elf | Book 'em, Linkspam

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linkspam

Book 'em, Linkspam

I've always wanted to a roundup of ebook-piracy-copyright posts, but they're always such a huge sprawl. It's almost impossible to decide where to begin, because there's a constant influx of authors, publishers, and readers jumping in with blog posts, news articles, sales announcements with commentary ... this time, there's at least at starting point: Someone on Twitter told an author she'd acquired her ebook by download.

I sort by date listed on the post, and then alphabetically by username, which means these aren't in exact chronological order. People who link may prefer to use the date post: http://elf.dreamwidth.org/2011/01/19/?format=light instead of the individual URL, in order to keep the cut tags and dodge my "bleeding rainbow" layout. (I like neon tie-dye; you don't have to.) Initial posting has 45+ links.

Disclaimer: some links may not work right; content may be removed, and sometimes my coding is borked. Feel free to offer corrections & additions.

Jan 11: it started on Twitter -

lucyham @ Twitter: Apologies; 2nd Part: Source posts

Jan 11

Lilith Saintcrow @ A Fire of Reason: Don't Steal My Books; DW crosspost (comments closed)

Jan 12

Corrisande: Buchdiebstahl / Bookstealing

anywherebeyond: "Free" Books Aren't Free; Blog crosspost 1st reply

julieandrews: Do I support authors enough? Do you?
Kimberly Pauley: And furthermore…why illegal downloads suck (i.e. status of a third Mina book)
Lilith Saintcrow @ A Fire of Reason: Inconvenience Doesn’t Justify Theft; DW crosspost

mizkit: a great post about piracy

otterdance: More on Book Piracy

pbray: "Free" books aren't free signalboost

qian: ebook piracy

renesears: Don’t Steal Books

seawasp: On torrenters/Downloaders of Books…
sjaejones @ Uncreated Conscience: No Honor Among Thieves

Jan 13

karenhealey: A Brief Pause For Some Rage.

renesears: Alternatives to stealing books

Jan 14

marina: Untitled (begins, Oh man, so there's discussion #345345 about ebook ~piracy~); LJ crosspost

Jan 16

burger_eater: Theft as a market force; LJ crosspost, Blog crosspost
MisterFweem @ blogspot.com: Verdict: Guilty!

Jan 17

double_dear: Ooohhh noooo!

epershand: Established: I am an asshole; LJ crosspost

la_vie_noire: Things I liked today; LJ crosspost

myristica1: E-BOOK/BOOK PIRACY

qian: Control and connection

sassymonkey @ Sassy Monkey Reads: Piracy Is Theft, End Of Story

vito_excalibur: FOG, theft, inevitability; LJ crosspost

wistfuljane: *wry twist*

Jan 18

Jan 18:

anatsuno: I need breakfast signalboost

bell: alternate perspectives; LJ crosspost signalboost

boundbooks: agh.

colorblue: this is not a post about yoga!

crossedwires: Untitled (begins, Links to other peole's posts)

elf @

ebooks: WWJSD: What Would Jack Sparrow Do?

glass_icarus: repetitive "piracy" linkspam!

inverarity: More thoughts about ebook piracy

jimhines: Arguing Book Piracy; LJ crosspost, Blog crosspost

qian: More of the same; LJ crosspost

rhivolution: We're really bad eggs. (DW-only)

snarp: On Digital Piracy, By Way Of My Confession That I Am A Deranged Criminal.

tahariel: Arr, Jim lad.

troisroyaumes: On piracy and copyright (link roundup)

Jan 19

ailelie: Book Piracy

aliettedb: Ebook piracy

anatsuno: I need breakfast (signalboost)

deepad: The politics of discussing illegal file-sharing

delaese: Piracy and Plaigiarism

devilc: And on the subject of eBook downloading (comments turned off)

eatsscissors: Aw, fuck it, this is too long for a comment: illegal downloading.

erda: ebooks and all that

februaryfour: Bits and Pieces

finch: Hey, Kids! Piracy!

