going to give up these rights. Maybe a particular author will give away an old book for free over the 'net, but not in general. Both authors and publishers have to eat. Allowing everyone to copy their books is not going to happen. Amazon had no choice but to comply.
Again, you can download the manuals RIGHT NOW, off the Kindle website. (Heck, that's what I did.) And, they said it in the product technical details as well.
It sounds to me like people WANT to believe that Amazon is forcing people to use them as their only source of Kindle-material. Perhaps this is so they can growl at DRM, or because they can then argue that Amazon should give them away "like razors". It's not true though.
Can we avoid conspiracy theories? Especially when they made it quite clear that you could, but from the product description page and in their manual, which you can download from them.
I really don't see how they could have made it much clear, and the fact that people still don't understand it reflects more on them, I think, than Amazon.
Re:Amazon doesn't charge fees for loading document
on
Kindle Versus The iPhone
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Not according to sections 8.2 and 8.3 of the product manual. It can directly read TXT, MOBI, PRC, Audible and play mp3s without any conversion. It can convert other formats, and the conversion is FREE. There is only a charge if you ask them to send them wirelessly to the Kindle.
You can read TXT, MOBI, PRC, Audible and play mp3s without any conversion. If you don't believe me, look at section 8.2 of the manual (which you can find near the bottom of Amazon's Kindle page).
Amazon won't even let you load your own documents onto the Kindle without paying them a $.10 fee for each one you load, and they charge even more to access otherwise free content like blogs and public domain books from Project Gutenberg and such. Amazon DOESN'T charge any fees for putting documents on the Kindle! If you read the product manual (near the bottom of Amazon's page) you'll find that you can just connect the Kindle to your computer with the supplied USB cable, and *PRESTO*, the Kindle appears as an ordinary drive. You can freely move content back and forth.
Where do you get the idea that it is "almost entirely proprietary"? If you look at the technical details section, it says it supports "TXT, Audible (formats 2, 3 and 4), MP3, natively; HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, MOBI, PRC through conversion".
*laugh* Have you even read the missive that you link to? And you do realize that you are arguing against the founders of the USA, don't you?
According to the argument that you linked to, it is immoral to have laws against murder, because such laws restrict the freedom of the murderer. (Which, indeed, they do.) However, society has decided that restricting the freedom of the murder victims outweighs the freedom of murderers. Similarly, restricting the freedom of consumers outweighs the freedom of monopolies.
It is ironic that the site you like claims to be in favor of free markets. The argument in favour of free markets is that they spur innovation and fair prices. Monopolies, however, prevent both.
So, an undergrad makes a relatively silly mistake in a proof, and the mistake is found before his paper even gets through the referee process. What's the big deal that keeps nagging at you?
Yes, people check proofs. The name "Vaughan Pratt" comes to mind as an example.
Mathematicians are extremely dedicated, because there is incredible competition to get a Ph.D. in mathematics, and in order to get a job doing pure math one practically has to wait for someone to die. It is something one only does if one is both extremely talented and in love with the subject. So, any new result in a field is going to be looked at carefully -- for fun if nothing else.
TANSTAAFL might work very well for aged Science Fiction writers, but, alas, not so much in the real world.
Take an example: Say you and your family saved up to go to have an amazing vacation, including staying at a Hilton near a beach. But, when you got there, you found out that you had to pay $20/night extra to have the beds and towels changed, $30/night for air conditioning, $25/night for hot water, $5/night for each key, and $50/night for use of the elevator to go to the 22nd floor. Would you go back?
Airlines and hotels are both businesses that respond greatly to the economy. When times are good, people take planes and stay in hotels -- both for vacations and business. When times are rough, people consider vacationing nearby, or driving, and try to stay with friends and family. Businesses try phone conferences. For example, I work for one of the top 15 companies in the Fortune 500, and for six months there has been a complete freeze on all travel.
