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An Ethical Question Regarding Ebooks
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Nov 29, 2008 08:49 PM
from the cui-bono dept.
from the cui-bono dept.
tytso writes "Suppose there is a book that you want to read on your ebook reader, but it is out of print (so even if you purchase the dead-tree version of the book used, the author won't receive any royalties) and the publisher has refused to make it available as an ebook. You can buy it from Amazon as a used book, but that isn't your preferred medium. It is available on the internet as a pirated etext, however. This blog post outlines a few possibilities, and then asks, 'What is the right thing to do? And why?' I'm also curious if the answers change depending on whether you are a Baby Boomer, or a Gen X, Gen Y, etc. — I've noticed that attitudes around copyright seem to change depending on whether someone is a college student or a recent college graduate, versus someone who can remember a time when the Internet did not exist."
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Get it in both forms (Score:5, Insightful)
The most obviously moral/practical solution in my opinion would be to order the text used from Amazon and then read the pirated electronic version.
Re:Get it in both forms (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Get it in both forms (Score:5, Interesting)
Also a child of the 80's and I agree; obv IANAL, but to me the spirit of the license and fair use of the content transcends the medium. Example: you simply can't buy a mini-disc with commercial content on it such as Name Popular Album. People buy the album in whatever format is available and convert/record it onto the mini disc, the desired format.
FWIW I also think that if you already owned a copy of the book but perhaps it was faded beyond readability / eaten by the dog and you disposed of the remains you would similarly have the 'ethical right' to download the book.
Parent
Re:Get it in both forms (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're giving money to the person who is a creator, then you're doing a public service by empowering them to continue to create, but are not actually morally obligated to do so.
If, however, you're giving money to a corporation that doesn't create things, but actively utilizes the economic power you gave them to ensure that things others create remain artificially scarce so that it's profit margins remain strong, then you are responsible for every individual who was needlessly deprived of access.
It's not just "ok" to infringe copyright in such cases. It's an immoral act to fund such groups by making a purchase, it's your moral responsibility not to fund such groups, and it's an act of public service to subvert their capacity to continue to act in such a fashion.
In summary, if can't put the money directly into the hand of the person who created the work, it's better not to pay for it at all, and it's better to help others to also not pay for it at all.
Parent
Re:Get it in both forms (Score:5, Informative)
Irregardless
Please do not use this non-word, it is painful to the eyes.
Parent
Re:Get it in both forms (Score:5, Interesting)
Copyright is an infringement on my right to free speech. Sharing knowledge does not diminish the original holder any more than lighting your taper from mine takes away my light. The public supposedly give up their free speech right in a limited and specific way for a limited time for the greater good. A large and healthy public domain of knowledge and culture being good for the public to build on, copyright is specifically designed to enlarge it by granting a temporary monopoly to authors so they could be encouraged by payment for their work. After a short period, the copyright lapses, the public domain is enhanced, and authors have to go on creating new works for more money.
The suppression of free speech was not given up to create a new class of fake property barons making all the money as the middlemen. Copyright was not supposed to be effectively permanent, the whole point was to improve the public domain, not bury it!
Copyright was a bargain between a creator and the public. Now it's an ever-extending new property right that benefits neither. I do not believe copyright in its current form to be an ethical restriction of free speech any longer, so I feel no ethical duty to respect it.
Parent
Re:Get it in both forms (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't.
In the solution posted above, you're paying for a legal copy, but still downloading and using the pirated form as the e-book you desired to begin with.
Alternatively, you make it into an E-book yourself. Tedious, yes, but I remember one Hungarian girl copying a Harry Potter book by hand so she could have a print copy. Be thankful typing isn't nearly so tedious.
Parent
Ethically? (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy would have to be an unethical practice to begin with.
