Book Piracy as Peer Preservation
computationalculture.net
computationalculture.net
I then tried to purchase the second volume, only to have the transaction declined because I don't live in North America.
I wrote to Penguin USA to complain about this, pointing out that the book I wished to purchase was freely available on download sites so Why were they refusing to sell it to me?
Their response was that I should find a US book store online, place an order for a physical copy and then either wait around 4 weeks for it to be delivered via surface mail or pay a premium price (more than the cost of the book) to have it delivered by airmail.
The fact that I actually specifically wanted an electronic copy for its convenience and immediacy was just ignored.
A downloaded copy does not deprive anyone of the original possession. The only issue in these cases is the legitimate right to be recompensed for that copy. However, if the owner refuses to exercise that right, how can downloading a copy still be considered "theft"?
I disagree to this statement, though. "A downloaded copy does not deprive anyone of the original possession. The only issue in these cases is the legitimate right to be recompensed for that copy. However, if the owner refuses to exercise that right, how can downloading a copy still be considered "theft"?"
(I do agree that the situation is ridiculous though)
That's pretty much what it boils down to.
They refused my money.
They were happy for me to buy the work second-hand and ship it at great expense (and environmental damage) across the world to my home where I could have then scanned it into an electronic format.
All with NO further recompense for the author.
All I wanted to do was pay the author for their work in return for a downloaded copy of the next volume, just like I had bought the first volume, and just like they were happily selling it to other people.
Instead I was redlined on the basis of my nationality.
I found it a somewhat interesting article, but I'd hoped they'd go a little more into the ethics of it, and also give more of a view from the perspective of the various stakeholders they mention (publishers, authors, etc.).
It all died when one of the founders was arrested.
Edit: it seems my information was incorrect, the site's owner sold it and the new owners wrapped the download links with malware and closed the forum. Users left and the site closed.
On the front page it shows a warning about how applications for editor are closed due to having too many. So it seems the community is still alive and well. Here's their documentation as an epub (in Spanish): https://www.epublibre.org/libro/detalle/2398
Games should store their source code in similar locations, along with MMO server software and the like. Someday these developers and publishers will be long gone. But hopefully their creations won't be.
I know I download a hell of a lot of movies, tv shows, etc. that I would definitely never watch if they were not available easily like that.
As for the moral aspect of this, I personally consider that the advantages to society provided by the free, widespread availability of cultural material far outweighs the inconvenience to content distributors & creators; moreover, I consider downloading content 'illegaly' like that to be a form of social protest; to be practiced until their outdated, absurd model changes. Part of this is certainly me rationalizing my behaviour, but I genuinely believe that most of it is not.
And when content is available without any form of DRM and with a minimal amount of intermediaries, I always pay for it (a good example is games through gog.com). Personally, I'll stop downloading illegaly when all content is available like that. And no, netflix doesn't cut it; I want the same, convenient service I get through piracy: a mkv/mp4/whatever without any form of DRM that I can store, read on any of my devices, copy, backup, etc.
This is yet another example of a semantic argument as a proxy for values. What matters is not whether piracy "is theft", it's how bad we think it is. But by framing the argument as a semantic one, it ensures that people will focus on technicalities and constantly talk past each other, all the while ignoring what actually matters.
Agreeing to either definition of the word "theft" is not going to make either side suddenly change their opinion of piracy.
So can we all just agree that copying a file without consent and taking a physical object without consent are qualitatively different acts, and have a direct discussion of their relative morality instead?
This rather shows how hardened the fronts between the positions already are.
If I copy the numbers in a very rich person's bank account to my bank account, I haven't stolen anything from them. All I've done is made a copy of some information.
And yet one kind of copying generates rants about the cultural value of free distribution, while the other generates nothing but fear and horror.
It's all very strange. And not particularly thoughtful or consistent.
IMO either you have a free economy, in which case you make every damn thing free, or you accept that rules of ownership are necessary and that the output of labour has value independent of the ease with which it can be copied.
Claiming that rules of ownership are irrelevant for IP you personally want from others, but very important for IP you personally want to monopolise, is the very worst kind of special pleading.
