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E-book piracy: Sharing or stealing?
December 29, 2007 | 4:59 am
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By Katherine Smith
Here we are. Techo savvy, but still testing our boundaries, learning and growing and expanding—and yes, finding the usual problems along the way. One of those, naturally, is the same one the music industry has had to address: the sharing of information across the net.
All right. How many of us feel sorry for big music stars when their songs are downloaded? (Looks for raised hands). Well, since technically it is stealing, we probably should, but heck, we all know they make a bundle…
No, it still really isn’t right. Moreover, it is against the law unless specifically released by the artist into the public domain. I am not talking about anything but current works.
Not the same as used book stores
Now then, let’s move on to e-book problems. Yes, for years there have been used book stores. Authors get no royalty for those sales. In fact, the book can be read and brought back many times. One person at a time. However, the scope of the possibilities of releasing an e-book for resale on an Internet site is endless.
To a certain extent, since e-books sales are still in the fledgling stage in many cases, I have mixed feelings about this. What if someone reads a pirated book and loves me and goes and buys all my books? Well, that would be great, if they buy it from a reputable distributor or my publisher. What if they then in turn offer it for sale and make money from it and I have no idea how many copies are out there circulating? Am I really getting up at five in the morning (and in Indiana, it is cold, dark, and I sit huddled at my computer) to write the best book possible to make someone else money or give it away for free?
No e-book millionaires
It doesn’t sound so good anymore. There really are no e-book millionaires. Not yet anyway. It is an emerging, changing, growing business, but still in infancy in many ways. The piracy doesn’t help the industry. Copyrights are protected by federal law, but the sites pop everywhere anyway, many of them overseas. I hate to even look anymore, but one recently had thee pages full of listings of my books. Three pages? Really? I felt popular for about one flat minute.
The upside is there are many reputable organizations like Epic that go after these unlawful sites. So do publishers I know Ellora’s Cave, for example, very large in e-books, has lawyers who keep on top of all this, but it is a constant problem.
Authors really do work hard. Publishers also pour a lot into a book. It will be interesting to see how this emerging part of our cyber culture deals with the issue.
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Comments:
Not to nitpick, but this statement, “Well, since technically it is stealing, we probably should, but heck, we all know they make a bundle…”, is just wrong. Copyright violation is not stealing and the fact that the music industry along with others wants to associate copyright violation with the concept of theft, does not make it theft. It is illegal, and wrong under most any circumstances but it is not theft.
As a writer you should know how powerful language is as a tool. Calling someone a liar rather than saying they made a mistake is a powerful statement, just as saying someone is a thief is more powerful than saying someone cost us money by violating our copyright.
This is a pet peeve of mine here’s an article that sums up my thoughts on the matter.
http://www.tricklenews.com/pebble/default/2007/12/07/1197021060000.html
And we’ve all seen how well this strategy has worked out for the RIAA, MPAA et al. Rampant piracy is almost certainly indicative that there is a problem with legitimate sources of content, for example, legitimate content is too expensive and encumbered with compatibility-blocking DRM.
Note that I am in no way advocating piracy, but from what we’ve already seen, it seems like lawsuits are not the answer – it’s really just an expensive game of whack-a-mole, and e-book publishers don’t have nearly as deep pockets as the RIAA & company.
Fortunately the music industry is starting to see the error of their ways as far as DRM is concerned, with unencrypted MP3s available for purchase now from both EMI and Warner Music. Perhaps the e-book industry should learn from this example before treading down the ligitation path.
When a big wave comes you have little choice, you can dive under it, or turn around and catch it, but you cannot stand against it hoping that you will be left on your feet.
E-Books are no big wave yet, but as e-Babel is banished by open standards it creates a seismic event that will inevitably become tsunami.
Given the world wide nature of digital communications the idea of dealing with serious copyright violations by individual lawsuits is ridiculous. It will not happen.
Copyright is not property, but a public license protecting authors who release their work into the public domain, Steve above is absolutely right, breeching it is not theft.