Parent
Re:Get it in both forms (Score:4, Insightful)
Also a product of the early 80's: I agree. I have a large music and movie collection, most of them are also on hard drive or backup dvd's. I own several hundred books some of them I have gone and downloaded in E-Book format because I wanted to take them along on the road with me. Most of those were downloaded from evil hax0rs because the publishers do not offer them in digital format.
My father (born 1956, and is totally against pirating and clueless about computers) totally agrees with my policy that if you own one copy regardless of whether it was second hand or not, you may do what you wish convert it, backup, etc. He has been a printer for 30 years and seen several competitors go under in copyright lawsuits, he wont even let someone copy a dollar bill or starbucks' logo on his machine in fear of a lawsuit.
We both know full well what is moral and what is immoral. You all should to. Pay to play, either the artist or the company that owns the rights.
Parent
Re:Best use of the Kindle (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Best use of the Kindle (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody can say you broke the law unless you have a conviction, so it's only illegal if you get caught. Lawyers may disagree, but if you need to speak to a lawyer you have gotten caught, thus my argument doesn't apply.
Is it unethical to steal a second hand book? The initial cost of a book should account for the possibility of selling it second hand, so you are stealing from the original book buyers. That's not a huge deal. Also, the dynamics of the book industry relies on second hand book sales being a little cumbersome, so you are messing with their well balanced system. Maybe their system needs to change though.
OT: nice sig. Slashdot *should* have a -1 disagree, that is secretly ignored.
Parent
Re:Best use of the Kindle (Score:5, Funny)
so you are stealing from the original book buyers. That's not a huge deal.
Like hell. You come to my yard sale and try that, you leave missing an arm.*
* This message sponsored by the International Association of Internet Tough Guys. All talk, no Action: ITG.
Parent
Re:Best use of the Kindle (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a bit of 'if a tree falls , and there is no one around to hear it , does it make a sound'
In law ,if no-one knows you killed someone , then you didn't.Until someone finds out you did.
(Innocent until prooven guilty).
Parent
Re:Best use of the Kindle (Score:5, Insightful)
exactly. we need to shape our laws to conform with our sense of ethics, not shape our ethics to conform with our existing laws.
i think this is a very interesting moral dilemma.
since the book is out of print, there's really no way of paying the author/publisher for a copy of the text. even if you buy a book used, the copyright holder doesn't see a cent of it. it's not like if the used book store sells out of their stock they'll order another shipment of that text from the publisher.
legally you'd be violating the author or publisher's copyright. but your decision won't make a difference to anyone except you and the used book salesman if you decide to buy a used copy. however, there's no ethical obligation for you to purchase your copy of the text from the used books salesman on Amazon.
personally, i don't see anything wrong with downloading a pirated copy in this situation, just seed the torrent until you have at least a 1:1 ratio. you're not hurting anyone financially or otherwise. but if you really want to support the author, you can look up his address or PO Box and mail him some money.
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Re:Best use of the Kindle (Score:5, Insightful)
By downloading the pirated ebook, aren't you reducing the general market for the used book? So even though you're not necessarily going to purchase a specific copy from a specific used bookseller, in principle you're weakening his market. Why is that any less wrong than diluting the original creator/publisher's market by illegally duplicating a book that's still in print? Used bookstores are extremely valuable parts of our commercial landscape, IMO.
(not judging/flaming you, I agree: it's an interesting moral dilemma).
Parent
Re:Best use of the Kindle (Score:5, Interesting)
well, is it still the creator/publisher's market if the book is no longer in print? if their book is in print and you chose to pirate rather than buy used, then yes, you are depreciating the market value of the used book, which has a direct influence on the market value & demand of the new book.
however, if the book is out of print, then the publisher/author have already sold their entire stock of books. the market value of the used books are of no consequence to the copyright holders. they have already made all the money that they can (or are willing to) make on that IP.
in this case, i think the question would be, whether or not piracy impinges on the rights of non-copyright-holders. in other words, do you have a moral obligation to compensate a used book salesman for enjoying a book that they happen to be selling a used copy of. personally i think the answer is "no."
