Are We About To Enter The Age of Book Piracy? 494
theodp writes "The speed with which the 4MB e-mail hoax purporting to be the new cookbook from the Naked Chef streaked across the Internet suggests to Slate that a new, disquieting era for the publishing world may be in sight. Indeed, the latest Harry Potter tale made the rounds on the Web just hours after the book went on sale, its 870 pages apparently scanned in and distributed by rabid fans. The old argument that no one likes reading on a computer has pretty much eroded. Just because publishing people can't conceive of book piracy doesn't mean it can't happen."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's call it what it is (Score:3, Insightful)
New Piracy Software (Score:5, Insightful)
So instead of Kazaa, Gnutella and Napster, book piracy will be by email? God help us! Just when I'm trying to convince my higher-ups that emailing that graphics-laden instruction manual (10 MB) to everyone in the company is NOT a good idea.
Hey! Maybe then they'll outlaw email and it will give us a chance to revamp SMTP!
It's Piracy (Score:2, Insightful)
Book Piracy (Score:2, Insightful)
An illegal translation of Harry Potter was being sold here (Chile). They regularly decommision tens of thousands of books at a time here.
Books suffer the same type of overcharged price fixing as CD's, so most people here can't afford them. Does that mean that the poor are denied the right to read? Libraries are basically non existent here too. Book piracy is not bad in the developed world because of fairly good libraries and greater affluence. One cannot expect a person making 200 bucks a month (or less) to buy a 10 dollar (minimum) book. Pirate copies sell for around 2 bucks. An affordable price. Your 10 dollar paperback could still make decent profit if sold for 3 bucks.
Now it's getting pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
Piract against the Movie Industry is again ilegal but it can be rationalized when you consider some of the dodgy things they want to try and pull against the consumers.
Piracy against the book publishing firms makes no damn sense. They don't screw the customers, price increases for books have been very slight and can be explained by the normal rate of inflation (my personal average is $1.50 over the past 10 years) and if you really want to read the book for free there is a *legal* way to do it. Just go to the local library and check it out
There is no "robin hood" rationalization for this, there is no way to justify it, this is just a bunch of cheap fuckers who can't be bothered to fork over $18 on Amazon.com for a pre-order.
In my opinion it's *now* a case of the consumers (the ones sharing the books on the web) screwing the authors. Remember, JK Rowling was a starving single mother when she wrote HP:ATSS...Think about *that* when HP #6 comes out
Hopefully, no (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully, "book piracy" won't suddenly catch on. I suspect it will slowly rise, but a sharp increase will only prompt publishers to have a knee-jerk reaction and jump towards some kind of lock-down attempt. A slow increase will give publishers time to think about the most sensible way of altering their business model in the face of copyright infringement. Some have found that giving away electronic copies is profitable [baen.com].
Getting books for free is easy (Score:2, Insightful)
Encourages kids to read (Score:3, Insightful)
The other reason is that it also encourages adults to read. I've got few objections to literature being pirated on the internet, and although they wouldn't admit it in public, I'd imagine the books authors don't object much either. If you really love a book, you'll want a hard copy.
It makes a change from all the "How To Drive a Woman Wild in 30 Seconds.pdf" crap circulating on Kazaa anyway.
Would you object to your kids downloading Shakespeare's sonnets from th'Internet?
Then what's wrong with downloading modern literature from a personal development point of view?
No substitute for the real thing (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no substitute for holding that book in your hands, and having the pleasure of turning the pages. It's slow, perhaps (unless you're one of those heathen speedreaders; reading was meant to be enjoyed), but it's a satisfying expirience.
As much as I love computers and all things gadget-like, no electronic contraption with a small sreen will ever replace my books. And having a personal library is just plain damn cool.
Re:Comics too. (Score:4, Insightful)
Having these online so that people could read from the start of the series would be wonderful.
Having them online so that you don't have to pay a couple of buck for a recent issue is silly.
Plus, comics are about collecting. I doubt this would hurt the industry too much.
It's copyright infringement (Score:5, Insightful)
Freely adapted from the parent post.
No, it's copyright infringment. (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you want to be a dope promoting the big publisher's propaganda [gnu.org].
