Don’t make it public. Go away. Leave us alone.

etc.

No-one will give you any money, but it will save you all the stress over this issue!

I agree that DRM is not the solution, but I don’t think that there is an evil conspiracy to defraud authors either. While there is perhaps money to be made in film or software piracy I truly believe that the majority of “book pirates” are just eager to read their favourite books on the go and when there is no alternative, they download a dodgy scan of a book and laboriously go through, editing to correct OCR typos, space problems, etc. with no aim but to better improve their reading. There is also a lack of education on the topic. Five years ago, people thought it was okay to use an image from the web for their project – “it’s there for free”.

With Cory Doctorow, I have read all his work but only actually bought his current book Little Brother in DTE. I didn’t know he was an author of fiction before I found his site, and while I like his journalistic writing, wouldn’t have bought a book of his on spec without seeing if his writing worked in a longer form first.

PS. Now I know about your site too, I’m going to buy a book on there that caught my eye, but permit me to make a couple of suggestions please? First is to provide books as plain text or RTF too, the second is not to mix SF with fantasy.

Ben Vost
keen eBook reader

DRM is also a problem. But I absolutely believe that waving our hands and saying DRM is the problem, rather than a fatally flawed attempt at a solution, is burying our heads in the sand (to mix a metaphor). DRM imposes costs. On the other hand, those who believe they have a moral right to freely share unlimited copies of books with their friends and families should feel at least partially responsible when publishers impose DRM.

BooksForABuck.com does not use DRM. However, that doesn’t mean our authors prefer to have their books freely shared without payment (or paid for once and shared forever). None of my authors are getting rich. Neither am I. I believe in setting low prices and asking readers to buy their own copies.

Rob Preece
Publisher

Now suppose instead of giving the ebook away, the ebook was sold by the pirate for a low price. (Or the pirate might simply place an afiliate link — skull and crossbones banner — onto his/her web page). The author would receive most of that income, and the “pirate” would receive a small percentage of each sale.

Is there a way to re-invent the ebook pirate into an ebook distributor? … To transform our Long John Silvers into Robin Hoods?

And suppose we sweetened the deal by sending some of the author’s/publisher’s money to a charity, mutually agreed on by the author and the ebook pirate?

Of course, authors and publishers can’t compromise too much … But I’m wondering — since everyone involved (publishers and pirates) has a common interest in books and reading — if there might be some strange ways to build bridges here.

And I wonder what might have happened in the Pirate Bay case, if the Swedish government would have started a dialogue with the pirates. Try to understand why they are doing what they do … The law suit seems to have been ineffective. The Pirate Bay owners said that they will burn their money rather than pay the fine; and even if the PB owners go to jail, Pirate Bay itself — and all the file sharing — will carry on.

Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks

B

Steve summarizes the situation perfectly:

They [publishers] should be asking themselves: “How can we provide such a value to our authors that the expected amount of piracy we know we’ll experience won’t be an issue?”

It’s better to focus one’s publishing energies on the positive side of things.

What I am planing to do in the future is to create a web page for ebook pirates. Called “The Bluebeard Inn,” it would take all the challenge — and all the fun — out of pirating ebooks.

The sign on the wooden door would say something like:

“Welcome, patch-eyed scavengers of the digital seas! If you can’t understand that authors work hard to create books, if you can’t afford to buy a copy, and if you get your pirate jollies from stealing ebooks: here, take a free copy of mine. I’m not tracking your IP (Internet Pirate) address.

Enjoy my book, and tell your friends all about it. If you evolve someday into an SCP (a socially-conscious pirate), you can always come back to this site and buy a copy of the book. Don’t worry: purchasing an ebook is a painless (and private) process; your reputation for skullduggery will never be dimished.”

I’d rather do that and laugh at the situation, than lose time and sleep raving about the plague of digital barbarism and the divine right of copyright holders.

Another one of my grandfather’s favorite sayings advises:

“When a mad dog runs at you, welcome him!”

Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks

Publishers must be asking themselves:
“How can we assure our authors that the books and ebooks published with us are “safe” from piracy?”

Simple answer: They can’t.

This is a clear indication that publishers are thinking about their jobs the wrong way. They should be asking themselves: “How can we provide such a value to our authors that the expected amount of piracy we know we’ll experience won’t be an issue?”

Of course, I also believe customers are thinking about the problem the wrong way, when they complain that DRM doesn’t let them do things they can do with a printed book. An e-book isn’t a printed book. The sooner we all understand that, the sooner we can move on to developing e-books, and an e-book market, the way it should be developed.

Scribd and Wattpad are not the real problem. They play relatively nice: when they learn about the copyrighted material, they remove it.

What is the real problem for publishers? … The sites that ignore the takedown messages. I won’t mention names, but one of the most prominent of these sites is from the same country that gave us Bergman films, and spicy meatballs.

And here’s another problem for publishers —
Publishers must be asking themselves:
“How can we assure our authors that the books and ebooks published with us are “safe” from piracy?”

We need innovative answers to these questions; not DRM and take-down threats. Which always remind me of one of my grandfather’s sayings: “After the horse has escaped, the fool shuts the stable.”

Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks

While Hatchette certainly has the right to go after pirates, they can save themselves a lot of time, money and aggravation by making their ebooks as widely available as possible, sans the DRM. Then pirates would have no motivation to do what they do, because the books are already out there and widely available.

The second part of the equation is pricing, but that’s a different post for a different time.

You’ve heard it all before. I reiterate because it is the essence of the issue. I buy ebooks. When they have DRM I feel that I am being ripped off. I cannot even share a good ebook to my wife. Publishers, fix that problem and maybe piracy will diminish.

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Because of this, social DRM has little power. There are those who revel in revealing themselves to be the source of piracy, and can often conceal their identity easily enough anyway (“This book is the property of LONG JOHN HACKER ARR!”). Finally, if someone who downloads a book is likely to read a social DRM message, they are just as likely to read a prominently-placed copyright notice…