Study suggests 7 in 10 find piracy socially acceptable

I’m thinking of sayings that involve “carrot vs stick,” “good cop/bad cop” and “attracting more flies with honey,” etc. Maybe if content providers tried to promote the idea that content creators need to be supported–as opposed to screaming at everyone for stealing from them–the public attitude towards piracy might change.

But then again, content providers tend to make every effort to separate themselves from the concept of content creators… they are middlemen who keep their creators under wraps (or on pedestals), and who wants to support that?

Possibly the predicted shift away from production conglomerates and towards small, more responsible shops that put the artists up front (and indie artists going it alone) might engender more sympathy from the public: Most people are more willing to support the “little guy” than the corporate entity.

At any rate, it’s not surprising that the numbers haven’t changed: When there’s no enforcement of whatever laws they have, there’s no incentive to change or consider another viewpoint.

Don’t they often say in these sort of things people may well not tell the truth – so the 70% may well be somewhat higher.

In cases where there may be consequences for telling the truth, sure, people will keep things to themselves. In this case, I don’t think that applies.

Right, if people were going to lie about this, they’d err on the side of the angels—so if anything, it’s the 70% finding piracy acceptable that could be understated.

My only point was: Why lie? There are no negative consequences for admitting you pirate (especially in Denmark), it’s considered socially (and therefore morally) acceptable, and there’s virtually no chance of a legal punishment.

It’s like asking me if I drink. “Sure, I drink.” There’s nothing morally, socially or legally wrong with my drinking, so why bother to say I don’t drink?

Based on that, I’d assume the number of people who’d lie on this particular poll would be very small… any adjustment to the 70% based on dishonest answers is probably well within the range of error of the poll itself.

This is interesting:

“Though three quarters of respondents said it was not all right to sell what you downloaded to friends afterward.”

That suggests people are predictably more willing to be unfair to a stranger (a content creator) than a friend. There’s your Global Village for you.

Public perception of a moral position can be very delicate imho. The fiasco of the music industry that screwed it’s customers blind during the CD period did critical damage to the publics sense of fair play. When that happens I believe that the public develops a perception of being cheated that then spreads and becomes part of a wider folk memory, even for those who never suffered any negative fall out during those time.
This kind of folk memory and damage to a moral action will take a long long time to correct, if ever.

The current replay of that aggressive profiteering market strategy by the big publishers in this eBook market is reinforcing this folk memory of being cheated and is, in my view, ensuring that it will be a permanent public view.

The idea that downloading and copying can be stopped or slowed by law enforcement is now yesterdays discussion. Just a quick review of how the internet works and how the technology works makes that clear.

The independent publishers and self publishing writers are appealing to the pragmatic side of people while tugging gently on their remaining moral ambiguity by offering eBook at transparently fair prices. This gives the public the satisfaction that they do yearn for, of owning a legit product, while transparently charging what is clearly a ‘fair price. And in my view this is the only way forward.

Or not… as my $3.00 non-DRM’d books are pirated regularly.

But no evidence they are downloaded …… or replace your sales.

And you have refused, multiple times, to answer the question of HOW they are ‘pirated.’ If it’s in. Torrent with 5000 other books by better known authors, you’ll have a hard time convincing me that people aren’t looking for their books and not yours. If it’s a lone torrent with only books by you, it would be a more convincing argument.

Even then where is the evidence that it is being downloaded ? Torrent sites use completely fictitious download numbers on their sites to persuade visitors that everyone is downloading. It is impossible to know if a single copy is actually being downloaded.

Howard, I’m legitimately curious where you’ve heard of torrent sites using fictitious download numbers. Do you have a link where I can read more about that? Thanks.

*sigh*

So we’ve at least gotten from “piracy DOESN’T MATTER” to “everyone lies about piracy so statistics DON’T MATTER” and “you don’t have EVIDENCE that they specifically pirated YOUR work”.

keep at it, boys, eventually we’ll get them to admit that piracy does matter and that it really is a problem!

Densityduck, the only reason I mentioned the ‘evidence; thing is because Steven has a habit of coming into threads like this and claiming that because HE gets ‘pirated’ it PROVES that price and DRM don’t matter. I disagree with him on this conclusion; I disagree that piracy is the major problem he thinks it is (I think there are other problems which impact author’s sales much more significantly) and I think that even if he is a rare exception, that doesn’t necessarily disprove the rule automatically. And it especially doesn’t disprove it when he refuses, time and again, to back up his assertions with any sort of concrete information.

