eBabel, worsened by proprietary DRM formats, is poison for the e-book business. But could exclusive e-deals with Amazon or Sony or others be be another deadly form of Balkanization?
Via a RosettaBooks exclusive for the Kindle, Terry Good will allow publication of an E edition of his first novel, Wizard’s First Rule.
Related: Chelsea Green and the great big mistake, from Booksquare. Other bookstores didn’t cotton too well to Chelsea Green‘s exclusive with Amazon on a p-book about Barack Obama.
Yes, deadly. Let us not forget, the Kindle is thus far only available in the USA…
It’s a good book. I’d buy it if I could get it in ePub.
OK, so actually I don’t even own the paperback (yet), I borrowed it from a friend. (GASP, how dare I! If I’d done that with a friend’s eBook I’d be in trouble!)
“Terry Good will allow publication of an E edition of his first novel, Wizard’s First Rule.”
Riiight…like all of Goodkind’s novels aren’t already available in every e-format already on every warez site/usenet fantasy e-book group.
All Goodkind and his publisher are doing is guaranteeing they’ll never get paid by his fans who want to buy e versions of his books (and here, all we’re really getting is an extended rental on the Kindle).
I’ve heard of publish or perish in academia, but why do publishers keep forcing this ‘pirate or perish’ mentality on those of us who gladly pay to buy Baen books and would gladly pay to buy Goodkind and other author’s books?
There is no forcing of this “pirate or perish” mentality at all.
It is a conscious decision made by individuals to steal. And that is what pirating and the use of pirated goods is. It is stealing, plain and simple.
If you want the goods, you pay for it.
If you want the goods for free, you steal.
If you can’t get the goods in the format you want, then I guess you need to either accept the format it comes in, or not get the goods.
But make no mistake, if you pirate or use pirated goods, you are stealing. It is not the manufacturers fault. They aren’t forcing anything.
It’s kind of interesting from a sociological point of view. The fact that the Internet has made access to information so easy has given a lot of people an almost subconscious feeling of entitlement—if any information can be obtained so easily, it all should. That is the true meaning of the oft-misused aphorism “information wants to be free.” Not “free as in beer,” since most people would be perfectly happy to pay for the e-books they want, but free to be obtained.
If people want particular information (if we look at a given title in e-book form as “information,” which it technically is), and it would be easy to get if not for the decision of the publisher not to make it available, then they feel “entitled” to go out and get it by whatever means they can.
(You could even make a case for it not even being all that morally wrong if they already bought a printed copy. Per the judgment in RIAA vs Diamond, consumers have the right to “space shift” their media, so they would be legally entitled to have an e-book version if they scanned and OCR’d it themselves. Downloading an illicit e-book has the same outcome and just saves them that work. Of course, as Michael Robertson found out when his CD-scanning music streaming service got shut down, the law doesn’t quite see it that way.)
It’s also interesting to see the differing terminology used by both sides of the argument. One side claims they are being “forced” to download. The other side claims that is “stealing.” Neither term is technically accurate.
Stephen Healy wrote:
Couldn’t disagree more. It is the manufacturers fault, and pirating works that aren’t available electronically is not stealing (in a moral sense — I concede the point that our ridiculous copyright laws make such actions punishable by courts).
Chris Meadows wrote:
Nice analysis. But also, Chris, there are times when not only is there no electronic version but the physical book is itself long out of print (so-called orphan works).
Brian: So there are. But those fall somewhat outside the context of the discussion of Terry Goodkind’s book, which most definitely is not orphaned.
(I do have to note, though, that I have never encountered a “pirated” work that’s been orphaned; all the works old enough to possibly be orphaned have been popular enough that their copyright was not in doubt—otherwise, not enough people would have wanted them for it to be worthwhile to scan and “pirate” them.)
[quote=Brian Carnell]Couldn’t disagree more. It is the manufacturers fault, and pirating works that aren’t available electronically is not stealing (in a moral sense — I concede the point that our ridiculous copyright laws make such actions punishable by courts).[/quote]
And I couldn’t disagree more. The manufacturer can not ever be blamed for people stealing their goods. To think that is to lay the mantle of responsibility always at someone elses door.
You as an individual are responsible for your own actions. Plain and simple. If you choose to use goods that you have not paid for but should have – you have stolen those goods.
Chris wrote:
“(I do have to note, though, that I have never encountered a “pirated” work that’s been orphaned; all the works old enough to possibly be orphaned have been popular enough that their copyright was not in doubt—otherwise, not enough people would have wanted them for it to be worthwhile to scan and “pirate” them.)”
You seem to be claiming that there are no orphaned works that are of any value. That’s not really what you meant, is it? And something could be orphaned and have a relatively recent copyright date. You are aware of what I mean by orphan works, right?