So, what are you supposed to do if you are in this kind of business? It is rather obvious: during the good times you squirrel away money for a rainy day fund, and you make your customers as happy as you can. When the bad times hit, you want them to think, "Well, we're low on cash, but we had so much fun two years ago using that airline/hotel/theme park, why don't we splurge. After all, life's short!" During the bad times, you use your rainy day fund, and keep trying to make your customers happy as possible, even with your reduced funds. There are lots of things that make customers happy that don't cost a lot, after all.
US airlines, though, have been run very poorly. Just after 9/11, the airlines were first in line to get government funding. How and why? Because it turns out that most of them were already either asking for government bailouts, or were planning to. Their stated reason was that fuel costs had risen. But, fuel costs are normal business expenses!
One of the real reasons was that during the previous economic high, the airlines had not been either saving money, or making customers happy. People had been forced to zig-zag across the country, having little or no food, unpleasant boarding procedures, and horrible service. So, when the times became bad, not only did the airlines not have any money saved away, but their customers actively hated them.
That's how the real world works in such businesses. TANSTAFL just causes those companies to go bankrupt.
Me too! ('cept that I was younger.) I wrote a version of the game of Hammurabi for it. I also had fun writing self-modifying code, taking advantage of the fact that you could convert data memory to and from program memory. Alas, the last time I tried to play with it, I found that it had died, probably because of the battery.
The fuss is that the author never licensed the website to distribute commercially under *any* terms, let alone for a fee. How do you know this? The author's complaint doesn't say this -- he seems to be under the mistaken impression that the site was charging for non-commercial use, which it isn't.
Furthermore, if you look at the site's information for authors, it explicitly says that it requires a license from the authors. This license doesn't seem to be posted, but there is no reason it can't say something like "You have the rights to distribute it for free under the Creative Commons license, and to charge a fee for commercial use."
I would be surprised if they even read the license at all *sigh* Clearly, you didn't read the license yourself.
The summary states that his license stipulates no commercial use. Charging anything for the paper beyond your own costs for providing it (a nominal bandwidth and storage fee, perhaps) is commercial use. On the face of it, OUP is violating the license. If you read the license on his article, which is explicitly stated at the top of the journal's web page, you'll see that the license does not prevent commercial use. Instead, it reads "Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder". In other words, you can use it for commercial purposes, if you get permission.
Note, the site DOES give free access to the article for non-commercial use, and clearly states this at the top of the page.
The thing the author is complaining about is the link TO REQUEST PERMISSION FOR COMMERCIAL USE. When you get the quote, it even explictly says that you do not need to do this for non-commercial use. The author, for some reason, clipped this text out of his screenshot.
Furthermore, the journal in its instructions for authors seems quite clear on its policy for granting permission for commercial use, and requires a license from the authors to do this.
Unless government has the magical power to produce goods and services out of thin air, the government needs to make a profit
And, from Moofie's response:
You're not trying to pretend that government services don't have any overhead, are you?
It seems that a definition is in order. Profit is the amount of revenue received minus the production cost and overhead. So, no, government doesn't need to make a profit, it just needs to cover its costs and overhead. Neither of which are zero.
And, again, the idea that companies don't have waste and bureacracy is laughable. Just talk to anyone who works at a reasonably large company and they'll tell you stories.
I've seen this argument many, many times. It might make sense for products like ice cream cones, but for little else.
Let's take these two points:
"The sellers must respond to the buyer every single day." Really? Okay, lets say that you are in charge of a large company, and you don't like Microsoft's latest upgrade. Can you just replace all the tens of thousands of Windows PCs in your company with Linux or Apples by the next day, and just keep on going? No? Then Microsoft doesn't really have to respond to you today, does it?
"You just change providers." Strangely enough, the same example works here too. And its not unusual -- maybe a century ago anyone could just start a new "provider" by hanging a sign on their door. That's not true these days, and big stores can do things like operate a location at a loss in order to force a small store into bankruptcy.
And, for some reason you ignore company's profits into the equation. Where do profits come from? You -- the consumer. Government services don't have the overhead of profit.