Money is the agreement that a given person has a given amount of money. That's why blockchains, which allow distributed consensus, can be used to establish currencies.
If, by "intangible bit patterns", you mean the credentials for someone's bank account, this is also not the same as a copy of a creative work. By having a copy of credentials you have the ability to change how much money the person has. This is very illegal to do without consent. Analogously, nobody is suggesting we should be able to legally break into the author's computer and modify their copies of their book.
Ownership is about control over things. The author has control over their copy, and I have control over mine.
Rules of ownership are necessary for rivalrous goods, and not for others. Citing Thomas Jefferson,
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper [(candle)] at mine, receives light without darkening me.
That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
When we're talking about copying information, the issue isn't fraud, it's that you copied somebody else's recipe and made your own version. Now if you were selling this thing and representing it as your own, that would be one thing, but if you're just using it for personal reasons, people might look at it differently. It's as if you found the recipe for a Big Mac and made your own in your own kitchen for your family using your own materials. McDonalds might not like that because you aren't buying theirs, but I don't think they have any legal way to stop you from cooking a Big Mac copy. You could even sell it as long as you don't use their trademark.
Media companies, however, can stop you from "cooking your own Big Mac," even when you make that copy with your own equipment in your own home for personal use. You aren't allowed to use the recipe for a copyrighted media file, in some cases, even if you bought the original (because of having to circumvent DRM). Lawrence Lessig used an example of an ebook of a public domain work that contains the stipulation "this book may not be read aloud." The only justification for this distinction between rights to these recipes is that the law doesn't consider a recipe for food or flavors to be substantial original works but does consider a recipe for sounds or text to be original works of authorship. Some people would see this as an arbitrary distinction. We simply made computers too good at copying things to work within a traditional publishing framework.
None of this automatically makes any of these things ethical, but it's entirely possible and not hypocritical to have differing opinions about fraud and copying. Some people are concerned about the ethics of restricting copying in the way we do. It gives big advantages to those who have been first to file patents and copyrights, companies like Disney who have made their fortune by adapting public domain works and then copyrighting their versions and extending them perpetually. Some people see this as a movement toward a world where no creativity is allowed because somebody owns all of the foundational ideas, stories, and sounds on which we base our culture, which is always derivative of the past. It's already difficult to create anything without being assaulted by lawsuits, and this problem is only getting increasingly worse. To some people, avoiding this dystopia of a ban on creative works is much more important than protecting the profits of established companies with large legal departments. As the world is joining the global economy, they're increasingly being forced to adopt the intellectual property laws of the same countries that have been exploiting them and appropriating their best ideas for generations. Now they're finding it increasingly difficult to compete with the information economies of the already rich. This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed.
Sure, it's a big faceless corporation that already has billions of dollars, so it's as offensive. but it's basically the same thing as a GPL violation. Whenever a big corporation steals, err, I mean 'copies,' GPL code and refuses to give the output away, they aren't actually stealing, they were never going to contribute anything anyways...
Not exactly; I'm saying the benefits to society as a whole offered by the post-scarcity nature of data on the Internet (infinitely copiable with negligible cost) is so large that, in my opinion, their right to decide who should access the content is far less important and so should be ignored.
It certainly sucks for them; and it certainly means that we need to think about new models to finance content creation (since we are living in a definitely scarcity-based society in real life, for now at least); but there you go.
And you say they are the "owner" of the content; given the current laws, yes, "they" usually posess the content. But the "they" in question is very often great industry behemoths constructed on the old, physical model of distribution; regularly offering incredibly bad deals to content creators.
As I said, when a content creator distributes its content directly or with a non-DRM intermediary (such as GoG) - and I consider, for example, both netflix and steam as little more than new forms of DRM - then I always pay for it. I pay for it because we still don't have a new model allowing free distribution of data while providing incentives for content creators (a global licence mechanism or something similar - easier said than done), and so I see it as a compromise in the meantime. It also encourages those new means of distribution.
