Re: The Seven Types Of Pirate

From: "Barry" 
>Publishers never will figure out how to deal with piracy until they figure out that they're part of it. 

Barry,

While there is always more than one side to every issue, the points you make are largely confined to parts, often small parts, of the various groups you cite.

>They build restrictions into e-books that they can't enforce and that don't exist in paper books and then they're upset when they're ignored. Piracy is a moral issue to book providers. It's a convenience issue to the public.

DRM and other restrictions are not liked by the majority of publishers, and have been shown, as you effectively say, to be more damaging to sales that to prevention of piracy. The major incidence of restriction is now with the big ebooksellers like Amazon and Apple. Small and medium publishers and sellers are much less keen on such restrictions. But i would say that the issue is of most interest to technological aware people like yourself. Most ebook users are not very worried. Keen users, like those on this list, may have several devices. Most users have one.

>It should be obvious by now that the public thinks if they've bought a book they have a moral right to have it in a different format and to lend it to their friends. Publishers can cite reasons why that doesn't work in a digital world all they like. Readers don't care.

I disagree totally. Most members of the buying public are very responsive to copyright issues, and respect the fact that the issue is too complex for the simple solutions you favour. The issue is hardly moral, unless you are accepting that a purchase is of a copy in a particular format. Americans should appreciate this point since control of copies by copyright owners is in the US constitution. That seems to make it an issue of honour and belief in constitution, rather than moral. I put aside for the moment the moral idea of theft.

>Book providers keep trying to make this an issue of right and wrong where they get to be the arbiters and the public keeps ignoring them. 

Only a very small slice of the public ignores this. 

>Publishers get legislation to back them up and nobody cares. When are they going to get it? 

They get it very well. Only a few people think they have rights which do not exist constitutionally, in law, or under the international Berne Convention. Most publishers prefer to trust readers to respect their copyright.

>People will be happy to pay for books if they're given the convenience they've been buying all their lives. Until that happens they'll do what they can to get that convenience.

I don't know what you mean by 'all their lives'. Only in th past decade has there been a serious alternative to a printed copy of anything. The technology does not change the law; such an approach makes murder OK.

>When piracy is so easy it'll probably never go away completely. Publishers can either figure out how to make money in this new digital world or cry out for a different world. Right now it seems they're doing the latter. Is it working?
>Barry

Barry, taking something to which people do not have a right is nothing new. There have always been those who do it. The technology doesn't make it something new, nor does the technology justify it.

Most people are honest, and prefer to respond to reasonable situations. The issue comes down to payment to artists of all kinds, and to inventors. If they are not paid reasonably for their efforts they will do something else. That is why each creator is given control of all copies of their works. And that means *all copies*. 

I guess you also want the ebook cheaply. 


Joseph

Joseph Harris is Smile Poet
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