As for Stephen,
“You as an individual are responsible for your own actions. Plain and simple. If you choose to use goods that you have not paid for but should have – you have stolen those goods.”
So, would you say the 19th century American publishers who legally published editions of Dickens that they hadn’t bothered to pay Dickns for were thieves?
Frankly, the last century and a half or so of copyright law appears to be nothing more than a method of rent seeking. Whether or not it would be legal for me to pirate a given work at any period in American history turns not on some principle about property and theft, but rather what happened to be in the interests of the content industry (for lack of a better term) at the time. As such, it’s a bit hard to get worked up over potential violations of said laws.
I said “if you choose to use goods that you have not paid for BUT SHOULD HAVE – you have stolen those goods.”
Perhaps I should be clearer.
If something is for sale, and is copyrighted, and you get access to those goods without paying for it, either through piracey or straight out theft, then you’re stealing from the person who owns the goods.
If you go out and find a copy of Wizards First Rule online and you download it without paying for it, knowing full well that it is pirated, then you’ve committed an immoral act.
There maybe a contradiction in your statement about 19th century publishers.
If they’re legally publishing editions of Dickens works then they can’t be considered theives. Theft is an illegal act so they can’t very well be legally publishing something if they’re theives.
The question is whether they’re publishing editions of Dickens works legally or illegally.
My original statement that it is not and can never be the manufacturers fault stands. You are responsible for your own actions.
You walk into a store, and pay for the goods within that store. If you walk into a store, grab items off the shelf and run out the door without paying for them, then you’re a theif and have committed an immoral act.
Ethically there is no difference between that, and downloading pirated movies, music, books. It may be easier to do one over the other, but ethically it is the same result.
Stephen, you are missing a vital point here….
My case for example…..
I own all the books in the Sword Of Truth series.
I have purchased then and paid my money for them. Goodkind has received payment for his work from me.
I enjoy these books and often re-read them over and over, but I’m not about to walk round with a backpack carrying the damn things everywhere I go….. I want them on my ereader so I can read then on the bus, the train, while waiting at the doctors, etc, but the publishers have decided this is not to allowed.
The only option open to me to be able to enjoy the material I have legal bought and paid for, is to download an ‘illegal’ copy and have THAT on my ereader.
What I am doing is, in the strictest sense, ILLEGAL, but if you want to say that what I have done is ‘wrong’ or ‘immoral’ you need to take a very long look at your standards and philosophies.
I have paid for this content, yet this person still says I can not have it in the format I need, and if I dare to go against his wishes it is I that is in thew wrong…..
If I buy a CD of my favorite song, and copy it to a tape so I can play it in my car (yes, I’m old, I don’t have a CD player in my car), I am breaking the law, but how is what I’m doing WRONG? Should I really be expected to buy a CD AND a tape of the same song just so i can play it at home or in the car? I can only listen to one at a time anyway….
What is RIGHT and what is LEGAL are 2 completely different things these days.
We no longer have a Justice System, only a Legal System… and Justice and Legal are now two completely different things.
Terry
Actually, if we analyze the usual downloaders of pirated e-books, i.e. that of Wizard’s First Rule, the person s who download these mostly are from outside the United States who are not being catered to by these publishers. There is a huge potential market for these kinds of books outside the US (especially in Asia, where this kind of fiction is very highly appreciated) but the publishers simply refuse to find distributors there or release the books there (just because many people there are perceived to be poor, perhaps). They should take a page from Twilight and Harry Potter, and they should not complain if these would-be customers download from the Web books that they want to read but can’t get from a bookstore. They can always expand their foreign operations.
Also, enforcement of intellectual property rights law is somewhat lax outside of the Western Hemisphere.
Economics 101:
A black market will occur wherever there is a gap between the curves of supply and demand.
If publishers tailored a product to the need and budget appropriately to the largest segment of their demographic, than they would have maximized their potential profit, regardless of the percent of piracy. At that maximum, the pirated losses are artificial, because those people would not have purchased at that level of utility anyway.
Essentially, as a consumer I know your electronic overhead is significantly lower than traditional publishing overhead. So I expect a significant savings. Or at the least, split the benefit between saving and publisher margin. but at $9.99/ebook, I do not receive a proper sense of value. Especially if that includes unnecessary proprietary locks that force me to enjoy my product in a inconvenient manner. If I wait for the (traditional) book to hit the bargain basket I can get it for $3, and trade/enjoy it as much as I like. And while I wait for the price drop, I will just enjoy the book at my local library.
Publishers must create new profit models to meet new formats. Using the old model, and changing the word “paper” to “ebook” isn’t going to fly…
and give me ePub, over propitiatory nonsense please. I spend enough money on my eReader, I should be able to use it at the library as well as your little “store”
-end rant-