I run a software training company. We provide streaming access to recordings made of the live session for which a student purchased a seat. Pay for a four day class, and you can stream the recording of that four day class for, at the least, 18 months. Why 18 months? That's all we promise, ideas end up being available for longer - five years and counting now - and in 18 months the class tends to have changed enough that we'd rather you just attend again (for free, if it's online).
Do you have the right to pirate the videos that my students paid for? Do they have the right to share it with people who didn't attend the course, and are thus missing the context of the classroom experience (and the web site where updated materials/code samples are dispensed)?
Thinking that everything you do, even selfishly, is somehow ethically laudable is not a sign of maturity.
You don't really give arguments to counter beyond the ad hominem attack, but let me try to explain why I think this way.
We have the capability to copy and distribute at negligible cost most of the cultural & educational content (books, scientific articles, movies, music, etc.) ever produced by humanity to our entire species; and because we don't have the same capability for physical things, we impose an artificial scarcity on this. Think of the enormous amounts of money and man hours spent on intellectual property: lawyers, consulting firms, etc... entire industries dedicated to limit our capability as a species to distribute knowledge and cultural content.
Now, if only a portion of these efforts had been spent towards spreading network infrastructure and creating, spreading and supporting educational material to the widest amount of people possible, where would we be right now as a species ? Given that, I can help but think that yes, copyright and intellectual property is more of an issue globally than a solution to the problem of incentivizing content production.
So no, it's not only rationalization of my "wrong" behavior (part of it probably is, sure); I genuinely believe this, and I genuinely believe that ignoring those laws and downloading content illegally is a form of non-violent (and massively followed) social protest; the mass reaction of the individuals in society to absurd laws.
As I said above, some sort of new economic model should have to be found for this to be viable; hence why compromise is necessary in the meantime (and hence why yes, I also pay for content when it is distributed in a way that in my view helps to go towards that direction).
I apologize for being rude earlier. I remember once feeling very self-righteous about my own disregard for copyright, and as my feelings have now switched to the opposite side of the issue I think I may have projected my own hang-ups onto you. It's a complicated topic, and I certainly don't think that always complying with copyright law makes anyone a saint either.
Why would you think people would disagree with that?
Don't confuse the economic and moral rights in copyright. When you copy something you aren't necessarily depriving someone of their rights so much as disregarding their awarded monopoly. Just like you usually do if you make moonshine or take a unlicensed taxi.
It's anecdotal at this point but also worth noting that the earliest conception of copyright in the colonial era had nothing to do with protecting creators and everything to do with allowing distributors and regulators get a piece of the pie.
If the current framework written was fully applied, it would not last two full election cycles.
One takeaway from his words is brutally practical: if access to information (including entertainment) is not cheap and plentiful, people will pirate. All that attempts to prevent piracy (i.e. enforce rent-extracting monopolies)accomplish is encourage it, and create not just sympathy, but public acceptance and encouragement of it.
Ethically speaking, "ownership" has a tenuous position. I find it easier to argue that ownership is a construct of society than it is an innate part of anything. That means it's flexible to what society decides. Right now, on this issue, that's definitely in flux.
From a utilitarian perspective, it's really pretty weird too. Ignoring economics for a second (that's my next point), it is probably better for all society to have information free of barriers. A lot more people can enjoy it if more people have access, particularly when the cost of copy and distrubution is so cheap.
Economically it costs a LOT of money though. HBO would not produce game of thrones without being able to get said money back. And they're only going to put as much money into it as they expect to get back. Why don't we have more CGI dragons? because HBO, while rich, is not an endless supply of money. and CGI dragons are really expensive. Yes, to reiterate the point, if HBO had enough money we'd have more dragons.
And as for the cost? $15/month for one show is actually VERY reasonable. Remember it costs millions of dollars to produce - just that one show. Even if you don't watch any other show you are still getting more than your money's worth. If you do watch other shows (And I highly recommend it), it's still easily worth your money. BTW, Netflix, HuluPlus, etc are also all worth their relative costs relative to what you get out of them.
I was born into a world where every peace of land I could use to survive on is owned. But there are an unlimited number of songs or books that can be written. What's the harm in letting a person own the book they created. There are an unlimited number left.
