Stealing Books For The Kindle Is Trivially Easy

By publisizing the vulnerabilities of the kindle you are screwing over thousands of writers. Adding a disclaimer at the end of the post does not really clear you morally. I am truly dissapointed that techcrunch would do such a thing. This disgusts me.

Thanks Captain Obvious.

Ronist: So the first person who realized you could put illegal music on the iPod screwed over thousands of artists? It was inevitable, not that persons fault. Blaming Michael here is pointless.

And if Michael did not write about this, do you honestly think that no one else will figure out these functionalities? Don’t be absurd and keep your disgust to yourself

The best bet is to convert the PDFs to .mobi files, which you can do with the mobipocket software. That way you get all of the lovely formatting still.

Anyway, everyone already knew you could do this. The kindle isn’t meant for people who pirate ebooks anyway… they’ll use the cheaper Sony Reader, or a blackberry, or a palm, or pocket pc, or whatever.

is there a good directory for the legal books?

I don’t think the Kindle is going to be any more significant in the marketplace than any other nearly-dedicated ebook reader. Devices like the iPhone can do a respectable job of displaying books, but also provide the owner with lots of other functionality when they aren’t reading a book.

WOW! Great find Michael!
No Payperpost rant today? And yes…I can read ripped book on my Windows Mobile device as well …..or just print them and kill a few trees

Hi Mike, Did I miss a post - the last post I read was when you were trying out the kindle when you were having a few drinks or something and you really did not sound that positive.You are now calling it a breakthrough device. What happened to make you change your mind?

Arr, matey, ARR!

http://www.scribd.com

enough said.

There are some people who will never steal some people who will never buy, some people will never do anything wrong some people dont know what is wrong, how ever god made every one equal and customers require service and hense have to be provided with products.

http://tekno-world.blogspot.com

you can also pirate books by photocopying them.

Or by writing out all the words by hand into a blank notebook or large piece of paper.

OMG I NOW ADVOCATE PIRACY!!!11111

Adam - I’ve now had a kindle for a few days. It’s a decent way to read a book, but the design is flawed and ugly (two different things), and the browsing experience is just stupid. I do like the device, though. I’ll be taking it on an upcoming trip to Europe and we’ll see how it goes.

My biggest gripe is the fact that I constantly hit the page forward or back keys by accident. And if you forget to turn the wireless functionality off the battery doesn’t last very long.

@12 LOL

Or you could dictate the book to a parrot and let it loose in a colony of parrots and in turn send them to all your friends.

PDA,s and Phones are too small to give you a good-reading experience.

Kindle, can do a better job, and being able to read pirated ebooks can be a boost for Kindle sales.

Just like PS2, that occupied the market due to the huge availability of pirated games, and iPod/MP3 players surfed the wave of pirate content, piracy can be a powerful boost for Kindle

@Ed: Project Gutenberg is a great place to get free, out-of-copyright books:
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

@ 14

That is assuming that a parrot can train other parrots to talk - a ridiculous assumption IMHO. That and everything else.

The internet is about the free exchange of other people’s work - didn’t you get the memo?

..the Kindle looks like a piece of junk. i cant believe they spend million$ on design research and came up with this.

now the Sony reader that is one slick device. only problem is it’s a one-trick pony. who needs to carry around another useless ‘high maintenance’ gadget that you have to handle with kid gloves.

what i’d like to see is something with the form factor of the Sony reader, same crisp resolution but add wifi and handwriting recognition. Now that would be a killer device!

I always felt that the same people who might not feel bad about pirating films and music, would find their conscience pricking if they did the same to a book.

Somehow books hold a higher moral value for most of us, I feel.

Mike - thanks for the clarification. So I guess I now have to decide whether I want the pleasing design aesthetic of a Sony or the Wifi/Web functionality of the Kindle. Enjoy your trip to Europe.

Adam - or wait until a better device comes out.

@18

Although a bit expensive, there already exists a reader with wifi and a touch screen: the iliad (http://www.irextechnologies.com/products/iliad). It even supports pdf besides mobipocket.

LOL, you convinced me to buy it with this article. I didnt know they had books on bittorrent

Ripping CDs you’ve purchased and putting them on your iPod is still legal, Mike.

Kindle+scribd could’ve been a good combo, disregarding any possiblity of copyright suits ofcourse.