Parent
Re:Best use of the Kindle (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this position misses one critical question: What is copyright a right to?
Those wanting copyrights dependent upon market availability seem to take the stance that copyright is a right to profit, especially monetary profit on the open market. While this is certainly an arguable point, it's not the be-all end-all.
This argument falters if copyright is framed, not as a right to monetary profit, but as a basic right to control. Although many creators will use the standard avenues of for-profit publishing, with the same aims of wide dissemination and agreed-upon compensation, there may be edge cases, both known and unknown, where the right of control, currently granted by copyright, is more valuable to the creator than the right to profit.
A creator may wish to exercise the right to only be publish through certain outlets, or only through publishers with certain standards, either quality or ideological. The public does not, and should not, have immediate right to override the wishes of the creator, simply because the technological means are readily available. In a capitalist society that values individual means fairly gained by individual achievement, the gains of copy-rights should be upheld.
(Of course, this is not to trample on consumers' first sale rights, fair use rights, or personal use rights such as personal format-shifting. The flip-side of the coin is that when the author releases a copy of a work into the world, that transaction was a legitimate trade of some degree of control for some degree of profit.)
Parent
Re:Best use of the Kindle (Score:5, Funny)
You should work for the MPAA or RIAA.
Seriously mate, they would love you.
Parent
Re:Best use of the Kindle (Score:5, Insightful)
you DO know that this violates copyright law, right ?
you have no right to reproduce a copyrighted work without reproduction rights from the author.
format shifting for personal use is legal.
Parent
Re:Best use of the Kindle (Score:5, Informative)
You do know that it doesn't, right?
If he's not distributing the book or otherwise spreading around these copies, he is allowed under current fair use law to format shift his book in order to better suit his needs.
This is why the *AA types can't actually sue anyone who rips their music/dvd/whatever collection to a digital format, so long as there is no distribution (or intent to do so later) there is no legal recourse against someone who alters a work for their own personal convenience.
Nice try, though.
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Re:Best use of the Kindle (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
The *real* "right thing". (Score:5, Insightful)
Stupidly long copyright terms (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. Strictly speaking I think copyright is a good idea. It gives the creator (directly or by proxy) an incentive to create by allowing them to treat their creations as if they're physical property. Part of this power should allow them to control how many copies of their creative work are available during the time that they hold their monopoly. It could be that it's more valuable to them if they restrict the available copies, such as by declaring that only 2000 will ever be made available, and selling them at a high price. By deciding to infringe the copyright and make additional copies illegally before the copyright term has expired, it diminishes the ability of the author to use copyright law to its full potential.
The problem here, though, is that copyright is supposed to expire so that everyone finally gets the benefit of newly created works, yet it effectively never does! "Temporary" monopolistic rights to information should not be something that grandchildren or great grandchildren get to inherit.
If copyright terms were pulled back to something sane, such as 10 or 15 years, and required the author to demonstrate an active interest in maintaining the copyright (rather than anonymously disappearing and being unable to be tracked down), there would be far less incentive to make illegal copies because everyone would know they could simply wait. Members of society who saw the work being created and who supported the law that provided the incentive for it to be created would actually stand a chance of being around to fully benefit from it when it finally entered the public domain. Obviously it would reduce the ability for a creator (or content owner) to make extra money, but at least the whole thing would be above board and clear from the start. I'm sure that pulling back copyright terms in this day and age would spark complaints from some creators and it might even cause a few publishers to go out of business, but we'd actually have an opportunity to see if less content was actually being created, and I don't personally think there would be much change. As with everything else, the industry would adapt to the new conditions, and people would still figure out ways to keep making money. Even works that are well out of copyright still make money for publishing companies today.
