AztecLady speaks: and the fucktard of the week goes to…
Monday, August 18, 2008Posted in: Azteclady Speaks, Fucktards R Us, hypocrisy
Marcus, who over at Dear Author has said–and I quote, because it’s just mind boggling–all of the following:
Starting on comment 32:
If you absolutely feel that you have to buy some DRM-restricted ebooks then you should at least have the decency to crack it and upload it to some file sharing site, just to hasten the end of such anti-progress, anti-mankind shenanigans that DRM is.
Anti-mankind? Hyperbole much? But he continues (comment 68)
Think, please. If I make a copy of a chair I’m not stealing the chair, I’m copying it. See the difference? The same applies for ebooks. However, it’s not the ebook (or even the contents of it) that is claimed to be stolen, but the monopoly of copying it. However, after you’ve “stolen” the copyright you still don’t have the copyright, so the whole idea of “stealing copyright” doesn’t even make sense any which way you look at it. So, no matter how you try to look at it copyright infringement simply can’t be compared to “stealing” as the word commonly is used.
To which I asked,
Please. Copyright infringement is not stealing?Intellectual property is not property, then?
Talk about not having the same definition of decency, stealing, and a host other things.
and got this little gem from him (comment 72)
Exactly. No matter how many times I “steal” some copyright I’ll never have it, so it obviously can’t be taken and thus not stolen.
Not inherently, no. It’s “property” only because it has been redefined as such for some (but not all) legal purposes, but it’s not “property” in the same way as is understood by the common man. (E.g., you don’t pay any property tax on “intellectual property”.)
Well, then. Let’s chuck some laws out the window, and have authors work at something else for a living, since they can’t make money off their writing.
Or we could say that there are people who’ll claim anything, no matter how irrational, to justify their lack of ethics.
Either way, what a fucktard.
Lynne Connolly
August 18
6:56 pm
Thank you, Karen.
I actually unsubbed from that thread because of that man. It started as a discussion of eink readers, and since I’m currently in the market for one, I thought it would contain some useful information.
But this idiot popped up. I have my suspicions that he’s a sock – can anybody really be this ignorant? And I have better things to do with my time.
It takes me around six months to finish and revise a full-length novel. If I work out the hourly rate, it’s pathetic – but I love writing, so I don’t do it like that. So that isn’t working, in this fool’s terminology. I wave my magic laptop and the story just appears.
I don’t want to go back, because I found it depressing and infuriating, and it actually stopped me writing for a while. I mean, why should I bother, when the Story Fairy does so well?
Jaci Burton
August 18
7:32 pm
The rabid file sharers can rationalize their actions in many inventive ways.
*rolls eyes*
Nora Roberts
August 18
7:47 pm
As I commented there, it’s impossible to debate or discuss the issue with someone who states that any author who calls infringement theft is neither sane nor honest.
He’s not worth the time.
Shiloh Walker
August 18
8:08 pm
He sounds like a fricking moron. You can’t discuss reason with morons.
veinglory
August 18
8:24 pm
It’s some kind of faith and does boggle my mind. It seems to overlook the fact that to make another chair you have to be a chair-maker.
To make another ebook you need to have a finger. The ‘maker’ does no labor and benefits from the labor of the author without their permission or blessing. That isn’t socialist freedom, IMHO, is is the purest sort of idyll parasite robber-baron exploitation of the worker.
Now I am actually quite relaxed about a few people passing an ebook to a friend or family member, that is technically illegal but basically harmless and normal reader-to-reader social behavior.
shirley
August 18
11:35 pm
I tried to follow that thread and got a bit lost. My son bought me a Sony Reader and I like it. I think the light is terrific.
As to the theft issue, I’m not a writer so from a reader’s perspective this comes, but I feel like a little torn here. While I may be breaking some copyright law when I buy a book(in paper) and let a friend or relative read it, well, it’s a bit hard to prosecute me for. And like a chair, if I buy a book(in paper) it’s my property to do with as I choose, whether that’s to resell it, give it away, or use it to prop up a table.