I still think Kindle is a useless and ugly thing Seriously, books can be read on an PDA, smartphone, iPhone and laptop. Music players are making way for these multifuntional devices, why does anyone need another single-function device? It reminds me of those “email machines” that some people give to their grandparents.

@14

OR you could read the book out loud, record it, then use speech-to-text technology to convert the audio into a text file and then burn it to hundreds of CDs and strap them all to carrier pigeons, sending them all over the world! This plan is both diabolical, ingenious and diabolically ingenious!11

Just a reminder — the vast amount of available material (eg at http://www.gutenberg.org) to which this article applies can quite legitimately be used on the Kindle.

The use of other material (eg, unauthorised Bittorrent downloads) is not stealing. It may well be a breach of (c), and under some of the newer regulations (in the US and UK, for instance) may be even be declared criminal. It may be immoral. It may be uncool. It may starve writers (or more likely force a publisher to skip a lunch). But it is not stealing.

(c) is already a legal minefield. Let’s not go sticking false flags in the ground.

–
Chris

“the vast majority of content on most iPods comes from home-ripped CDs or was obtained in violation of copyright laws”

Well come on, which is it? The casual reader will interpret that sentence as “most iPods are stuffed with pirated content”.

I don’t know how much pirated music ends up on iPods (and neither do you), but the bulk of the content on my own iPod is ripped from CDs I own. iPods are so mainstream now, an awful lot of iPod owners wouldn’t know how to start a Bittorrent client. It’s likely they burn CDs for each other, but that’s a small scale thing comparable to home taping.

What idiot thinks Kindle doesn’t support ebook standards?

Mobipocket and Kindle support OPS 1.0, the official ebook standard since 2000. It will also support OPS 2.0, the official ebook standard since 2007. OPS 1.0 is a standard for files to be converted into ebooks using Dublin Metacore data, an XML schema, and so forth.

It also supports conversion from Word, RTF, Simple HTML, and PDF (beta) but you’re saying Amazon should sell devices that it’s not easy to convert things into?

That worked so well for Sony…

This post is really biased from the first sentence to the last. Next, are you going to blame gun manufacturers for homicides? What about DVD player manufacturers for pirated movies and how about blaming Windows for being able to download pirated MP3s. This post is full of generalizations and I was truly shocked that it came from Tech Crunch. That is truly the most useless way to review a product.

Nice clarification John H. If you read this blog, your likely to conclude the world is filled with people stealing all music, movies, and now books and putting it on ipods and now kindles. I don’t think so. And Techcrunch doesn’t have any data to prove otherwise.

How about we assume that most people are honest and will pay for the content they value? It is not so novel an idea.

I am Kindle owner, and happen to like it a lot. It’s not perfect, but neither was the first generation ipod. The design could be better, but overall I actually like it better than the book experience since I can make the fonts bigger and carry around an assortment of books.

I don’t necessarily like Kindle’s current design, but to those who say that multi-function devices such as Windows Mobile, iPhone, etc. are the way to go, I think they are missing the most obvious feature: Size. Yes size does matter.

As someone who reads a fair bit on mobile devices, I can tell you that reading on a larger screen provides a lot more possibilities. A 320 by 240 screen just cant do a lot more than a fiction. If you want to read memos, docs with diagrams, tables, charts, illustrations, math, formatted bullet points and so on, large screen helps a lot. Now a small laptop isn’t going to do it. it can be bulkier and more power hungry and more expensive.

The free availability of content is a good thing, since you wont think the device is locked. If it was you would be complaining that it is a closed world. So what should a designer so: doomed either way!

The current Kindle’s issues are more to do with ergonomics and business model. Both will be improved by massive customer feedback as we see already such as requests to be able to share books, button layout, keyboard size, etc. If the feedback is dealt with, next version may prove to be the killer device, so my bet is on waiting.

Actually, it is correct that the Kindle does NOT support current standards. While Mobipocket is based on OEB, it doesn’t comply with this standard.
The new standard is based on XHTML+CSS. What we usually call .epub is actually OPS, a standard for the structure of the text, and OCF, a standard for the container.
Check the IDPF website for some extra information: http://www.idpf.org/

This new standard should make everything much better for both the publishers and the users. For the publishers, it means that instead of having to deal with multiple file formats, they’ll juste have to generate a single epub file. For the users, epub is a much more capable format than Mobipocket currently is, because it provides much more advanced possibilities, like font embedding (do you really want all your books to look the same ?), stylesheets and advanced layout options (should be very useful for newspapers).