Once again, the FSF tells it as it is...
God I hope so (Score:3, Insightful)
To store all his information.
Why will man not share his information?
To hold power over other men.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry guys, book piracy is already here. (Score:3, Insightful)
But believe me, any book you'd want is available in text format and pdf.
I mean, seriously, a insane number of classics are already available legally from Project Gutenberg - how many people use that regularly?
There's just not as much prestige in releasing a pirated book, when the most highly anticipated movies can make a group famous.
That's just my 2 cents.
It's Newspeak (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm annoyed at people that use overblown, emotional words like "piracy" so that it will sound of life-or-death importance; the implication being that most people can be mind controlled to agree with their notion of copyright infringement - they'll try to make it sound as harmful as possible.
- Brian
Re:article -1 Troll (Score:2, Insightful)
Just because the publisher already has the text "in the computer" doesn't mean that it won't cost them anything to publish it as an e-book: there are skills and tools necessary for that that are not present in the average paper-publisher's repertoire: they will have to hire or contract for such work to be done: an additional cost.
The printed word is a mature medium. The idea that presenting it as a collection of pixels on a screen is suddenly going to increase the receptive audience of the exact same content over presenting it as ink patterns on paper is improbable at best. A more likely interperetation is that the e-book will simply be a more convenient format for a certain segment of the audience who would have bought and paid for it in any case. That doesn't increase the publisher's profits, rather it erodes them by the additional costs of e-publishing, combined with a loss of the economies of scale in their print distribution: where before, book retailers might average, say, 10 copies of a typical book, now they might average only 8 copies. That shippment of books will still have to be packed, shipped, tracked, unpacked and inventoried. Only now there will be fewer actual sales to spread the costs of those operations out over.
E-publishing, therefore, leaves the publisher with the choice of either a deminished profit-margin (try selling THAT to the board of directors!), or higher prices (with the attendant loss of sales that that entails) in order to maintain the financial outlook which NOT e-publishing corrently affords them. So why e-publish? Why indeed!
Libraries (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would book piracy put publishers in a great deal more trouble than libraries? Someone still has to buy the books. Likely there are several groups of book piraters, I am sure they all buy their own copies.
Oh, and I dont like reading on a computer. Maybe my CRT just sucks.
Re:books can be too much of a pain in the ass (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm going on holiday, then a book bought at the airport bookshop is far more convenient than a PDA. I'll still be able to read it on the flight and take it with me to the hotel swimming pool/beach. With a PDA or laptop, I probably won't be able to use it on the plane, while at the beach I'd be too concerned about it being stolen, buried in the sand, soaked by rain/drinks/the large guy jumping into the swimming pool/the little kids splashing about learning to swim, to really feel relaxed. Having any of these things happen to a $10 book is an acceptable risk. Similarly, when attending a conference I'd prefer to have a hardcopy of the paper than the author is presenting. If a cheap CD-ROM reader/LCD display with long-lasting life came along, then I would change my mind and say E-books would be a good idea.
If I'm learning technical stuff at home or in the office, then saving as much space as possible is definitely a good thing. I'd prefer not to have to lumber a large book back and forth between office and home. If I need the information from a book, then I can either buy it brand new, second-hand, or borrow it from the library, copy the relevant pages and then sell or return it. Photocopying has the disadvantage of creating as much paper as was copied. Scanning the book electronically allows me to create my own virtual bookshelf, and make backups onto CD-ROM whenever required. Having the all the relevant chapters on a single CD-ROM is no bad thing. I would consider buying a technical book electronically, if it were possible.
My preferences are based entirely on how much space is available, and how safe the surroundings are.
Re:Comics too. (Score:2, Insightful)
Comics are different. They are only on the shelf a couple of months, at most. The unsold comics either are bought by the store, or they get sent back to the publisher unsold. The ones that get into the long boxes of the comic stores, if sold, will only generate profit for the comic store itself; no additional profit is given to the publisher.
The majority of the runs of comics I've seen online are older comics that would cost an exorbitant amount of money to buy the originals from a store or collector. The people downloading these have no interest in selling them for more money, or in "ripping off" the comics publishers. They just want to read the old stories in complete chunks!
