Authors destroy legal e-book lending site thanks to Authors Guild, publisher FUD
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
Of course, I'm likely more technologically capable than the average reader, but for how long? It's not hard to imagine a future where piracy is an easy and attainable option for the vast majority of readers. A future where authors subsist almost entirely on the goodwill of their readers.
And as a reader, this move seems like a straight up fuck you.
When I buy a physical book (often at a price near that of an ebook) I can lend it to friends and family an infinite number of times, resell it for a good portion of the original price, or give it away to whomever I please. I have no such "rights" with a DRM protected ebook. But I do have the right with some DRM protected ebooks to temporarily lend it to someone else. And these authors just tried to make that more difficult.
And really, what have they accomplished? They've shut down a single tool that let some readers use a publisher-sanctioned tool to lend DRM-protected ebooks.
They haven't stopped anyone with the power of Google from learning how to remove the DRM from their ebooks or audiobooks and sharing them with however many friends, family members and strangers they want. They haven't stopped anyone with the power of Google from finding torrents of their ebooks or audiobooks.
They did however manage to piss off a chunk of their customers. The ones who actually pay $12 for an ebook.
If you subsist in part or in whole on the goodwill of your customers, it seems like a good idea to try and maintain that goodwill.
It would be awesome to know the average 'lending count' of physical books, but I can tell you it is for sure no where anything close to 'infinite', I doubt it is even approaching ten.
Have you checked out the resale value of anything on Amazon that isn't considered collectible or a first edition? I hate seeing that I am only getting less than two bucks for a book I paid 24.95$ for just a few months ago. Same goes with selling back retail copies of most of my stuff at Half Price Books.
The one and only downside to the Kindle for me was lack of ability to share my books with friends. I've finished reading a book several times and told friends how great the book was, but I couldn't lend it to them, either because the book wasn't lendable, or the friend didn't have a kindle.
On the otherhand, I brought a small library of physical books with me (maybe 10-12) when I moved to my new house with roommates. I keep those books in the living room bookshelf, and all of those books have been read by multiple people, be it roommates, friends, or visitors.
E-books are currently missing the point on the social aspect of book purchasing. One of the great joys of reading is finishing a great book and lending it to someone and then discussing it, or having the opposite happen to you. I hope this problem gets a happy solution soon.
I agree, fully, that the technical reasons for this shift are irreversible. I agree, too, that the analog copyright based models dating back to the 18th century have become unsuitable in the 21st. And that's why we need to think long and hard about artists rights as such, and what we're going to do to assure that they have the same level of commercial respect and dignity that accrues to those who provide goods and services with marginal costs greater than zero - especially when artist's fixed costs remain non-trivial.
That starts with taking a critical look at remarks like yours. "Look at me! I'm so supportive! Aren't you grateful? You better be fucking grateful." I'm sorry, that's not respect. That's just you being a conceited prick. Moreover, your willingness to stop paying "if you're displeased" (while presumably continuing to read) indicates that it was never respect for the law or fair exchange that motivated you.
If your heart were truly in the right place you'd pay because you made a copy, and for no other reason. And if you didn't want to pay - for whatever reason - then you wouldn't make the copy. I recognize that we have no way to implement an exchange that enforces this norm at the present time. And I recognize that goodwill is the only thing artists can depend on for the foreseeable future. But let's stop pretending that this isn't a very one-sided arrangement. And lets stop pretending that people can take advantage of a one-sided situation and keep their hands clean. I'm sorry, but they just can't. And unless you're actively looking for a system that both sides view as fair, you're not the mensch you think you are.
Also, if you're not willing to pay for what's provided because you MUST pay, then stop calling yourself a customer. Customers pay. They pay every time. And they pay to get what they want because that's how they get what they want. They don't make payment a secondary, incidental exchange based on some extraneous factor, like whether or not the provider expressed enough slobbering gratitude for the "customer's" generosity. Unless we're discussing gifts, generosity shouldn't enter the picture. I know that when I pay for groceries, generosity isn't what motivates me.
I'll clue you in. If generosity and "a desire to support artists" is what motivates you, then what you're describing is no longer a commercial transaction. It's an act of patronage. I'm not saying that patronage is necessarily bad, but be honest enough to admit that's what's happening, and stop pretending you're a customer when, in reality, you're no such thing. Like everyone else, you take what you want. Unlike most, you make a donation. That's appreciated. But it would be appreciated even more if you were honest about what it is, and what it means for people to be in a situation that is entirely dependent on goodwill.