As copyright terms are stupidly long today and showing no signs of being prevented from being extended further, I don't personally have an ethical problem with infringing copyright on certain works. This is especially the case if the works are no longer in print, and have been out of print for a reasonable length of time (at least several years), and which the creator or owner is unavailable for giving or denying permission to make more. (In cases where publishers own rights to massive amounts of IP, I also don't have much respect for standard template "no you can't because we can't be bothered with the admin" answers, either.
Parent
Re:The *real* "right thing". Irrelevant pont. (Score:5, Insightful)
How about contacting the copyright holder and getting permission to create/publish the e-book ethically?
Copyright is an entirely unnatural "right" to restrict others' freedom. I say it has no basis in rationality (it could have, except that it doesn't seem to have actually helped to promote any sort of useful progress), so the only link from copyright to ethics is the rather tenuous link between legality and ethics.
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Re:The *real* "right thing". Irrelevant pont. (Score:5, Insightful)
How about contacting the copyright holder and getting permission to create/publish the e-book ethically?
The more rational thing would be for the copyright owner to have to explain why they weren't printing the book and still wished to exercise their copyright.
Upon a proper challenge, the copyright should expire after a few years if they are failing to actually print or offer the copyrighted material for sale.
The laws don't define ethics, and they are irrational,they provide undue favor to authors, and undue discrimination against the consumers.
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Re:The *real* "right thing". Irrelevant pont. (Score:5, Interesting)
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If you can't buy it, don't... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If you can't buy it, don't... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up.
Don't feel bad about pirating anything which has no legal way to get hold of a copy or where you know the author won't be fairly compensated by the distributor.
If you can figure out a way to send the author some money then do so. If not, forget it...
Parent
What's the difference here? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand here.
You're questioning the morality over paying Amazon to deliver an out of print book in paper form versus paying nothing for the same book in ebook format?
You do realize in both ways, the creator gets nothing. So where exactly is the problem?
Re:What's the difference here? (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize in both ways, the creator gets nothing. So where exactly is the problem?
Our (counterproductive) intellectual monopoly laws make one way illegal, which has apparently been confused with making it unethical/immoral.
Parent
Re:What's the difference here? (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize in both ways, the creator gets nothing. So where exactly is the problem?
1) You do realize that when you buy a used book, you are still very much supporting the new book market that paid the creator.
2) Why is it only the creator of the book who matters? Do you think the reseller of used out of print books deserves to starve?
3) Just because a book is out of print that doesn't make it ok to make copies. That ensures it STAYS out of print, which again, utimately deprives the creator. It might be ok to make copies of a book where the owners have no interest or intention to ever reprint it... but the mere fact that its currently out of print doesn't mean its been abandoned by the creator.
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Re:What's the difference here? (Score:4, Interesting)
Keeping it out of print may also be the desire of the creator or of their estate. Look into the on-line publications of the secret Scientology writings of L. Ron Hubbard, or look at the fascinating material over at www.wikileaks.org. Much of that is material the original authors or current owners absolutely do not want available for general information, much less duplication. And this policy goes right back to the beginnings of copyright law and the Catholic unhappiness with Bibles being printed in English.
It is fascinating history, and reveals the roots of copyright in the _prevention_ of publication to keep material secret, not in the assistance to public education and welfare offered as a reason for copyright and patent laws.
Parent
Re:What's the difference here? (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Copyright laws are not there to protect the "book market" as some kind of ephemeral whole. They are to protect creators of works.
2) Copyright laws are not there to protect used book sellers.
3) True, but the ultimate aim of copyright is to encourage production and distribution of creative works. When the owner lets them go out of print they are abusing the system.
Parent
Re:What's the difference here? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you're close to something here, but not quite there. When you buy a used book, there's not a clear way in which you're supporting the new book, and supporting the copyright holder of that original book is even more indirect.
In response to issue #2, no one is saying that used book resellers deserve to starve, but they really aren't the issue. Used book resellers don't own the copyright to the books they're selling, so when you copy those books, those resellers aren't being wronged morally/ethically/legally. Even if their business model becomes obsolete, that's not really my problem to solve. You know, the whole thing about buggy-whip makers...
