Nov 23rd, 2013, 2:46 pm
Piracy is not theft unless we are redefining the meaning of the word 'theft'.

Is is theft to photograph an original painting so you can view it on your computer? No painting is missing and the painter is not out of pocket. Therefore No offense has taken place.

Copyright is a freak of modern commercial society. It should be culled down to a sensible definition. (By sensible I mean a level that everyday people would agree with).

Can anyone own copyright on an idea? I don't believe so. Ideas can emerge simultaniously in different minds and have done so in science. We don't know anywhere enough about the 'mind' to understand how ideas come about or whether minds are linked on an unconscious level.

Our society is rooted in crass materialism and consumerism and this is the wicked basis for the need to copyright and 'own' ideas.

There is a company still attempting to copyright (and therefore 'own') the human genome! WTF!


WHERE PIRACY = THEFT:

I believe piracy can only be defined as a sort of theft if someone has LOST OUT by the act of duplicating an idea or software.

In practice this means if I WOULD LIKELY HAVE purchased the book or software then by duplicating it without paying a fee I am depriving (= theft) the originator of the book or software of a sale.

The social problem with not linking piracy with theft is that it undermines those writers (of books and software) who are trying to make a living from their endevours and thus diminishes all such efforts - and we really need such diversity if we don't want to only read Stephen King or run Microsoft.

So maybe it is a societal problem rather than simply a legal one? The best way around this dilemma is to pay for those books and apps we find useful or enjoyable, even though we have 'pirated' them for free already. This would be the morally correct thing to do, would it not?

At least, when dealing with small companies and writers (because Microsoft over-charges for its buggy software and that is obscene IMHO).
Nov 23rd, 2013, 2:46 pm
Dec 17th, 2013, 10:27 pm
There is just about a 20 cent difference between the hard copy and the ebook copy of The English Monster at my preferred book retailer.

Buying an ebook is not like buying a hard copy. It's hard, if not nearly impossible, to return them if you decide that you don't like it. I very rarely buy actual copies of books anymore, the space I've opened up by switching nearly entirely to ebooks is awesome!

I'm not going to sugar coat it. At nearly the exact same price as a hard copy, there's no way I am going to buy that ebook unless it impacts me in some PROFOUND way upon reading it, or if it goes on sale. There's no real justifiable excuse for an ebook to be priced as high as a hard copy when ebooks are virtually free to mass produce, unlike the actual printing of a real book. It really just comes down to greed. Not greed on the authors part by any means. You, like most other hard working people, are just trying to make a living. People who pirate ebooks aren't your incomes enemy.

Why should people be forced to spend money on something that they have virtually no way of really knowing until after the fact whether or not it was really worth that amount to them? Once you've bought that ebook there's virtually no way to get your money back. I could take a hard copy of a book back to the store and get my money back. If companies want to charge the same amount for ebooks, they should offer the same policies.

At the same price as a real copy, I also feel like I should be able to lend my books out as MUCH as I see fit.

Somewhere along the line someone had to buy the ebook. That's your sale. The rest is just a new type of lending. And if a person who borrowed (or downloaded) your book likes it enough, they'll buy it too.



I also just want to say that there are books I have downloaded and then ended up purchasing because they were so wonderful, that I would have NEVER looked at twice otherwise. The most recent example being Hugh Howey's WOOL series. AMAZING books, but I never would have bought them if I hadn't first downloaded them.

Without being able to obtain them first for free, I basically am a missed sale. And I think missed sale opportunities make up a much larger percentage of lost profit than people who just say "I should never have to pay for anything ever".
Dec 17th, 2013, 10:27 pm
Jan 16th, 2014, 2:26 pm
So to necro the thread again.

I pirate because I lack reasonably priced legal alternatives (I already own 1000 or so dead tree books, so I buy what I can), either because the stuff is old / out of print / etc. or because I happen to live in the former eastern bloc. Import books cost an arm and a leg here and locally published ones... um... how to put this nicely... can rather lack in quality* while still being overpriced compared to the wages.