However, ideas are not rivalrous. Once they are created, everyone in the world can benefit from them simultaneously at no additional cost. Therefore, the immediate opportunity cost of allowing people to own ideas is far greater than for physical property.
Not to mention the only people seeing that fucking clip were the ones that bought the DVD. Way to ensure returning customers, well done.
For people that believe something written can be property, then theft is an appropriate word (theft : the act or crime of stealing).
If, OTOH, you believe intellectual creations should not be treated like physical property, then theft is not the correct word.
Definitely not clear-cut.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property#The_term...
"Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman argues that, although the term intellectual property is in wide use, it should be rejected altogether, because it "systematically distorts and confuses these issues, and its use was and is promoted by those who gain from this confusion". He claims that the term "operates as a catch-all to lump together disparate laws [which] originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues" and that it creates a "bias" by confusing these monopolies with ownership of limited physical things, likening them to "property rights""
Economists Boldrin and Levine prefer to use the term "intellectual monopoly" as a more appropriate and clear definition of the concept, which they argue, is very dissimilar from property rights
We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.
Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter. There is no matter here."[1]
When I read comments like yours I can't help missing the early visionaries of the cyberspace.
Pirating is wrong, but I do it because I don't have the money to spend.
It's not like the person would have oome up with whatever without their environment. He is in a constant flow of input and draws his art from that. This goes for every kind of art so the product in the end is as well a product of the environment as by the guy who decided to fix it on the medium.
The owner has the right sure. It's given to him by another product of the environment a certain portion of people agreed upon some time ago.
It doesn't make it right or some kind of physics law. Especially not in the digital world where there is no "stealing". There is more of it after the act.
Copyright only prevents producing and distributing unlicensed copies, i.e. uploading or sharing.
Downloading, streaming, or attending an unlicensed performance is not copyright infringement.
Without Copyright, and when it expires, the natural state of culture is to be copied, that is how it evolves - all works exist naturally in the public domain.
Copyright is a limited right to encourage the arts by providing a temporary monopoly.
The word theft is entirely out of place in discussions of copyright.
I clearly said that making an unlicensed copy and distributing it infringes copyright so we agree.
> You only have the right to view something if someone who created that wants you to view it.
Here we disagree, copyright does not prevent many things like borrowing a friends book or downloading a movie.
Do you have any sources where someone was prosecuted for unlicensed viewing or downloading - this would substantiate your argument.
Uploading and sharing is what copyright prevents, not downloading.
> how is that not a theft?
It is not theft, theft means depriving someone of something actual - copyright infringement is against the law but no-one is charged with theft for it.
Damages are awarded against uploaders but potential income and stolen money are not equivalent.
Copyright is a time limited monopoly, possesion is not - trying to conflate copying with theft does not further the discussion, it only muddies the discourse.
There are a number of ways I can view something against the wishes of the copyright holder, thus reducing their monetary income. Are all of these wrong?
You already mentioned the case of me describing something to other people. The NFL has a (probably unenforceable) disclaimer for the Super Bowl that says, "any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited."
Buying used is often quite cheap. The creator doesn't see a dime. There's no guarantee that the seller of the used item won't use that money to buy something else used instead of new. Is that wrong? Is the creator entitled to a large market of new buyers?
Format shifting is convenient for the customer but not the creator. For example, I bought Advance Wars on the Game Boy around 15 years ago. I've since backed up my copy (trivial to make your own backup with a flashcart). Now, Nintendo sells it on the Virtual Console for 8 bucks. If I play my backed up copy on a hacked Wii U, they're out 8 bucks. Is that wrong? Is the creator entitled to have every customer re-buy media for every new platform they want to consume on? The RIAA says that backing up a CD to an iPod is wrong: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2006/02/riaa-says-ripping-cds-...
Buying in other countries is often cheaper. Look at textbooks for a prime example. When I was in college, I paid $20 for a legit copy of my physics textbook from India printed on poor-quality paper with a cheap binding; the content was exactly the same as the American textbook. Was that wrong? Some people even buy books in bulk in cheap countries and sell them in America for profit. Wiley sued a Thai guy for doing this, made it to the Supreme Court, and LOST. Are creators entitled to segment markets in this way? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/11/how-an-ebay-books...