Now, there is a danger when people scan in 0day releases, or comics currently available in TPB format. But if someone wants to read hard-to-find independent comics, such as the early, gritty TMNT stuff, they should not have to pay the inflated prices comic stores want to charge.
Downloading is worse than the library (Score:3, Insightful)
I have read this argument as a justification, and I don't like it. Quite apart from the technical difference (the library only has one copy of each book, and you can only use it for a limited time), if you download rather than going to the library, you will push the library's use rates down. Politicians will take that as evidence that nobody uses the library, and cut the library's funding.
Now, the ideal solution would be an all-digital library, but publishers will not agree to that anytime soon. Besides, with libraries, everybody wins -- people who don't own computers can read the book, and authors get paid (I remember an interview in which an author said that if every library in the US bought his book, it would be a best-seller).
So, for pragmatic reasons (not to mention the idea of actually going outside!! and meeting real humans!!), support your local library -- don't use it as an excuse to download books.
Again (Score:3, Insightful)
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Book piracy is no big deal.
Anybody who has the patience to read a book on their computer REALLY REALLY wants the book that they're reading. So much so, that they tend to either already own the book, but have lost it, left it at home and they're somewhere else, or something of that nature.
Piracy of textbooks and, say, RPG manuals is another story, however. I think most people who acquire that stuff might actually have purchased the real deal, but because they don't want to shell out for a reference manual, as they already have it, they won't go out and buy the real thing.
Book piracy may have a negative impact on sales, however. I think that would-be book pirates should be aware of that and restrict themselves to downloading books they already own or would immediately purchase if they saw it on a shelf, and then order it immediately online before making a real dent in the sucker, BEFORE deciding if it's worth finishing.
Why?
I had the pleasure of meeting Joe Haldeman a couple years ago, and he explained the financial facts about writing.
It's important to remember that most authors are in pretty bad financial shape - they don't make a whole lot on a book, or for that matter for shorts and articles. "Bridget Jone's Diary" and it's like are the exception, not the rule. Science fiction and fantasy - minus JK Rowling and a very small set of other lucky ducks - are probably the worst paying genres.
So if you're planning on purchasing a book but find yourself downloading the book instead, whether or not it turns out the book is your style, buy it anyhow, unless you're that guy who sits for 3 hours in the bookstore trying to determine if the book is worth buying.
Counter as you will, people.
Re:article -1 Troll (Score:3, Insightful)
The book industry doesn't make every book available in an ebook format. Whyever not? It's not like they don't have the work in a computer? They can sell it for a bit less than a paper book, but he savings must be astronomical - no distrobution chain to run, no bookshops to pay... If they don't see the advantages they'll be left behind just like the music an video industries.
As someone who works at a small publishing company... We don't regularly release e-books. The reason for this is that it takes a fairly large amount of additional work to make a good quality e-book, and the simple fact is we have virtually NO DEMAND for such projects.
We do at times release pdf's of chapters, table of contents, supplementary materials that are freely available on our website (as an academic publishing companies, a professor will occasionally want students to be able to download a particular chapter before they get the book). All our reports show that in these cases, the vast majority of people print out the pdf rather than read on screen.
Now, one really exciting thing about e-books is the accessibility component. We have blind students or other disabled students request e-books many times, and in these cases we are usually able to provide an e-book which they would then use with some kind of text->speech software.
But the simple reality is beyond the disabled and pre-release type of electronic publishing, we encounter virtually zero demand for books in electronic formats. Then again, as I mentioned we are an academic publisher, and where reading a tiny scrolling screen for a novel might be ok (a trade paper back sized book for instance), it's much harder and more awkward for scholarly works and textbooks and the like.
And there is the piracy issue...
Re:Comics too. (Score:0, Insightful)
Intellectual properties are much harder to develop and need far more protection than any manual labour
Yeah, sure it is. I'd like to see you digging a ditch or mining coal for a living. You wouldn't survive five fucking minutes, you effete snob.
but the /. crowd wants to literally put us further down the scale with the ditch diggers and that ilk.
Right now, I find you repulsive. Frankly I have more respect for a ditch digger since he's doing honest to goodness hard work (and badly paid for it too).
Much noise, no answers (Score:2, Insightful)