I'm also old enough to remember the times when bootleg tapes and such were the only means to get music, films, computer software from the west around here, ironically that was also the time of cheap and quality book publishing... if we ignore the censorship. Old habits die hard... and even harder if there is still reason for them to exist. :/


* A year or so ago the translator of the Fifty Shades books (not a good sign already) got memetic with his hilariously bad work and arrogance. ("If I translated The Kings of Leon as Lion King then that's what it means!")
Jan 16th, 2014, 2:26 pm

"Stories are the only things worth dying for..." - The Unwritten

Image
Feb 26th, 2014, 2:39 am
So, to necro the thread, yet again...

I'm an author. My books are listed here in the release section, and I've been aware of it for quite a long time. I'm not here to rant about it. I'm just here to provide another author's perspective.

Being an author is not my day job, but then again, not a lot of authors can make a living solely from their books. I don't think piracy is to blame for that.

As an author, I'm of two minds about piracy. Certainly, I'd love to make a little scratch from everyone who gets a copy of my book. Realistically, though, piracy is a fact of life. You won't DRM it away. You won't solve it by guilt-tripping people. My posting here and being a 'nice guy' isn't going to make me any more sales. Piracy has been around since long before the web. Heck, when I was a kid I'd go to an "Apple 2 Users Group" meeting every Wednesday, and we'd pass computer games back and forth like STDs in a whorehouse. So it'd be a bit hypocritical of me to stand up on some kind of high horse and look down my nose at people who pirate my own book.

I've been in this position before. Long before I finished my first novel, I was a Celtic musician. I had one of the earliest and largest websites devoted to the tinwhistle on the internet, started just a few months after the web really started taking off. (Anyone here remember Mosaic? heh) Shortly after my website became popular, I found people copying and sharing my information all over the internet. The mp3s (though they were WAVs back then) I recorded of tinwhistle playing, the sheet music I laboriously notated. I wasn't as laid back about it back then as I am now, I'm sad to say I was an asshole to several people that I found using my stuff. It took me a while to calm down and think more rationally about the entire thing.

I've heard some say that they pirate to protest DRM, or to protect themselves from it. I think 99% of the time, that argument's a load of hooey. I said the same kind of stuff back in those Apple 2 days. But that was just an excuse. Heck, I first published my first novel on Smashwords, DRM free. Within 2 days, it was on Usenet. So the protesting DRM argument doesn't hold a lot of water with me. The price argument doesn't either--it was 99 cents at the time.

I've come to the conclusion that if someone's going to pirate my stuff, they were never going to pay for it in the first place. That's the only reason I ever pirated anything myself. It was something I wanted, but didn't want enough to pay for it. Maybe some can't get the book in their country from Amazon. Perhaps others don't make the kind of money that would let them pay for all of the books/movies/games/whatever that they want. But whatever the excuse is, if someone really wanted to pay for my books, they could. If they don't, they won't. No amount of hand-wringing or teeth-gnashing will change that.

Regardless of the pirating, my books sell. I am making more from the first two than most indie publishers, and it's pretty close to on par what I'd be making if I published with a traditional publishing house. I consider that a blessing. I hope to do just as well with the third that will be out some time later this year. And, I expect I'll probably see the book pop up here soon enough.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is: I can't say I'm exactly thrilled that I don't make anything when my books are downloaded from pirate sites. But I can be happy that perhaps I'll pick up a new fan in the process--and hope that people enjoy the story enough to tell their friends about it, because buzz and word of mouth are really the only ways to make a living wage in this biz.
Feb 26th, 2014, 2:39 am
Mar 10th, 2014, 5:18 pm
I'll necro a necro's necro. ;)

My books are all available in both hardcopy and ebook at my local library. I donated them because of how much the library played a role in my joy of writing in the first place.

They're available here as well...and any new eyes on my work is welcome news.

There is one lil caviat here, Amazon's search engine algorith relies on sales only in part...reviews are the major factor in the placement of any book. So read all you like, but if you enjoyed it...go on over a leave a review, eh? lol

My Books
Mar 10th, 2014, 5:18 pm
Mar 13th, 2014, 9:47 am
Welcome to your new user group:

Image

sethyn wrote:I'll necro a necro's necro. ;)

My books are all available in both hardcopy and ebook at my local library. I donated them because of how much the library played a role in my joy of writing in the first place.

They're available here as well...and any new eyes on my work is welcome news.