Renting something instead of buying it reduces profit. Did you know that video game rental is illegal in Japan? Should it be illegal in the US too? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3xuy5YALl0
Lots of people watch stuff with a friend. I had a friend with HBO Go, and we had Game of Thrones night where three or four of us would watch it together. Should we have bought individual accounts?
Some media is paid for by ads. I use an adblocker in my browser. My grandma mutes the TV and goes to the fridge during commercials. Is that wrong?
Some works don't get published in foreign markets. Lots of old video games, TV shows, movies, and books are only officially released in one language, and are never translated by the creator for any number of reasons: lack of interest in the market, lack of money for translation, attachment to the "integrity" of the original work, etc. Unofficial translation violates copyright law, at least in the US. Say a work is only available in Japan, and in Japanese. Is it wrong for someone to translate it to English? Is it wrong for someone from the US to pirate the translated work, when that person would never have bought the work in its original translation and is region-locked from buying it anyway?
Copyright only prevents producing and distributing unlicensed copies, i.e. uploading or sharing - it does not cover viewing or downloading.
You may not agree with the law but nonetheless there is no prohibition against viewing an unauthorised copy.
-- can't reply below ? So replying here.
> as legal as buying a stolen tv.
Buying stolen goods is an offense in law. Buying an unauthorised copy is not.
> How is downloading not creating a copy? There was one file before you downloaded it, now there are two.
Yes, but it is not copyright infringement. Making a local copy for the purposes of viewing a web page, a picture or other digital media is not copyright infringement, this is well established by precedent.
As for whether it's stealing or not, it seems difficult to rationalize it. Is sneaking in to see a movie stealing? Is stealing perishable food stealing (or is it only stealing if all of the rest of the food is purchased before it spoils)?
Legalities aside, ethically it seems pretty clear; if everyone acted as you propose to act, then there would either be no reward for producing content, or content producers would need to physically lock down the ability to view the content (like having movies or TV shows only available in theaters).
HBO now is an acceptable service. One pirates demanded for years. The lack of which they used to justify piracy. And now I see pirates have now decided it's too much. Let's face it, your piracy is due to be cheap ass.
Arrr, but ye shall remember...pirates will be pirates matey!!
Thus you can and do obtain it legally, so long as you don't publish or share the work.
The original uploader or unlicensed streaming site or seller of unlicensed DVD copies is commiting copyright infringement - the downloader or viewer is not.
Drug users are punished with posession, not as smugglers or distributors. Equivalenty downloaders are not infringing copyright.
That's a counter-example. Drug punishments aren't related to this at all, but we do charge people for possession AND we charge people for distribution.
I have received a lot of emotive disagreement and conflation of terms but where is the statute or precedent that says downloading is illegal ?
There is none. Sadly or happily depending on ones position.
Yet I don't understand all this disagreement with the facts.
Please if you believe I am wrong it would be quite easy to substantiate the argument by a citation of statute or precedent.
I have looked into this matter quite extensively and there is no such legal prohibition.
The laws were brought in, because people were abusing the ability to copy digital media and profiting off of it. Essentially making money off of someone else's hard work. That is what the laws are there to stop.
The unfortunate side effect is that even legitimate copying of digital media is being restricted, and while that is a bummer, it also isn't the end of the world.
But in some ways, you are just trying to shift the entitlement from the person wanting a free ride back onto yourself, suggesting that you should be able to do whatever you want with someone else's work (which it still is, even though you have a copy of it). That simply isn't true.
It is no different to Intellectual Property. If you started photo copying and distributing Pokemon cards, you and others would be benefiting from someone elses work, without them getting compensation for it. Even if you're not profiting monetarily, those other people are certainly profiting in some way.
I am in no way a copyright evangelist, but the argument that just because you didn't deprive them of it means that it is okay just doesn't reside in reality. I agree that in most cases, torrenting or streaming something for free when you should be paying is not a big deal. But to pretend it's ethical is a stretch.