@Joanna: As if anyone has “concrete information” about torrent sites and downloads… I don’t see you refuting the other side of the argument for lack of the same data. You’re cherry-picking the data to match your own preconclusions. Stop clouding the issue by demanding verifiable stats from a single person, and look at the big picture.

I’ll point out that, as I’m obviously not the only one whose works are in those torrents, that it really doesn’t matter whether you listen to me or care about my dozen books: Look at the volumes of books in there. What do they tell you… that the whole system works beautifully? That there are no problems? Does removing my books from that pile of torrented books somehow make that pile okay? The books are there, they are in torrent files for people to take without properly paying for them, in clear defiance of copyright. Tell me how that’s not wrong.

You obviously don’t have a problem with piracy. However, you also don’t seem to have a good reason why my books–attractively packaged, with free excerpts available to read before buying, sold at a low price on multiple ebook sites and my own, without DRM, in multiple formats, no geo restrictions, well-reviewed and better quality than most backlist ebooks by major publishers–would end up in a torrent file. As the only reason I’m aware of is “Just because I can, and f**k Steven Lyle Jordan,” I’m eager to hear any other logical reasoning you have, to see if there might be something lacking in my sales model that I can address.

And by “logical reasoning for it,” I don’t mean “What’s the difference? It’s good for you!”, another premise that is only supported by supposition and anecdotal evidence, and is certainly not reflected in my profit line, ie, pirated books aren’t helping me to sell any new books.

Steven, if you really think that I ‘obviously don’t have a problem with piracy’ than you clearly have not been paying attention to any of my posts or articles on this website and elsewhere. I don’t ‘condone’ piracy. I do not download from torrents, personally, and I obtain the content I consume from legitimate channels. I spent over $1000 on ebooks last year!

My point is simply that a) you are never going to stop all piracy, the same way you are never going to stop all shoplifting or using office supplies from work at home or whatever. A portion of these losses is simply the cost of doing business and that’s life in ANY industry and b) if you focus on ‘piracy’ as the big issue, you miss other, even bigger issues such as geographical restrictions, DRM and exorbitant prices which affect the bottom line of authors MORE—and no, the fact that your personal books do not have this problem does not in any way negate the issue they present for the vast majority of commercially popular authors. That’s ALL. I never said I condoned piracy, I never said I supported piracy.

As for why your books are in a torrent, I suspect it’s simply that they were there. The people who seriously torrent (99% of whom likely never even read the books) just collect as much as they can and make it available for the heck of it. I doubt a single one of them is posting a 10,000 book torrent of popular authors plus you and saying to himself ‘I am doing this to screw Steve Jordan.’ If that’s really what you think, than I suspect there is nothing I can say that will contribute anything further to a dialogue with you.

Steven, the reason that your books are turning up in torrents is because, as you said yourself, the current system does not work.

The trouble is that nobody is trying to create a workable system for the digital world. Right now it’s just one big conflict zone and authors like you are essentially caught in a war-zone.

Large corporate content publishers don’t care about morality or ethics or the overall fairness of the system. They only care about maximizing profits. The Publishers decided to take the civil offense of copyright infringement, label it with the ludicrous term “piracy” and push for criminal prosecutions.

So you can thank them for the fact that most citizens have no respect at all for copyright. We don’t have a system of copyright that serves the public interest and deserves respect. I’m sorry that your interests are protected. But, then again, neither are mine.

Don’t forget: Criminal prosecutions (or, at least, their equivalent) were always an option in copyright infringement cases… do it big enough, and you could easily score jail time. The adoption of the word “piracy” is obviously charged, but then, that’s the modus opperandi of all advertisers, lawyers and politicians… and it doesn’t obscure the fact that copyright infringement is going on, and going unpunished.

But I agree: The system doesn’t work; and a major part of the reason is that too many of the public don’t care that the system doesn’t work, because a broken system means they can score free stuff, from major authors and from nobodys like me, without reprisal. Nothing I’ve heard yet contradicts that single, simple fact.

Yes, the corporate entities have severely poisoned the waters. Yet the public has it in their power to force them to clean it up, or go out of business forever… and instead, they’re adding rum to make double-shots out of the poison, then kvetch that the poison’s not as tasty as Coke. How is a system going to get fixed in that environment?

When I spend $10 a seat for a movie ticket and then have to sit through 10 minutes of commercials and 10 minutes of up an coming features and then they throw a propaganda piece about the evils of piracy, I’m ready to walk out of the theater and download everything I can find. The propaganda campaign has had the opposite impact on me. I believe the study.

Why aren’t you driven to boycott or picket the commercial advertisers, or write scathing reviews of the movies previewed before the feature? Why don’t you pick a seat, then hang in the lobby until the movie starts? In fact, knowing in advance that you’re going to be bombarded by all that, why do you go to the movies at all?