The hope does not lay in crippling literature with DRM, technical means of protection simply lead to technical means of removing the protection – besides which a book where my use of the text is crippled is hardly the thing I paid for. I would also deduct that your books which now appear to have been pirated may well have been DRMed originally. Or they may have been scanned, which is in some regards is worst form of literary compliment. If the latter is the case the powerful pull of digital communications is being demonstrated. Resistance is futile the means of communication will win out in the end.
The only hope is in having fair and manageable international copyright laws, and a means to pay the legitimate copyright holders directly. Both these things are elusive at the moment, but they are not beyond immediate invention. Price too plays its part, without paper production book production is much less riskier and far cheaper – this needs to be reflected in the price.
I don’t think you will find many here that would suggest that authors, illustrators, editors, publisher’s do not deserve to be paid, or indeed that anyone here is happy with idea of the piracy of copyrighted works either for misguided reasons or for profit.
But the copyright laws themselves, especially in the US, have been vastly overextended. That has to be the starting point, that many present laws are an unforgivable invasion of the public domain, and that has to change, for in this also the technology will win out in the end, regardless of laws.
Copyright laws have to be fair, but what they should be in the digital age has to be openly arrived at, or the benefit of having such laws will be washed away. No amount of moralising will fix that historic problem. Simple means of direct payment, uncrippled literature, fair prices and fair copyright protection is not a matter of choice, but a recognition of on-rushing reality.
Established publishers are tied to the presses, it is really a matter of authors, editors, the new digital reatiler/publishers and readers to work out a system that is fair and cheap.
Greg Schofield
Perth Australia
Great post, Katherine.
I note that Katherine’s books are available in Fictionwise in their multiformat catalog–which means no DRM. The DRM excuse is not valid in the case of pirating her books.
Steve, I’m not sure how the distinction between copyright violation and theft matters–except to lawyers. With the Digital Millennium Act, pirating copyrighted digital material is a crime, not simply a civil tort.
Dan, you’re absolutely right–the recording industry has not figured out how to combat piracy, so we can’t use them as a model. On the other hand, they did take down Napster. What Epic (www.epicauthors.com) does, at least, is share knowledge of pirate sites–sites that make money off of large-scale piracy–and do its part in defining the law surrounding sharing of copyrighted digital material.
Like Katherine (or her publisher(s)), I continue to avoid DRM (except where required by the distributor) for many of the reasons we’ve discussed on this loop. That definitely does not mean I think piracy of non-DRMed work is not an issue.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
I find it interesting that authors and publishers want to use a different model for ebooks than for print books. Could it be that ebooks are easier to fingerprint?
Publishers and authors forget (and it has been long forgotten by the music industry) that the reason the book industry grew and so many authors can get published (and if any good grow an audience) is that a single copy of a book is readable by many people. Although I am new to the ebook world (just received a Sony Reader for Christmas), I expect to be a buyer of very few ebooks because of DRM. I currently spend $200 to $300 a month on hardcover books and am willing to do so because I can share my books with my children (all adults so the books have to leave my library) and my friends and neighbors.
I know from experience that over the years this sharing has resulted in many authors gaining new devotees who have purchased their own copies of a favored author’s books, even if not a copy of the one they borrowed from me.
DRM is not a positive but a negative for a lot of potential ebook buyers, just as it was/is for music buyers. I, for one, have never bought digital music because of the restrictions on where and when I can play it; I’d rather buy the CD. Perhaps authors and publishers will force me to minimize my ebook purchases for the same reason.
I would leave you with this thought: One reason why my children bought me the Sony Reader is that they thought it would be a good way for me to sample authors with whom I am unfamiliar, thinking that ebooks cost less than a conventional buy. Pricing and DRM will leave me to spending my money on print books, which means many authors whose books I might otherwise be willing to try won’t get tried.
>>>There really are no e-book millionaires.