So the whole thing with locking up ebooks seems a little over the top to me. *NOT* because I think hundreds of copies should be illegally traded by some scumsucker just out to screw over the author. But because if I read a great book and I want to share it with a friend, I should be able to. The whole locking thing just seems more like some kind of permanent ‘rent’ of the ebook. You know, I spent my money for it, but I don’t truly ‘own’ it and I can’t even get a deposit back when I’m finished. I’d have to loan out the reader the book is on to share it, which I’ve done a time or two.
I don’t know, it seems to me a lot of book marketing is word of mouth and sharing – in the paper world I mean. I guess I wish it was easier to do the same – WITHOUT the inherent problems – with ebooks. I don’t know if that makes sense to the authors here or not. To be clear, though, I am NOT saying that putting ebooks on file sharing sites is good. I believe it *IS* theft and should be punishable by law. I don’t believe, however, that sharing an ebook with a few people should consist of thoughts that I’m robbing the dinner plate or causing electricity to be disconnected from ebook authors due to some great loss of funds.
Yes, I understand that allowing even one copy *could* create a cascade event, which is why I said I’d love for ebook publishers, and traditional publishers with digital formats, to find a way to allow me to actually own the book I’ve bought and to share it as I would a paper book, without having to worry about that potential cascade.
kirsten saell
August 19
12:35 am
You’re not breaking any laws to do that. You’re not copying anything, just lending a friend a piece of tangible property that you own.
Print books can be sold, given away, traded, whatever, because they are physical objects and the creator’s intellectual property rights are balanced by the owner’s tangible property rights. There is nothing physical about an ebook, so those tangible rights simply can’t be applied to them. And because a reader cannot legally sell, trade or give away an ebook, the cover price, IMO, should reflect that.
As far as “stealing copyright” goes, Marcus is a total knob. You don’t “steal” copyright. You infringe upon it. His analogy of copying a chair is boneheaded, too. To copy a chair, you would have to buy materials and put in time and labor, because copying a chair takes physical material and effort.
Would Marcus be arguing so vehemently in favor of piracy if said piracy required him to invest time and money in paper, ink, printers, a bookbinding machine, and gas to drive to the nearest seedy alley where he had to stand there and personally flog physical books from the trunk of his car? No? Perhaps because he’s a lazy fuckwad who thinks he deserves to get whatever the fuck he wants at the expense of others, with no investment or effort on his part at all. I can’t even begin to express how disgusted I am by his attitude. Fucking useless parasite.
That said, DRM drives me insane. What a great way to “encourage” law-abiding readers: make the legal version of the ebook 100 times more cumbersome and difficult to use than the DRM-cracked illegal one they can find for free on a sharing site.
katieM
August 19
12:45 am
If you lend a physical book out to someone, that person might lend it to another who might do the same. A book that starts out in Maine might end up in Oklahoma, but its still just one physical book. With ebooks, lending (if you don’t lend the reader) results in copies of the book. Copies for which the writer and publisher make no profit. Print books clearly state that reproductions are illegal, and most people don’t want to go to the trouble of photocopying or scanning whole books because it would cost more than the physical book. With ebooks, it’s just a mouseclick. One ebook doesn’t travel from Maine to Oklahoma, instead, copies spread unchecked like wildfire because you can only control yourself, not the person you “lend” to.
shirley
August 19
1:02 am
Okay, this kind of clears a particular aspect of my confusion up. Sort of, LOL. I mean, with this explanation, it makes sense that the ebook isn’t tangible property – in a literal physical way – and so property rights don’t necessarily apply. However, it is still a ‘real’ object, regardless of it’s digital nature. Right? Or not? See my confusion?
Which is of course why I understand the damage piracy can do to an ebook. But it’s also why I think it’s a bit screwy that I can’t share a singular copy of an ebook with a friend. If only the ebook industry could figure out a way to limit the copies to one for each new reader. Then I could send one copy and that person could send one copy and so on, just like a paper book.
