# The Threat of E-Book Piracy



## Baron (Jun 10, 2011)

It's being suggested that the advent of e-readers is creating a situation in which publishing is as severely threatened by piracy as the music industry has been.  

Ebook piracy &lsquo;is colossal threat&rsquo; | Metro.co.uk

E-books drive older women to digital piracy - Telegraph

The following link shows a list of sites which host pirated e-books

List of Websites That Host Pirated eBooks

Ebook Piracy can be reported to the U.S. ISBN Agency. The agency issues International Standard Book Numbers, which identify publishers of particular books. If your e-book is registered, you can contact the U.S. ISBN Agency to report piracy concerns.  Residents in countries other than the US should report to their own ISBN agencies.


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## Rustgold (Jun 10, 2011)

A rather incomplete list.  It's easier to get pirated material including pirated books from a torrent site.


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## elite (Jun 11, 2011)

Yes, right now The Pirate Bay is pretty much the best place if you want to quickly find collections of books for download.

I'm not too fond with piracy, but the amount of material I need to read these days for Computer Science is so enormous I have to resort to it. The stuff in my university's library is either outdated or in Portuguese (a nightmare), so I've been gathering quite the collection of pirated books. I keep this to computer science books strictly though, since it's a necessity for me.

I can't wait for the day I can start collecting these great books in paperback, and possibly hard cover


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## Heavy Thorn (Jun 11, 2011)

I'm not worried about piracy.  It only hurts the people who fight it.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Ebook Piracy


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## Baron (Jun 11, 2011)

Heavy Thorn said:


> I'm not worried about piracy.  It only hurts the people who fight it.
> 
> How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Ebook Piracy



Piracy is theft.  The income from sales for the average author is poor enough.  There will always be people who say that pirate circulation helps to get your name out there but there's no point in dying of starvation while the fame grows.


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## Custard (Jun 11, 2011)

Piracy is a problem even with real books. Here we have books that have been photocopied and their prices decreased from 350 to 30 rupees. Even in real books piracy exists, so I don't really see what the difference will be.


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## Heavy Thorn (Jun 11, 2011)

Baron said:


> Piracy is theft.  The income from sales for the average author is poor enough.  There will always be people who say that pirate circulation helps to get your name out there but there's no point in dying of starvation while the fame grows.



Which is why I've never in my life pirated something, and have even left  friends' houses when they sat down to watch a pirated movie.

Artists  have every right to be paid for their work.  I just don't think the  firing squad is the way to get it, even from people who weren't going to  pay you anyways.  For others, I understand the point-of-view that  people who pirate your book are hurting you.  For myself, I don't worry  about it.  If I put a reasonable price on my work, most people will pay  that price.  For those who don't want to pay my price but still want to read my book, well... I can't blame them.  I'm not rich, and I don't expect everyone to be.  Lawyers and law suits and constantly-tightening DRMs just seem like a police-state way to go about living off your work, and I have very little respect for artists who engage in that kind of response to piracy.  If nothing else, they just come across as greedy and uptight.



Baron said:


> There will always be people who say that pirate circulation helps to get  your name out there but there's no point in dying of starvation while  the fame grows.



If you're not prepared to "die of starvation" while working toward eventual success, you're in the wrong business.  If you're worrying about the ten-out-of-a-hundred people who give a damn about your book not paying, I'd say you're focusing your energy in the wrong place.

Create something worth paying for.  Still not everyone will pay for it, but it's worth more to go after 1,000 readers with a new book than 100 who didn't pay for the last one.

EDIT:  Okay, I'm not sure what's going on with your post - when I clicked "reply with quote" it quoted the above, but looking at your post now, it's not showing.  Either way.


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## Baron (Jun 11, 2011)

Bob Dylan is one of those who waged war really heavily against the music pirates, as did Bono.  I don't think either of those would fall into the category of trying to bring about a police-state way to go.  At the same time artists have the right to be afforded some protection against piracy and plagiarism.  It costs nothing to report piracy to the ISBN agencies and the ball is then in their court.


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## Heavy Thorn (Jun 11, 2011)

Baron said:


> Bob Dylan is one of those who waged war really heavily against the music pirates, as did Bono.  I don't think either of those would fall into the category of trying to bring about a police-state way to go.



