Author explains why book piracy is not a victimless crime

[TrackerNeil]

4 hours ago, TheRevanchist said:

I really think that the debate is more complex than people should compensate authors. Sure, that is true, but if that was going to happen, then we wouldn't be debating this. It is very difficult to convince all those people to change their mindset (without finding a compromise) and it is even more difficult to stop torrents. There are many other industries which have been here before, and some have found a solution (I really like the steam model for video games), or close to it.

I find this statement curious. So because it is difficult to convince book thieves to stop stealing, the debate is "complex"?

To me, it's fairly simple: we pay for the books we read. I'm not against libraries or a Steam model or whatever, but let's not claim that the issues are murky when they're pretty clear. We either pay for our entertainment or we free-ride and hope that others will pay the freight. Me, I like to pay.

Now, I am a big fan of free sample chapters, and it's something I do for every one of my own books. However, don't blame the publisher or author if the sample on Amazon is skimpy, because we don't control that. I put a more generous excerpt (four full chapters) on my web site, and I think it would be great if Amazon allowed something similar. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 hours ago, The Shamrock that hides said:

I think the best defense against pirating by people who would buy if they know they will like the book is to offer reasonable samples.  

There are a lot of samples that just give the forward, acknowledgements and chapter titles.  with maybe the first page or two of the actual story.    - This is not enough to evaluate the book.   The temptation then is to torrent the book as a test, I would hope that then if they like the book they will purchase a legal copy, but not all will -they may purchase the next book in the series legally though.     If you buy from a physical book shop, most people browse the book in-store to get a feel of it.  without a decent sample you can't.  nor can you give away or sell to a second hand book shop any e-book you didn't enjoy.

There are also a lot of e-books that do offer decent samples.

 

 

Another defense against pirating is Amazon Prime.    I'll be really interested to see if there has been a difference in the amount of downloads since Amazon Prime was introduced.   Not every kindle user will have Amazon Prime but since more than just books are available - free next day delivery and their TV service I think more and more people will take advantage.  then their "need" to get pirated books is drastically reduced.

I believe its not against the law to call you a vile scummy bastard.  It would still be morally wrong.  - No one is arguing what the law states or denying that copyright holder should not be compensated for every copy.  People are saying they personally feel that Authors should also get some kind of compensation from used book sales.  they are well aware that this is not covered by copyright or any laws.

No.  

The used book argument is being offered as a red herring to distract from the fact that people are arguing that buying a book, making thousands of copies of that book, and giving those copies away should be just fine because even though they are making thousands of copies they aren't charging people for those copies.  Unlike like those evil used book dealers who are making the big bucks charging $2.50 for a used mass market paperback.  You see it's morally worse in Mr.OJ's mind to not share of that $2.50 than it is to freely give away thousands of newly minted copies of a copyrighted book because those who take the free copies "weren't going to buy them anyway".

[john]

10 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

Look, I'm not trying to berate a hypothetical book-downloader, but I want to just call a duck a duck. When you (the rhetorical you, not you, john) download a book from a torrent site, you are enjoying the art without rewarding the artist for her hard work. You are expecting others to pay the freight for your entertainment. If you are taking the book without paying for it, you are stealing and let's stop obfuscating the issue with I wouldn't have paid for the book so no harm done or those damned publishers charge too much. Maybe you are OK with stealing--I encountered someone online who was brazen and shameless about it--but let's at least acknowledge what's going on. Stealing an ebook is not the worst crime one can imagine, but it's stealing, plain and simple. 

See, I just can't think of piracy as theft.  It's just ludicrous to me to equate the two, though I appreciate it's a common view, for reasons I can't fathom.  So I wonder if that's the difference - you're so outraged by what you consider theft that you can't much appreciate the fact that your books are sought after, by whatever means.

4 hours ago, DjourouLoveMe? said:

That's only a defence against people who own a kindle.

It's a defence against anybody with access to a computer device and the internet.  Which includes all book pirates.  You don't need a kindle to read ebooks.  You do usually need to form some sort of relationship with Amazon and/or Google or Apple.

[Gertrude]

In your mind, why is piracy not theft? That seems pretty cut and dried to me.

[TrackerNeil]

43 minutes ago, john said:

See, I just can't think of piracy as theft.  It's just ludicrous to me to equate the two, though I appreciate it's a common view, for reasons I can't fathom.  So I wonder if that's the difference - you're so outraged by what you consider theft that you can't much appreciate the fact that your books are sought after, by whatever means.

Actually, by now I'm pretty resigned. Some people (a relative few, I think/hope) just want free art and that's that. I try to focus my efforts on producing the best art I can and letting go of the rest. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

6 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

In your mind, why is piracy not theft? That seems pretty cut and dried to me.

Theft involves the intent to permanently deprive someone of the stolen item. Piracy is a copyright infringement.

[MisterOJ]

20 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

In your mind, why is piracy not theft? That seems pretty cut and dried to me.