Even point #3, which seems the most sensible to me, doesn't quite hold up. There are a variety of reasons that things go out of print, and it's not clear how to get them back in print. Again, you might have something, but it's pretty unclear, indirect, and uncertain.
I guess what I'm saying is, I would agree with you that the situation it more complicated than whether the original creator gets directly compensated. At the same time, I feel like your arguments might be a little too complicated, a little too much of a stretch.
I think part of the problem is that people are feeling like businesses aren't really providing the things they want. Lots of people think it's all about "free". The ebook is free, so greedy people will just get it. But often it's about availability and a sense of fairness, and people feeling like they don't want to have to search around for rare out of print books in order to read something, only for the purpose of propping up a secondary market.
I think if you want to make an argument here, the only real angle I can see is that, if you destroy the secondary market for a book, you're also diminishing the value of new books (i.e. if I can't resell my books, then the price I'm willing to pay for new books is less). However, that issue is complicated by the fact that the book is out of print. lessening the market for out of print books isn't going to retroactively decrease the price of the book when it was new, taking money out of the pocket of the author.
You could argue that declaring "open season" on all out of print books makes it less likely for people to buy new books, because if the books goes out of print then its value drops. But that seems to assume that speculative book collectors who buy books new, hoping they'll go out of print and become rare, are a significant part of the book-buying market. If that were the case, these books probably wouldn't go out of print, since there'd be such high demand.
Parent
Re:What's the difference here? (Score:5, Interesting)
... but what about medical textbooks where they wouldn't normally be available or affordable?
Funny thing; about 5 years ago I was working on a software project in which we were trying to develop portable wireless access to various medical reference texts and databases, primarily using wireless "smart phones" as the hardware. The main thing that killed the project was that we developers needed access to the text for testing. My part in the project was writing decoding software that could understand the texts' formats and convert them to usable databases. But most of this work couldn't be tested, because we couldn't get access to the medical texts. The printers would only sell them to people with official medical credentials, and as software developers, we didn't qualify. The companies lawyers couldn't find a way to break this lockout, so eventually we had to give up. A number of doctors, mostly EMTs, didn't get the wireless access that we'd told them we could build.
This was a good lesson to all of us in what copyright is really about. The publishers and authors knew quite well what they were doing when they refused to even sell or lease their data to us. They made it quite clear that they understood what we were trying to do, and they weren't going to allow it.
It's, uh, interesting to see the concept of ethics tied into this.
Parent
Re:What's the difference here? (Score:4, Informative)
Well it's not quite as black and white as you make it out to be. There's a little wrinkle I'd like to point out.
First, some definitions. A "secondary market" is when people can sell assets to each other after the original creator has sold them. For example, a collectors bookstore selling a used book, or EB selling a used video game. The existance of a secondary market increases the "liquidity" of the asset, in that you're able to resell your asset quickly/easily for a fair price. This creates value for the asset holder.
In other words, a functioning used book market increases the value for all book holders. By getting rid of the secondary market, the value is destroyed for potential new-book buyers. They're still paying the same amount for a new book, but they won't have the option of receiving a salvage value when they're sick of the book. One person's actions can't get rid of the secondary market on their own of course, but if everyone did it... tragedy of the commons.
That said, in the provided example, I'd probably go for the ebook. Just consider the above when talking about used books in general.
Quick tangent: this is why I get pissed off at the videogame publisher group the ESA (EA, Ubisoft, etc) with their DRM and lawsuits. They're trying to kill off both trading and the selling of used games. They are reducing the value of their product by depriving me of a secondary market, while still increasing their prices every year. Of course they have an incentive to remove the secondary market; they want to increase the primary market to make money for themselves. Jerks.
