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Don’t pirate books, just don’t


Ser Scot A Ellison

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7 hours ago, Scott de Montevideo! said:

Nope.  If you look at the twitter thread I link there is a guy aruging that systemically this is the fault of "capitalism" not the people who pirate other's intellectual property.

Referring to it as "capitalism" is a bit too vague because that word has been used to mean many different things some of which are not consistent with his argument, but if he means our current system as practiced by the large transnational corporations, then he has an extremely cynical, but logically unassailable moral position.

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4 hours ago, Switzeran said:

 it doesn't address the fact that it should be the writer making the decision on distribution, not other people. I understand why he would avoid that part of the issue, but still, it's a real issue.

I don't understand your repeated insistence on this argument here, for me it's a totally moot point, since once it's out there, the author may have preferences but he has no control. I can wish all I want to resurrect someone, it doesn't make resurrection a real issue, to use an analogy.

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But Lawrence's retort is way too harsh for so m ething that requires some more nuance than he seems willing to give it.

I've interacted with Lawrence on Twitter... he was quick to go for my throat for mentioning a problem I had with Lev Grossman's The Magician (he posted a glowing review). He certainly seems quick to anger.

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12 hours ago, Theda Baratheon said:

Except I don’t think I have ever pirated a book except Fifty Shades of Grey and that unfinished Twilight novel from Edwards perspective and no way was I giving money for THOSE :lol: OK I might have bought the twilight one had it been finished, just for the hell of it. 

Meyer put the pdf of the unfinished Midnight Sun manuscript on her website for everyone to download so that wouldn't count as pirating since it was never published and the author herself has made it available for free.  I admit I went to a bookstore and flipped through 50 Shades.  I couldn't bring myself to buy it either but wanted to see what all the hoopla was about.  Later on someone offered to email me a PDF of it in its prior fanfiction form - which would have been available to the public for free prior to it being pulled offline - but I'd seen enough in its published form so didn't.

I think a prior fanfiction version of a subsequently published work is about all I've ever downloaded.  And I don't think that really counts.  I had read Sarah Maas' Throne of Glass series and when I learned an earlier version had once existed on one of those fanfiction sites I went looking for a copy and did find a PDF online.  Similarly, I did hunt down and download a copy of Cassandra Clare's Draco trilogy after she removed it from the various fanfiction sites.

But yeah I would never illegally download a published book that was available for purchase.  If I couldn't afford to purchase them I'd do what I did when I was younger....I'd save up my money and wait until I could afford it and then purchase it.  Or take it out from the library.  Or ask for it as a birthday gift.  Or just wait until the price went down.  Even though I could pretty much just buy any book I wanted these days I still like to get a bargain.  I have a whole slew of ebooks sitting in an amazon wishlist and I check on their prices and wait until that one day when one is on offer for $1.99.  I've done pretty well that way.  With a few stubborn examples I've gotten most of them for that price.

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But in a way I think just writing pure fantasy entertainment partially concedes the problem. Like, why not write in a way that basically brings in loathsome characters into a story - ala a traditional part of fantasy is there being an enemy. Get the reader on board for hating them. Then slowly reveal in part that they steal from bards. It's a crude way to outline it here - I'm rushing the idea for the sake of brevity. But for pirate readers, make them hate an enemy in the stories until they finally realise the enemy they hate are themselves.  No happy little escapism for them, for them the ground is salted.

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4 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

That's completely at odds with every interaction I've had with Lawernce.

I'm happy to be proved wrong. (he was nice after the first reaction anyway)

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5 hours ago, lady narcissa said:

Meyer put the pdf of the unfinished Midnight Sun manuscript on her website for everyone to download so that wouldn't count as pirating since it was never published and the author herself has made it available for free.  I admit I went to a bookstore and flipped through 50 Shades.  I couldn't bring myself to buy it either but wanted to see what all the hoopla was about.  Later on someone offered to email me a PDF of it in its prior fanfiction form - which would have been available to the public for free prior to it being pulled offline - but I'd seen enough in its published form so didn't.

I think a prior fanfiction version of a subsequently published work is about all I've ever downloaded.  And I don't think that really counts.  I had read Sarah Maas' Throne of Glass series and when I learned an earlier version had once existed on one of those fanfiction sites I went looking for a copy and did find a PDF online.  Similarly, I did hunt down and download a copy of Cassandra Clare's Draco trilogy after she removed it from the various fanfiction sites.

