Copyright Infringement of Books 468
Maximum Prophet recommends a NY Times piece on the growing phenomenon of unauthorized digital versions of copyrighted books showing up online. The problem has been growing exponentially, fed in part by the popularity of reading devices such as the Kindle and the iPhone. The article features the odd photographic juxtaposition of Cory Doctorow and Ursula K. Le Guin, who take opposite views on electronic editions, authorized or not. Ms. Le Guin: "I thought, who do these people think they are? Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?" Mr. Doctorow: "I really feel like my problem isn't piracy. It's obscurity." "Doctorow, a novelist whose young adult novel 'Little Brother' spent seven weeks on the New York Times children's chapter books best-seller list last year, offers free electronic versions of his books on the same day they are published in hardcover. He believes free versions, even unauthorized ones, entice new readers."
http://ebookshare.net/ (Score:2, Informative)
http://ebookshare.net/
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You wouldn't believe how many ebooks I have (Score:4, Informative)
Go to Usenet, get just about everything you could want. Build up a personal library of hundreds of texts that would match a (small town) library.
The book publishing industry will go the way of the music and movie industries, just a bit slower since reading text on a monitor is still not quite as easy as a real book.
Um, that'd be *free* beer (Score:5, Funny)
FTFA:
"The question is, how much time and energy do I want to spend chasing these guys," Stephen King wrote in an e-mail message. "And to what end? My sense is that most of them live in basements floored with carpeting remnants, living on Funions and discount beer."
Parent poster:
Go to Usenet
Sounds about right.
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The book publishing industry will go the way of the music and movie industries, just a bit slower since reading text on a monitor is still not quite as easy as a real book.
First we need some laws on the subject that were not distorted from 200 years ago to fit the internet. We also need to realize culture cannot be monopolized, and any attempt to do that is doomed, even if people who demonstrate the freely copyable nature of any information are compared to other people who steal shit on the high seas.
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First we need some laws on the subject that were not distorted from 200 years ago to fit the internet.
One of the general problems is that as soon as a computer is introduced to a subject area, all precedent is forgotten, chants of "That's different!" are heard repeatedly, and we humans must relearn every social lesson that we so laboriously worked out over the centuries.
Free speech? We're using computers; it isn't "speech", it's email or texting or ...
Freedom of the press? We're using computers, not press
Re:You wouldn't believe how many ebooks I have (Score:5, Insightful)
Fair use? We're using computers, which do copying for even the most trivial operations, so we have to throw the idea out and look for something else.
Which is exactly why we need to extend the concept to computers en masse. The current laws are impossible to enforce without a police state. Which one would you want?
One of the general problems is that as soon as a computer is introduced to a subject area, all precedent is forgotten, chants of "That's different!" are heard repeatedly, and we humans must relearn every social lesson that we so laboriously worked out over the centuries.
Yes, but that's not a bad thing. The lessons our ancestors learned are different from today's. Our ancestors didn't have instant and truly anonymous speech from 10000 miles away in a country with no extradition treaty. Our ancestors didn't have access to so many types of entertainment competing for their attention span it's humanly impossible to even know about them all. We need to learn our own lessons about the Internet, because we're the ones who experience it.
If you lean too much on tradition you'll end up like Hungary in WW2: a Kingdom without a king, lead by an admiral without a fleet, in a country without a coastline, fighting against enemies we have no problems with, with countries as our ally we do have problems with.
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Actually, it'd be great if the current laws were consistent with the 200-year-old stuff: [cornell.edu]
Congress has gone way beyond the Constitutional intent or meaning, and the Supreme Court has unfortunately upheld them on it. That is why copyright has so many problems. Copyright terms have been extended to make money for business interests, not to su
Re:You wouldn't believe how many ebooks I have (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You wouldn't believe how many ebooks I have (Score:5, Interesting)
I still don't understand the "Because it can be done easily is is my right to do it" attitude of the pirate defenders.
Easy. You're criminalizing a big chunk of society, who are actually decent people. Because it's so easy to do it, there's no moral backlash, no higher ethics forbidding it like murder. How could it be illegal to use the internet you paid for, after all?
Do you really want to ruin university students' (read: theoretically the best and brightest of their age range with the most promising future ahead of them) lives because they downloaded some music to go with the exam material? Do you really want the police state needed to enforce these laws today?
Copyright was invented to protect those who owned a printing machine from each other. You don't think those rules should apply today, do you? And if you're worried about the author, ask them next time how much of the retail price they get to keep. They'd be better off if you sent one of them $100 and pirated for the rest of your life.
And if you're still brainwashed enough to defend copyright, google up all the ancient Greek works that were destroyed, and only their copies survived.