Lastly, I can't believe that anyone who has ever worked in a private company can ever view companies as streamlined and efficient. Why, just yesterday I had a $17 million contract fall through because one person signed a certain document five minutes late. And, no, there's no way for us to get any of it reimbursed.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason you don't hear about ebook piracy is because of the lack of reporting, no other.
I own a ebook, and just casually googling to find books to buy I've found TONS of pirated books on the web. Often these come up very high on google too.
This is not new, either -- about a decade ago I recall someone posting a book on USENET. The author also read USENET and was very upset, naturally.
Those arguing that "alternate" ways of selling ebooks will work have to deal with Steven King's experiences. He started writing a book making each chapter available on the net with no DRM but merely a request to pay him a small amount. He never finished the book because too few people paid him. Steven King is one of the most popular authors ever, and yet even he couldn't make it work.
And just to forestall someone using the Baen Free Library as a counter-example, notice that there are very few books on that site, other than Eric Flint's own. The other books seem all to be quite old and out of print.
Slashdotters often make comparisons with RIAA and the music industry. However, the differences between the music and book markets make the comparison rather doubtful. For instance, when is the last time you saw a musician extensively praise his recording label? Yet in almost every book you will find the author thanking their editor, and often other people in their publisher's organization. The Writer's Guild of America is VERY aware of ebooks, to the point that they were threatening a strike over the issue once. With the music industry it is the RIAA pushing for DRM, while with the book industry it is usually the authors. Very different.
At the end of January I bought an Irex Iliad ebook reader (more expensive than the Kindle, but with a larger screen and with the ability to use a stylus). See Irex Iliad
I love it! I use it every day. I can read technical two-column pdfs on it for work, as well as tons of novels. You can plug in CF flash cards or USB drives, and if you attach it to your computer the internal memory appears as if it were another drive. I also use it to take notes in meetings or jot down things while working.
Seriously, it is one of those things that you find more and more uses for, once you have it.
I'd rephrase this argument somewhat: "Content producers", read musicians, novelists and reporters do spend a lot of time and effort producing things, and do have a reasonable expectation of being able to feed their family as a result. I doubt that most "consumers" think that anyone could produce this, but instead just want something for nothing. There are an awful lot of "fans" who don't what to support the artists that they supposedly love. Admittedly, when you talk to these people you often get nasty anti-artist rants.
The tragedy of all of this is that if authors, reporters and musicians can't earn a living, then there won't be any new books, or good news coverage, or highly professional music. Such a world is very sad indeed, and not one that I'd enjoy living in.
Once again, we see the common pattern of people being targeted not because of anything that they've done, but because they are a "bad group". The proposers of things like this, and those people who make those "if you've nothing to hide..." arguments, always believe that THEY are GOOD people. Their plans are for BAD people, and will never affect them. Their kids will never be slightly ill and cranky, and throw a tantrum in kindergarten. Their kids will never be blamed for something that they've never done. Never!
Notice also that this plan is for identifying people -- who someone is. This is a good thing if you are trying to identify the evil "them". However, its not much use for stopping crime, is it? After all, the 9/11 conspirators had perfectly correct and valid visas, so its hardly the case that better means of identification would be useful.
Do you really think netflix could offer non-DRMed movies without permission of the studios? And, just look at the recent writer's strike -- there's no way in hell the studios are going to allow mpeg streaming!
There's more meanings to "impossible" than just technologically impossible.
It is ironic that the parent post claims that copyright is somehow destroying constitutional rights. (Presumably the US constitution.) In reality, it is the constitution itself that establishes copyright!
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 states that Congress should "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".
Now, you can try to argue that copyright is somehow immoral, but be aware that you are arguing AGAINST the constitution, not for it.
Baen leaves it up to the authors, bypassing a lot of the issue, which is nice. (And, indeed, for older books the electronic rights usually ended up with the author, as the old contracts didn't specify otherwise.)