But yeah I would never illegally download a published book that was available for purchase.  If I couldn't afford to purchase them I'd do what I did when I was younger....I'd save up my money and wait until I could afford it and then purchase it.  Or take it out from the library.  Or ask for it as a birthday gift.  Or just wait until the price went down.  Even though I could pretty much just buy any book I wanted these days I still like to get a bargain.  I have a whole slew of ebooks sitting in an amazon wishlist and I check on their prices and wait until that one day when one is on offer for $1.99.  I've done pretty well that way.  With a few stubborn examples I've gotten most of them for that price.

Actually I guess I’ve never pirated anything then because someone sent me pdf’s of fifty shades and I had that free PDF from meyer’s website :lol: so I guess I’ve actually never pirated any book.

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2 hours ago, Theda Baratheon said:

Actually I guess I’ve never pirated anything then because someone sent me pdf’s of fifty shades and I had that free PDF from meyer’s website :lol: so I guess I’ve actually never pirated any book.

Reading a pirated book someone sent you does not seem to me THAT different than reading a book you illegally downloaded yourself. ;) 

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Pirated book, the only thing that comes to mind is a rather obscure one almost 20 years ago. And by obscure I mean The Art and Science of Cooking with Cannabis (or something like that), suffice to say the few silly things me and some friends tried were neither a piece of artistry nor particularly of scientific value. Bluntly put I paid nothing, and I got nothing in return. That was back in the e-donkey age.

Ah, well, then there's also the issue of copy shops and text books during college. I guess everybody knows that one.

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1 hour ago, baxusalah said:

Reading a pirated book someone sent you does not seem to me THAT different than reading a book you illegally downloaded yourself. ;) 

Who knows where he got them from. I don’t feel bad about that particular instance :lol: 

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6 hours ago, Errant Bard said:

I'm happy to be proved wrong. (he was nice after the first reaction anyway)

Oh I’m not calling you a liar or anything. He can get pissy sometimes but he’s had to deal with some, uh, intense online troll personalities in the past so I can’t blame him sometimes.

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So how does the practice of loaning/borrowing books from friends figure into all this?  Or even just buying second hand books?  In either case the author sees no profit from our consumption, but I never hear the same level of hate for those cursed book loaners as I do for pirates.  

Personally, I've never "internet pirated" a book, or any other media myself, though I have viewed pirated movies/TV shows with friends.  But in all of my adult life I've only ever bought (or had bought for me) maybe a few dozen brand new books from a authorized vendor.  All of the hundreds of other books I've read have been acquired from second hand shops, free boxes at the dump, garage sales, or loaned from friends.  Or, since the internet, bought used from Amazon or Powells etc.  

And maybe this is a generational thing (I'm 47), because for me, growing up before the internet, this was just the norm:  If you got ahold of a book that you liked, you passed it on to your friends, as they would for you.  If we were all following a series, we'd conspire to have the latest hardcover installment passed around by whichever of us got it as a gift.  Point being, books were being consumed without the author profiting, and it was OK!  Encouraged, even, in the sense that sharing your book with a friend was your duty as a fan of the series.  

So is this different?  Is the scale of pirating vs loaning incidents significant?   Do all of you here poo-pooing piracy never loan or borrow books?  Have you never bought a used book, or traded your old books in for store credit at secondhand shops?  

FWIW I'm not trying to justify piracy.  If anything, I am now slightly abashed at my lifetime of flagrant and unconsidered IP theft :blush:

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24 minutes ago, The Mance said:

So how does the practice of loaning/borrowing books from friends figure into all this?  Or even just buying second hand books?  In either case the author sees no profit from our consumption, but I never hear the same level of hate for those cursed book loaners as I do for pirates.  

Personally, I've never "internet pirated" a book, or any other media myself, though I have viewed pirated movies/TV shows with friends.  But in all of my adult life I've only ever bought (or had bought for me) maybe a few dozen brand new books from a authorized vendor.  All of the hundreds of other books I've read have been acquired from second hand shops, free boxes at the dump, garage sales, or loaned from friends.  Or, since the internet, bought used from Amazon or Powells etc.  

And maybe this is a generational thing (I'm 47), because for me, growing up before the internet, this was just the norm:  If you got ahold of a book that you liked, you passed it on to your friends, as they would for you.  If we were all following a series, we'd conspire to have the latest hardcover installment passed around by whichever of us got it as a gift.  Point being, books were being consumed without the author profiting, and it was OK!  Encouraged, even, in the sense that sharing your book with a friend was your duty as a fan of the series.  