Re:You wouldn't believe how many ebooks I have (Score:4, Insightful)
This is 1) a logical fallacy called argumentum ad populum: something is right because people do it; 2) a logical fallacy called a strawman (the Coward never proposed solving the piracy problem with police state measures); 3) a logical fallacy called a non sequitur (advocacy of a police state doesn't follow from the statement that piracy is wrong); 4) an incomplete "analysis" of the reason for copyright; Score: 5, interesting on Slashdot.
Congratulations.
Re:You wouldn't believe how many ebooks I have (Score:4, Insightful)
What was happening before IP rights came along was that originators would keep what they'd created secret until they were in a position to get a sponsorship deal up-front, or to make a lot of money very fast through some other means (like having a printing-and-distribution deal whereby they could flood the market with their own official product before the rip-off merchants had a chance to get their copies ready). In the case of classical composers, they'd keep their work secret until they got a commission for a big public performance, at which point they'd dig something suitable out of their chest of part-finished manuscripts, cut it or build it up to the desired length, polish it and hand it over. Some people marvel at how some great works of classical music were supposedly written from scratch in a few weeks, to order - and of course, they weren't ... some of those works had perhaps been tinkered with for years, but were never completed and performed until the composer's patron asked for something new for a high-profile performance ... because that was the only way that the composer could make money from their work. Until that point your "protection" was keeping kept your stuff secret until the last possible moment. If the chance to cash in never came along, then you'd hang onto the thing to keep it safe, and perhaps end up taking it to your grave.
The point of introducing IP was that you could now show your stuff to other people, and allow society to see and evaluate your work, and in return for sharing, society would go some way to protecting your right to profit from what you'd done. It meant that you didn't have ten companies all developing the same device in secret, with none of them bringing it to market until the time was right for "quick-burst" profits. You weren't properly protected if you didn't share, but once you'd lodged a public patent or published a book, everyone knew that the thing was yours, and society would reward you for sharing by trying to stop you being badly ripped off.
That was the deal. Share and be protected.
(Before someone else mentions it, yes, I appreciate that the US phenomenon of submarine patents [wikipedia.org] violated that deal ... and that's why those patents should have been declared void, on the grounds that the filers were negligent in not upholding their end of the deal.)
"Libraries of record" should have exemption from any copyright rules that prevent them from making copies of published works for archival and/or preservation purposes. I think that the Library of Congress already has such an exemption, and last time I looked the British Library were campaigning hard to get UK law updated to provide a similar exemption (which should have been there but seemed to have been missed due to an oversight). It's not difficult to write clauses into copyright law that makes "preservation of works" a priority, and law-makers tend to be sympathetic to the argument when its put to them. The need to preserve works really isn't a sensible argument for scrapping the whole copyright system.
If the Library of Congress wants to scan your book and deposit microfiche and electronic copies of it in nuclear bunkers scattered around the US to preserve it in case of social upheaval, my understanding is that that's probably absolutely fine under US copyright law, without their having to ask anybody's permission or pay anyone any money. No problem.
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"a bit slower since reading text on a monitor is still not quite as easy as a real book."
It amazes me how many people think ebook readers are just netbooks without keyboards. The screen looks like paper!
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Can you recommend one that doesn't cost more than 300 books?
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Can you recommend one that doesn't cost more than 300 books?
Given that the GGP's comment was about how Usenet allowed him to collect hundreds of books for free...
No.
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I think that people who read books, a small market to be sure, is made up mostly of people who go to a library to find out if they like something and, if the book is good enough, then go to Amazon or Borders or B&N and buy the book. I know that's what I
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I was with you until you've got there:
... Does the colour of the paper and it's smell tell me how long ago it was published? Can I look at the spine of an e-book and know the reading habits of the previous owner?/ ...
You know, with a few minor replacements, your post could just as well end in "... which is why we will always have phonographs".
As for the relevant parts of it (folding, marginal notes etc), it's either already here, or around the corner (i.e. working prototypes have been demonstrated already).
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Sure, and in that sense I'd expect books to persist, as luxury items for niche bibliophile audiences (and priced accordingly... if you think books are expensive now, just wait!).
But in mainstream, paper books will be dead in next 10-20 years.
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Now take a e-reader to the beach and see if you can read it in bright sunlight, when it have been sandblasted and sprinkled with saltwater, and overheated....
Actually, I did just that with my Sony. Works fine (it has an aluminium case, and the whole point of eInk screen is that it's readable in direct sunlight!). By the way, I wouldn't recommend getting a paper book sprinkled with any kind of water, either...
As well, the existing ebook readers are very new tech. Keep in mind that the very first eInk one had appeared in 2004 (Sony Librie), and the first mass-produced ones in 2006. There are still many quirks in them (slow refresh, low DPI) that are getting ironed
Re:You wouldn't believe how many ebooks I have (Score:5, Informative)
The book publishing industry will go the way of the music and movie industries, just a bit slower since reading text on a monitor is still not quite as easy as a real book.
