Re: ebook security

On 3/1/10, helenfoshee-/[email protected] <helenfoshee-/[email protected]> wrote:
> Community members:     I am a new member and I am a novice at this, but I have to ask --
> where do copyright laws play into all of this pirate activity?

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I'm a copyfight fanatic who tries to
keep up with current cases.

Almost not at all, because criminal copyright infringement is very
limited and almost impossible to prosecute for things like
filesharing; criminal copyright infringement laws were designed to go
after people selling truckloads of bootleg albums, or publishers who
were grabbing other publisher's books and reprinting them.

Civil copyright infringement can be prosecuted by anyone--who has the
money to file suit. And, again, the burden of proof is very difficult
(although not as almost-impossible as it is in criminal cases).
Proving that a *person* is attached to a particular IP address is
difficult (how do you prove which person in the house was
infringing?), and proving damages is also troublesome. (If a book
doesn't exist in ebook form, how much is lost by distributing it that
way? Or are the ebooks just free advertising, promoting sales of the
authors' other work?--which doesn't make them legal, but would make it
harder to establish damages.)

There have been only two successful trials for criminal filesharing;
both have centered around music files, not ebooks. I'm not sure if any
ebook cases have gotten past the cease-and-desist-letter or DMCA
takedown stage.  Since the copyright owner (or agent) has to prosecute
the case, most don't bother unless they feel it's really costing them
a lot. And while publishers make a lot of noise about money lost due
to filesharing, it's not any one person's sharing that's causing the
damage. (If the damage is even real. Publishers like to calculate that
every ebook downloaded without paying is a full-price sale they're
missing... they don't want to accept that every ebook downloaded
without paying might be a fifty-cent yard-sale purchase that didn't
happen.)

Hm. That was long. Short answer: Copyright law was created to go after
publishers who stole other publishers' profits (hence the huge
penalties for single infringements), not to go after individuals who
made a single copy (which, until ~50 years ago, meant typing or
longhand) to share with a friend. While it's now very easy to make
single copies, the law is still designed as a club to go after
corporations, and is very unwieldy for narrower use.

>  Helen
>  Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
>
>  -----Original Message-----
>>  From: Howard B <[email protected]>
>>  Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:32:26
>>
>>  Publishing only a printed and bound copy is not a significant deterrent to
>>  piracy.

It's certainly not. JK Rowling refuses to release ebook editions of
the Harry Potter books (she thinks they should be read on paper;
doesn't like ebooks), and all of them are available through the
various torrent & filesharing sites.

Not releasing an ebook version can convince people that there's
nothing wrong with scanning & converting it, because the scanner isn't
depriving the author of ebook income; he's just filling a niche the
author found too troublesome to deal with.

-- 
"I follow Eris blindly in all things. That She is the Goddess of Chaos
simplifies this immensely."  -- Christian the Pagan


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