Of course, if you told the manager you were being charged too much to sit through all those commercials, he’d calmly tell you that if there were no commercials, he’d have to charge you more to get in. Would your response, then, be to break his window?

Or would you go quietly back to your seat?

There’s a clear double-standard at work here. You accept the commercials, even though you might not use their products, and you don’t feel the need to chew out the theater manager for making you sit through them. (I know I don’t give the manager grief because I sit through a constant series of commercials for TV shows I don’t like, and sodas I don’t drink.) Yet piracy messages are “unacceptable propaganda,” and your response is to go and do something illegal.

When a society can take any action without a fear of negative consequences, they cease to become a society, and they become a mob, acting according to their own selfishness and ignoring the damage they do to the market. Mob sensibilities presently dominate the ebook market, and it’s easy to identify with the mob when the mob makes it possible for you to get things you want without paying for them.

The only long-term results of such a situation are that eventually, the mobs will come to dominate, then figure out how to monetize the market for themselves (check out “A Pirate’s Dilemma,” there are plenty of historical precedents)… or they’ll come to dominate, then move on, and the market will collapse behind them, to eventually be reconstructed by legitimate businesses. Either way, it will drag out the current problems for many more years before anything is settled.

Steven, you’re quite right – the system is broken, and most of the general public doesn’t care. Not because we can “score free stuff”, but because it really isn’t our problem or our responsibility to fix.

I didn’t stand, Luca Brasi-like, behind [your favourite Big Six published author’s name HERE] telling them either their signature or their brains would end up on the contract that stipulated I wouldn’t be allowed to purchase their books.

I didn’t whisper seductively into the ears of the CEOs of the Agency Six to convince them that the best way to grow the e-book market was to double prices while eliminating quality control.

I don’t even recall holding any seminars for prospective indie authors and advising them to keep as low a profile as possible, to make it harder for people to find their work, but that if they do maintain a higher profile it should be as negative as possible, to ensure people never look at their work, since there is always a risk that if someone reads your work and enjoys it they might pay you for it, now or in the future.

I didn’t cause these problems, and there really isn’t much I can do to fix them.

Sure there is. You can boycott their products. You can support the products of companies (and indies) that sell quality products in a manner you approve of. And most importantly, you can get others to join you.

All of these companies have one major Achilles’ heel: They depend on you buying their stuff. If you don’t, they go under. If they want your business, and you demand change, you’ll get it (at least to some extent). If you do nothing… and even worse, continue to buy from the companies you don’t like… things will not change.

And I reiterate that the only reason people are doing nothing is… the system as-is gets them free stuff. I bet that if the system as-is resulted in you’re not getting any stuff, or nothing but more expensive stuff, you would consider it your problem and your responsibility to fix, and you and everybody else would be out there, demanding change on a silver platter.

Consumers have more control over these matters than they think. There are more and better alternatives than piracy, vandalism, and bad behavior. Don’t think you’re a lone sheep in a dark forest… you’re part of a herd on the move. Now steer away from that cliff and get going in a constructive direction.

“Sure there is. You can boycott their products. You can support the products of companies (and indies) that sell quality products in a manner you approve of. And most importantly, you can get others to join you.”

Pretty to think so, and in certain circumstances it even works. Still, most people don’t seem to have a big problem with Agency prices or DRM (see the bestselling eBooks at most sites) and folks who have a problem with geo restrictions aren’t buying anyway as they can’t. Most boycotts are ineffective and fail to produce a significant economic impact from those who use/buy or would use/buy a product, but yes it can’t hurt I suppose if you can get enough folks to agree on what the actual problem(s) are.

Brian I do not agree with you at all. There is no evidence most people don’t have a problem with DRM. I believe most do. And many who are suffering from geo limitations are downloading pirated copies.

Most boycotts are successful and have an impact on the business being boycotted.

It is also up to those of us who understand the issues and who object to the price fixing and profiteering to communicate the facts and options to our friends and colleagues.

I have a huge problem with DRM. And I won’t pay $9 for an ebook that was first published in the 1950s and whose author is dead. (Wasp, by Eric Frank Russell). I’m not pirating it – I don’t know how – but tell me that price isn’t set by nothing but greed.

I would support indy writers, but I can’t find any who write what I read. Most of it is urban fantasy, horror, gritty mysteries, erotica or paranormals of some sort or another. I know those are very popular genres, but it’s not what I read.

So most of my ebook reading are classics, or books that I can get for a reasonable price ($5 or $6, DRM-free from Baen).