You mean like how the US Music industry is posting profit growth of 4% annually over the last three years? Or perhaps you meant the Movie industry with its 3rd year of growth?
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You mean like how the US Music industry is posting profit growth of 4% annually over the last three years? Or perhaps you meant the Movie industry with its 3rd year of growth?
Or perhaps the OP meant that the publishing industry will, like the music industry, go through a few years of opposing digital media (which it has done) and predicting doom and destruction from piracy (which it is about to) , followed by willing publication of all their output in digital form, but with daft DRM (which in some cases, it is now doing). Before finally understanding the reality of the new market and dropping DRM so everybody who wants a copy can buy their product and use it on the device of the
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The book publishing industry will go the way of the music and movie industries, just a bit slower since reading text on a monitor is still not quite as easy as a real book.
I can't agree with you there - book publishers (with the help of Amazon) are playing this spectacularly well in comparison. For one thing, they have not launched legal attacks and propaganda campaigns against their most avid consumers. For another, books (both print and e/kindle) are priced fairly. And finally, it is much easier for the l
the real issue (Score:3, Funny)
re:"Mr. Doctorow: "I really feel like my problem isn't piracy. It's obscurity.""
I think his real problem is he can't write. Might explain the obscurity.
Re:the real issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope. There are genre giants that end up making less than the waiter at the local Dennys.
This all boils down to the fact that they are relatively obscure and service a
relatively small market. Furthermore, their publisher eats up most of the gross
revenue of what actually gets sold and distribution costs need to be recovered.
Unless you are Stephen King, a few pirates will probably benefit you in the end.
You're probably obscure enough that pirates really can't do any harm.
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>>>their publisher eats up most of the gross revenue
If I was a new author, I'd skip all the middlemen and just publish directly to the net. $1 per book downloaded. Even if I was only read by 1% of the internet, I'd still have a successful career.
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Have you even read any Cory Doctorow novels? Sometimes they are a little out there, but at least the perspective is fresh. (Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, I'm looking at you.)
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom had its less believable bits but was very forward looking, Eastern Standard Tribe moreso. Little Brother was probably his best one yet and eerily prescient.
What's more they're free for download. Now it isn't Shakespeare, I'll give you that, but it is entertaining and the writing is quite a
Competition for time... (Score:5, Interesting)
... there is really so much competition for peoples time these days it's little wonder companies like to blame lack of sales on piracy.
I'd really like someone to add up all the hours it would take to experience x's book or y's product and they'd soon begin to realize it would take someone an ENTIRE LIFETIME not even to get through a fraction of what is out there.
I usually only buy books that I think are worth something over the long term. People have way too many options today to fill their time. Also with the advent of the net discussing and sharing insights, any book that is published quickly becomes out-dated.
One thing I hope electronic books allow is real-time updates to books so that they can stay fresh, with a wikipedia like revision system that tracks version and revision history (for those that need it).
Personally electronic books when done right (when the software gets there) will allow copying and pasting a whole bunch of different things that you can't do with a real book. Both will have their place I think.
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You are correct. This is why I prefer to buy Greatest Hits CDs or "The Best SciFi of the Year" anthologies. It acts like a filter, otherwise there's no way I could keep up with the deluge. We're suffering from too much data.
Yeah. (Score:5, Funny)
Mr. Doctorow: "I really feel like my problem isn't piracy. It's obscurity."
There, there, Cory. People are paying attention to you now. It's okay.
Shakespeare was a huge fan of peer-to-peer sharing (Score:4, Funny)
Back in his day they had this distributed network of his plays called Uyznettee. Only Uyznettee used horses as the transport. They would stick a small cannonball up the horse's backside for a "one." An empty horse was a "zero." Occasional errors occurred if a horse voided before the transfer was complete, but a parity horse took care of that.
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They would stick a small cannonball up the horse's backside for a "one." An empty horse was a "zero."
Up the backside, huh? I guess that should be called "rear-to-rear sharing" then.
Why... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, why do people complain that you're deriving enjoyment from their labor, their primary way of life, and not compensating them in any way. What selfish jackasses, eh?
Re:Why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Looking at The Pirate Bay's top 100 of audiobooks (because the e-books seem to be geek-only and aren't respective of the entire population, unless a crapload of people are annoyed with Vista and enjoy building the perfect PC) you find:
Harry Potter, self help books or language learning books from popular authors, dead authors (some recently deceased like Robert Jordan, others dead for years such as George Orwell), the Twilight Saga, etc. In other words mostly well-known books, or books in which pirating is not harming the authors (unless you get royalties in the afterlife).
Re:Why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Write good books, make good music, make interesting movies, and the money will flow in.
Why? Because you think it would be nice if the world worked this way?