In America. In Japan, maybe so.
http://www.teleread.com/blog/2007/09/27/more-on-japanese-cellphone-novels/
http://www.digitalworldtokyo.com/index.php/digital_tokyo/articles/cellphone_novel_downloads_outstrip_paper_books_in_japan/
Now, I wonder if any of those Japanese buyers wail about how they can’t share their purchases? Can anyone point to any detailed studies of those purchasers? (I fear what’s going on there is being dismissed under the “Well, that’s Japan” rubric, when it might have something to teach all of us.)
I think the vast majority of authors are still struggling for recognition. Getting more readers is a real issue for them. Maybe they need to switch over to the music model, where the actual content itself is not the money maker so much as ancillary products you sell to your audience once you have them? Martha Stewart certainly makes more money from selling ads in her magazine than she does from actual sales of the magazine itself. And let’s not forget, this magazine is sitting in millions of doctor’s offices across the country where dozens of people read it for free. And it is sitting in millions of libraries across the country where dozens of people read it for free. All of this is legal.
Real ‘pirates’ sharing hundreds of works across the net just because they can IS wrong, but there are also fair use reasons why real people might share something they own (for example, my mother subscribes to a magazine that is read in turn by my myself and my sister-in-law when we are over there). They may be losing a sale on me because of that, but *I* in turn may loan her a book or magazine of my own. And if I am stuck at the airport with nothing to read, and I happen across the magazine I already know and like which my mother subscribes to, I may buy it. This sort of informal sharing is how authors build an audience in the first place—word of mouth advertising, basically. I read you because my mother/best friend/sister/whomever said I might like you. And next time a new book comes out, maybe I will buy it on my own.
In my opinion, we don’t need to necessarily ‘encourage’ digital file-sharing of this level, but we don’t need to freak out about it either. I think social DRM might be the answer here. I can still put it on my device or devices, treat it like a real paper book that I own and do anything I might like with it, but it’s got my name on the top of every page, or something. I wouldn’t put it on a P2P network or anything like that, but I would feel just fine sending it to my sister or my mother the same way I might with a p-book I was finished reading and thought they might like.
And btw, for any writers out there who might be poo-pooing that cellphone ebook format, check out what’s happening on Veoh (maybe YouTube and others too, but I’ve settled on Veoh). There are micro-series being done that are really pioneering a compressed storytelling technique (what Ballard did with compressed novels).
Rebecca Drysdale Is A Time-Traveling Lesbian just trumps NBC’s expensive Journeyman, in my opinion:
http://www.veoh.com/userVideos.html?username=disposabletelevision
I’ve subscribed so I don’t miss an episode. Not much of a budget, but in the few minutes per episode, I’ve found it has a higher entertainment density than most things Conventional Network TV has spit out.
Episode 4 is a particular hoot:
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v17148142zWCDbn6
(You can watch them all streaming online with the on-screen player, btw. No need to download the client unless you want to subscribe.)
>>>Maybe they need to switch over to the music model, where the actual content itself is not the money maker so much as ancillary products you sell to your audience once you have them?
People are fond of using Dickens as a model. Stating that he made more money from personal appearances and such.
Not all writers are so socially inclined.
Mike: maybe they need to start becoming so. My point is that in my opinion, this is the mistake the music industry has already made, which is killing it: clinging to an old business model when things are going in a new direction. Look at it another way: washing machines. Before there were the modern electric ones, companies were making hand-crank versions that people bought in department stores. Were they threatened by a new way of doing things? Yes. And they either had to get with the program and LEARN how to make things the new way, or go out of business. The word is changing and adapting and developing, and if you want to be in BUSINESS (as opposed to being a starving artist in a slum somewhere) you need to be able to change too. The food industry is constantly offering new products, changing their offerings, changing their ingredients etc. based on what people want. So is the clothing industry. Why are the media industries so slow to catch on? Whether ‘you the executive’ thinks it is a good idea or a bad idea for people in Japan to read ebooks on their cellphones or not is immaterial. The market decides. In Japan, the market decided they wanted cellphone ebooks. If ‘you the executive’ do not think of a way to easily provide it to them at a price they are willing to pay, someone else will step in and plug that gap, and they’ll get all the money you could have had. Writing, making music etc. are art forms, yes. But they are businesses too, and if you want to make the big money, it behooves you to look at it that way. I learned this lesson from the editor of the biggest women’s magazine in Canada, who got her magazine into the number one spot precisely by knowing exactly who her average reader was, and what they wanted to read each month.