sholio: Musing on book piracy

laceblade: Today in Stupid…; LJ crosspost

instantramen: in which much paraphrasing occurs re: piracy

ordinarygirl: Ebook Wank?; LJ crosspost

starlady: Some links on illegal file-sharing and IPR

yifu: On a local level

Jan 20

auroraprimavera: [Real Life] E-book Piracy - Why I do it
Charles Tan @ Bibliophile Stalker: Essay: eBook Piracy and Copyright in the Philippines

elf: Underpants Gnomes, Pro Author's Division
Lilith Saintcrow @ A Fire of Reason: Taken, Perry, and Reader Questions; DW crosspost

owlectomy: My thoughts on e-book piracy

qem_chibati: So books eh,

Jan 21

autumnus: E-book discussion - econ perspective

eatsscissors: "Reductio Ad Absurdum" Doesn’t Mean That I'm a Harry Potter Character

elf: Books are not Music

marina: I swear this was going to be a cheerful post; apparently I'm not done talking about this

petronia: Oh, no, you're kidding

Jan 22

misscam: That piracy thing, fannish confessions, in the news

New additions as of 1/25/01
Jan 12: Carla @ The Crooked Shelf">: Illegal Downloads - A Readers Perspective
Jan 13: Y S Lee's blog: Piracy, borrowing, theft
Jan 14: Lou Anders @ Bowing to thte Future: Don't Steal Books
Jan 18: Misty Massey @ Magical Words: Free Books Aren't Free

Jan 21:

kirias: Piracy: some thoughts
Jan 21:

nihilistic_kid: Throwing meat to dogs because growling and yelping entertains me
Jan 21: Shaun David Hutchinson @ Deathday Letters: Steal This Post

Jan 22:

alaneer: On ebooks
Jan 22:

ginny_t: Untitled (begins, So recently there was A Thing); LJ crosspost
Jan 22:

karenhealey: I was wrong, and I'm sorry (comments turned off)

Jan 23:

elf: "The poor should not be reading my books"
Jan 23:

manifold_press: E-book piracy

Jan 24:

duskpeterson: From Twitter 01-23-2011
Jan 24:

imnotasquirrel: thoughts on ebook piracy
Jan 24:

torachan: Linkspam: oh noes piracy edition
Jan 24: Paul Raven @ Futurismic: Piracy and privilege

Jan 25:

anke: Why I don’t get geographic restrictions on ebook sales; ankewehner.de crosspost
Jan 25:

cimorene: ebook piracy post rec (Signalboost)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I love it when you do these link round-ups.

I like collecting the data; I'm still working on the best formatting methods.

I have to fight to keep from throwing commentary on about half the links. I think these work best as plain links so that other people can sort out what they think about them, maybe starting with names they know or titles that they agree with.

I forgot to even put a trigger warning notice on this one. I'm not sure what's triggery in them, but there's an awful lot of vitriol in the collection, and that generally means it's likely to be triggery to some people.

The saddest thing about all this is the fact that there’s nothing much to be done about this (although I would happily suggest smothering the new trend of ebook and never speaking of it again). from this one.
Gee, golly. Ebooks are a NEW trend. Should we tell PG? Also I'm fairly sure there are tons and tons of ways to get pirated physical books in certain places/countries. Sigh. It's just silly to cut off ones nose to spite their face. Pirated books may well be the problem they claim, however I sincerely doubt everyone who downloads even opens the file.

(I do, absolutely, understand why authors get pissed off and agree they have the right to be so. But the interwebs is a big critter, and sites will just keep on coming. Though personally, smashwords and PG could probably keep me entertained till I die (or until big houses stop using DRM and making me want to swear at them) so I'm pretty much just not reading their books, and thus not buying them even though I'd probably like them, anyway. Does that make them happy, I wonder?)

Though telling an author you just pirated their book is sorta stupid, imho.

Oh so many links and rants to read, so little tiiiiime.

Oh gods, I barely even looked at that one; I just saw that it was connected and put it in the list. I mentally tagged it as "yet another anti-reader, authors-deserve-worship screed;" entirely missed that it thinks that ebooks are a new thing, and the smell-o-books argument buried in the middle.

I do not know how bad internet piracy of books used to be in pre-kindle-times

I have a 1.5gb DVD of text, rtf and pdb ebooks that's four years old. Although I'm not sure how accurate it is to label it "piracy" when the books are out of print and there's no authorized ebook edition. (Not all the books are like that, but many are.) Hard to say who it's hurting when you can't buy a copy that gives the author royalties.