If you're really concerned with the status and well-being of artists, stop saying "your reduced status is just the way it is and you should be grateful for what little you've got left" and start asking "what would restore a measure of genuine equality to this situation?"
In my view, the current model of selling a copy of a work to a customer as if it were a scarce good was dubious in the past and is downright unsupportable now. It simply doesn't map very well onto the underlying reality of effortless, unlimited digital copies.
What makes more sense is a patronage model - that is, have the customers fund the production of the work, rather than buy copies of it. (Think something along the lines of Kickstarter.) Once the work is produced, it is free for all to use at no further charge. (Though of course premium products could still be made - for example, signed, numbered, or customized editions.) This has a number of advantages: it eliminates the whole mess of DRM and copyright, it democratizes the process of allocating funding for artistic works, and it diffuses the risk of producing a large work among a potentially large number of people.
There are, of course, downsides to this model. It will generally be necessary to produce some initial portfolio of work unpaid so that the customers can trust that you'll be able to deliver. (Though really, an analogous situation exists in the current model.) And there are legal questions to iron out over what happens when a work doesn't get completed.
Still, I think that over the long term this will prove to be the right approach. It suits the reality of the products that artists are selling, and it is fair to everyone involved. It also makes it possible to cut out a whole gaggle of intermediaries and bureaucracy that stand between the artist or artists producing a work and the public. Not to mention eliminating the conflicts of interest that can make an artist the enemy of their own fans.
edit: Heh, you keep editing your comment, and I see that you too have noticed that artists have patrons now rather than customers in the traditional sense. The difference is that I see it as an opportunity and a good thing, and you see it as exploitive. And indeed, it certainly can be exploitive if one doesn't use a business model that suits this reality.
What bothered me so much about the original comment is that the poster was so sloppy about this distinction. He'd treat the exchange like it was charity when that suited him, turn around and demand the very different regard that accrues to a customer when that became preferable, only to switch the frame back to a charity when that was most beneficial to him. It had a slipperiness that is transparently self-serving and one-sided. The guy, quite frankly, comes across like a weasel.
I'm not saying that people don't make money in the current environment, or that many people who would never have had opportunities in a more closed system aren't finding ways to do really great work now, or that ultimately, things can't work out for the best for artists and audiences alike. I'm just saying that this guy, in particular, has a problem with his ethics.
If you recognize that you're a patron, be sensitive to the serious inequality that comes with that status, and aware of the special deference to artists that is required to maintain a modicum of balance. And if you see yourself as a mere customer, then have the decency to behave like one, and actually pay. Every time. Not just if and when you happen to feel like it. But don't cherry pick the best of both - the status of one and the detachment of the other - while dodging the kind of clear definition that leves you with anything less than the upper hand at all times, because that's just being a dick.
You also seem to forget that in many countries that support a strong book market, there has never been any requirement to buy books for a long time before the internet got going, due to the network of public libraries. I have been using the interlibrary loans scheme in the UK since I was 10 to order pretty much any books I wanted to read. Yet I still buy a lot of books. Which I then often give away to people and buy again. Given that everyone in the UK who reads knows that they never need to pay for books beyond the cost of a library card, why do they buy so many books?
The force of law is dependent on goodwill. And it isn't as though the force of law isn't being used in copyright. In this case, the threat of the misuse of law was enough to make the ISP shut down the service.
Also, I would say that of the artists, musicians and writers I know, the vast majority treat the recent developments in digital copying as something to be explored and used as inspiration, not as some kind of existential threat.
[edit] at a guess, I would say that there has probably been more money made by authors writing about the internet, than has been lost to authors through piracy on the internet, if only because geeks tend to collect massive dead-tree libraries, even when they own a kindle.
What I was addressing is the issue of the way things are. Today, many people buy books by choice, not because they can't get them for free. And in the foreseeable future, I expect more and more people will buy books purely by choice.
Now - you didn't say as much - but I expect the argument you're leading to is that people who pirate books should be treated the same way as shoplifters. Which I think is a horrible idea.