If you'll notice, the sentence you're referring to specifically targets "lawyers and law suits and constantly-tightening DRMs."  I don't have a problem with authors reporting piracy to the ISBN agencies.  I _do_ have a problem with "crack down" measures taken by both governments and studios/publishers.


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## Baron (Jun 11, 2011)

Heavy Thorn said:


> If you'll notice, the sentence you're referring to specifically targets "lawyers and law suits and constantly-tightening DRMs."  I don't have a problem with authors reporting piracy to the ISBN agencies.  I _do_ have a problem with "crack down" measures taken by both governments and studios/publishers.



Well the studios and publishers have to make a living as well and they've been bashed a lot by the advent of the internet.


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## Heavy Thorn (Jun 11, 2011)

Baron said:


> Well the studios and publishers have to make a living as well and they've been bashed a lot by the advent of the internet.



That's a good point.  I'll admit, I often see studios/publishers as "The Man" in these sort of discussions.  I understand the need to make a living, and I agree 100% - but from what I've seen, much better results are made from looking at the problem of piracy and approaching it from a "Okay, things have changed, how can we adapt and profit?" standpoint than a strict suppression policy that inspires rebellion and loathing.

When I see an author or publisher who legitimately tries to work with their audience/readers, there's an instinctive desire in me to want to support that person/group.  When a guy I know (and actually dislike) posted on a filmmaking forum I've been a member of for 4 years, and said "Hey look, my film is on this pirate website!" and thought it was funny and said, basically "Let them pirate it," I went to his site and dropped $20 to buy a movie I wound up hating.  But even though I dislike the guy and thought his movie sucked, I still don't regret spending that $20 to support an artist who "turned the other cheek," as it were.

If you read the link I originally posted, while I don't necessarily agree that such cases will be widespread and/or work for everyone, I think there is an advantage in siding with the "underdogs."  At the very least, like you said, report it to the ISBN agencies and move on.


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## Rustgold (Jun 11, 2011)

Baron said:


> Piracy is theft.


The other side is that there are products that are deceptive in what they actually are.  For instance, I'm sure that anybody who've brought computer games over the years have felt ripped off in some products.  How many times have you seen a flashy cover that promises so much, yet delivers so little?  Whether it be the computer game with dud gameplay, or the vampire book written by a porn viewing housewife; there's so many things that fail to impress after the first 4 minutes.

As somebody who've brought plenty of dud material, I have no problems with saying that I have both legal & pirated stuff.  I fail to see for instance why we should be forced to buy Office 2007, when my legal version of Office 2003 works perfectly well.

As such, I don't view piracy in the extreme righteous-seeking way.


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## Baron (Jun 11, 2011)

There was a time when copyright meant that something couldn't be copied or made public for profit without permission.  The law hasn't changed but, due to the internet, the interpretation has.  I agree that software manufacturers don't help the situation by producing bug-ridden products, manipulative upgrades and misleading advertising.  The fact remains that two wrongs never made a right.

As far as the consumer is concerned, when it comes to games, music or books, it's a case of "taste and try before you buy".  I certainly don't buy anything that I don't have some prior knowledge of.  I'll happily pay for a self-published work by someone whose work I've read on the forums or that I've enjoyed reading a preview of.  I won't spend out on an unknown quantity because I like the cover.

The fact that people may buy stuff they have no prior knowledge of and end up with rubbish, that they don't take time to read reviews and bug reports, or that they feel they have to stay on the constant upgrade ladder, doesn't justify theft.


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## Heavy Thorn (Jun 11, 2011)

Baron said:


> There was a time when copyright meant that something couldn't be copied or made public for profit without permission.  The law hasn't changed but, due to the internet, the interpretation has.  I agree that software manufacturers don't help the situation by producing bug-ridden products, manipulative upgrades and misleading advertising.  The fact remains that two wrongs never made a right.
> 
> As far as the consumer is concerned, when it comes to games, music or books, it's a case of "taste and try before you buy".  I certainly don't buy anything that I don't have some prior knowledge of.  I'll happily pay for a self-published work by someone whose work I've read on the forums or that I've enjoyed reading a preview of.  I won't spend out on an unknown quantity because I like the cover.
> 
> The fact that people may buy stuff they have no prior knowledge of and end up with rubbish, that they don't take time to read reviews and bug reports, or that they feel they have to stay on the constant upgrade ladder, doesn't justify theft.