Some authors wouldn't mind hearing, "I managed to read your book even though your publisher refuses to sell it to me." But given how most authors start foaming at the idea of ebook copies, I'd reserve such comments for authors who've specifically said that they cared about readers more than customers.

I started going down the list to read them all and then decided somewhere after the first few lots that I'd give myself a headache, but I thought that one was worth pointing out. Hasn't PG been making ebooks for several decades, anyway? (I know, I know, they're PD books and no one cares - but they're still ebooks and they've been around way longer than Kindle.) In that case I'm not inclined to think it piracy, either. (Nor do I think it an evil evil thing if one downloads a copy of a book they've got and paid for before.)

I really do wonder sometimes why authors are in it at all. At least a lot of them. Even the pro-library ones start to foam and it's honestly quite unflattering. If I wanted too, I know how to get books off sites and torrents and whatever. I could. But there are other publishers and authors getting my time these days because I don't have to fuss to get their ebooks and I can get them in a good format I can read and they get my money, too. Because they earned it. My time is in more limited supply than my money, if the authors I used to read a lot want to keep getting my money then they need an easy way for me to get the books in a non-drm format. I. Will. Pay. Otherwise I just forget to read them entirely and they go on my list of "paper books I should maybe read sometime" and will likely go unread and unbought.

PG started, for some values of "started," in 1971, and while "nobody cares" about PD books, that's because Gutenberg has been around the entire lifespan of the internet--they've worked tirelessly to make sure that *everyone* with online access can get "the classics," which expanded to add "anything it's legal for us to share freely" when they had resources.

I still meet people with new ebook readers who are *thrilled* to discover they can download all of Shakespeare and Dickens and the Sherlock Holmes stories for free.

Ebooks have been commercially available for over ten years, starting with Peanut Press in 1998, which later became eReader, which was bought by Fictionwise, which was bought by Barnes & Noble.

Ebooks are "a new trend" the way that online interactive games are "a new trend." And about as likely to vanish.

Even the pro-library ones start to foam and it's honestly quite unflattering.

At some point, I'll make a sharp rant about how I'm working to adjust my taste in reading to just not *care* about DRM'd books and, to some extent, don't-share-me books. I won't ever get there entirely, but it's likely I can keep myself distracted with good fanfic and Baen books for the majority of my reading hours.

I think it's fantastic. I love, love, love PG. There are so many books there to choose from it's insane. Though PG Australia needs some help in the looking like it's from this century and being not so out of sorts. (But that's not a PG mains problem.)

I've discovered, for me, it's very much a case of "out of site (mostly) out of mind" and the "oooooh look at the shiny ebook with no drm, gimmmmmme." it may well help that I'm inclined toward fantasy, and there's no shortage of fantasy/urban/modern fantasy writers. Likewise historical fiction and romance. And fanfic. Oh, I love fanfic dearly.

Though I'm still baffled by stories on smashwords that are like 6-7k long being around 7USD. Erm. No.

Also trying to work out a good way for zines/ezines to work on ereaders (aside from well formatted, right sized PDF's. epubs could probably be made to mostly work... I think. Humbug.

Everything other than novels has problems on the ereaders. Zines can work if they're not artwork-heavy, as long as there's a linked TOC so readers can jump around.

The next Big Tech Jump we need? A way to combine epubs, so I can download a dozen short stories, throw them into EpubSquish.exe, and get a single epub with a TOC that links to the start of each of the others. Because I need a way to put 30 short Yuletide stories in a single file quickly, and someone should figure out how to do that for me.

I liked modern fantasy more before vampires & werewolves took over, but I suppose that'll thin out in another couple of years and I'll be able to find witchy and fey books again. And in the meantime, FANFIC!

That's true. The best solution I an come up with is properly formatted pdf's, but they can be such a pain. Sigh. E-ink is still fairly new, but I'm baffled at, for instance, the inability on my kobo to "close" a book to move it off the damned "I'm Reading" list. Lots of firmware thing they could do without too much trouble and most of them just don't. Sigh.

Something like that would be awesome, actually! I wish I had the skills to code it.