Not because pirating things is morally laudable, or authors don't deserve to get paid, but because the practicalities of detecting and enforcing that punishment would have drastic and damaging effects on the internet and innovation.
So let's discuss alternatives.
If I want to steal an ebook, I have to go to a torrent site or wherever, download it, use something like Calibre to get it into the format my ebook reader will accept, plug that ereader into my computer and sync it over.
If I want to buy an ebook, I search Amazon's (or B&N's or whoever's) online ebook store right from my device, and click buy.
When I've completed the process, I get quite a bit more from the torrent option than the Amazon option. With my DRM-free pirated ebook, I can download it from any country I want regardless of publisher embargoes, read it on any device and share with whoever I want. With the Amazon option, I can't.
Leaving morality aside for the practical purposes of our discussion, currently the question this leaves consumers is whether to pay $12.99 for immediate convenience that comes with some future restrictions, or pay $0.00 and put forth about 15 minutes of effort.
That's a pretty uphill battle for convenience at $12.99. Particularly when you can buy a paper version of the same book, often for near about the same price.
The great thing is, there's a pathway to changing that balance, without ruining the internet or screwing the artest. It's called getting rid of - or drastically reforming - traditional publishers.
If I were to buy "The Help" for my Kindle, I'd pay Amazon $9.99, and the Author's Guild tells me - http://www.authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/e-book-royalty... - that Kathryn Stockett would get royalties amounting to $2.28. That's what we like to call a "metric-shit-ton" of overhead, particularly for a purely digital good.
You could cut the end-user price in half, and still have more than 50% of each sale go towards distribution, marketing and customer support costs. It's also quite likely that cutting prices in half would move more books, meaning that poor "fourth class citizens" like Kathryn would make quite a bit more money in the end.
This is something I'm acutely aware of and it's not what I'm getting at. I know that bringing panopticon style policing to the cultural sphere would be an unfathomable catastrophe. And though I didn't say so here, I've been long opposed to regarding unauthorized copies as "stolen" and that making them is, in itself, an act of theft - in large part because that line of reasoning invites such a horrific response.
But none of this changes the fact that when someone makes (not takes, but makes) a copy, they simultaneously generate an obligation to the author. If there is an act of theft involved, it pertains to the money owed to the author, and a person's keeping in his pocket something that, by rights, belongs in the author's. I mean, we can talk all we want about the infinite nature of intangible goods, and how this makes analogies with naturally limited physical goods absurd. But in doing so, we're narrowly focusing on the digital copy itself, and not the money - which is not in infinite supply - and which didn't change hands when it should have. Expanding the scope of discussion to include this amount makes the charge of theft less absurd that it is when applied to the copy alone. This is a subtle distinction, I admit, but that doesn't make it any less real.
Obviously, author's moral claims aren't unlimited. Fair Use, for instance, encompasses a set of situations in which a copy can be made without minting a corresponding obligation. This is a good and necessary thing. Indeed, I'm all for a significant expansion of what constitutes Fair Use. (Whatever else you may think of me, please don't mistake me for an advocate of the maximalist RIAA / MPAA positions.)
At the same time, I think the moral obligation to pay that comes with many, if not most copies, is something that's gotten very short thrift. Just because technology makes it easy to dodge this responsibility doesn't mean that it goes away. And if copyright as we've know it isn't a viable system any longer, then we need to come up with one that is.
Here, it's worth remembering that patronage usually involves much more risk than being a customer. This leads to a very different relationship with the artist than artists have with customers. After all, it's one thing to buy a ticket to a hit show. It's another to underwrite the costs of the theater company long before anyone knows how good the result will be. Generally speaking, being a patron means handing over money before the work in question exists. Being a customer means paying the artist after the fact. And unless you're covering the costs and obligations of bringing an existing work to a substantially wider audience, you can't claim to be underwriting something that already exists.
In many ways, it can be very liberating for artists to have the money they need up front. At the same time, this can limit where they go with it. A viable commercial market allows them to take chances a patron wouldn't underwrite, and do well if the bets they make pay off. This is another reason to keep the distinction between patron and customers very clear. Their effect on artists differs considerably, and I don't think one can be easily substituted for the other.
>"Does the Authors Guild care about writers? Absolutely — just as much as the RIAA cares about musicians."
