Pirated digital books

And some of us just use things without permission without trying to justify our actions ethically.

And regarding theft: while I am not about to make some intellectually dishonest argument that piracy is somehow ethical, I have never found the term "theft" to be very useful when it refers to so many different unrelated things. Theft of property, theft of services, theft of ideas, identity theft... all of these concepts are based on different sets of ethical principles and have different types of consequences.

 

I'm wondering if maybe we're focusing too hard on the wrong thing here. We're focusing on the ethics of digital 'sharing' and its ethical boundaries, which is a valid thing to consider, for sure. But ...if we accept that digital copying is here to stay, the real problem is: how do authors get fairly paid in this new environment?

 

1. Write book.
2. Get book published.
3. Make money.

No, really, piracy is the big nuclear boogy man at the moment but I don't think this focus on lost profits is particularly healthy. I know this might sound like a rather defeatist attitude, but stopping piracy is a lost cause, so all you can really do is keep creating art and make what money you can off of it. I know it's not fair that some people will pirate your work, but there's nothing that can be done.
Although, there may be ways to limit it. Pretty much the only way I've ever seen piracy drop is by offering a convenient service. It's happened with iTunes, Netflix and Steam, and I'd be willing to bet the same has likely happened to some extent with increasingly convenient places to buy eBooks.
But even so, unless you are planning on creating your own business then their is little you can do. As a writer, it's in the hands of publishers and their bean-counters to spearhead this type of thing.

 

Yup. I did a little photography in a previous life, and have occasionally come across some of my images being sold on others' websites (if you want serious dishonesty, look no further than the digital scrapbooking business), but I rarely go out looking for them and when I see one I only send an email to the website proprietor asking to have my image(s) removed (a courtesy never yet granted). I figure I have time to be an artist or an Internet cop, but not both. As @Void said, the hot setup is to ignore the 'thieves' (far as I know, it's copyright violation - a tort, not a crime) and just keep creating more art.

 

Copyright infringement can also be a criminal offense so long as the statutory requirements giving rise to a criminal level offense are met.

 

That's an interesting one, because "fairly paid" can mean a lot of things. Reguarding the traditional publishing industry, there are a great many standards that don't make sense anymore. Like why a physical copy of a book and a digital copy of that book cost roughly the same. The cost of a physical book involves printing, shipping, stocking, and the distributor's cut. A digital copy only has the distributor's cut, so why are they the same price?

But a traditionaly published book still has the costs for editing and marketing attached to it, and the publisher needs to recoup those losses. But they're usually using that money against the author's advance, so only when it's paid off does the publisher start making money.

It seems like the best thing to do then would be to only finance self-published authors and give directly back to the writer of the novel. The only problem with this system is the staggering amount of drek that obscures the good self-published novels in a sea of ruinously horrible writing.

It's looking very likely that the print world is going to follow the music industry and move to a streaming service. Amazon has already started their trial system, and it remains to be seen whether other services will arise as well. At this time Amazon has only a specific few books available to stream, but that won't last for long.

I recently lost my music drive to worn out heads, and lost about 80 gigs of music, so of it super obscure. Instead of ripping it all again, or downloading what I had lost, I got Spotify, and haven't really seen a reason to do anything else. This is a false equivalence of course, the music artist gets $.0063 for a play, but that play lasts for 4 minutes. A book would have to pay the author far more for it to be viable as a streaming service. At the same time, there are a great deal more books that I would read, if I knew I didn't have to pay for them.

 

I'm not following what you mean here. It sounds like you're assuming that it works like the music industry, where (as I understand it) essentially all of the costs are "billed" to the artist and paid with their theoretical royalties, and what isn't paid off, because there aren't enough royalties, is actually treated as a debt.

In the publishing industry, I believe that the author gets paid immediately--they get paid the advance on royalties, then nothing until the royalties that they would have earned equal that advance, then, assuming the book is still selling, more royalties. Or if there is no advance, they immediately start getting royalties. But in either case, their royalties don't have to also pay for the editing and marketing costs.

 

No, sorry about that. You're right. I was talking about the publisher's need to recoup before they were making a profit. I guess I wasn't thinking while I was typing. I'll edit it.

 

Hi Void,

Actually it is theft. If I write a book and publish it, then I own that book and all rights to it including the right for people to copy it (copyright). Those rights are worth money to me and I sell them. If someone pirates my book then they have not only violated my rights as an author, they have stolen the right I have to sell or not sell a copy of my work.

And those who then give my work and my rights to copy and sell my work away are adding insult to injury.

While those who claim some sort of Robin Hood justification have no justification whatsoever. I as an author am not rich. I do not charge an exorbitant amount for my books. I do sell my books to libraries allowing them to then run a public service by lending them freely to others. And never once as far as I know has a pirate ever gone out and checked for some sort of proof that the people they are giving my books to are actually financially destitute and could not afford them.

Let's not beat around the bush. Let's call a spade a spade if not a f*ing spade. It is theft.

Cheers, Greg.

 

"What's a spade?"
"It's a shovel."

 

Its a spade. Shovel is what you do with it.

 

For (hopefully) the last time in this thread, saying that piracy is not theft is not condoning it, it is merely my opinion that they are two similar but separate crimes due to their nature. Rape is not murder, but saying so is not an endorsement of rape.

The rest of this has no relevance to the discussion of whether or not piracy counts as theft or not, and is merely an appeal to emotion. It does not matter what justifications people think they have for pirating, nor does it matter who they are pirating from and how much they charge for their books. If piracy is theft then it is theft regardless. If piracy is not theft then it isn't theft regardless.

 

Reading a pirated book is nothing more than looking at someone else's creation without his permission. That alone is why it is unethical. If you are stealing anything, then the author's permission is what you are stealing.

But how do you measure the consequence of "stealing" permission? Theft of a $100 bill deprives the victim of more than what theft of a $1 bill deprives the victim of. But if an author sets the price of his book at $100, and I read it without paying for it, then am I depriving the author of more than what I would deprive him of if he had set the price at $1? Could the author set the price at $1 million and then claim $1 million in damages each time someone read his book without paying for it?

 

I myself have, in the past, googled the name of a book and "PDF" and just read it.
I don't mind if anyone does it to my book. In fact I encourage it.
"prout vultis ut faciant vobis homines et vos facite illis similiter".

 

Publishers don't get to write their own laws--the fact that they tell you that you can't resell their book, or that you have to read it while wearing a purple hat or while dancing a jig, doesn't make that a law. Used books are perfectly legal. Libraries are perfectly legal. And I see zero ethical issue with them. The fact that a manufacturer would LIKE us all to buy our books, and clothes, and cars, and houses, brand spanking new and never resell anything, means nothing.

Edited to add: Dang. I didn't see that this was a zombie thread.

 

Yeah, second hand bookstores do not violate copyright laws. They are perfectly legal as @ChickenFreak says.

 

I disagree. The reason it is legal is because as a society we have deemed it morally acceptable. There is generally a presumption against restriction on selling one's property.

 

You've misread my post. Perhaps intentionally. It shouldn't be that difficult for you to follow it and see why. Try reading it again and if you still can't figure it out I'll explain it.

 

Selbbin, do you realize that books have historically lasted for a long time, and been passed on to multiple owners? Was that always wrong? Have we been in a swamp of immorality since Gutenberg?