I've liked vampires and weres since before all the hype got going (so long as they don't sparkle) but I like other kinds, too. Is there not much witchy/fey fiction? Theres a webserial I want to read again but I think I'm going to have to make it into an ebook myself. All 300ish chapters. [twitch]

There's witchy & fey fiction; it's just hiding behind the vampires, sparkly and not. Especially the vampire erotica. Which I don't mind--I'm as much a sucker for angsty brooding and inhuman lusts as the next fangirl--but I read Interview over two decades ago, and the whole genre is no longer *new* to me. I'm not yet bored with literary witches & literary fairies; literary vampires just don't have the same impact anymore. And I don't care for werewolves.

There's a couple of sites that let you combine multiple webpages into a single ebook. Squeebook is the one I'm familiar with, although I haven't played with it much.

Oooh yeah forgot about Rice. Whoops. Well the recent vampire fetish? XD I don't know, I blame the fact I live in a small town :D Most of the genres I read aren't new to me, but I'm fond on different takes on concepts I'm familiar with as well as entirely new territory.

Oh I've been there before. Huh. Mind like a sieve, except about stories and rpgs and history.

I just tried Squeebook and liked it a lot. I'll try it the next time I have a multi-page fic that I want to turn into an ebook to see how it handles that. It says that it can so we will see.

Also, I'd like some witchy and fey fiction. Any recs?

In non-free books, Faewolf by DM Atkins (aka

slashpervert) & Chris Taylor (one of her regular co-authors, but I'm not quite sure which, and she may not be as okay with her fandom ID being attached to her legal name) is terrific. (Even if it does have a kinda-sorta werewolf.) I think it's $1 cheaper at the Circlet Press site; I bought at Smashwords for the filetype variety.

I liked Mercedes Lackey's Diane Tregard books, but there aren't any new ones.

I'll let you know? I haven't been keeping track, other than noting that vampires are everywhere.

Thanks for Faewolf. I'll check it out.

I've read all of Misty's Diane Tregard books (and own them as well) and wish she'd go back to the 'verse for a few more books.

Check out Laura Anne Gilman and C.E. Murphy.

Awesome. Thanks!

I liked Mercedes Lackey's Diane Tregard books, but there aren't any new ones.

There IS! Trio of Sorcery just came out and I picked up the pbook from the library. (Can't find an e-version yet.) It's 3 novelettes in one book. First is Tregarde. Second is Talldeer (who I love as well). Third is a new character who is a technoshaman.

:) :) :)

Yes, yes, I know that B&N has an epub version. I would totally buy it, too, even with the $12 price tag except I am not willing to support DRM in any shape or form (even though I could totally strip it).

For anyone who might encounter my comment above about Lackey's new book, I wrote an anti-rec. http://jumpuphigh.dreamwidth.org/55608.html

There are not just spoilers, there are nauseating and potentially triggering details in that post.

Oh, ooh, I FOUND ANOTHER AMONGST THE LINKS.

"If the illegal downloading of books continues, there may soon be a world in which you will never be able to read books again."

http://sjaejones.com/blog/2011/no-honor-among-thieves/

I'm sorry. What?! Apparently the only way books exist is through big houses, then?

This is like a sport.

There's a great many authors who seem to think that being torrented is proof that the public is dying for their books. (It's such a vile act of depravity; anyone who sinks to that level *must* be overwhelmed with *need* for those books. And more authors who think that any notable change in the big publishing industries will mean the end of all creative content everywhere, because NO artist will make stuff for free. (Of course, "removal of Big 6 publishers" would mean "authors can never be paid again.")

To be fair, the potential changes that are showing up are very new; authors who studied their trade for many years are not at fault for not realizing that everything changed over the last five or ten. But yeah... the earth logic, they are rather lacking in it.

I adore authors, but sometimes they make me want to drop a piano on them, cartoon style. I can't fault them for not noticing everything that's happened, as there has been a lot going on even in the past few years. But some of them come off as very, very anti READER which is just illogical.

Plus there's the fact that, oh, there are hundreds if not thousands writing ebooks and webserials and other kinds of fiction and a, getting readers and if they work well and people like them enough b, getting paid.