The reality for many writers is that income streams are small and intermittent, and having one's work freely available on line for zero cost really does reduce income.
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Most people don't pirate lesser known works, because they are lesser known. Because not everyone pirates, and those who pir
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And you do realize that even the most pirated songs are *gasp* purchased by a lot of people? There are quite a few people who buy music. Even the people who torrent the most music buy the music from bands that they like.
FFmpeg is LGPL'd, its doing the same thing as handing out CDs and going int
I'm a pro-piracy author. Ppl will still buy paper. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a two-bit, small time computer book author with just one book to my name so far. I love seeing my book get pirated. It's sold reasonably well for its niche (approaching 10,000 copies) but for the second edition I pleaded with my publisher to allow the e-book version to be free. Of the, say, 10,000 copies sold, only a couple hundred have been of the e-book edition, and I'm convinced that the wider exposure a free e-book would gather would result in increased print sales. When Seth Godin gave away the free PDF of his Ideavirus book, it led to me buying his various other books in print throughout the years. Doctorow is right that obscurity is a bigger hurdle than piracy, but I'm pretty convinced that even big name authors could benefit from extended reach thanks to freely distributed content.
My argument rests on people preferring paper to e-books, and I think they do. I sure do. Sadly, big name publishers tend to disagree, despite a number of convincing social media experiments, but over time perhaps change will happen.
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"My argument rests on people preferring paper to e-books, and I think they do."
For now, but that's mainly due to the extreme slowness of e-ink. Imagine if colour video-speed e-ink. Many people would stop buying paper books even if the price doesn't come down at all.
Change WILL happen (Score:2)
Change is after all inevitable
but what if the change is within "preferring paper to e-books" and not within "big name publishers tend to disagree"
Re:I'm a pro-piracy author. Ppl will still buy pap (Score:2)
My argument rests on people preferring paper to e-books, and I think they do. I sure do.
Some do. Some don't. I prefer e-books, and I have for years now. Just this last week, I bought an e-book edition of a book I already owned on paper, because I vastly prefer the e-book.
(I've never engaged in e-book piracy, and I expect that I never will. I've spent a lot of money with Baen -- they sell DRM-free ebooks in many formats. I've also spent pretty small amounts of money with publishers that encumber their ebooks with DRM. If I don't engage in piracy, why do I care about DRM? Because I've bee
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Here's the best writeup on the subject I've seen by an author, at the Baen Free Library [baen.com]. Worth a read.
Along web their webscription.net Ebooks website [webscription.net], Baen seems to have a good handle on this whole digital media business.
I'd love to see them debate this at WorldCon (Score:2)
Baen Books is Great (Score:2)
Once e-books are ubiquitous (Score:2, Insightful)
Lets give up (Score:4, Funny)
Well, that, sir, is the worst form of terrorism. Certainly neither I nor our great US&A government could support an endeavor of such despicable intent.
Besides, you cant beat the independent authors industry- they're too powerful.
Same song, second verse... (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA: "Until recently, publishers believed books were relatively safe from piracy because it was so labor-intensive to scan each page to convert a book to a digital file. What's more, reading books on the computer was relatively unappealing compared with a printed version."
I spent a few minutes looking for a legitimate, for-sale e-book version of The Left Hand of Darkness; there isn't one.
So the publishing companies are simply repeating the mistake of the record labels: being slow to release legitimate downloadable versions of their product while bemoaning the demand for a product they refuse to produce.
Cry me a river...
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Pal, I've heard this "being slow to release legitimate downloadable versions of their product while bemoaning the demand for a product they refuse to produce" before, and it's bullshit. There was a massive push to make e-books work between 2000 and 2002. I know - I was there. In fact, I even was the author of one of the front runners. I had the Diablo game franchise behind me, advertisement on Battle.net, and a tech-savvy audience that should have generated thousands of sales. Everything was going for
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Something called an Expresso Book Machine is coming down the line, and it's going to cause a revolution too. Print on Demand caused a revolution as well.
I wouldn't really call the results of PoD a revolution, at least not in terms of fiction publishing (which, at least tacitly, is the topic at hand -- both Doctorow and LeGuin are fiction authors). PoD books are too expensive for mainstream purchasers to consider. While a typical novel will set you back around £7 ($10), a typical PoD novel would be m
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Well, seeing as I am one of the publishers who uses Lightning Source as their printer, and I thus know a fair bit about this end, you have a couple of your facts wrong here.
First of all, Lightning Source doesn't set the cover price - the publishing company does (they also set the wholesaler discount, although anything over 55% gets the book listed as a low-discount book, and that can adversely impact sales). Lightning Source takes care of production and order fulfillment. Are PoD books more expensive, tho
Read Little Brother Because it was Free (Score:2)
I think it com
Dear Ms. Le Guin (Score:5, Insightful)
"I thought, who do these people think they are? Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?"
