ASK HN: Illegal Book/Mp3/* Downloads.

He refers to it as Borrowing a book from a library. But my point is that libraries have certain restrictions which an illegally downloaded e-book does not give us.

Not to pick a side or even make a moral argument but here's a fun thought experiment:

What if you had special mental abilities that allowed you to circumvent these restrictions. Some people have nearly perfect photographic memory when it comes to printed words. Is it theft every time someone like this enters a library?

If not, could we just call my kindle and bittorrent a prosthesis for my mind so that I have equal ability?

The point is that these arguments are a lot like matter. It looks discrete and easy to quantify from a distance, but the closer you look, the more you find that deep down, its made of nearly nothing at all. We (society) just picked something out of our asses, nearly at random, and went with it. It only got the force of morality attached to it later in the game when people had lived with it for a while. Kind of like running a stop sign on an empty street makes some people feel guilty for no apparent reason.

I think it should really be a personal decision.

Maybe you're luckier than he is in other ways. Maybe he'll create something great by using the knowledge which will benefit everybody. Maybe he can't buy the book at all, so downloading might not have that bad an effect.

I personally feel all creative content should be through some sort of a rental model (e.g. pay per view) that takes into account lots of different details like affordability, amount of use, importance, relative importance to other content etc.

In this way, if I still get to keep every book on the planet, but if I just spent a few seconds on it browsing the pages, I'm not really going to get charged for it.

Although, a lot of popular books make money because of their popularity and the big names associated with them and not because they get read so much.

What are your reasons for considering it wrong? Not saying it is not wrong, but all the laws are man made. There is no absolute way to decide. Personally I like to think at the possible outcomes of policies. and decide which outcome I would like best.

Free books could lead to more reading, but less books being written. On the other hand, they could even lead to more reading and MORE books being written (because authors would have more readers, which might matter more than the paltry income they get from book sales). Who knows, they could even lead to LESS reading, because the perceived value of books could go down. It is not so clear cut to decide...

One thing I am 100% sure about: libraries and the "free" books they provide are very important for a society. At least for me, being technical minded and entrepreneurial minded, they can make the difference for me between being able to create a viable business or not. Also I am quite certain that for technical books the motivation to write them is not the money - it is very hard to make any money with technical books, so I think they would mostly be written to boost reputation.

For fiction books I don't know. Clearly a lot of them were written regardless of the income they might generate, but probably hoping for riches and fame motivates at least some authors.

> which might matter more than the paltry income they get from book sales

Citation. & where does the rest of their income come from?

If it's not commercially viable why do it?

(never looked into the book world, as in the writing side of it, so am clueless :D)

I am currently in talks with a publisher to write a non-fiction book. They offer 11% on what they make from a book sale, which would amount to about 2€ per book. They would at first print 1000 books. From talking to other people who have written books I got the impression that these conditions are normal.

So I would expect to make 2000€ for several months of work, which is effectively nothing (in fact, it is a negative income). Nevertheless I want to do it. I expect to justify digging deeper into some topics that have always interested me. Maybe I could consult in that direction later on (even though my long-term goal is not consulting). Also I am interested in the process of writing a book, hoping it becomes easier over time.

But with 2€ per book, it is next to impossible to make any money directly from book sales. The time I plan to invest costs me 40000€ in opportunity costs - even if they sell 20000 copies, which is extremely unlikely, it would merely be break even.

Maybe the e-book writers who sell their e-books for 100$ have another perspective, though.

Another case in point might be PG: his essays are available for free. Why is he writing them? While some of them got issued in book form, I highly doubt that was his primary motivation for writing them.

Also a lot of university professors seem to have written books - maybe it helped them to get tenure?

Im not sure I agree PG is a good example: he made his money elsewhere, essay writing isnt a revenue stream, right?

Anyway going back to topic; that's interesting. I imagined (from your first post) that margins were bad but not THAT bad. Sucks. Is you book a niche or local interest book or something? I imagine Fiction probably hasd a bit more in sales prospects right?

What about long term sales? 20,000 seems a small # to sell over the course of several years - but then, as I said I havent a clue :P

(as an aside have you considered self publication - if what your selling is local interest or that low in sales prospects Lulu.com might be an option? as I said Im a dunce in respect to this but it looked quite good when I checked it out)

I think selling 1000 copies would be hard - it is a technical subject.

I don't know, maybe it is a stupid idea, but I also kind of want to trick myself into writing a book. In theory I could write it for Lulu or as an ebook, and perhaps have better margins. But knowing myself, my chances of success are much higher if I have another party being interested in the project (the publisher). There is a deadline and so on, and hopefully some experience the publisher can bring to the table.

Maybe it is silly, but I am also thinking "this could be the last opportunity to do this, before publishers and maybe even books cease to exist". Doing it the old fashioned way I mean. I can very well imagine that if it works out, I would try to publish future books via Lulu or as e-books.

PG as an example: that is exactly the point though, he made his money elsewhere. But I also think that without his essays, YCombinator would probably not be what it is.