I actually agree with that point, though I think there are statistics  somewhere that say that a significant number of books/movies pirated are  never even read/watched.  But still, the idea that you should pirate  something because you might not like it seems a bit... drastic?  If I'm  iffy about something, and I don't have the money for it, I'll either  find it free (Netflix, library, etc.) or just do without.  For software,  there are workarounds - OpenOffice, etc.  And as Baron said, there are  plenty of reviews and discussions about any given product - the only  exception being things like a self-pub'd book that no-one's heard of, in  which case I'd be impressed if you could find a pirated copy.

Honestly, though, I think _most_, if not all justification for piracy is stretched at best.  That said, I stick by my earlier points about fighting it vs. finding a way to work around it.


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## Sam (Jun 11, 2011)

Custard said:


> Piracy is a problem even with real books. Here we have books that have been photocopied and their prices decreased from 350 to 30 rupees. Even in real books piracy exists, so I don't really see what the difference will be.



It's nowhere near as prevalent in real books. E-books are practically impossible to protect. All someone needs to do is buy the book and put it on any torrent-sharing website. There's more hassle involved in distributing real books. With E-books, it's free and easy.


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## movieman (Jun 15, 2011)

Sam W said:


> With E-books, it's free and easy.



Yet they're selling by the truckload. I don't know if he still does, but at one point Konrath had some of his ebooks available for free on his web site and he still sold lots of them from other sites because going to his own web site to save $2 was too much hassle for most people.

Personally I try to buy ebooks from Smashwords rather than Amazon or elsewhere because I know they're DRM-free and I can read them however I want. Oh the horror! If I was an evil bastard I could upload those books to a pirate site. But if I was an evil bastard I'd have downloaded them from the pirate site instead of buying them, so DRM would be pointless.

Last week someone said 'hey, there's a publisher giving away free ebooks on their web site', so I went to take a look. The one book they had up so far didn't seem that interesting, but I thought I'd download it anyway.

"Your computer does not meet our requirements", it said.

So I looked further down the page and found a link saying 'If you're running Linux, go here to download', so I did.

But it wasn't a book. It was some file for some crappy Adobe software. So I go to adobe.com and find the crappy Adobe software page.

"Your computer does not meet our requirements," it said.

So I spent a while poking around on their site until I found an actual, real download link and downloaded it, and installed it and ran it.

Then I had to create an accout with Adobe so I could read this 'free' book. That's great, because I totally want Adobe tracking every book that I read.

All that effort meant that I could finally read this 'free' book... but only in Adobe's crappy ebook reading software, rather than the software that I normally use. So I gave up.

Out of interest, I did a Google search and found various web pages saying 'to avoid having to use Adobe's crappy software, just run this program and it will remove the encryption and you can read the book anywhere', so the whole thing was utterly pointless. I didn't actually care enough to bother, but it would appear that anyone who wanted a pirate version could get it with ease, probably with far less hassle than I had to go through.

Suffice it to say, I'm never buying an ebook with DRM. If a writer releases their books that way, then they'll never make a penny from me; life's too short to jump through hoops like a performing mole-rat. I suspect that many other readers feel the same way after their first experience with the ebook DRM monster.

Piracy sucks if people download your book who would otherwise have bought it, but attempts to prevent piracy suck because people don't buy your book because it's so crippled by DRM it has no value to them. Reporting pirate sites would make sense, but given that any time I look for information about a book or movie on Google about eight hundred of the first thousand results claim to be pirate download sites, I can't help but feel that writing another book would be a more profitable use of our time than trying to chase them down.


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## The Backward OX (Jul 9, 2011)

Rustgold said:


> I fail to see for instance why we should be forced to buy Office 2007, when my legal version of Office 2003 works perfectly well.



What! What! What! What?








What’s all this about being forced to buy Office 2007?


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