Don’t pirate books, just don’t

[Errant Bard]

6 hours ago, john said:

I don’t get it.  Like if there was 2000 instances of a book in the ledger and yours wasn’t one of those then you must’ve pirated it.

The point being, how do you know people have the ebook if there is no record?

Note we already have that kind of ledger, only it's not centralized: you currently have to keep receipts to prove ownership.

[Errant Bard]

8 hours ago, the Greenleif Stark said:

Blu-ray comes with the digital copy of a movie so you don't have to purchase twice, why can't books be the same?

Not saying it cannot be done, just saying that it's not the same product, and producing one isn't the same as producing the other.

Also, I suspect digital distribution management to be easier when you're a big megacorp. I some how feel that book publishers are smaller, poorer, more numerous and less in control (could be wrong though.) I could see Amazon proposing that kind of stuff, but not sure the concurrents or the publishers are keen on an offer they cannot match/could diminish sales that are already way way way lower than those of a movie.

[Darth Richard II]

I can see ebooks coming with physical copies kind of, they're at least similar, but audio books have way extra production costs associated with them.

Anyway this is getting into legal stuff I'm not familiar with, I think the original point of the OP was getting a book free and then leaving an amazon review or whatnot is not helping the author.

[Errant Bard]

2 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

What's so ridiculous about my example?  Unless you're getting the ebook from scanning a physical book I don't see the difference.

 

ETA: in an slight tangent - I'd say if the author's been dead more than a say ten years* pirate away

*Actual amount of time depends on a lot of stuff but I'm not fucking paying for a copy of Moby Dick or the fucking Illiad.  Line drawn in sand, dude.

Agreed with the author death thing. Megacorporations (Disney...), museums and leeches (I mean, family of the author) have pushed to make copy right last longer and longer after the author's death because apparently, thry need to recoup investments done to sell the stuff. BS.

I would like to raise the idea that copyright's point is not actually to remunerate the author: it's to PROMOTE CREATION by making it worthwhile, lucrative to invest yourself into it. From there what's good with selling the same thing for more than a human lifetime?

I will go further than you, based on that: past the period where it really sells (say, five years), books go into public domain. Matches a salaryman experience: you get paid only once for work you did once.

 

As for the stealing blue ray question, it's ridiculous because it's stealing, not copying, and it's not a something that ever happened, whereas making a VHS or a mix tape are practical, commonplace examples of pure copy. I understand you want to demonize the entitlement to have what you pay once for in multiple formats, but we can see that if you take examples of what people really do instead of scenarii that never happen, it's less comfortable to cast stones.

[The Marquis de Leech]

2 hours ago, Errant Bard said:

Agreed with the author death thing. Megacorporations (Disney...), museums and leeches (I mean, family of the author) have pushed to make copy right last longer and longer after the author's death because apparently, thry need to recoup investments done to sell the stuff. BS.

I would like to raise the idea that copyright's point is not actually to remunerate the author: it's to PROMOTE CREATION by making it worthwhile, lucrative to invest yourself into it. From there what's good with selling the same thing for more than a human lifetime?

I will go further than you, based on that: past the period where it really sells (say, five years), books go into public domain. Matches a salaryman experience: you get paid only once for work you did once.

It's worth remembering that copyright in English law only started in 1710, and it envisaged it lasting for a mere seven years (with a one-off non-automatic right of renewal for a further seven years on top of that. So fourteen years maximum). Modern copyright is a monster. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

16 hours ago, the Greenleif Stark said:

Blu-ray comes with the digital copy of a movie so you don't have to purchase twice, why can't books be the same?

Because, as he pointed out, a paper book and an e-book are completely different products with different production requirements.  I agree it would be smart marketing.  But I don’t agree to an attitude of entitlement regarding being provided with an e-book when you buy a paper copy.

[the Greenleif Stark]

5 hours ago, Scott de Montevideo! said:

Because, as he pointed out, a paper book and an e-book are completely different products with different production requirements.  I agree it would be smart marketing.  But I don’t agree to an attitude of entitlement regarding being provided with an e-book when you buy a paper copy.

I'm not saying because I bought the book I'm entitled to the ebook version, I'm saying they need to offer deals or something, like Blue-ray does, where I buy the book but I pay a few more dollars than the normal book price and I get the ebook copy too.  I'm not talking about self-published books or small writers and stuff, I'm talking about the Sanderson's and Martin's of the world, the big publishers.  Here's an example, Oathbringer the book is listed on Amazon for 26.50, the ebook is 16.99, why not do a deal for 30$ you get both, rather than spend 43.49$?  That's all I was saying 

[mankytoes]

15 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

What's so ridiculous about my example?  Unless you're getting the ebook from scanning a physical book I don't see the difference.