Two more things about Japan, ebooks, and cellphones (it got under my skin and I’m digging…):
http://analytica1st.com/analytica1st/2007/12/sharp-sh905i-first-to-feature-dolby.html
– this phone includes software called Manga Book Reader. Well, that implies a file format. Whose? It it a standard? Have the Japanese agreed on a Manga format everyone uses?
And what would it do to ebooks here in the US when most phones offer a swivel screen like this? –
http://analytica1st.com/analytica1st/2007/12/softbanks-top-ten-selling-phone-models.html
– and note in that first link the resolution of that Sharp screen:
>>>3 inch (480X854) Full Wide VGA (16,777,215 colors)
Not as big as an iPhone screen, but much higher resolution! And, if the PR is to believed, very wide viewing angle.
>>>Mike: maybe they need to start becoming so
I reject that. This is hegemony. You are talking about people changing their basic temperament. Good frikkin luck!
>>>The word is changing and adapting and developing, and if you want to be in BUSINESS (as opposed to being a starving artist in a slum somewhere) you need to be able to change too.
Tom Clancy and James Patterson are now businesses. Do I read them? No. (I did read some of Clancy just to see what the clamor was about. Please!)
You can tout artist as pseudo-Republican all you want. But don’t complain when everything is blanded out and you start screaming about everything being the same old crap.
An instructional (but hilarious) video:
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v1629397ydkYhmSN
(R-rated language at end)
I don’t go to movies. They’ve become roller-coaster rides. They appeal to idiots. I refuse the lobotomy.
More about cellphones in Japan as they pertain to publishing:
http://www.trannet-japan.com/ep/tjc_news_dtl.asp?dk=N0000031
Evidence, please? Can Katherine or any author show beyond a reasonable doubt that their sales have been damaged by eBook copyright infringement? Or is this all based on the ridiculous assumption that anyone who can’t read something for free will immediately troop off to the bookshop and buy it for the RRP? The anti-DRM group have plenty of evidence from Baen Books — but where is the evidence on the other side? Once they have some evidence then a rational debate can begin.
Jon Jermey:
The evidence is right in front of you. When I read a book that I borrowed, was given, or found on a park bench, I know that somebody, somewhere, paid for it.
Whenever someone makes an illicit copy of a for-pay book and uploads it, a new copy has come into existence. Now two people, in two places, can enjoy that same book at the same time. Extend that to hundreds or thousands of usable copies generated from a single sale, and you can easily see the lost sales.
Now you may say those thousands of readers would never have paid anyway, so what’s the harm? But that’s a strawman: if the producer chooses that each copy of her works should be obtainable only at a price, then her wishes should be respected. The harm is that those illicit readers should have had the same choices a law-abiding reader has: pay for the copy, find someone else to pay for the copy, or do without the copy. Cutting the cash register completely out of the loop is unfair to the people who spent months or years working to bring that book into existence.
I would be 100% in favor of a DRM system which protected ebooks no more (and no less) than pbooks are protected:
1) It takes just as much investment and human effort to make a copy as it takes to scan or copy each page of a pbook.
2) Only one person at a time gets to have a copy in their possession.
3) The single copy can be sold, loaned or given away, so long as the seller/loner/giver doesn’t get keep a ‘free’ copy.