Parent
Gutenberg project (Score:4, Informative)
Given the life length of copyright in the US (thanks, Mickey Mouse!), the kind of book you describe is likely to be found at the Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.org] archives.
Gen X says.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Gen X says.. (Score:5, Funny)
There is nothing more pleasurable than searching for old books in a second hand book store.
Um, Sex.
Parent
I remember life prior to the Internet (Score:4, Interesting)
Get a copy from the library (Score:4, Informative)
is what I used to do when I was a student and had limited finances.
I wouldn't download a pirated e-book - I hate the format to begin with, and despite the fact the used book sale doesn't make it back to the original author directly demand for used copies is used by publishers to determine when to reprint a book.
ethics and legality (Score:4, Informative)
Ethically, I see no problem with copying it in whatever form you like if it's out of print or if it's older than 10-15 years. I consider copyrights lasting longer than 15 years and copyrights on out-of-print books to be unethical, but that's just me.
Legally, you are certainly completely in the clear if you buy a used copy and read it in paper form. You're probably in the clear if you scan the used copy yourself.
It's not clear what happens if you download a copy. The legality of that may depend more of who you copy from and where you live than whether you own a copy. Another possibility is that you borrow a copy and scan it yourself, or that you buy a copy, scan it, and then sell it again. I don't think any of those have been tested in court, and the legal situation may not agree with intuition.
Ask the author, not Slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
Out of print + refusal to make available (Score:5, Insightful)
In cases like this, the correct thing to do would have the book in question fall immediately into the Public Domain.
That is, if we had IP laws that were set up to promote the progress of the useful arts as opposed to being set up in a way so as to make a few wealthy companies even wealthier.
The Constitution says ... (Score:5, Insightful)
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
IANAL, but it seems to me that the key condition here is: 'To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts'. Once the copyright or patent holder ceases publishing, licensing, or producing the work or invention, progress has ceased. And so should the term of this right.
Ask. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is one of those cases you might just contact the author and ask.
Books want to be read (Score:5, Interesting)
As a published author, I would prefer that people read my book than that they pay for it.
In the long run, this builds me an audience, which may also be monetarily worth more than a one-time payment.
If the book is not available... pirate it.
Death metal, a tiny musical genre that thrived from 1985-1995, has many classics out of print. Our solution at the metal site for which I write (the Dark Legions Archive [anus.com], I'm a blogger) is to make FLACs available of out of print classics.
The reason is simple: it's better that the artists have a new listener, than that the potential listener is thwarted by the chaos of record publishing.
Technically, it is against the law. However, from artists, we have heard nothing but encouragement. There are now new generations, new fans and new life for their art. I don't think anyone can reasonably complain about that.
Re:well..duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Boomer: I agree.
Copyright law got royally screwed up a few years ago. Now its principle purpose is to protect corporations from loss of perpetual profits, which is damn close to the antithesis of its original purpose (protecting the actual creator of a work from being screwed by marketeers).
Until there is a US Congress with the guts and brains to rewrite copyright law in keeping with its original intent, there is a strong Thoreau-ish argument that violating this law, in those manifold instances where it provides no benefit at all to any individual, is an expression of patriotic civil disobedience.
Go make your e-copy for yourself, or acquire one through whatever means you can find, knowing that you are not harming any individual. If you share that e-copy with friends or anonymous acquaintances, you are going a step further in limiting, to some small degree, the culture of corporate greed that has been allowed to wreck the USA economy in eight short years.
Parent
Re:The answer to ethical questions.... (Score:4, Insightful)
To use the oft abused car metaphor: If someone doesn't make a car I want in the color I want, I'm not allowed to steal it just so I can paint it the color I want.
What? that doesn't even make sense. I guess I'm hurting those poor used book stores as well, since I use the library. People don't "deserve" to earn money if they don't provide a service people want; those stores will exist as long as people want to buy used books, and no longer.
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Re:Pirate the book (Score:5, Funny)
The ethical thing to do would be to keep seeding.
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