An ebook may not be touchable, but it’s certainly tangible in that I can read it, see it, even listen to it with the right software. And I guess I agree with Kirsten on the price too. I mean, if all I’m really doing is renting the ebook, then I should be able to recoup some of the cost when I’m finished. Or they should be *much* less expensive to ‘rent’. I mean, wowza, places like EC and Samhain are coming really close to ‘paper’ prices on some of their ebooks.
Lynne Connolly
August 19
1:05 am
Me too, but instead of stealing books, I wrote to the people who produced the DRM’d books and told them why I wouldn’t be buying any more.
When I had my ebookwise (sob – I broke it last week) I had to convert every book I bought for the ebookwise’s proprietory format, so DRM books were pretty much useless to me.
But Nora’s right. Arguing with someone like this Marcus person is a waste of time.
shirley
August 19
1:26 am
You know, I couldn’t quite figure out how he got onto DRM from Dear Author’s post on the coming soon readers. Their post didn’t have anything to do with ebooks themselves, so I was really lost when he started talking about DRM and piracy.
AztecLady
August 19
1:33 am
Not all eReaders can “read” all the formats, so whenever a discussion about eReaders starts, people talk about which device is more versatile, or for which it is easier to re-format ebooks.
Naturally, people gripe about DRM, and the fact that you may legally own an ebook that you can’t read, if your eReader won’t work with that particular format.
From there to posting DRM-free copies to filesharing sites, only a moronic troll like Marcus could make the leap.
Kaycee
August 19
1:34 am
I am a bit confused by the insistence of some, that the only way an e-book can/will be shared, without an e-reader, is by (photo)copying it time and time again.
What if the original buyer, downloads a PDF file, prints off ONE copy and sends ONLY the one copy to friend 1, who then passes it on to co-worker B and so on and so on….?
Color me even more tres confused.
I don’t buy e-books so I truly have no knowledge about any of this.
kirsten saell
August 19
1:36 am
A lot of print publishers charge the same price for the e-version of their books as for the print–as high as $25 or more. I think Samhain isn’t doing too bad–but I’m speaking as a Canadian who, despite a 1:1 exchange rate, still pays 50% more for a print book than I would in America. Most decent sized mass market paperbacks here are in the $9 to $12 range. $5.50 is a steal compared to that.
Totally. You have some big print pubs who charge exorbitant prices for their ebooks (while paying the same 8% to the author, OMG!), chain them up in DRM until you can hardly read the damn things, and then sneer and say “You see? We’re hardly selling any–told you there was no future in ebooks.” We need more readers telling them what they’re doing wrong, because obviously they’re oblivious. Sigh.
kirsten saell
August 19
1:38 am
But printing it out would be making a copy, and making a copy violates copyright.
Kaycee
August 19
1:44 am
I just wanted to add that I challenge this Marcus “person” to go ahead and use his/her defense in an actual court of law.
AztecLady
August 19
1:49 am
Kaycee, when you print off a copy and give that to a friend, you keep the one in your computer–so now there are two copies of the book, one in electronic format and one in print.
When you buy a print book and lend it to a dozen friends in succession, there is still one copy.
It seems draconian to say that the first case is illegal and the second isn’t, but that’s the letter of the law.
Or what kirsten said.
Emmy
August 19
2:53 am
….and here we go again.
I’ll just address one issue and say that I agree that DRM sux, because I have multiple devices I read books on, and am forced to crack the DRM to be able to read a book I purchased. I don’t feel bad about that at all. I think authors are loosing money on the DRM deal. People are choosing to not buy books because of the various proprietary formats that lock people into one ebook reader. DRM, which was intended to protect from piracy, actually makes it *more* likely a book will be pirated. People feel entitled to read books and if they can’t access what they want the legal way, they feel no guilt in getting it another way.
MB (Leah)
August 19
3:04 am
Apple figured out a way to keep iTunes users from sharing or storing more that 7 copies of a song on their computer(s)/iPod(s).