The People. The ultimate holders of authority. If they decide to amend the Constitution to abolish your and everyone else's copyright, they can, so I suggest you show them some respect.
Also dear author, it's a *privilege* not to have your books copied, not a natural right. Learn the difference. You can control your property and lock your book inside a vault where none can see it, but you have no right to control other people's property or how it is used.
And finally that privilege is a *temporary* privilege. Eventually all your works will fall into public domain, just like Mark Twain's works. The arts are meant to be free, not locked-up forever.
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>>>Socialism is a straw man used by the irrelevant right wing to stop people from taking what they are due
"Due"? You are not entitled to take money from your neighbors' wallets for your own enrichment. It's theft of property/labor. It's a form of partial enslavement (they work, not for themselves, but to make somebody else richer). Therefore it's a violation of basic individual rights. You have no right to take from others.
Writers, publishing, public culture, and earnings (Score:4, Insightful)
You're quite wrong. The book belonged to you (period), until the moment when you published it. Note the root of that word, pub- , it's very important.
From that moment in time, the book became part of public culture, progressively less and less yours and more and more a part of the public mind as its community of readers expands. And eventually, when it passes into the public domain, the work will not be yours at all, despite the fact that you will still be its author. See, there's a difference.
For a writer, you're curiously unaware of the relationship between a written work and the minds of readers. A book isn't the paper it's written on, but the words and ideas contained within. When a person reads your book, those words and ideas are inevitably donated to that reader, every last bit of them (the paper is irrelevant). Dwell on that a while, because you don't appear to have absorbed the implications.
For each person who reads your work, your "codified super insightful knowledge" (as you put it) becomes ever less exclusive, and if you are really popular then your exclusive hold over that knowledge drops close to nil: your work has become part of popular culture, and gained a momentum of its own. You are then no longer its owner but merely its author, and your earnings from it will be far more a product of the work's cultural significance than of your publisher's marketting. It will no longer be a "product", but an element of culture with earnings as a side effect.
You might wish to reflect a little on this essay from Baen: http://www.baen.com/library/ [baen.com] . As long as you are at war with your readers, I predict a future of hand-wringing and unhappiness.
Copyright is a religion (Score:4, Insightful)
There seems to be an inherent gut-level bias against the notion of somebody getting something for nothing. Even if it turns out good in the end. No matter how many people testify that releasing free copies of their work has actually increased their net income, people like Ms. LeGuin can't get away from, "Mine! Mine! Let go!"
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Copyright is an arbitrary, artificial construct "designed" (I use the word generously) to encourage creation.
Actually, if you dig into the history of copyright, you'll find that this wasn't at all true. The earliest copyrights were given by monarchs to publishers of texts such as the Bible. They clearly didn't do this to encourage the creation of more bibles. They did it to limit the production so the masses couldn't get and learn to read such texts on their own, but had to rely on their betters to read
Ever actually try to find a _specific_ book? (Score:2, Interesting)
In general, I find the books I want to read either 1) get popular enough that they eventually drop down to a reasonable price, 2) are just popular enough that it's available without a wait at the library, or 3) is so obscure that I can buy one of the 30 copies that are actually still available for a couple of hundred bucks on Amazon.
Note that the one I would most be interested in an electronic copy of (legal or not), is the one that is least likely to have an electronic copy.
There are only a few books out t
Best two quotes from the article (Score:2, Interesting)
Obscurity? (Score:2)
Wait ... Cory Doctorow thinks he's obscure? If he's obscure, what writer is well known?
Is there any SF reader who doesn't know his name?
Why not asshat vengence? (Score:2, Funny)
iPhone != Reading Device (Score:2)
Get real - it's a phone. Yes, it can be used as a reading device, and yes it open eBooks.
The thing is, the way smartphone processors are going, soon everything will be able to do that! Your toaster, your picture frame, your kitchen table mats!
Okay, maybe not, but the technology(such as thin & low power touchscreen displays) will be there, and I suspect some device not currently thought up will spring into existence, and then we'll have even more complaints! It's unlikely to stop there...
Music, TV, Movies and Books (Score:2, Insightful)
It's pretty clear that society at large increasingly has no problem infringing in copyright.
Rather than industry trying to change society's view of copyright isn't it about time society got together and changed copyright to something that fits its views?
Hey what's wrong with Funions and cheap beer? (Score:5, Funny)
Come on Stephen, your books are pretty much the equivalent.
Baen Free Library (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.baen.com/library/ [baen.com]
There are some pretty big name authors here as well as new authors who are trying to make it. You can read the dissertation by that commie Eric Flint about "Online Piracy".