The big elephant in the room is that distribution and maybe even production do not require publishers anymore...and so instead of changing to adapt to the market they are out cracking down on supposed pirates.
It takes a lot of ignorance of the business model of publishers to defend their status as on par with artists.
And this is true for both digital content or something as intangible as an identity.
So I am not really convinced by the simple argument that since the original still exists untouched, everything is fine. Yes, this is surely convenient and better for the original author/owner/creator, but not enough to say nothing harmful happened.
You're paying for the creator's time and labor. Taking the product of that time and labor without compensation is theft.
Loss of income does not equal theft.
Whether you have then been wronged or not is another discussion with valid arguments on both sides.
Why not call it copyright infringement if you want a more neutral term?
More to the point though, labelling the act of downloading the latest film as theft is not conductive to a discussion about the moral justification of piracy, because you are using loaded language to condemn it even before presenting an argument. That is, there appears to be no strong consensus that piracy falls under what is commonly referred to as theft.
(I am under the impression that the term digital piracy did stick regardless of one's position in that debate.)
This is also a inconvenient word, though for different reasons.
There is clear precedent that you are not.
In this case, HBO is a business trying to make profit. It spends enormous amounts of money producing shows. Giving away a copy of their product for free arguably reduces their ability to stay solvent. Thus, theft.
If you illegally take away income from a business, it can be classified as theft. If you do something else illegal that doesn't take away income, it would be hard to classify it as theft. Apologies if I was cryptic.
Spending an enormous amount of money does not entitle anyone to a profit, just ask Webvan.
When you create that original you estimate that you have to sell X-number of copies to get back your money that you put into creating the original. If you want to watch/listen to/read that work you at least partially agree with the author that it's worth something. It may be in your opinion worth less then the price, but it's not up to you to set that price, as you have no idea how much work and resources did the author put into creating it. You have only one right - agree or disagree with the author and either pay him for this work or look for something else that was priced in your range.
Words have commonly accepted definitions, and copyright or contract violation simply does not fall under theft. "I think it's bad, theft is bad, therefore, it's theft" just is an incoherent argument. Just as not hiring you is not murder, even if it in the end were to somehow contribute to you dying.
It's really not that difficult, you can simply look up what these terms mean instead of inventing your own definitions. "Depriving someone of money" is not the definition of theft. And it not only isn't, it would be a braindead definition if it were. Suddenly, buying from your competitor would be theft. Accidentally dropping your dishes would be theft. Pretty much everything would be theft under that definition.
And not dropping them would be, as well!
Except you're not actually being sued by the manufacturer either, you're actually being sued by the manufacturer's delivery company.
Well, sure, that would be joyriding rather than vehicular theft. Still a crime. [0]
[0] http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/crime-penalties/federal...
Copyright infringement without breach of contract is more like people stealing the Transmit logo https://panic.com/extras/ripoff/
So, no, actually, whatever you do with that book or dvd, if you paid the price you agreed to, you almost always can do with it whatever you like, unless it is illegal. But just as using a chainsaw you bought and paid for to murder someone is not a breach of contract, so is not copying a book you bought.
And in any case, a breach of contract is not theft. It's a breach of contract. That's why we have a separate term for it. Just as destruction of property is not theft. It's destruction of property.
Plus, if you download an unauthorized copy somewhere, you most likely don't have a contract with anyone regarding the thing that you are downloading, so you could not possibly be in violation of the terms of that non-existent contract.
Yes! And breach of contract is not theft.
Calling copyright infringement "stealing" is not much different then calling it "theft".
In case of movies, i didn't hire anyone to create the movie. Also, i would never buy that movie so they lost nothing.
But what if I sold the publishing rights to that video to a corporation who is bound by law to maximize revenue for my benefit? I've declared by releasing my video for public consumption that my interest is purely commercial.
That corporation does not generally have the legal ability to restrict who buys the rights to watch my video. Let's say the corporation decides to price viewings at $100 a pop. Your brother pirating my video and sharing it with his friends would arguably be doing more good for me than the alternative of fewer people watching it and me making a somewhat smaller amount of money.