So is this different?  Is the scale of pirating vs loaning incidents significant?   Do all of you here poo-pooing piracy never loan or borrow books?  Have you never bought a used book, or traded your old books in for store credit at secondhand shops?  

FWIW I'm not trying to justify piracy.  If anything, I am now slightly abashed at my lifetime of flagrant and unconsidered IP theft :blush:

The case(s) you describe fall in the same category as someone inviting friends over to watch a movie they'd rented, and they're all perfectly fine.

Your examples are small scale. Piracy is, in the end, on a big scale. Have you lent your books to millions of people? 

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1 hour ago, The Mance said:

So how does the practice of loaning/borrowing books from friends figure into all this?  Or even just buying second hand books?  In either case the author sees no profit from our consumption, but I never hear the same level of hate for those cursed book loaners as I do for pirates.  

Personally, I've never "internet pirated" a book, or any other media myself, though I have viewed pirated movies/TV shows with friends.  But in all of my adult life I've only ever bought (or had bought for me) maybe a few dozen brand new books from a authorized vendor.  All of the hundreds of other books I've read have been acquired from second hand shops, free boxes at the dump, garage sales, or loaned from friends.  Or, since the internet, bought used from Amazon or Powells etc.  

And maybe this is a generational thing (I'm 47), because for me, growing up before the internet, this was just the norm:  If you got ahold of a book that you liked, you passed it on to your friends, as they would for you.  If we were all following a series, we'd conspire to have the latest hardcover installment passed around by whichever of us got it as a gift.  Point being, books were being consumed without the author profiting, and it was OK!  Encouraged, even, in the sense that sharing your book with a friend was your duty as a fan of the series.  

So is this different?  Is the scale of pirating vs loaning incidents significant?   Do all of you here poo-pooing piracy never loan or borrow books?  Have you never bought a used book, or traded your old books in for store credit at secondhand shops?  

FWIW I'm not trying to justify piracy.  If anything, I am now slightly abashed at my lifetime of flagrant and unconsidered IP theft :blush:

You don't make a new copy of the book when you borrow from a friend or a library.  That is the fundamental difference.  There is no infringement upon intellectual property if no new copy of the material is made.  

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38 minutes ago, Scott de Montevideo! said:

You don't make a new copy of the book when you borrow from a friend or a library.  That is the fundamental difference.  There is no infringement upon intellectual property if no new copy of the material is made.  

The point of the thread wasn't legality but small authors not being paid, was it?

Not really getting the problem with new copies versus lending. You read the book, what does it matter if you keep the bits on your hard drive, after giving it to someone else? The author is no more paid.

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18 hours ago, Switzeran said:

Lawrence is being rather uptight. Gaiman was not always a multi-millionaire. He cites his experience with when the internet was in its early days, and by that point he was not yet making his big literary and bestseller breakthrough with American Gods. He was big in comics, to be sure, and that provided him security, but it didn't mean he was guaranteed to make it as a novelist. And one can certainly find people who have managed to make a career that started with giving something away for free (see Scalzi, again; he serialized Old Man's War on his website before PNH made an offer to publish it at TOR).

Worth noting that the Sandman graphic novels had sold 30 million copies by 2006 (not counting the individual comics sold, the contracts he signed with DC, each much bigger than the previous, and his TV work for the BBC in the 1990s), a few years after American Gods was published, and Good Omens (1990), Neverwhere (1997), Stardust (1999) and Coraline (2002) had sold millions of copies each as well. Combined with the highly lucrative film deals he signed in the 1990s, Gaiman was a multi-millionaire many times over by the time American Gods was published.

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1 hour ago, Scott de Montevideo! said:

You don't make a new copy of the book when you borrow from a friend or a library.  That is the fundamental difference.  There is no infringement upon intellectual property if no new copy of the material is made.  

Also the library pays for the book and tracks how many times it is lent out. This information is conveyed to the publisher who includes these numbers is their decision whether to continue with an author or series. I think I remember reading with ebooks and libraries that they are allowed only so many downloads per purchase by a publisher and once it's been borrowed that many times the library has to repurchase the ebook. I suppose that's similar in some ways to a physical library book getting too worn out and the library purchasing a fresh copy.

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