DH has songs that I downloaded on his computer as well, and I gave a friend my old iPod with all my music on it and it’s all ok because if they try to pas it along to others, it’s coded to stop after 7 copies. I don’t know how Apple has done it, but it works.
I don’t see why the ebook publishers couldn’t do the same in the future.
I’ll admit there are times when I want to share an ebook with my sister or friend, but I haven’t. In that case it’s two less people who an unknown author could get exposed to who might buy their back list or future works.
As it is, if I want to share the works of an author that I really like with family and friends, I have to buy the dead tree version and I just don’t have the funds to buy so many copies of a book to share. There are a few authors whom I’ve come to admire and will buy their dead tree versions to share, but it’s very less than I would like.
Tuscan Capo
August 19
5:43 am
Hm. Well you know DNA isn’t really a tangible item, and is usually pretty dam difficult to trade, but its still illegal to copy and use it to make a brand new human being.
Just the humblest of opinions here but really it sounds to me like this guy knows exactly what pirating is and is just desperate to excuse it.
Nora Roberts
August 19
10:31 am
~Just the humblest of opinions here but really it sounds to me like this guy knows exactly what pirating is and is just desperate to excuse it.~
Exactly. Which is why arguing with him, or any attempt at reasonable discussion is tits on a bull.
veinglory
August 19
2:27 pm
DRM does suck. But so long as the line between passing one one ebook and proliferating an ebook is fuzzy to people it may remain a part of the picture.
Yes, If a single copy of an ebook was passed like a single copy of a paperback (getting grubby and worn out until it finally has an encounter with someone puppy/child/basement mold/cheese sandwich) there would be little to no issue. But that is not what filesharing sites are.
I don’t go after readers who lend their Kindle to their sister, but asshats who load my work on websites for the world to download.
Kaycee
August 19
3:34 pm
Thanks for the clarification.
I am not / was not in any way, shape and/or form defending what Marcus said.
My question is/was a hypothetical one.
Jenns
August 19
4:09 pm
I think Marcus knows very well that it’s wrong, and is just a miserable, frustrated guy (or woman) who wants to stir up some controversy.
What Nora said: not worth it.
AztecLady
August 19
4:14 pm
Kaycee, I understood, just wanted to make it as clear as possible for the lurkers’ benefit too.
Lauren Dane
August 19
7:59 pm
I wish these asshats would just have the courage to say, “yes it’s stealing so what?” instead of bending themselves into a pretzel to make stealing all right.
I am not a fan of DRM, it takes something that should be relatively quick and easy and turns it into a nightmare. But as someone mentioned above, Apple has figured how to make this work with songs and files from iTunes so I don’t think it’s impossible tech to let someone share between devices up to a certain limit.
I don’t have a problem with readers trading back and forth, but I do have a problem with sites I find EVERY WEEK who are offering up my books for hundreds of downloads. It drives me crazy.
As for the chair analogy, that’s the same kind of simplistic argument we get all the time. A chair is a generic thing and you can’t make a photo copy of it. You’d have to labor to make one yourself. As for ebooks being sent around, that’s not a copy in the traditional sense. It’s the book just transferred over and over.
A chair isn’t intellectual property either unless it’s one of those swank super office chairs I slobber over with the super whatsits on it that render it impervious to ass ache and stuff while working.
Anon76
August 20
2:51 pm
Kaycee said:
“I am a bit confused by the insistence of some, that the only way an e-book can/will be shared, without an e-reader, is by (photo)copying it time and time again.
What if the original buyer, downloads a PDF file, prints off ONE copy and sends ONLY the one copy to friend 1, who then passes it on to co-worker B and so on and so on….?”
The difference is that the original copy you bought is still in your posession. True, the other copy is being passed around like a print book would be, but you kept that original file, hence the only copy paid for. Which in this instance is no big deal. However…
Once individuals start passing the original file around, the reproductions are continuous. Each person now has an individual copy, rather than a shared one, and all the author got for his/her hard work was a royalty on that one measly download. Even with the high royalty rate paid to ebook authors, that wouldn’t buy a candy bar.