There is one lil caviat here, Amazon's search engine algorith relies on sales only in part...reviews are the major factor in the placement of any book. So read all you like, but if you enjoyed it...go on over a leave a review, eh? lol

My Books
Mar 13th, 2014, 9:47 am
Apr 15th, 2014, 4:46 pm
I am angry . I tried to purchase E-books from amazon but this happen>>>>>>This title is not available for customers from your location in: africa .Brilliant block a whole region from books and they want us to be honest and stop pirating books.

How do they expect the author to profit when they prevent readers from buying books and when someone share the book then he become evil and they slap the fourm with enough lawsuits to sink a pirate ship.
Apr 15th, 2014, 4:46 pm
May 31st, 2014, 11:50 pm
ixyavi wrote:There's no real justifiable excuse for an ebook to be priced as high as a hard copy when ebooks are virtually free to mass produce, unlike the actual printing of a real book. It really just comes down to greed. Not greed on the authors part by any means. You, like most other hard working people, are just trying to make a living. People who pirate ebooks aren't your incomes enemy.


Well, to be fair, that's not necessarily accurate. There ARE costs to producing ebooks, whether you are aware or not.

http://michaelhyatt.com/why-do-ebooks-cost-so-much.html



As someone who has put out my own book of short stories (shameless shameless plug of my signature, which has my book) I have seen my book be "pirated" or "shared" or whatever term that you prefer. Does it suck that more people aren't buying it? Yeah. It does. Especially when PRIOR to it coming out, I had probably about 20-30 people saying they were looking forward to it and were excited for me.

Over the past two years, however, I have sold PROBABLY about 10-15 copies. Across all mediums (I posted to Amazon 1st and then to Smashwords, which I think farms it out to the istore and B&N and others).

Soooo, yeah....so much for those excited to buy my book. :lol:

However as someone that has grown up as the internet has came into being and really exploded the way it has, I'm also fairly pragmatic about the situation. As much as I would like it to be otherwise, a large chunk of the public just will not pay for anything. That's not representative of everyone, clearly, and I definitely am not referring to anyone on this site. However, we all know those people who will simply not pay for anything. If they have a $1 in their account and there is a song they want, they'll download the song illegally and spend that $1 on something else. That's a sad truth.

However there are also a lot of people who buy a LOT of digital media as well. I used to be someone who downloaded a shit ton of music. I wasn't trying to pay for shiiit. I would collect stuff just because it was there, often stuff I wouldn't even listen to.

But then I kinda grew up and I much more love the feeling of paying for good solid indie artists music that I like. Not gonna lie and say I don't download any music anymore, but I'd say a whopping 99% of it I do pay for. The other bit I download and if I like it I pay for it, if not...well...it gets the recycle bin treatment and I keep it moving.

As it pertains to my book, Once I realized that people were not really paying for my book (I just got a payment of $2.99 from Amazon last month....1st one in well over a year), I just decided to embrace it. I posted it up on Pirate Bay, and I posted it here (once again...shamelessly...in my signature).

In the package I uploaded it has my book in Epub and Mobi format, along with links to not just my blog but also the Amazon and Smashwords page where, at least on Smashwords, you can pay whatever you feel like for the book in whatever format you want.

It still hasn't lead to any sales, but I didn't put this out to make money (thank God, huh?), I did it because I wanted to be able to say that I did.

Currently I'm in the early stages of creating a graphic novel with my friend who did the artwork for my book. That we'll be selling and hopefully people will buy it. However I understand the culture and the nature of the internet that says that it will inevitably end up on torrent sites and the like.

Fighting against that is futile, I think.

BTW: to wrap up, I wrote a blog post on a similar topic as this one. I saw on twitter where an indie hip hop producer kindly asked a blog to remove a link to his music that had just been released a few days before. It was a shitty 128K rip of the bandcamp stream at that.

As a result commenters just started ripping him for daring to ask that it be taken down, which prompted me to write my thoughts on the situation.

Snippet of that piece below and then a link if you wanna read the rest:

This went on for awhile with people chiming with their take that people who bootleg buy more music than those who don't bootleg. However I think that is misleading, as there are far more people who bootleg that do NOT buy music as well. I know many people who flat out refuse to pay for music, and if they found an album they wanted that cost $1 they would bootleg it and spend the $1 on something else.

