E-Books Piracy (Or why do I care?)
Sunday, June 22, 2008Posted in: Azteclady Speaks
Tags:e-books, piracy
(This post originally appeared in Shiloh Walker’s blog)
To keep this on track, please note that I am not talking about Creative Commons or other ways of freely sharing work—simply because those involve author’s choice. That is not what I want to address here.
Piracy and filesharing automatically remove the author from the equation; the decision to share and to download pirated work is made by the original perpetrator and by every person out there willing to ‘get a free copy’ illegally.
As I see the issue of piracy, there are two main aspects, the ethical and the practical.
Ethically speaking, piracy is wrong. Period. No gray areas here, no apologies that cut it. The person who downloads ‘free’ copies of pirated items is stealing those copies, and cheating the creator of the work out of their due royalties.
You can’t afford to buy the books? Use the library, borrow from a friend, or do without.
Too draconian? Too judgemental? Too black and white?
Gee, really?
I’ve done without plenty that I can’t afford, and I’ve done without some things I wanted so that I could get things I needed; so I’m fresh out of sympathy for anyone who can, and does, spend money by the fistful on some luxuries but will whine about not being able to afford others, and therefore feels justified to steal them.
You don’t know if you want to spend your hard earned money on the books? You have been burned by buying stuff you didn’t like? Sorry, that’s life, and it doesn’t come with warranties or return policy. Again, find a way to legally try books by this author, or abstain.
It really is not that difficult, from an ethical standpoint.
There is of course, the practical aspect to this.
As I have mentioned here and elsewhere before, I see the matter of piracy as one of personal interest. If the authors I enjoy can’t make enough money out of their writing, they’ll either have to produce less books per year (and this is a best case scenario, counting on editors’ and publishers’ good will and long memories) while they do something else for a living, or, for most of them, simply quit writing.
Which is my loss as a consumer.
This may seem unimportant to some who will say, “It doesn’t matter, just look at how many new authors turn books out all the time!” Which is true, of course, but doesn’t solve the matter of personal taste, nor of quality; because it is also true that not all writing is equal—both objectively and subjectively speaking.
In any system with high turnover, quality suffers. Don’t believe me? Check the service at any restaurant with a stable waitstaff vs another restaurant with a revolving employee door, and report back on the differences.
While no system is perfect or incorruptible, publishing does have a filter that has worked well for the most part: if books by author A make money for the publisher, the publisher will continue buying books from author A; if author A receives enough in royalties and/or advances, continuing to write will be appealing to her.
Piracy breaks this cycle—filesharing completely obliterates the benefit (aka profit) for both author and publisher. Someone has to buy only one copy in order to produce hundreds if not thousands more. If an author gets royalties for that one copy as opposed to royalties for even a small fraction of the illegal copies, how likely is it that she will spend the time, and invest the effort, necessary to write another book? And how likely is it that the publisher will offer that author another contract?
Some authors will migrate towards print books—which are by no means immune to electronic piracy, but since that at least involves actual effort on the part of the original thief, plus the end result is a copy that is not equal to the original product, it is less damaging to the author’s income. Also, print publishers tend to be bigger, have more clout, and more power to stomp on sites sharing their copyrighted work than their electronic counterparts.
More authors migrating to print is fine by people like me, who prefer dead tree books to begin with—but what about people who prefer e books for any of a variety of reasons? Well, they are sorely out of luck, aren’t they?
Like, say, those people downloading books left and right? Well, gee, seems to me that those people just shot themselves in the foot then.
Unfortunately, the guilty also take down with them the people who actually pay for the e books they enjoy—and that is yet another sin in their consciences, as far as I’m concerned.
(The piracy issue affects other industries as much, if no more, than publishing–check out stampoutpiracy.com for more information)
Emmy
June 24
4:37 am
Absolutely, Shi, it can. I spend alot of time teaching. Job hazard. Blah. It was what I perceived to be a defeatist attitude that was killing me dead.
I’m with you on the copies part, Nora. I get that computer files are a good sight less perishable and more easily reproduced than a dead tree. Your comment even made me come up with the super cool idea that you could put your books on little .5gb thumb drives and sell those. I just paid $40 for a 4gb drive, so .5gb should cost around $5, and be more than enough room for a book and maybe some promo stuff for upcoming releases. That way it could be read on a computer or e-reader with a USB port and then passed on/sold to other people when finished. Pretty sure some jackass would find a way to break any copy protection and pirate it to the masses, but that would be one way to address the concern of people who just want the right of being able to sell/trade/give away the e-books we’re purchasing the same way we could print books. Equally sure someone will find a way to poke holes in that suggestion. Meh.
Be that as it may, my comment was specifically addressing the financial aspect, in that neither a print nor e-book purchased once and passed on to 25 people would garner an author any more revenues.
kirsten saell
June 24
5:33 am
I would expect that the reason the law in Australia requires you to retain ownership of both the original and the copy, or neither, is because you are supposed to be copying it for personal use, not so you can sell or give away one copy while keeping the other to read yourself. The law was made with print books in mind, and it requires some adaptation to be sure.
And to be honest, while sharing an ebook (sending a copy, then deleting your own) with a friend is still technically illegal, I’m pretty sure no one is against this in theory. But in practice, it’s harder to see it as harmless. You would have to assume that every person you “share” with is aware of the potential harm in making copies and uploading or distributing multiple copies of the book to many friends. It isn’t the same as sharing a print book, because the potential harm from a seemingly innocent act is so very great. All it would take is one of those 25 friends to feel ambivalent about piracy, and all of a sudden that book is in the hands of possibly hundreds of people.