In you mind, how is "piracy" and theft the same thing?

[john]

37 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

In your mind, why is piracy not theft? That seems pretty cut and dried to me.

Aside from the nature of the two crimes, which RBPL described, on a more basic level it just doesn't seem evil enough.

What's the evil act here?  Copying something exactly and leaving it intact?  Distributing it without permission?  It seems silly to me to compare it to taking away property.  That's violation in a way that piracy just isn't.

[C.T. Phipps]

3 minutes ago, john said:

Aside from the nature of the two crimes, which RBPL described, on a more basic level it just doesn't seem evil enough.

What's the evil act here?  Copying something exactly and leaving it intact?  Distributing it without permission?  It seems silly to me to compare it to taking away property.  That's violation in a way that piracy just isn't.

By which counterfeiting isn't a crime?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 minutes ago, john said:

Aside from the nature of the two crimes, which RBPL described, on a more basic level it just doesn't seem evil enough.

What's the evil act here?  Copying something exactly and leaving it intact?  Distributing it without permission?  It seems silly to me to compare it to taking away property.  That's violation in a way that piracy just isn't.

It is a violation of the copyright holders right to be in control of the reproduction of the copyrighted work.  It is a criminal action that people have convinced themselves is harmless because "the people who take free copies weren't going to buy it anyway".

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

By which counterfeiting isn't a crime?

Oh, that's "different".  That's something is it wrong to copy unlike copyrighted works.

[john]

21 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

By which counterfeiting isn't a crime?

Well, counterfeiting is fraud.  Fraud is also a more evil act than piracy, if that's what you're asking.

26 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

It is a violation of the copyright holders right to be in control of the reproduction of the copyrighted work.  It is a criminal action that people have convinced themselves is harmless because "the people who take free copies weren't going to buy it anyway".

That's not my reasoning.  My reasoning's that the crime is less significant because the evil act involved is less significant.

[Myrddin]

How is second hand book stores in any way the same as online piracy? Every copy in a second hand store is a copy the author was compensated for at some point. Every one. 

Now, I'm not going to assume that every book downloaded illegally equals a lost sale. Doesn't matter. It takes just one legal copy that helped put bread on the author's table to generate infinity copies on torrent sites.

For authors like Martin or Rowling, torrents don't hurt them, not really. They already sell copies numbered in the millions. But for the author struggling to sell through an initial print run of 10,000, having 16,000 illegal copies floating around for free is enough to halt their career.

[Darth Richard II]

We really going to go down the piracy isn't technically theft blah blah semantics road? 

[The Marquis de Leech]

5 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

We really going to go down the piracy isn't technically theft blah blah semantics road? 

To be fair, I had a law lecturer who was adamant that filling a car with petrol and then driving off without paying wasn't theft either, since the taking of the petrol was consensual (in her eyes, it should be obtaining by deception instead). So these sort of minutiae matter.  

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

11 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

We really going to go down the piracy isn't technically theft blah blah semantics road? 

It's not semantics. The concept of theft just does not easily apply to non-rivalrous goods - ie: goods that are infinitely reproducible such that my use of it doesn't impede you from using it. You taking something that belongs to me and now I'm unable to use it because I don't have it is just conceptually a very different thing than you making a copy of something that I have some claim to but I still have my original thing and can still use it in just about any way I want. 

Obviously, there are many people who think that the second thing is wrong in some circumstances, and that people can have property rights in non-rivalrous goods. But these two things are not conceptually the same. 

[Darth Richard II]

9 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

To be fair, I had a law lecturer who was adamant that filling a car with petrol and then driving off without paying wasn't theft either, since the taking of the petrol was consensual (in her eyes, it should be obtaining by deception instead). So these sort of minutiae matter.  

Fair enough, I get picky over weird terminology too.

[Gertrude]

2 hours ago, john said:

That's not my reasoning.  My reasoning's that the crime is less significant because the evil act involved is less significant.

That's a very handy yardstick. Pretty hard to quantify evil, yeah? I understand the infringement argument, but I can't get behind 'one act is more evil'. I bet the authors who are losing revenue because of copyright infringement view it as pretty evil. (and we can argue over the amount, but authors are losing revenue)

[MisterOJ]

13 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

That's a very handy yardstick. Pretty hard to quantify evil, yeah? I understand the infringement argument, but I can't get behind 'one act is more evil'. I bet the authors who are losing revenue because of copyright infringement view it as pretty evil. (and we can argue over the amount, but authors are losing revenue)

Scenario A: I buy a book, read it and give the copy to my friend, who then in turn reads it.

Scenario B: I buy an ebook, read it, take off the DRM and send a copy to my friend, who then in turn reads it.

How is one worse than the other?

[Joe Abercrombie]

Quite obviously, in scenario A you no longer have the book. In Scenario B you keep the book, can continue to make copies of it, and your friend can make infinite copies of it too.

Just sayin.