There's a great many authors who seem to think that being torrented is proof that the public is dying for their books.

To me, it is proof that the public wants ebooks that are appropriately formatted, affordable, and/or DRM-free. It's also proof, imho, that people just don't have the energy to search out those qualities, especially if they have been thwarted in previous searches. Or maybe I'm extrapolating based on my own desires and energy levels.

Edited (Didn't proofread) 2011-01-20 20:55 (UTC)

Ok, even me, the diehard, physical books only please reader, thinks THAT is going overboard.

People have been saying physical books are dying out for the last few years. I rather doubt that honestly. Maybe not as many are being made, but books themselves will not 'disappear' simply because there's now ebooks.

That also ties into the First World Privilege issues that are being discussed... much of the world doesn't have reliable electricity; the ebook is not going to be the main literary medium outside of English-dominant countries for a looooong time yet.

And I'm entirely unconvinced that ebook filesharing cuts into physical book sales; the markets don't have that much overlap. People who want paper--and would buy it new, the only way the author gets royalties--don't settle for free digital versions. (I'm sure that some do, but I can't believe it's any substantial number.) I think most of the download/torrent sites are the people who were going to buy those books from used bookstores or yard sales or borrow a friend's copy.

That also ties into the First World Privilege issues that are being discussed... much of the world doesn't have reliable electricity; the ebook is not going to be the main literary medium outside of English-dominant countries for a looooong time yet.

All the more reason Big Name publishing companies should be working towards better availibity of paper format in those areas, as well as making it easier to afford them.

What it all comes down to is money. If the Big Name publishers don't think there's enough money in a specific market, they aren't going to be as willing to focus on it. And if that were true, there wouldn't be as many pirating sites as there are.

You might want to capture shilowalker's tweets from the same period as Lilith's, although they were along the same line.

As an aside, I recently passed along a download site to Paul Huson, who has dealt with plagiarism issues in the past. Here's his reply:

Paul Huson January 8 at 3:06pm
Thanks, Herb. Yes, I've been aware of all these sites for quite a time now. My publisher and agent's lawyer told me there is nothing they can do about them. When you close one down, a mirror site opens up elsewhere. Many of them are based in countries that don't recognize US or even world copyright. So now I take it as a form of flattery, at best advertising or PR!

And all my best regards to you too, and thanks for the thought.

Paul H.

Tweets are a pain to capture. (For me, anyway; I don't use Twitter and wouldn't have gotten these except someone else had already linked them.)

Are there any *legit* versions of Huson's books as ebooks? Can you buy them anywhere? (I'm glad he doesn't fret about them. He might poke at his publisher about providing purchasable versions; some people would love to buy "Mastering Witchcraft" as an ebook.)

Several of the author posts complain about how they lose so much time filling out DMCA notices instead of writing, and I can't figure out why they bother. Do they feel like they've *accomplished* something in getting a single Mediafire or Rapidshare link removed?

I can understand avoiding Twitter, there are times I wish I had continued doing so. Looking back on that particular discussion, I don't think she added anything new or revelatory to the discussion.

AFAIK, no, there are no legit ebooks of Huson. I don't know if anyone has broached the discussion with him. If I remember it, I may when I return from the funeral I really should be packing for...

As for the DCMA complaints, I would think that is another reason they have an agent; I would consider that a part of proper representation.

If you know him well enough to bring it up, could mention that if he's got the rights to it, he could put it up on Smashwords & have it feed to Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Not only does nothing prevent him from grabbing one of the bootlegs and start with that, he could probably find volunteers to format it nicely for him. (For a while, I considered writing to various Pagan & witchcraft authors and offering to convert their books to ebooks for free, if they'd offer them for sale without DRM. Decided I'm not quite forward enough for that.)

That's a good suggestion. I'll try to remember it when I get back from my trip. If I don't make some kind of response back on it, and you remember, ping me.

Thank you for the link round ups! You're awesome :D

Also, I wanted to share that I wrote my own piece on e-book piracy. You can get find it here. It's basically me explaining why piracy (as much as I'm against it) is the only way for me to get books.

I buy e-books. I buy lots of e-books. However, one of the things that drives me crazy about DRM encrypted e-books is that they are often so poorly scanned and proofed that it drives me crazy to read them. And because of the DRM, I cannot correct the mistakes.