That's just the way some people are. The age we live in makes it that easy to do so. And you know what? I've bootlegged the shit out of music in the past (meaning downloading for personal use, not downloading and selling on the corners), but that's in the past. Now I'm a strong supporter of independent artists and I support artists to the fullest. In fact I wrote a blog piece a few months back about Cracker frontman David Lowery's shaming of NPR intern Emily over piracy, and trying to connect people who download illegally to the deaths of two of his friends. And in there I agreed that there are a lot of justifications to be found for circumventing the industry on downloads if you really want to look for them. However a lot of them were based in the era of $20.00 CDS and $6 singles. Things have changed.

And I get what some of those commenters are saying by pointing that many people only hear of artists through bootleg sites, and once they find them and like them, THEN they actually buy. And that without those bootleg sites, those artists would not have had those fans/sales. Once again though, that infers that the majority of people who bootleg will also pay for music afterwards, and that's just bogus. I don't care what study you give me, I'll never believe THAT. I DO believe there are people who download shit for free and then pay for it later once they realize they like it. But don't try to convince me the majority of bootleggers are paying customers cause I'm not buying it (see what I did there?).


READ THE FULL PIECE HERE: http://www.searchingforchetbaker.com/20 ... itled.html
May 31st, 2014, 11:50 pm
Aug 31st, 2014, 10:41 am
Why can we be sure that this is not just your marketing, english_monster? Maybe one of your friends request an ebook?
I'm very suspicious about your intentions in this subject since I read your article in The Guardian.
Writers are well-educated middle-class people who can afford themselves to get more satisfaction and recognition from society as writers. I know many people who have low wage jobs and there is no chance to read or write anything.
Are you aware that world-wide corporations and rich people don't want to destroy all warez sites? 95% of content is amusement. There are no serious,non-fiction, life important ebooks. Crowd worldwide must be amused and delusioned.
I agree with jatboylover. When developed, imperial countries have feelings for the poor then we could talk about copyright. That will never, never, happened.
I personally bought two books, scanned them and share with others because I wanted that other people read the content. 950 people downloaded the books so far and some of them will buy the hard copy.

http://michaelhyatt.com/why-do-ebooks-cost-so-much.html

This article is a lie that cover the hunger for profit.
1. Digital preparation is not so complicated and hard, I do it as hobby. There are plenty of good free software for this purpose Scribus, Sigil, Calibre, etc.
2. Quality assurance may be problem, but there are regulations how to write books to Kindle (mobi) or epub friendly - everything is html based!
3. Digital distribution is nothing more than uploading a files and filling the forms.

All three points above can work a man alone. The fact is that ebooks are overpriced!
Aug 31st, 2014, 10:41 am
Dec 11th, 2014, 8:58 pm
mr. shepard
ill try my best to decompose the reasons for these acts, in my particular case
Im currently a med student, im in my third year of basics cycle, and online med books, which are way cheaper than a hard copy of it, are astonisghingly expensive, lets take harrison's principles of internal medicine for example. a round price of 230 dollars, right now my father, despites his efforts is not able to buy the full extent of textbooks needed in order to correctly study, thats why I have resorted to such desperate acts
I also enjoy reading, fantasy, horror, sci fi novels, and those are very hard to come by in third world countries, particularly if you crave for books as my father taught me; books arrive 1 to 2 years after they have been published, and the only means of purchasing through the net is a credit card, which we also cant afford
so as you can see, it is an effort to surpass the obstacles against me, and become a full fledged doctor
thanks for taking your time reading and/or answering this
Dec 11th, 2014, 8:58 pm
Jun 24th, 2015, 6:31 pm
All my life I have read voraciously, but I have rarely purchased a new book. As a perpetual student, I never had extra income -- not for 2 or 3 books a week. Plus, I was introduced as a pre-teen to used-book sales by my mother. So all my life I have read library books, used books, and borrowed books. I gather the author gets payment from library purchases, but not for borrowed or second-hand books.

I'm still living and reading like that. There's a local annual used-book sale for charity and I usually buy 60-80 books there, at an average of less than $1 each. I also buy from thrift stores year-round. I continue to buy these hard copies even as I read more and more e-books. If anything I'm buying more (used) books now than I did before I started e-reading.

Having free e-books has somewhat changed what I read because mobilism has new books soon after they're published. This means I don't have to wait for the library hold list to whittle down, to get my hands on a copy. But e-books have mostly replaced library reading in my life, not purchased books. My purchasing of new books hasn't changed in the slightest.