What I don’t understand is, if a small company like Baen can afford to even give away books free, and charge reasonable prices for their other books, why can’t the Agency 6 do so too? (I’ll bet the Agency 6 just *hate* Baen.)

@Howard, most folks on this site or say MobileRead hate DRM. Most people in general don’t even know what it is or how it affects them. I agree that some folks running into geo restrictions are pirating as I said they aren’t buying anyway because they can’t.

Statistically most boycotts fail, because they simply don’t get enough support. IF enough folks can be convinced to forgo books from favorite authors or to buy them used thus denying the publisher income then a boycott could/would work, but most folks I’ve run into don’t have the desire to go that far.

What wonderful emotion. It is, of course, impossible to prove that any pirated copy would have been purchased if it had not been available through piracy. It’s also impossible to prove that it wouldn’t have been, which means that we should probably be arguing about what sort of probability to give to the sale (e.g., is it 75%, 50%, 25% or something else).

That my books being pirated don’t automatically translate, one-for-one, into lost sales does not mean that having my books available through piracy doesn’t hurt me. Certainly they can cheapen my brand, make authors less likely to sell through me, and, where the books are OCR scans rather than pirated copies of eBooks, make it seem as if my editing is worse than is the case. The notion that pirated books will eventually translate to sales (because downloader of pirated books might pay for a legal download of some other book in the future) has never made much sense to me. He’s more likely to tell his friends who might have been considering a legal download to pirate instead.

Like some of the others on this loop, I try to do things right. I offer what I believe to be high-quality books at prices that are extremely affordable. For the most part, my books are DRM-free. When purchased directly from the publisher, my books are available in multiple formats including HTML which is about as future-proof as anyone could want. Still, I don’t see piracy helping me. I’ve never had a customer tell me he discovered me via pirating and now wants to be a good citizen.

If users see piracy as acceptable, I think they have every right to expect more extensive DRM, higher prices, more delays in release in eBooks, and all of the other things we hate about our industry.

Rob Preece
Publisher

@Rob “If users see piracy as acceptable, I think they have every right to expect more extensive DRM, higher prices, more delays in release in eBooks, and all of the other things we hate about our industry”

Which are most of the reasons people say they pirate, so if the industry goes even farther in that direction don’t publishers “have every right to expect more” people to start pirating? It seems like trying to put out an oil fire by throwing more oil on it.

Isn’t the definition of insanity doing what you’ve always done and expecting a different outcome?

You’re right becca. Threatening to download files illegally has not earned the respect of content producers (are you surprised?). And you’re right that it never will.

similarly, forcing people to pay inflated prices for crippled files isn’t going to work either. It didn’t work for the music and video industries, why should it work for ebooks?

Most people find DRM a major nuisance and most boycotts succeed. The market responds. eBook buyers care.

Josie: “Which are most of the reasons people say they pirate, so if the industry goes even farther in that direction don’t publishers “have every right to expect more” people to start pirating? It seems like trying to put out an oil fire by throwing more oil on it.”

You would think it was obvious wouldn’t you … incredible really.

becca: “Isn’t the definition of insanity doing what you’ve always done and expecting a different outcome?”

So right. SO right.

There has always been far more readers than actual buyers of books. In the era of print non buyers sustained themselves via libraries and the widespread borrowing of books. The used book market was also an avenue for those not prepared to pay full price.

All of this will change with the coming of digital. Lending will be strictly controlled and so will libraries – indeed the latter might not even survive given that delenda est bibliotheca appears to be the new motto of some publishers. A ‘used’ ebook market is simply a non starter.

Given this one has to suspect that a large portion of this group – formerly largely hidden from authors – will turn to piracy. That’s my speculation anyway.

Frankly the real question that needs answering is whether any purely content based industry can survive in a digital form. The economics of it does not make much sense to me. The fact that so early in the transition to ebooks the price of $0.99 is being promulgated as the new norm by many selfpublishers is not a good sign.

I don’t insist on $0.99 per book (although I just bought an indy at that price). I’m willing to pay $5 or $6 for a DRM-free, well-formatted book such as I get from Baen. I’m even willing to pay somewhat more than that for a new book by a favorite author (I paid $15 for an eARC of Lois Bujold’s latest book).

What I’m nto willing to pay is $8 or $10 – essentially new book prices – for books that have been out for years and are an author’s backlist. I’m certainly not willing to pay more for an ebook than I am for a paper book. And I don’t see why, if discounts can be applied to paper books, they can’t be also applied to ebooks. As I’ve said before, charging $9 and $12 for books that have been out since the 50s makes no sense at all. That’s just greed, and I won’t do it.

There’s an old saying that “the dogs bark, and the parade moves on.”