I just grabbed the first (paper) fiction book that came to hand, and its copyright page has a lot of text about electronic rights, as well as a plea not to pirate the book.
Amazon says that their PDF handling is currently experimental, but that you can convert it.
If you look around, you'll find that PDF support is an issue for pretty much all of these devices. Sony's reader, for instance, can view PDF, but it is unreadable. This isn't a coincidence.
Years ago in the e-book business there were heated debates between the reader-first and the publisher-first groups. The former wanted readers to be able to enlarge, shrink or reformat books however they want. The latter want to be able to control every pixel on the screen, so that it will actually look good. For instance, the classic Alice in Wonderland illustrations flow around the text, which only works if the formatting is fixed.
These e-books are reader-first devices: they let readers reformat books to whatever they want. PDFs are publisher-first. And how do you fit a 8.5x11 inch PDF page on a small screen? If you scale it, then it'll likely be unreadable. If you force everyone to scroll around the page, that'll likely make it irritating to use. There's probably a reasonably good solution, but it certainly isn't going to be easy!
A lot of the same kinds of comments are coming up here as in other forums about the Kindle.
Firstly, even though this article points out explicitly that you can put your own content on the Kindle, lots of people still seem to refuse to believe it. You can! And you can use USB to backup the files, as well.
Secondly, DRM isn't really Amazon's fault. All publishers are really, really aware of electronic rights. There are major disputes between the Author's Guild and publishers because of this. Recently, in particular, there was a big fight with Simon & Schuster. There is simply no way that anyone, either authors or publishers, are going to give up these rights. Maybe a particular author will give away an old book for free over the 'net, but not in general. Both authors and publishers have to eat. Allowing everyone to copy their books is not going to happen. Amazon had no choice but to comply.
Again, you can download the manuals RIGHT NOW, off the Kindle website. (Heck, that's what I did.) And, they said it in the product technical details as well.
It sounds to me like people WANT to believe that Amazon is forcing people to use them as their only source of Kindle-material. Perhaps this is so they can growl at DRM, or because they can then argue that Amazon should give them away "like razors". It's not true though.
Can we avoid conspiracy theories? Especially when they made it quite clear that you could, but from the product description page and in their manual, which you can download from them.
I really don't see how they could have made it much clear, and the fact that people still don't understand it reflects more on them, I think, than Amazon.
Not according to sections 8.2 and 8.3 of the product manual. It can directly read TXT, MOBI, PRC, Audible and play mp3s without any conversion. It can convert other formats, and the conversion is FREE. There is only a charge if you ask them to send them wirelessly to the Kindle.
You can read TXT, MOBI, PRC, Audible and play mp3s without any conversion. If you don't believe me, look at section 8.2 of the manual (which you can find near the bottom of Amazon's Kindle page).
Not to mention that it has SD card support.
Where do you get the idea that it is "almost entirely proprietary"? If you look at the technical details section, it says it supports "TXT, Audible (formats 2, 3 and 4), MP3, natively; HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, MOBI, PRC through conversion".
*laugh* Have you even read the missive that you link to? And you do realize that you are arguing against the founders of the USA, don't you?
According to the argument that you linked to, it is immoral to have laws against murder, because such laws restrict the freedom of the murderer. (Which, indeed, they do.) However, society has decided that restricting the freedom of the murder victims outweighs the freedom of murderers. Similarly, restricting the freedom of consumers outweighs the freedom of monopolies.
It is ironic that the site you like claims to be in favor of free markets. The argument in favour of free markets is that they spur innovation and fair prices. Monopolies, however, prevent both.
So, an undergrad makes a relatively silly mistake in a proof, and the mistake is found before his paper even gets through the referee process. What's the big deal that keeps nagging at you?
Yes, people check proofs. The name "Vaughan Pratt" comes to mind as an example.
Mathematicians are extremely dedicated, because there is incredible competition to get a Ph.D. in mathematics, and in order to get a job doing pure math one practically has to wait for someone to die. It is something one only does if one is both extremely talented and in love with the subject. So, any new result in a field is going to be looked at carefully -- for fun if nothing else.