This concept is pretty simple. But a lot of DRM-haters make no room for it. They say DRM in all forms is universally bad, and offer no real solution in its place. I enjoy Baen’s free and for-pay ebooks, and applaud their willingness to take the risk. But it is their risk to take. If an author/publisher team chooses to take that risk, I’ll happily consume their wares, and sometimes make donations in return for the ‘free’ stuff they give me. But a lot of people will not – most likely the majority. Can a ‘pay as an afterthought’ model really scale to the mass market? I doubt it – and I suspect that deep in your heart of hearts, you do too.
If another author/publisher chooses not to take that risk, and instead wants cash on the barrelhead, I’m fine with that too. I have the same three choices: pay, find someone to pay (all or part of the cost), or do without. If that author/publisher implement some DRM to protect their choice – well, it’s just another factor in my choice.
A challenge for you anti-DRM folks: can you find an enforceable alternative mechanism which protects the producer’s right to determine the value of his/her work?
(side note: had to rewrite this, as the blog lost my first submission! grr. Now lost my second sumission too, re-pasting from my notepad copy …)
Baen Books does it right, and there’s plenty of reason based on Baen to believe that the elimination of DRM wouldn’t hurt sales. But the author and publisher shouldn’t have to show that sales are hurt by copyright infringement — if the author and publisher didn’t give Joe Doakes permission to post a book on the internet (in effect making himself the publisher of a digital edition without ever arranging for that with the people who own the rights to the work) then Joe Doakes shouldn’t be posting the book. Whether Joe Doakes is hurting the author’s sales or not is irrelevant — if it’s not his work, he has no right to post it.
On the matter of “I bought it and I want to read it on multiple devices or put it on my mother’s PC or Mac or Palm or Ipaq so she can read it too” — ereader’s DRM permits this. If there’s going to be DRM, ereader does it the way it should be done. No limit on the number of devices you can read the book on — just enter the unlock code, which is the name and credit card number used in purchasing the book. Neat, simple, not nearly as inconvenient as what Adobe and Mobipocket inflict on us, and the code isn’t information that anyone will want to shotgun out all over the internet. DRM should die, as it’s beginning to do in music, but until publishers catch on, ereader editions offer the most customer-friendly DRM there is, and ereader deserves high praise for that.
Bests to all,
–tr
Well, IF the device you plan to move it onto supports the e-reader format
No guarantee that five or ten years from now, ANY devices will still be supported with that format. If you have bought anything in secure e-reader, it may be useless, and you would have no way to convert it into something you can read again.
Ficbot,
True enough. But the same applies to any of the formats out there, DRMd or not, except for plain text. I figure I’m covered for a while if I’ve got access to a Palm, Windows, or Pocket PC device. While Palm’s a bit shaky, I understand that there’s an emulator that will run Palm apps, EReader included, on the new Nokia internet tablets, and that there may also be such an emulator available for some implementations of Linux. I’ve got all the ebooks and the software installers backed up to CD and on SD cards, and a spare Palm sitting in the desk. If it all goes away on me, I’ll look at it the same way I would a flood or fire that took out my bookshelves, and replace some of the material in the format of the day, and let the rest of it go.
The prospect might bother me more if I was in my thirties, but I’m pushing 60, and of the ebooks I’ve bought there are plenty that I wouldn’t try to replace. I’d replace some, but not nearly all of them.
But I’d worry a lot more about keeping my ebooks if I were married to a Kindle, or if they were all in secured MobiPocket or Adobe. I understand that a number of folks refuse to buy anything that’s DRMd, and depending on what you’re wanting to read, that’s reasonable. But the writers I’m reading at this time aren’t putting their titles out under Creative Commons licenses or posting them on their web sites. It’s DRM, print, or pirated editions, and I don’t go after pirate copies. For older titles, given a choice between a bare-bones copy from Project Gutenberg and a DRMd Penguin Classics from ereader, I’m just as likely to go with ereader depending on the title and the extra intro and notes.