If authors and publishers truly want want to minimize piracy (they'll never eliminate it -- anymore than the RIAA will), then they need to stop this DRM nonsense and start to actually use copy editors for both print and electronic versions of their books. A purchased book should be infinitely lendable or resellable -- just as hardcopy books are. Stop treating e-books as a finite resource.

I have a zero-tolerance policy for DRM. I just will not spend my money on an ebook that is bound up by DRM.

I won't download free books with DRM; it's not worth the hassle to install the extra software.

OK, technically, watermarked PDFs have DRM, but they don't require extra hoops to read. I don't deal with ebooks that require registration of a device or use of my credit card to read them.

B'sides, if the watermarks bug me, I unlock the PDFs and strip them out. I do this a lot for locked PDFs, because my Sony reads them a lot better if I crop out the white margins first, and I can't do that with locked files.

Couple more for you-

http://jimhines.livejournal.com/549188.html (Has a DW by the same user name as well.)

http://mizkit.livejournal.com/621375.html

For the record- I won't illegally download ebooks. Hell, I rarely download ebooks at all.

I don't like ebooks. I prefer an actual paper bound book I can hold in my hands and read and reread until it falls apart. Then I'll buy another one.

While I agree DRM is evil, I also believe that authors deserve to be paid for their work. And when a book doesn't sell that well in either paper form or as a legal ebook, then that lessens the chance that an author I like will be contracted to write more, because publishers won't pay out money for books they don't believe people want/ that they don't think sold well enough.

Publishers don't care about how many copies have been pirated. All they see is how many copies legally sold in either format and that's where they get their bottom line.

Tell me I'm wrong all you want, there's many blog posts (as one example) by authors I follow that show, yes it does come down to how many actual, legal books sell whether or not an author can afford to keep writing.

Can't get to LJ from work; the Jimhines post is already in the list.

I agree that authors should get paid. What I don't agree with, is that spending lots of effort trying to shut down filesharing will cause more sales.

Publishers don't care about how many copies have been pirated.

They should. They should especially care if pirated copies are bouncing around in a format they don't offer. They should doubly care if the pirated copies are well-formatted and slick, rather than convert-to-text and PDF-at-letter-size, because that shows that people *care* about those books.

And they should be trying to figure out how to get more people to pay for them, which won't happen as a result of punishing bootleggers. (It's possible that publishers are hoping for RIAA-style lawsuits that get them settlement money for going after bootleggers by entirely disregarding any actual sales info.)

I don't like ebooks.

I don't like paper books. Paper is my last resort for reading; it's only for those books that are valuable enough that I'd feel very very guilty for chopping the spine off & scanning it. I will put two hours into converting a new book rather than read it on paper. More than two hours, if it's something I'll use for reference or want to re-read, but about 2 hours is what it takes for a quick-and-dirty paper-to-digital conversion.

I've got some disposable income; I've got a 3+hour-a-day reading habit; I've got multigenre tastes and no squicks ... publishers should be *screaming* to get my ebook dollars.

Instead, I'm slowly working to adjust my reading preferences to avoid the entire range of the Big 6 market, because they've made it very clear that I'm not their target customer.

Can't get to LJ from work; the Jimhines post is already in the list.

Ah, I must have missed it.

They should. They should especially care if pirated copies are bouncing around in a format they don't offer. They should doubly care if the pirated copies are well-formatted and slick, rather than convert-to-text and PDF-at-letter-size, because that shows that people *care* about those books.

I wholeheartedly agree that they should. In fact, I'm of the opinion that the fact that as soon as they shut one site down, another replaces it, should be a heads up, that hey, maybe readers DO want this sort of thing and maybe we'd make more money if we offered it legally, and here's the key- cheaply.

I think that's the main issue with why people are pirating books rather than buying the legal ebooks- the cost is ridiculous. Availability in paper format is another reason. If they were better priced/better available, I believe people would be more inclined to buy them rather that pirate them.

I don't like paper books.

I'm a very tactile person and like the feel of a book in my hands. It's all personal pref, much like you preferring ebooks.}:)

I don't like ebooks.
I don't like paper books.