As for fiction books, I don't know, but I don't think the sales prospects for an average book are much better. It could be a bit like an iPhone app store multiplied by a million - thousands and thousands of authors writing books, but only very few of them taking off and making money out of it.

hey, sorry I wasnt suggesting you plan was bad :) it sounds badass. I have considered writing briefly in the past but gave up due to lack of motivation - so your probably going the right way for attempt #1. Thinking about it now were I to go back and seriously try again I suspect I'd end up in the same place.

Well r.e. PG I just meant that it's not the same as a penniless author considering writing a book. PG can invest his time in writing those essays because it serves a purpose (i.e. establishes his credentials and respect). BUT he gets coverage on a lot of those essays by already being respected (like topping up the tank :)). And if they get ignored (unlikely) there's no financial fall out for him.

Im sure there are lots of people in the same boat with some great things to say: but many get passed over and go unnoticed.

But, meh it's hardly worth disagreeing over :D thanks for the info.

A lot of times I think it also goes like this: you blog interesting content, and eventually a publisher approaches you and asks you if you want to make a book out of it. Then the work to prepare the articles for publication in book form might be acceptable.

Wasn't trying to defend my silly idea, just trying to portray some ways of thinking that might go into writing a book. Although admittedly I also wrote it here to hear criticism, in case it actually IS stupid.

It depends on many things, such as whether or not you believe in intellectual property.

not so much really: I think it depends on whether you feel the author has good reason to ask for money for you to view his efforts.

It's all integers, man!

Illegal numbers! :)

That effort has been put into sequencing and arranging, which would still give a claim to copyright.

Bits, even.

If you believe that author entitlement trumps the social benefit of distributing books to everybody whether or not they can afford to buy them, then why aren't you advocating closing down all the libraries?

I'll do so on the day the libraries start to have same number of copies from each book equal to the number of users.

Is that really important? It seems that the relevant observation here is that just like piracy, libraries reduce opportunities for authors to receive compensation for their work.

My university library always make me feel actually buying the book. And I've done that some times. Most other times I've given up on the library book.

I have never borrowed a book from a library and then later bought the same book. On the other hand, some of the pirated ebooks in my collection have turned out to be valuable enough to sell me on the convenience of owning a physical copy.

Your anecdote vs. my anecdote. I think that neither of us has a very strong case that piracy and/or libraries help authors sell more books.

Economically, the bottom line is whether we are supplying enough reward back to the info publishers to sustain their work in long term.

Before the legal system has caught up in this area, we need to make a personal moral decision.

And I think respecting those who work hard to produce the books will give you a good ground for making such decision.

I don't agree that there is a moral dimension to this debate. As you mention, it's an economic question about optimizing the production of valuable creative works in our society through incentives to authors. This needs to be balanced with the obvious social benefit of making creative works available to the largest audience possible.

In the last 20 years, the variables in this equation have shifted radically. Computers have reduced the effort needed to write and edit a book, while distribution now has no cost at all.

Our intellectual property system very desperately needs to be reexamined in light of the way technology is changing creative production. What matters here is what benefits our entire civilization the most, not what any individual author 'deserves'.

It's clear to me that author moral rights are barely relevant here, since the decision to write a book or not is up to the author. Piracy is a fact, and so are libraries. Somebody who is thinking about writing a book needs to evaluate the effect that both piracy and libraries are going to have on their personal motivations for writing the book and reach a conclusion about whether or not it makes sense for them to put in the effort.

The moral decision I am referring to is whether we choose to use a pirate copy of the book.

"Our intellectual property system very desperately needs to be reexamined in light of the way technology is changing creative production"

I totally agree with you point. However, we do realize that legal system is always catching up to the real world. Before legal decision arrives, we need to decide ethically based on our judgement.

This is a model I learnt at uni on computer ethics. And I think it applies to most cases in technology field.

"But if the author expect for money & we bypass the paying step in anyway, I believe it's illegal."

Well, sure it is. I don't think anyone will argue with you there. The much more interesting question is should it be illegal; and to answer that we need to decide whether it's right or wrong. Laws are just an expression of morality, and often a pretty old expression at that.

Personally I think the discussion is near moot anyway. Sharing of digital content is basically impossible to stop on an open network, so trying to legislate against it won't change a thing regardless of anyone's ethical views. Good luck getting that infinitely replicating horse back into the barn.

'Sharing of digital content is basically impossible to stop on an open network'

I agree on this. But the problem is again whether it's right or wrong.

A close example is "You hire a coder to code your idea. And somehow you bypass the paying step."

Yes authors don't write custom books for you. But he expect something back to support his time & effort. But you bypass the paying step by downloading it illegally or let's say 'without paying any'. This logic is applicable for any other intellectual property.

And I support software freedom. I love the freedom. When it comes free (cost wise) it's great. But there's not always free lunch. If the author expect money, we should pay. If the author doesn't expect money we should make him happy for his great work someway.