ETA: in an slight tangent - I'd say if the author's been dead more than a say ten years* pirate away

*Actual amount of time depends on a lot of stuff but I'm not fucking paying for a copy of Moby Dick or the fucking Illiad.  Line drawn in sand, dude.

I agree, do you apply that to music as well? It's hard to feel bad about pirating the Beatles when you're only taking money from people who have already made a fortune from music they did nothing to help create. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

24 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

I agree, do you apply that to music as well? It's hard to feel bad about pirating the Beatles when you're only taking money from people who have already made a fortune from music they did nothing to help create. 

Yeah, more or less.  I'm still not really comfortable downloading from contemporary artists from spotify knowing what shit pittance it pays, but not so uncomfortable that I'm always buying their album in another format.  

[Ninefingers]

6 hours ago, Scott de Montevideo! said:

Because, as he pointed out, a paper book and an e-book are completely different products with different production requirements.  I agree it would be smart marketing.  But I don’t agree to an attitude of entitlement regarding being provided with an e-book when you buy a paper copy.

I don't agree with this at all.

It's the same underlying IP, in different formats. And further, they're coming from the same electronic source, making the production of an ebook a matter of file conversion and at a laughably small marginal cost.

[Ninefingers]

15 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

I'm not fucking paying for a copy of Moby Dick or the fucking Illiad.  Line drawn in sand, dude.

Nor should you. They're in the public domain. 

In fact, society has drawn that line in the sand for us. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain#Public-domain_books

Here is an enormous collection of public domain books which you can download for free, legally:

https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

[Corvinus85]

42 minutes ago, Ninefingers said:

I don't agree with this at all.

It's the same underlying IP, in different formats. And further, they're coming from the same electronic source, making the production of an ebook a matter of file conversion and at a laughably small marginal cost.

Unless the writer in question is someone like GRRM, who still writes on a fucking Wordstar machine, and then prints the damn manuscript to send to the publisher. If you want an e-book from that, enjoy scanning, or go look for a 3D-printed save icon. 

[Ninefingers]

3 minutes ago, Corvinus of Teranga said:

Unless the writer in question is someone like GRRM, who still writes on a fucking Wordstar machine, and then prints the damn manuscript to send to the publisher. If you want an e-book from that, enjoy scanning, or go look for a 3D-printed save icon. 

Before the publisher publishes the book, they put it into an electronic format. (They're not binding up photocopies of what GRRM sends them)

Once they have it in electronic format, it's a matter of file conversion and cleaning up the resulting output. 

[Corvinus85]

32 minutes ago, Ninefingers said:

Before the publisher publishes the book, they put it into an electronic format. (They're not binding up photocopies of what GRRM sends them)

Once they have it in electronic format, it's a matter of file conversion and cleaning up the resulting output. 

Yeah, what I said came across wrong. But creating an e-file from a writer's printed manuscript still requires some work.

[red snow]

On 7/10/2018 at 12:19 PM, Scott de Montevideo! said:

Because, as he pointed out, a paper book and an e-book are completely different products with different production requirements.  I agree it would be smart marketing.  But I don’t agree to an attitude of entitlement regarding being provided with an e-book when you buy a paper copy.

It's something they certainly need to try/do more often. I don't think Amazon does it yet but whenever I buy a Kindle book, I'm usually offered the audiobook at heavy discount (and this offer usually stands so I can take them up in the offer at a later date). This morning I bought Circe as a deal if the day for £1.39 I can now get the audiobook for £4  instead of £19. There have been a few occasions where I want the audiobook and it's cheaper to buy the Kindle version then buy the discounted audiobook.

Given an audiobook probably costs more than e/book (voice actors need paid and recording/production costs), I find it hard to believe they can't offer ebooks with physical books or discounts from either direction. The exception may be that audiobook a are a growing market and the likes of Amazon are actively promoting the medium. I guess ebooks are pretty established and don't benefit from the push any more.

 

[Ninefingers]

On 7/10/2018 at 1:47 PM, Corvinus of Teranga said:

Yeah, what I said came across wrong. But creating an e-file from a writer's printed manuscript still requires some work.

Absolutely. It's not zero effort, but it's far from the labors of Hercules. And when divided across the number of ebooks sold for a major release it's a laughably small cost per ebook.