I don’t know how many times I have said this same thing, and how few people seem to see any validity in my point of view. You can’t ask people purchasing a new product to give up so many of the rights they enjoyed in the past, and charge them the same price. If you do, you had better be providing them with some blammo incentives: better quality editing, more exciting storylines, perks and frills, anything–or a reduced price. And no one can convince me that the $0.90 per copy, or however much it is that goes into paper/printing/binding, plus the costs of shipping/warehousing/returns, don’t amount to enough to give consumers that lower price.
DRM is a joke. It takes no time at all for hackers to break, so the only readers forced to deal with it are the law-abiding ones. Way to punish people for doing the right thing.
Well, there goes all my instant gratification! And now I’m stuck paying Amazon twice as much for shipping as for the book–again! The big attraction of ebooks for so many people is that they aren’t tangible. They take up no space, they don’t require shipping and they are pretty much instantaneous. So, as solutions go…meh, LOL!
Well, eventually, if one of the first 24 of those 25 people want to reread the print book, or give it as a gift, or simply have it to look at, they will have to buy one. Maybe used, maybe new. But those copies have a shelf life. They do not become more numerous and nonperishable the more they are used. So while the lending of that print book may not result in any revenue gained for an author, it may result in sustantially less revenue lost for them.
Kat
June 24
6:19 am
Kirsten, I think we’re at a point where the early adopters are subsidising the growth of the market and the cost of infrastructure for publishers. Eventually, prices will have to go down due to lower production costs (due to economies of scale) and more competition. Also, when the market consolidates and formats come into some sort of standard and only a few remain, it should drive costs even lower and competition even higher. This is the way it’s usually happened. But yes, the higher prices are one reason some people are resorting to piracy, and once we have a better pricing model (or better alternatives for a reader’s needs) then it might help stem the loss of income for authors.
I’m rather liking my spur of the moment idea of imprinting the buyer’s name in the e-book to dissuade people from “lending” to dodgy friends. It won’t stop the freeloaders and hackers, but like I said before, I don’t know that we can do much about people who download/copy for the sole purpose of freeloading other than resorting to legal channels.
kirsten saell
June 24
6:30 am
I don’t think lower cover price need to bite into an author’s earnings, either. Traditional print pubs currently pay the same (or next to it) royalty percentage on ebooks as on print–unless the author has the clout to negotiate a higher rate. There’s enough room I think in that lowered overhead to both lower the cover price, and keep the author earning pretty much the same dollars and cents (or more) per copy as print.
I’m a naturally thrifty person in all aspects of life, from books to shoes. I love a bargain (or a freebie) but not on the back of some poor ten-year-old stuck working 16 hour days in a sweat shop in Indonesia, and not at the cost of an author’s success. Still, it chokes me as much to see readers fleeced as it does to see authors ripped off.
Kat
June 24
7:03 am
Kirsten, I agree with everything you just said.
Nora Roberts
June 24
11:35 am
~Still, it chokes me as much to see readers fleeced as it does to see authors ripped off.~
Yes, absolutely.
Kat, your post at 150 made much more sense to me, even if I can’t and don’t agree with every point you make. For instance, you say a lost e-book sale may result in 7 print sales. This doesn’t address authors published only in e, or readers who only read e.
And for someone one like me, who has an extensive backlist that’s readily available in so many venues, it’s hard to believe someone would just copy a book for a friend so they could have a taste of my work, which would then result in sales.
I don’t believe most readers are ‘out to get the author’. But I do believe many just want something for free. This is confirmed again and again on message boards where a reader will crow about getting an illegal download instead of having to pay for it. A lot of them don’t see it as stealing, just getting it for free.
So we hope educating readers and talking this pretty much to death illuminates some.
My copyright page now includes a warning re piracy. Of course, I doubt many people actually read the copyright page–but at least it’s there.
Ann Bruce
June 24
7:48 pm
Yes, there is. My public library loans out e-books. After three weeks, the file is automatically deactivated, “returned” to the library, and is available to the next reader.
Nora Roberts
June 25
10:46 am
Re Australian copyright exception. My agent’s legal researched this. It is legal to copy a book–once–in *another form*. That’s an important distinction, i.e., the purchaser can print out ONE hardcopy of an e-book for personal use only, not for selling or trading purposes. The purchaser cannot make another digital copy of a digital book, or Xerox a paper book.
This makes sense to me. Many people don’t want to read on screen, so print out an e-book and read it.
Kat
June 25
12:43 pm
Thanks, Nora. That does make sense. And reading the conditions, it seems you pretty much have to make sure you’re not infringing with the original and the copy and that you’re the legal owner of the original while you own the copy. The only problem I have with that–and nothing to do with with piracy per se–is that it makes the status of e-books unclear. Do I own the downloaded copy? Or is it considered a copy and I have a license? If I copy for backup, is that illegal? If I give it away by sending a copy via e-mail then deleting my copy, is that illegal? But anyway, I’m digressing. I don’t think the law has quite caught up with e-books yet.
Roslyn Holcomb
June 25
5:22 pm
My library does as well Ann, or least the one in my old hometown does. Haven’t checked out the libraries here in Atlanta yet. Presumably as more books are available as e-books the libraries will expand. One thing I’ll say for libraries, they seem to really work hard to keep up with technology.