Baen Publishing is noted for including a CD with some hardback novels that has free novels in it. Surprisingly enough they've not cried foul when digital editions of those CD's have ended up online.
http://www.webscription.net/p-162-freehold.aspx [webscription.net] You can read a good friends book here.
let's play a game (Score:5, Funny)
He seems like a reasonable guy.
old news; doesn't clearly depict controversy (Score:5, Interesting)
First off, the events they're talking about in the NY Times article actually came to a head in September 2007. It looks like a reporter dusted off some old notes simply because the Kindle is starting to get a lot of press, so it seems relevant now. The article doesn't really depict clearly what the controversy was about.
There's a guy named Andrew Burt, who has published a little science fiction, and had gotten elected to a middle-level position in the Science Fiction Writers of America. He noticed that scribd.com had a whole bunch of copyright-violating scans of books. He did an automated search of scribd's catalog, and based on that search, and without much consultation with anyone, he sent scribd a slew of what appeared to be DMCA takedown notices. The trouble was that he wasn't very careful, and, e.g., he got them to delete some fiction by Cory Doctorow, who actually wanted it on scribd as a form of publicity. IIRC, DMCA takedown notices are also supposed to be sent by copyright owners, and signed under penalty of perjury, but Burt's notices were sent without consulting the copyright holders, and were factually inaccurate in many cases; I think he ended up claiming that they weren't DMCA notices, but scribd apparently thought they were. Doctorow got very angry, and publicized his anger on his web site boingboing. Doctorow also published a very short piece by Ursula LeGuin on boingboing, without her permission, which made her furious. Burt ran for president of SFWA after this, and lost. The whole thing exposed a generational divide between older and younger SF authors. The older ones typically were suspicious of the internet, and saw it as a threat. The younger ones typically saw it as a way to publicize themselves. An old-timer named Howard Hendrix compared authors who gave their work away online for free to scabs, resulting in an ironic response called International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day [wikipedia.org]. Here are some representative opinions on the whole thing:
So first off, this isn't really a controversy about whether copyright should exist. The positions of all the different parties are quite similar on that issue. Scribd, Burt, Doctorow, LeGuin, and Hendrix are all pretty much in agreement that it's a bad thing to violate authors' copyrights. What they disagree on is mainly whether the internet presents more of a threat, or more of an opportunity.
Another thing to understand about this is that scribd is just a tool, in the same way that bittorrent is just a tool. I've posted some of my own nonfiction on scribd, simply on the theory that publicizing my work is always a good thing. However, just as The Pirate Bay has an extremely heavy presence of pointers to copyright-violating torrents, scribd also has a huge amount of copyright-violating stuff. Maybe the percentage is lower, but it's still a huge presence there. It's the classic situation where the web site is willing to devote x amount of effort to policing itself, but various people would like them to devote 10x (similar to Craigslist and prostitution).
My [not so] theoretical take (Score:5, Insightful)
I have absolutely no ethical qualms about downloading the electronic version of a book I've purchased in dead-tree form. I paid for the words presented in text form. Whether I read them on paper or a screen, it's the same performance of the same work. It's like ripping my own CDs so I can load them on my MP3 player except someone else did the ripping. In fact, I don't even have many of my physical books or CDs on hand. They're tucked away in boxes at a relative's house. (A relative who has a lot more storage space than me.) I ripped all my CDs years ago and haven't touched the physical media since. If I want to read a book I own (and I know which books I own), I download a pdf, prc, rtf, doc, html, etc. I haven't resold or disposed of any of them so, legally, I still own a copy and nobody's using the physical copy at the same time that I'm using the electronic copy. But I'm sure what I'm doing would piss off some copyright holders.
If I owned a kindle, you can bet I'd use my ethical loophole to bypass their $10/title charge for most books. I'd rather pay $5-7 for a paperback and download a "pirated" electronic version. Heck, even if they only charged $2/title for ebooks, I'd still download a pirated version after paying my $2 so I could be sure I'd have access to the product after the DRM screws me 5-10 years down the road.
Copyright holders and IP distributors need to clue in to the fact that reproducing information is cheap and easy. They can't legislate away that reality. Produce a quality product at a reasonable price and it'll sell. Try to charge more than people feel an easily-reproduced product is worth and they'll steal it or ignore it. Refuse to provide the product in a form that they want or make the process too cumbersome and they'll bypass you entirely.
Google settlement (Score:3, Informative)
http://inklingbooks.com/googlesettlement/googlesettlement.html [inklingbooks.com]
Obscurity by choice or lack of foresight? (Score:4, Insightful)
Kind of interesting that someone who had a bestseller a year ago is more open to the idea of digital publishing than an author that hasn't written much worthwhile since the 70's. Don't get me wrong Le Guin is far more prolific writer but if part of the crowd that grew up without the technology we have today and have refused to embrace the times.
The irony will be that as online publishing and ebooks become more and more prevalent the technology frightened authors like Le Guin will disappear into obscurity by their own efforts to protect themselves and you can bet they will whine about that too.