I do feel a little guilty downloading e-books without paying, but otherwise e-books would deny me the opportunity to read for little or nothing, as I've done all my life. They would deny me the chance to share my favorites with friends, which I do constantly. I do buy hard copies of favorite novels after I've read them, just to lend to others, but I buy them second-hand. I send e-books to friends, and I lend hard copies, depending on what format my friends read and what formats I have.

If someone can figure out a way for e-books to be lent out to friends and sold second-hand -- all of it legal, as it is with hard copies -- then I might quit downloading mobilism's freebies. I would certainly lose much of my justification for doing so.

I read the suggestion somewhere to 'pay' the author for the book by posting a review on Amazon or goodreads, and that appeals to me a lot. I do review books often in emails to friends, but I should also post them online so they benefit the author more. One of these days I'll get that good intention turned into action.
Jun 24th, 2015, 6:31 pm
Feb 11th, 2016, 10:58 pm
Simply put: some books suck.

Before e-books were a thing, I used to buy every book that caught my fancy. I have a decently big library, and even more books stacked in boxes because they can't fit anywhere else. I also live in Italy, and dislike reading translated books when I know the original language (Not to mention books are very expensive in Italy, and people try every trick to make sure you pay more. For example, the Song of Ice and Fire series has been split in even more books, and each of them costs as much as the original book would in an Anglophone country). I could very well order the books online, and I've done it plenty of times; but way too many times, I didn't even finish the books I'd bought.

E-books let me decide whether I should buy books or not. I still love the feeling of reading printed books, but I don't have the money nor the space to just buy any book I like. Thanks to e-books I've discovered plenty of authors that I now consider my favorites, and I then bought the printed books.
Feb 11th, 2016, 10:58 pm
Feb 22nd, 2016, 4:35 pm
as someone who doesnt live in an english speaking country i have rather hard time getting an access to books im interested in reading. Not every book i want to read is released in my country, we dont have any fancy english language bookstores nor libraries where i could get original. yes of course i have bookdepository and could just get it there without having to pay for a shipping that could be even twice as much as the price of a book. BUT i dont have that much money to afford every book i want to read (and some books are seriously expensive af). So yeah it's really easy for you there in america to say go to library if you cant afford the book. Too bad the books i want are not available in the library anyway :-)

Also some books just suck and i'd be mad and sad if i paid so much money for a book and it turned out to be a piece of shit, that's why i tend to use ebooks from here as idk a demo version??? I mean i download book, read it and if i like it i will buy a physical copy of it sooner or later or if it's a series i continue reading them in physical copies (if i can afford it) - and due to that i have many many series on my shelves without their first books, because i first want to get the books i have yet to read and then one day i would buy first book to have the complete series.
Feb 22nd, 2016, 4:35 pm
Jun 8th, 2016, 8:39 pm
Hi there, My justification is that I live in Zimbabwe, if I were to buy a printed book here It would cost me upwards of $US 25.00 , IF I could even find it. Library's have hardly any books after the year 2000. To import a book will cost double as its is considered entertainment and not a staple. If it weren't for these sites I would be dead from boredom... If we had an amazon or decent library I wouldn't pirate but If I am to enjoy the books you lovely authors write with the intention of others enjoying them this is my only option.

Wish you all the best in your future writings.
Jun 8th, 2016, 8:39 pm
Aug 4th, 2016, 6:59 pm
Hello
There are several reason why someone would go through downloading free books instead of paying them. I would only list mine "
• I live in Greece and our bookshops have very few foreign books, mostly the popular ones. 98% out of the books I read, I won't find them there.
• Since last year, we have capital controls. That means, I can NOT pay via my credit/debit card and paypal to a foreign account.
No e-bay, no amazon, nothing. Imagine my ''options" about it.
• Even before capital controls, those books that I didn't pay for, were books that I wouldn't pay in the first place or they were too expensive to buy. I find it illogical to have an e-book cost 10€ and can't do anything to return it back ~ while the paperback has the same price.

I did though buy several e-books. When I liked an e-book, I would just go and buy it to support the author (within reasonable prices, like 3-4€ or so). And if the author was someone I was fan of, I would simply pre-order it.

Most of the people who download books, are vivliophiles. Since you can't really control piracy, at least, think how you can benefit from it.
Aug 4th, 2016, 6:59 pm