Now the ethics are way more muddled. I'm not saying copyright is a bad thing or that infringement is a good thing. What I'm saying is that technological, cultural, and legal hurdles have made the content distribution market non-efficient and therefore non-optimal for content producers. It's virtually impossible for pricing mechanisms to maximize revenue, so there's always going to be situations where piracy makes sense because the content creators won't be able to make money on every viewing, but still derives a benefit from broader consumption anyway.
Some would call it piracy.
But effectively media from the 80s and earlier, that would otherwise become completely unavailable, or rot, becomes preserved and available for many generations to come.
Though that's secondary to the focus on quality and value of the material.
[0] http://transcripts.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Wars_Episode_VI:_Retu...
'Benefit is up there with MF Doom when it comes to being mysterious. He popped onto the scene in the early 2000's when Napster first blew up, when (by a longshot) he won a rap contest out of over 1000 MC's put on by Napster. This made him the first MC to truly use the internet to blow up (seems like forever ago, huh?). He never really put an album together, just happened to make enough tracks out of his $18 setup to release 2002's Benefit, which is filled with too many dope tracks. ' [0]
I can see how even without the help of a contest, indie artists could use sharring platforms to get traction.
They cite Wikipedia as an example of these competing qualities, where user-contributions declined as stricter quality controls were put in place. I've watched this debate over what qualifies as "notable" for Wikipedia rage for years now, as the community tries to strike a balance between hosting an expansive encyclopedia with one that hosts relevant content that isn't watered-down with too much trivia.
I'm curious what others think about this conflict? Will algorithms and machine learning one day curate out the literary gems for us?
For content to be preserved I would personally hope that the direction is more on the preservation angle, personally.. There is very little cost for storing information these days, so there's no real reason to me not to cast a wide net on exactly what content is archived. There is no single good definition of "quality content" after all; even the works considered "top quality" can shift over time, plus there are people out there who really get into niches that a group of curators seeking "top quality content" might miss. (Some of these niches after all deliberately include kitschy or trashy "low quality" content.)
From what I gather from the article, the barrier was more on the technical side of preservation. This is easier to see: the "barrier to entry" is more making sure an e-book isn't fuzzy low-resolution junk, or making sure the e-book has correct title, author, etc.
In reality, most writers can hardly make a living from writing. Their book deals are essentially decided by if the book will sell. For published writers, the biggest factor in publishers' minds is the selling history of her/his previous books. So writers are trying all the means to boost the sale of their books. As far as I know, most writers hate book tours, public readings, etc. They will, however, fly 10 hours to another city, give two readings, each of which may have only 10 people show up, so as to sell several copy of their books, as long as the publishers can cover the travel costs. Most writers are poor and can't afford the travels at their own expense.
So writers really want people to buy their books, not to become rich, simply as a way to support, so that they can afford to write. Writer friends buy each other's books once they are published, as a means to support, both in spirit and in finance. I remember once my family member gave a reading to promote her newly published book. After the reading, a writer friend came to say bye to us, empty-handed. She didn't say anything, but with a very apologetically expression. We know she was having a hard time financially. That expression really hurts.
The financial burden hits hard when writers have family and children. The majority of writers hate teaching, as far as I know. Whenever there is an opening position in a college's writing program, there would be hundreds of applications, including some well-known writers, even although they are aware that teaching will take a big part of their time, their energy from them to work on their own novels, their own books. It seems the cost of context switch between teaching and writing are very high for most writers. A well-known writer, whom I believe most educated people should at least have heard of, can't work on his own books at all when he is teaching. So he has to negotiate with the college to teach only one semester per year, so he can write in the other semester without teaching obligations. I wish his books have higher sale number, so that he can get higher book deals. Thus he doesn't have to teach.
Most fiction writers don't face a piracy problem, they face a marketing problem (nobody knows their book exists) and an economic problem (there is an abundance of supply of novels).
Every new novel has to compete not just with novels released that year, but with all novels still in print. In that way it is unlike most other markets. If you make soap, you only have to compete with the soap manufacturers of today.
However, it is not as the world currently works, unfortunately.