If things continue as they are a huge gap of world literature from the "copyright reform" era will simply vanish.
I do think its rather sad that in a genre like science fiction and fantasy there are people without the foresight to see a day when dead tree's will no longer be practical reading material.
Used Book Stores... (Score:3, Insightful)
OK there are so many holes in the whole copyright argument, mostly because it an archaic system used to solve a problem we used to have many many years ago. It has been modified and altered to try and keep up with modern times, but it hasn't been able to keep up, partially because industry is constantly lobbying it to stay in the dark ages so that can squeeze a little more profit.
You can pretty much say the same thing about the music and movie industries. None have tried to actually plan into the future.
Also there are some gray areas. Used Book store, Radio, Movie Rental places, heck throw in Game Rentals to grab another industry.
Though really what makes me mad is being asked to spend 50$ on a book. or 13$ for a softcover, and making me wait over a year for the freaking privilege of buying it at 13$. Don't even get me started on the price difference for US/Canada, it is criminal and discriminatory. Canadian currency was worth MORE than US, and we were being asked to pay 30% on top of that... Because yeah, that won't make your consumers furious.
Anyway I am a AVID reader and read a LOT. I buy almost exclusively used. I refuse to spend and waste my money. It actually makes me feel sick when every once in awhile I don't want to wait and shell out the big bucks for the book. The only other time I buy new, is when someone gives me a gift card for Christmas or something, as then I can rationalize it as I am not spending my money, only someone gave me a lavish gift.
Anyways I emphasize with Le Guin, and I have read many of her books, and enjoyed them (all used). However do not turn your gaze upon your readers and consumers, and think the fault is there. The fault is in an industry that has not kept in touch, and is horrible in every sense of the word. I remember hearing about an insider tell all about how truly messed up the distribution system is and the relationships between agents, distributors, retailers, and all the rest.
Don't look at me and point the finger in blame. Fix your own bloody system so it works.
Re: (Score:2)
High sales can be brought by more than just a sucessful business model.
A large store in a town with no or very little other commercial entities that compete with it will be more sucessful than one with an established commercial sector, for example.
Re:HA! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are a well-established author, as LeGuin is, whose works are a standard recommendation for young adult fiction(one of the largest book markets out there), the value of additional exposure is likely to be lower than the cost of would-be-buyers downloading instead.
If you are not a well-established author, or are well established only in a comparatively narrow niche, as Doctorow is, the value of additional exposure might well be substantially higher than any loss in sales.
Another difference might be with target market. Someone trying to appeal to children or teens, a tech-savvy but fairly cost sensitive(and often credit-cardless) demographic, might worry more about piracy, since if downloading or copying from a friend at school is easier than whining for mom's credit card, they lose a sale. Someone trying to appeal to twenty-something techies with online buying power might not face the same hurdles.
Now, it could simply be the case, as you suggest, that one author is right and the other is wrong; but it is, I think, reasonable to suspect that authors in different places might have different optimal strategies.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing to point out about this is that the optimal strategy may depend very strongly on technological trivia that could change tomorrow. Right now, the average person has no easy way to take a pdf consisting of pages scanned from a novel and convert it into something more convenient for readers, like a plain text ASCII file. Similarly, the TV studios didn't have much to worry about until te
Re:HA! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:HA! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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Apparently she authored the Earthsea series among other things. Don't feel bad - I had to Google her name.
Re:HA! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not a big fan of either one, but there's just no comparison between the two. Le Guin's works just have incomparably more depth and experience behind them. She's won two Hugos, and also managed to not only finish undergrad, but earned an ivy league Ph.D. in anthropology as well... as opposed to her "competition". (Please, don't bother "pointing out" that a Ph.D. outside of the hard sciences is worthless. It's not. Heinlein wouldn't dedicate a novel to a soft-minded pseudo-thinker...)
Doctorow is a small-fry gimmick writer compared to le Guin, and he knows it. Not that there's anything wrong with that per se. Doctorow's ideas and attitude are important; as they said about McLuhan, "even if he's wrong, it matters." But purely on authorial merit... please.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not a big fan of either one, but there's just no comparison between the two. Le Guin's works just have incomparably more depth and experience behind them.
I wouldn't be surprised. I like Doctrow's work. However, it's more due to the subject matter and general concepts than the work itself. There are plenty of times I've felt something Doctrow wrote was more like story notes than finished story. But hey - still like his stuff. And I know who he is. ;)
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The Lathe of Heaven [wikipedia.org] anybody?
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Yes. It clearely is your fault if you don't know ahead of time influential and/or famous people that you may or may not be interested in to begin with.
Re:It's called COPYright for a reason. (Score:5, Insightful)
I was going to say:
"Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?"
Because they can.