The window that the publishing industry has to redefine the relationship with its customers is rapidly closing. They can try to change the playing field to move from “sales” to “licenses” (while keeping or increasing the same profit margins), move to the agency model, adopt DRM, or whatever. But if consumers perceive the new playing field as unfair, they’ll revolt. If they revolt by boycotting, the industry might have a chance to respond. If they revolt by turning to piracy, the industry will wind up in a much worse position than if they sought a consumer-friendly solution now.

Personally, I have no compunction in removing the DRM from everything I *buy*–not license–from Amazon, in case I decide next year to switch to a Nook. I similarly have no moral problem in removing the DRM from an EPUB library book so I can read it on my Kindle, rather than on my PC. Since the U.S. Government seems unwilling or unable to come up with IP laws that take 21st century reality (or the rights of consumers) into consideration, I’m going to continue to ignore them, feel my own way through the swamp, and deal with the consequences. I’m moving on.

And another thing – I don’t see piracy as acceptable, yet I’m one of the legal buyers who publishers punish with higher prices because they can’t figure out how to deal with pirates. I cannot stop piracy. Lots of folks comment on blogs and articles all over the internet that piracy is wrong, but our opinion hasn’t stopped it. Publishers have the power to TRY to stop it to a greater degree, but it seems like they are just throwing up their hands and saying “we don’t want to have to change, so we’ll just HAVE to raise prices and the poor suckers who play by the rules will just keep forking over their money.”

Well, not this girl. I refuse to pay higher prices on ebooks just to subsidize pirates because publishers are set in their old ways. When I see an ebook priced at $15, all I can think is “they are trying to make me pay for the people who pirate this book, when if the price was $7.50 not only would I buy it but maybe some of those pirates would become paying customers, too. And at $5, even more would, and publishers would make even more profit due to higher sales volume.” And then I don’t buy the book, because if I did I would just be an enabler to that very flawed pricing scheme.

But there must be enough other people willing to pay the “pirate tax”, because publishers keep adding it on more and more. All I can hope is that eventually more legal readers will start refusing to be used as crutches for the industry, and join the boycott of high priced ebooks, forcing publishers to figure out a better way to deal with piracy.

And I know, before anyone goes there, that virtually everything we buy has a little something added on to make up for loss due to shoplifting. But I can see stores making an effort to prevent & punish shoplifting – publishers, not so much.

“becca says:
What I’m nto [sic] willing to pay is $8 or $10 – essentially new book prices – for books that have been out for years and are an author’s backlist.”

Really? Why? Does the text go bad when it sits around for a while? Does creative work stop being interesting just because it’s old?

How many garden variety 1920s books did you read this year so far then?

How many are on the shelves?

Density Duck: No, of course not. But you’re assuming the higher price is the default. If it’s a book by an author you know and like, you might be willing to pay a higher price to get to read it as soon as it’s available. So the price is set high to start with to get money off these customers, and then drops in order to catch the customers who are prepared to save their money by waiting. It’s simple market economics, and if you maintain the price at the premium level in perpetuity you just can’t expect as many sales as if you vary the price level over time to attract different customers.

Orielwen: Or maybe you’re assuming that price drops over time is the natural state of affairs. Maybe, in a world where you don’t have to make room for new stuff, you don’t need to hold firesales just to try and get some revenue out of the old junk.

Yet new stuff is constantly arriving into the ‘marketing sphere’, so price drops over time is just as applicable to eBook as any other product that is constantly changing.

John Doe – I agree 100%

Density Duck: one assumes that the backlist title has already earned back it’s costs, so the price is pure profit for the publisher and author. I imagine that it’s silly of me to think that such savings should be passed on to the reader.

It’s not so much that the price drops over time as that there is a short period of time when the book is first released when you can get away with charging extra, because there exist people with more money than patience and it’s profitable to take advantage of them. Once as many of these have spent their money as are going to, then it’s time to start selling at the ‘real’ price, so that you can get more sales from everyone else. Why is this so hard to comprehend?

the other reason I’d expect a backlist to be priced somewhat lower than current books is the assumption that a writer will get better over time. I’ll pay more for new releases of Nora Roberts than I would for her earlier Category romances, for example.

It’s interesting: on SBTB and Dear Author, consensus seems to be that $5 – $6 is about the highest price for a no-questions, impulse buy for an author’s backlist. And that’s what Baen charges standardly for their wonderfully non-DRM’d ebooks. If Baen can make a profit by charging in that perceived sweet spot, I don’t see why the Agency publishers can’t. When books get up to $10, they stop being an impulse buy for me, and become a luxury item.