It's not good enough to just have the skills anymore you need to have context that an audience can relate to. It used to be that you either wrote quality and let the audience find you, as with books, or you wrote quantity and convinced the audience that you were relevant, like in news papers. Today you need both.
I made a post on Steam, about it, avoiding commenting on piracy, saying only about the problems Denuvo creates for legitimate costumers.
Quickly, got accused of being a pirate.
So I just went ahead, and admitted that I actually own pirated copies of Doom 1 and 2, and explained why, and how I got them (it was very expensive and hard actually), got piled-up by people using many of the most absurd arguments I ever saw, but that I guess are result of never seeing how life in the third world works.
For example, many people asked me if I would steal a car, I replied that yes, if I needed one urgently, I would, gave for example if my mother needed to go to the hospital immediately, I would happily steal a car and drive her there.
Lots of people then replied I am evil, because they would just call 911... and that any argument about third-world emergency services was a lie. (while today we have on the headlines, Brazillian police kidnapped New Zealand Jiu Jitsu champion in Rio de Janeiro and stole 2000 BRL from him, and now he is requesting protection from the NZ embassy).
Also another argument I saw a lot, is that "if you really want it, you work to get it", I mentioned for example a poor kid that might work reselling trash from landfill would want pirated photoshop, and pirated photoshop books, to get a better life working with photoshop.
Lots of people told me that this kid should just get a better job and buy photoshop, or that should work harder to get money to buy photoshop with the current job...
I concluded that many people that defend DRM and is very strongly anti-piracy, don't know how the rest of the world works, that people that are strongly anti-piracy, lived lives where their suggestions: "just move out of the shitty country", or "just get better job", or "just save money", or "just ask help of the government", as things that work, and don't know how it is to be stuck in a country where calling 911 is a good way to get killed, instead of getting help.
These rationalizations for ripping people off are pathetic; just admit you do it because it's quick, easy and there's little chance of getting caught.
You aren't a freedom fighter, and if you actually paused the trackers long enough to think about what you're doing, you'd have to admit to yourself that what you're doing is simply wrong. At least be honest enough with yourself to admit that.
I WANT to obtain ebooks / to series etc... in a way where the authors get paid but they're either inflated in price due to the USD, not available outside of the USA, not available without some sort of awful DRM that prevents me from using a device or my choosing to read / play them on or are low quality.
IMO Amazon are the worst offenders for this, they make ebooks far more expensive then physical books and yet still plaster them with their restrictive DRM on top. A lot of their library is unavailable outside the USA or if it is - comes at a great cost. On top of this, while their ebooks readers are great I've found I really need the higher end models with the high DPI screens which are /really/ expensive outside the USA and reading on a LCD screen is just too hard.
HBO go isn't available in Australia so that's our.
I currently pay for and subscribe to:
- Audible (highly overpriced, limited content available in Australia, about to cancel)
- Netflix (well priced, good quality, poor interface and limited content available in Australia)
- Apple Music (well priced, good quality, poor interface although the latest betas on iOS 10 and iTunes are much, much better)
- Spotify (Overpriced, medium quality, good playlists / sharing features)
The cost of all these services plus the devices to use them with and the connections for them really adds up. I wish someone / the govt could just act as an international media aggregate and you pay a subscription based on what kinds / levels of content you want and they provide it from various upstream sources in standard formats (never going to happen I know).
In the past I've tried:
- Safari books online - cancelled due to extremely high costs and very restrictive DRM
- Paktpub subscription (Can't remember the name) - overpriced and quality varied greatly
- Scribd - overpriced and very hard to get what you want in Australia
- Stan - overpriced, poor interface, no 4K support
- Quickflicks - overpriced, poor interface, no 4K support
... and many others
After all this, just like with licenses software, it would actually be easier for me just to torrent (or whatever) the thing I wanted, but as I said I want to give money to the people that create and maintain the content.
The only media provider that does his well in my opinion is Bandcamp, ok they have no subscription model because that's not their thing, but I have spent more money on bandcamp than I ever did on CDs or Vinyl, and the artists get more of a cut.
</end rant>