This really isn't true. The RIAA represents the recording industry - not musicians. The Authors Guild, along with the Writers Guild and other organisations, do represent authors, and they do care about them. The presidents of both the Authors Guild and the Writers Guild are writers. Both frequently go up against the studios themselves. There have been many, many conflicts between the guilds and publishers/studios.
You can argue that what the Authors Guild is doing here is misguided, but to say the guild doesn't care about authors is just plain wrong. I speak from experience.
Paulo Coelho has interesting thoughts on piracy helping book sales. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/feb/01/paulo-coelho-rea...
Coelho's points are definitely interesting but it seems to hinge on the digital/physical separation of products and how we currently value physical stuff ("to download my books [then] buy a hard copy", songs on the radio / buying CDs)... I guess that the real test comes when you're saying "download my book for free, then if you like it, download my book for money".
This is the beginning, a shadow of what it will look like when the worst actors among us in society really learn how to yoke the social network herd.
[0] http://day4.se/how-we-screwed-almost-the-whole-apple-communi...
I guess another way to say what I'm trying to say is: he didn't need to add any spin of his own (like the RIAA line) considering the quotes and screenshots.
If their works were able to be lent to anyone and everyone in the world they wanted higher prices for their books to be charged, just like what libraries have to pay since they can also lend to anyone off of the street.
Either way, it's hard to see how any of this was LendInk's fault.
The only truth is power. Legally the site was in the clear, and yet the authors had enough power to shut it down.
Many of the authors understood that it was legal but still did not like it because it skirted the spirit of the contract which that lending is for family and friends.
The strangest part of this story is that some outraged people were able to close a website they didn't have any claim to.
You can choose to strictly be on one side or the other, but the problem is that once you commit, you lose the ability to appeal to the other side.
http://heideas.blogspot.ca/2006/08/case-of-2000000-comma-and...
Here's a choice paragraph:
The CRTC lawyers, "armed with the rules of grammar and punctuation" decided
that a comma setting off an adjunct clause from a conjoined structure
necessarily gives it matrix scope, and if Rogers' contract lawyers didn't know
that, too bad for them.
The authors did not write the Amazon publishing contracts. Most of them aren't lawyers, and a lot of them may not even be college graduates. They cannot, and legally will not be held to a strict reading of the contract if they can prove that they reasonably believed that the Lendle program was limited (or marketed as limited) to friends and family of the ebook purchaser.
BTW, that's not the most expensive comma. Check out the comma in the Cleveland Browns contract that cost Cleveland a Superbowl-winning franchise. (The current Browns are an expansion team.)
I'm surprised the AG has not come out against services like BookCrossing which allows individuals to trade physical books and works similarly to LendInk. (Maybe there was and I just didn't hear about it).
It sounds like there were two objections:
1. OMG, this site is pirating my content! 2. I didn't want people to lend to anyone, just their friends and family
Case #1 is clearly an issue of authors being misinformed or technologically unsophisticated.
Case #2 is that authors probably thought that they were buying into a particular scenario, but the technology did not actually serve that scenario. The scenario I'm guessing the second camp thought they were buying into was one where lending would actually not be widespread --- where one would have to personally know someone in order to read a book without purchasing. It didn't limit who could be lent to by forcing users to declare "friends and family". I'm guessing that authors felt that LendInk was increasing the amount of lends actually happening above what would have happened had LendInk not been present.
Note: I'm not passing judgement on LendInk. Just that I don't think many people are able to make the technical distinctions that many HN readers or readers of tech sites are able to make.
Nope. That would require that Amazon have some way to investigate whether someone was really your "friend" (how is "friend" defined?) and be willing to spend the money to carry out the investigation. Not likely for a $1.99 ebook.
Perhaps they could limit you to a list of friends (a maximum of ten or whatever) but that wouldn't allow you to (e.g.) lend programming books to one set of friends and novels to another.
EDIT: in the U.S.
If anything, if this was the route intended, said authors COULD try to claim "tortious interference" (whereby a third party induces or enables the breaking of a contract between the first and second parties), but in order to do so, they'd first have to establish that a) the spirit of the contract with Amazon was 'friends and family lending', something that is not at all hinted at in the letter of the contract, and b) such a thing was known by LendInk and they knowingly set forth to do business regardless - and I think there would be a nebulous case with difficulty proving either.