TANSTAAFL might work very well for aged Science Fiction writers, but, alas, not so much in the real world.
Take an example: Say you and your family saved up to go to have an amazing vacation, including staying at a Hilton near a beach. But, when you got there, you found out that you had to pay $20/night extra to have the beds and towels changed, $30/night for air conditioning, $25/night for hot water, $5/night for each key, and $50/night for use of the elevator to go to the 22nd floor. Would you go back?
Airlines and hotels are both businesses that respond greatly to the economy. When times are good, people take planes and stay in hotels -- both for vacations and business. When times are rough, people consider vacationing nearby, or driving, and try to stay with friends and family. Businesses try phone conferences. For example, I work for one of the top 15 companies in the Fortune 500, and for six months there has been a complete freeze on all travel.
So, what are you supposed to do if you are in this kind of business? It is rather obvious: during the good times you squirrel away money for a rainy day fund, and you make your customers as happy as you can. When the bad times hit, you want them to think, "Well, we're low on cash, but we had so much fun two years ago using that airline/hotel/theme park, why don't we splurge. After all, life's short!" During the bad times, you use your rainy day fund, and keep trying to make your customers happy as possible, even with your reduced funds. There are lots of things that make customers happy that don't cost a lot, after all.
US airlines, though, have been run very poorly. Just after 9/11, the airlines were first in line to get government funding. How and why? Because it turns out that most of them were already either asking for government bailouts, or were planning to. Their stated reason was that fuel costs had risen. But, fuel costs are normal business expenses!
One of the real reasons was that during the previous economic high, the airlines had not been either saving money, or making customers happy. People had been forced to zig-zag across the country, having little or no food, unpleasant boarding procedures, and horrible service. So, when the times became bad, not only did the airlines not have any money saved away, but their customers actively hated them.
That's how the real world works in such businesses. TANSTAFL just causes those companies to go bankrupt.
Me too! ('cept that I was younger.) I wrote a version of the game of Hammurabi for it. I also had fun writing self-modifying code, taking advantage of the fact that you could convert data memory to and from program memory. Alas, the last time I tried to play with it, I found that it had died, probably because of the battery.
Your virtual processor sounds impressive!
Furthermore, if you look at the site's information for authors, it explicitly says that it requires a license from the authors. This license doesn't seem to be posted, but there is no reason it can't say something like "You have the rights to distribute it for free under the Creative Commons license, and to charge a fee for commercial use."
Do you have any reason to think otherwise?
Note, the site DOES give free access to the article for non-commercial use, and clearly states this at the top of the page.
The thing the author is complaining about is the link TO REQUEST PERMISSION FOR COMMERCIAL USE. When you get the quote, it even explictly says that you do not need to do this for non-commercial use. The author, for some reason, clipped this text out of his screenshot.
Furthermore, the journal in its instructions for authors seems quite clear on its policy for granting permission for commercial use, and requires a license from the authors to do this.
Plame WAS covert. See Plame employment report. You could also see MSNBC's commentary.
The CIA has explicitly stated that Plame was covert. See Plame employment report. You could also see MSNBC's commentary.
It seems that a definition is in order. Profit is the amount of revenue received minus the production cost and overhead. So, no, government doesn't need to make a profit, it just needs to cover its costs and overhead. Neither of which are zero.
And, again, the idea that companies don't have waste and bureacracy is laughable. Just talk to anyone who works at a reasonably large company and they'll tell you stories.
Let's take these two points:
And, for some reason you ignore company's profits into the equation. Where do profits come from? You -- the consumer. Government services don't have the overhead of profit.
Lastly, I can't believe that anyone who has ever worked in a private company can ever view companies as streamlined and efficient. Why, just yesterday I had a $17 million contract fall through because one person signed a certain document five minutes late. And, no, there's no way for us to get any of it reimbursed.