I love books. Paper, electronic, PDF, ePub, hardback, paperback - for the most part doesn't matter. (I won't [edit] buy ebooks formatted for the Kindle; that's pretty much my limit.)

There are some books that I have in multiple formats, because I'll read them again in all of those.

I don't like paying as much for an ebook as I would for a hardback - I don't think they should even cost as much as a paperback, for that matter, but that's a different argument.

What I want in an ebook is decent formatting that will be readable whether I'm reading it on my Nook, my laptop, my desktop or my phone, and I don't want to have to jump though hoops to get it to open (DRM, we hates it, too, my precious.)

I get that authors don't get royalties from pirated works, but they don't get them from the second-hand market, either (I know, Elf, preaching to the choir).

What I don't get it a viable solution to the problem. Wish I did.

Edited (spelling) 2011-01-24 07:39 (UTC)

http://marina.dreamwidth.org/1053039.html

Linkspam is a bell curve, every single time.

Usually, but not always. Sometimes the first day or two has an explosion, and then it trickles off a bit, and then there's the big surge later.

I've got another half a dozen or so, including early links; I'm never sure how to add those in.

I just realized - I forgot to tell you that I had edited my piracy post to include this linkspam. Sorry about that.

Thanks! And no worries about mentioning it; I assume linkspam posts get shared around here-and-there.

There is just. so. much. to discuss, so many sides and impacts, and it's not helping anything that most of the publishers will only participate by releasing vague press releases that mumble about the importance of maintaining business-as-usual while simultaneously declaring they're seizing the future.

I'm about to post a comment on Paul Raven's blog entry and could use some picking apart of it before I go public. Would you?

There is one point that I'd like to disagree with. Both Tan and you pointed to Rowling as someone who is probably losing significant sales due to piracy. Oh, sure, she is probably losing some sales due to piracy but I'm willing to bet that she is losing way more sales due to her refusal to release her books in e-formats. I can't speculate on others' motives for downloading her work but I'm guessing more than a few had a similar experience as I did. I bought an ereader. I wanted to reread the Harry Potter books but can no longer read the books in paper due to their massive size. I searched and searched and searched and got confused and hit the google-machine and discovered that she was refusing to release them in eformat due to fear of piracy. Although I hadn't been thinking of torrents as a way to acquire ebooks at all, her refusal to allow me to read her books by refusing me a format that works for me left me in a situation where I could either never read her again or become a pirate. During that searching, I discovered many other people saying the same thing. "I like rereading the HP books and would like to read them on my vacation next week but I can't carry all those books with me on a plane." She missed the boat. Sure, if she ever releases her books in eformat, some people will buy them, getting them in eformat for the first time, and some people who pirated will buy them to reimburse for the pirate copies they downloaded. But people like me, who aren't super-fans and just wanted to curl up in bed with a good read and have since moved on to other books, are going to be less likely to care that there are finally legal copies to purchase. Don't think I don't see the irony of Rowling's fear of piracy being what turned me into a pirate just to get her books. That irony is compounded by her massive financial support for M.S. charities and me not being able to read her books because of M.S. It just leaves me oh-so-amused. But saying that she is losing sales to pirates is just not that simple. In fact, I have to wonder how many readers of other authors she turned into pirates when they discovered that the only way to acquire her books in eformat was through alternative means.

I'd split it into 2-3 paragraphs (after "she missed the boat," possibly also earlier after "due to their massive size").

Might change "by refusing me a format that works for me" to indicate that you have a disability; you don't mention that until much later. Or add a bit after, "due to their massive size" to indicate why that's a problem, and not just "I don't like reading big books."

Don't know if you want to mention that the Tolkein books were fairly recently released as legit ebooks, and were bought by the thousands, despite having bounced around on torrent & newsgroup sharing sites for more than a decade.

Might mention that there's no indication she's losing *any* sales to pirates--everyone I know who has digital copies has paper copies as well. Sometimes multiple editions. And most of them got the digital ones to research fanfic, not specifically for rereading. (Which means that if she released DRM'd versions, the pirating would continue, because DRM'd books have very limited search abilities.)

All good thoughts. Thank you

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Book 'em, Linkspam

Jan 11: it started on Twitter -

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