On the other hand, perhaps there are some defamation cases floating around that LendInk could win, possibly also interfering with someone's livelihood?
1. They don't.
2. I don't either, I can lend physical books to whoever I damn please even in an other country if I want, and the author won't get any more direct money out of that.
3. Hell, companies can buy a book for all employees to read, they're not charged more because they're companies.
2.3 KDP Select Fund. We will establish a fund on a monthly basis and you will earn a share of that fund for each of your Digital Books included in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library Program.
LendInk facilitated lends under the 'Lending for Kindle' program, allowing a one-time lend between Kindle owners.
https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2JGI9S4...
Shouldn't an article like this have a quote from the site operator?
Secondly, even if it did say that, it could somewhat be construed as true. The DMCA process wasn't necessarily followed since I don't think the hosting company gave the website owner the opportunity to refute them. Again, if I remember correctly, the website owner does not blame the host and did not see it as a fight worth fighting since there was little (or no) revenue involved.
Edit: the last paragraph may be incorrect; the hosting company may have given him an out. Regardless, he decided it was not worth the effort.
Edit:
http://www.digitalmediamachine.com/2012/08/what-happened-to-...
Something I was hoping to hear more discussion about: is there any evidence that anyone in the e-book community knowingly filed an incorrect DMCA takedown notice?
It's just one of those tragedies that will never see any kind of justice. Welcome to the world. It's another day.
The authors in this matter are not technologically sophisticated enough to understand how either the Kindle Lending or LendInk work(ed). They actually believe that it is promoting piracy. Thus, they are not committing perjury in their DMCA notices.
“My name is O. G. Tomes and I am the Author of The Sanctuary Saga: No Harm to Charm, book one; Test of Faith, book two and Charms of the Sisterhood,vol. I, II and III. A website that your company hosts (according to WHOIS information) is infringing on at least five copyrights owned by my company. Articles were copied onto your servers without permission. The original BOOKS, and their covers to which I own the exclusive copyrights, can be found at:
Amazon.com and Smashwords.com
The unauthorized and infringing copy can be found at:
http://www.lendink.com/feed.php
This letter is official notification under Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (”DMCA”), and I seek the removal of the aforementioned infringing material from your servers. I request that you immediately notify the infringer of this notice and inform them of their duty to remove the infringing material immediately, and notify them to cease any further posting of infringing material to your server in the future."
Source: http://www.2abd.com/politics/copyright/lendink-taken-down-by...
Case and point, I use facebook like just about everyone else does. More or less for keeping in touch with family and actual friends. What's to stop me from posting my lending links in a status update? And how is that any different than lendink? Would starting a facebook group for reading lovers and posting a link there be out of question?
With a physical book, you have to learn that your friend has it, either by seeing it on their bookshelf or hearing them talk about it. Then you ask for the book. So it will happen every once-in-a-while; depending on how many reading friends you have, you might lend out a particular book 0-5 times before the book falls apart.
But LendInk is advertising what books are available, and it only needs to find one owner, somewhere, anywhere, who's willing to lend it to you. You don't even have to know them, because there will be some owners who will gleefully lend anything to anyone. So instead of having to individually learn about the 100 books your friend owns, or the 1000 books that your ten friends own, you just need to show up on LendInk, ask for a book, and get it sooner or later. The books on LendInk are too available.
"Just as with any other lend, the author gets her commission[...]"
http://www.publetariat.com/think/congratulations-you-killed-...
So, yeah. By killing LendInk, they deprived authors of potential royalty income.
EDIT: Per Amazon's terms and conditions, not linked from any of the articles, this isn't as clear cut. Some authors (members of the KDP program) can get money from lending out their books, but the 1x per purchase lend does not, as pointed out by j_s.
Edit: Specifically, it sounds like LendInk facilitated "Lending for Kindle" loans https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2JGI9S4...
> Will I receive royalties when customers choose to lend my book?
>
> Loans of digital books through the Kindle Book Lending program
> are not purchases and thus are not eligible to receive royalty payments.I have a database of Kindle books that I built last year, but I know that now there are over a million titles. So, year old data:
> db.books.find({'lendable': true}).count();
543519
> db.books.count();
846456