My point is that until publishers wise up, ereader’s is the most customer-friendly DRM out there, and some major platforms will have to die out before it’s impossible to find some device that will support it. I’ve been buying from ereader.com for almost 8 years now, and also from Fictionwise, and while I’ve run into problems a number of times with Adobe DRM, and a couple of times with MobiPocket, I’ve had no DRM problems at all with ereader titles on any device I’ve used. I think that speaks well of the format. It’s as close to an unrestricted format as DRM’s likely to allow until DRM finally sinks into the tar pits where it belongs.
Bests,
–tr
Good points, TR. I just bought my first DRM’d ereader title, and it was pretty cheap. I guess, ten years down the road if it stopped working, I’d chalk it up to blowing money to rent a movie or something. It’s also a kind of cheesy genre book, and one I wanted to have, but felt weird about displaying on a shelf where my mother could see it—or reading it on the subway where the entire city could admire my tacky tastes in genre crap
For me, it was a good solution to have an e-version I could read at my leisure, without prying eyes judging me, and without the testament of it sitting on my bookshelf for all to see for the next ten years 
I’d say that HTML is not likely to go anywhere any time soon either, and unlike plain text it allows certain types of formatting to be preserved as well as just the text itself. Also, by this time, it is pretty much just as universal; I think it would be very hard to find a platform that could render plain text but not HTML.
>>>Good points, TR. I just bought my first DRM’d ereader title, and it was pretty cheap. I guess, ten years down the road if it stopped working, I’d chalk it up to blowing money to rent a movie or something.
Or having to replace your VHS movie with the DVD one! (And then, for the HD-DVD or Blu-Ray one… oy!)
I still think it’s a matter of supply and demand. DRM has been rejected comprehensively until now, and I do not think that any new form of drm that restricts your ability to read, print, extract text and so on from your e-book will be successful.
Publishers and authors are not obliged to offer e-books, and I do not see why we insist they offer them at the cost of drm.
They are free to drm them of course but they should not be surprised that sales are so anemic. Now I do not think that offering drm free e-books will be a panacea either, just that sales will increase considerably, though print will still be king for a long while.
Sorry for responding to this comment so long after it was written, but I will anyway.
BooksForABuck,
My whole point is that language is very powerful. There is a difference between something that is morally wrong and something that is illegal. You seemed to have confused the two when critiquing my comment. I suggest you follow the link I supplied for a more detailed criticism.
Theft and stealing are morally wrong and the words themselves have very strong connotations.
We can argue whether copyright violation is in all cases morally wrong or not but don’t allow the language itself to be hijacked to imply a moral equivalence that does not exist. Degrees of moral wrongness exist for different acts. For instance it is morally wrong to lie but it is much worse to kill. By allowing the hijacking of the term theft for copyright violation we are allowing corporations to determine the degree of violation of the mores of our society.
Do not think for an instance that their was not a concious decision to abandon the term piracy for theft when describing copyright violation.
The point to my comment is that an author should understand the power of language and not buy into the false moral equivalence it implies.
I went to a Sci-Fi Fantasy Convention in Houston TX. One of the panels I went to was called Libraries of the Future – and I thought they might mention e-books or the new Expresso books machine in a positive or interesting light. There were two librarians and an author on the panel – one of the librarians was also an author. The librarian that wasn’t an author said – “We all love e-books because you can take that one download and send it to all your friends so you have twenty of them instead of just one and the publisher can’t track you down or do anything about it.” Well I raised my hand and when they finally called on me for my question, I said I had a comment and I told her it’s fine to pass a copy of a downloaded book to a friend when you’ve finished it the same way you might do with a paperback or hardback book but per etiquette and as a legal issue you are supposed to delete the copy you have. I had to say something, I just had to. The comment made on a pannel like that made me feel she was encouraging or endorsing people to do that. I knew she knew it was wrong and her presise wording of publishers can’t hunt you down knows she’s stealing from publishers as well as stealing the author’s royalties. For a librain to say that at a convetion about books with authors in the audience is crazy to me. Are other librians encouraging readers to do this. She was a librian at the Baytown Texas Library.
The other panel I went to was several authors discussing urban fantasy and that was great. I loved that one.