Re:It's called COPYright for a reason. (Score:4, Funny)
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Ellison stands on his own tiny pedestal in that department.
Re:It's called COPYright for a reason. (Score:5, Funny)
Ellison is notoriously short. Seems he was at a party and approached a beautiful young lady and (charming as ever) said, "What would you say to a little fuck?"
The lady looked down at the diminutive Ellison and replied, "I'd say, `Hello, little fuck.'" 8^D
Re:It's called COPYright for a reason. (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't get to make this choice for other authors. If you want to write a book and distribute it freely, go ahead. You don't have the right to give other people's property away just because you would want to share yours.
Freedom is about freedom of personal choice; it is not about being forced to give something away because somebody else thinks it would be a good choice.
Re:It's called COPYright for a reason. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sigh. Please learn what "force" means. Hint: it involves guns and courts and jails. No-one is telling authors they must "give something away because somebody else thinks it would be a good choice" or they will be thrown in prison. However, authors are saying they have the exclusive right to make copies of their books and that other people should be imprisoned (after refusing to pay hefty fines) if they dare try to step on that exclusive right.
You simply cannot make a freedom argument for copyright.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
If you write something and let it loose upon the world, you no longer have control over it.
The sooner that "artists" get over their Napoleon complexes, the better.
The only real relevant question is how can we ensure that artists
are encouraged to create and contribute to the culture they have
drawn from themselves. Letting them run around like little Napoleons
is ultimately counterproductive.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
We had it - it was a 17-year copywrite period within which authors & composers could reap the exclusive benefits of their labor. Once Congress started endlessly extending that period it was inevitable that "the people" would push back.
What is it now - creator's life plus 75 years or some such ridiculous period? And they wonder why copywrite is getting violated more and more...
Re: (Score:2)
how can we ensure that artists are encouraged to create and contribute
The society as a whole should pay authors, possibly in form of grants, and the higher your readership is the more you get. Books then become free (or just to cover printing, if you want a paper book.) This way the writers would be directly employed by the people, as long as they keep writing, the copyright is assigned to the people (work for hire) and the whole problem disappears.
If the government doesn't have money for this scheme i
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Hmmm. Desiring profit from a good work (or a bad work, but let's presume a good one for the sake of the argument) to enable one to continue exerting effort to producing more good works... that's bad control?
Of course, at least in the music publishing business, most publishing houses TAKE the rights to your work. You no longer have it. Can't even copy it yourself. That's frustrating.
But we seem to be talking about even the author not having control over it. It's not really about "having control," it's a
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
if I write a book and don't want it freely copied, I think I should be allowed to have that right
The problem is Rights aren't immutable and at least have to have some correlation to their being enforceable. Rights are a by product of society and when society changes our rights and obligations change as well. Unfortunately peoples opinions and expectations often suffer from 'lag', and for the really stubborn my not change at all, which will just lead to a whole bunch of pain - here's looking at you Ursula!
Re:Yet another unsustainable business model (Score:4, Informative)
For distributors and retailers, somewhere around 50% of the cover price, less any discount they offer.
For publishers... the value of a good editor is difficult to estimate. The same goes for a copyeditor and indexer.
As for the rest, I calculated that my publisher earned seven times as much as I did from my previous two books. This is after taking out the per-unit cost. Given that there was little editorial support, little marketing support, and production was a fiasco of heroics, confusion, and impossible deadlines, I'm not sure that said publisher provided seven times as much value as I did.
I'm not going to work with that publisher again. Now I have my own publishing company instead.
Re: (Score:2)
People still buy books and newspapers because the portability and physical experience is better than a notebook or even a Kindle.
I'm not so sure. Yes, notebook computers are certainly not a convenient form factor for reading a novel, while a regular book is. However, a Kindle is about the size and shape of a book. The main problem with the Kindle, as I see it, is the price. It'll be interesting to see what happens when you can get one for, say, $50. The current ones are really quite expensive, consider
Classics for Peanuts! (Score:2, Interesting)
take a look at the price of classics that have long since been in the public domain, as they're not cheap either.
Here in the UK we've long since had several different publishers releasing whole rafts of Classic titles for 99 pence, which is little more than a U.S. dollar in todays' money. And they are well produced too . . .
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but then this was added:
"Doctorow, a novelist whose young adult novel 'Little Brother' spent seven weeks on the New York Times children's chapter books best-seller list last year, offers free electronic versions of his books on the same day they are published in hardcover. He believes free versions, even unauthorized ones, entice new readers."
This tipped the balance largly in favor of Doctorow, at least with respect to the submission (the article itself is more neutral).
Re:I'm currently reading (Score:4, Funny)
Pages 211 and 216 must have been really good!
Re:Maxim (Score:4, Insightful)
You spell poorly and have low standards for material to look at while touching yourself, but you are NOT a troll.