What all those portable readers currently lack, is a good support for typesetting rules. The lack of hyphenation for example, means that you’ll get a lot of white space between 2 words when you ask for a larger font. If the words are too far away from each other, your brain won’t actually understand the whole sentence as easily. Lack of proper typesetting is a real issue, most people won’t realize what’s missing, but they won’t enjoy or understand the book like they should.

Finally: unlike music, there’s thousands of e-books available for free. Not only public domain books, there’s also more and more Creative Commons books available (Doctorow, Stross, Watts… for those of you who enjoy SF).

This “news” is an obvious consequence of the Kindle’s format support which has been known from the start.

To portray this as some sort of vulnerability or fault on Amazon’s part is ridiculous. For one thing, unlike with recorded music, there is a huge library of classic novels and other writing in the public domain. Why shouldn’t the Kindle be able to read a Project Gutenberg .txt file of Jane Eyre?

A less obvious point is that the quality of “pirate” ebooks is poor compared to legit versions. If the file has been produced by scanning a book, the pirates, who can’t operate openly, don’t have the same proof-reading resources available to legitimate scanning enterprises. So the accuracy and formatting of the text is poor. As Cory Doctorow has pointed out, the purpose of these texts is for a few nerds to swap them in a strange gift economy; they are not actually readable copies. Consider that MP3 piracy covers mainstream music - whereas “pirate” book scanners are *not* generally scanning mainstream novels (crossover hits like Harry Potter excluded). You won’t find pirate Catherine Cookson or Frederick Forsyth.

You might think that any book with a legit electronic edition would be pirated in short order through breaking copy protection (if any). However, while there are tools to convert .LIT to .txt and so on, they don’t work very well and generally break spacing around hyphens, miss out quotation marks and so on. (The tools may have improved lately - I haven’t tried this in a while; did you convert a book and then actually try reading it all the way through, Mike?).

While the Kindle may be as important as the iPod, I think it’s important not to take the analogy between digital music and ebooks too far.

I would prefer that FictionBook (http://fictionbook.org/index.php/Eng:FictionBook) would get more momentum on the internet. This is THE e-book format in Russia and has a great potential.

There’s this:
How about we assume that most people are honest and will pay for the content they value? It is not so novel an idea.

And there’s this:
The internet is about the free exchange of other people’s work - didn’t you get the memo?

And somewhere in there, the idea that copyright violation does not equal stealing.

There’s a difference between considerate fair use and/or copyleft on the one hand and piracy on the other, but the lines get blurred all over the ‘net. And what angers me are the people who seem to feel entitled to violate copyright. Taking someone’s work, for which they’ve asked for compensation, and not paying them = theft (whether you classify it as such legally or not). And you are not entitled to do so, no matter how easy technology may make it. Advances in auto manufacturing and GPS don’t entitle you to track down your enemy and run him over.

If someone was going to pirate books, the Kindle isn’t going to change their behavior either way - they’d do it with or without it. The Kindle doesn’t enable piracy, it just gives people who pirate books another device to read them on. Which is, in my opinion, hardly worth mentioning.

I agree w/ 37 & 38 - enough said.

So what is the real story here? An ebook reader shows text without doing DRM? Hey that’s great, what a pity it doesn’t show pdf natively.

Why should the device care about DRM stuff? Is that really what you want? I’d much more want to read all this freely available tutorials, ebooks and stuff on a device i paid hundreds of dollars for.

I hope there will be at least one or better more big players on the ebook-reader market that just don’t close anything. why not just build some hardware and let people decide what to do with it? just like with pc’s (nearly). Install linux or any other operating system that fits and that they like most. That whole DRM stuff doesn’t really avoid people from stealing stuff it just hinders people not stealing anything from beeing free in their decision about what to read (or listen when we talk about DRM in music which is nearly the same topic).

What exactly is your point? The fact that people can read pirated content on the kindle, a point that is obvious to the point of inanity? What exactly should be done about it? Why is this a problem any more than the fact that people can use any other media device for using pirated content?

Also, allow me to present my own true (but totally misleading and pointless statement):
The vast majority of money is either earned legitimately or stolen from small children at gunpoint.

As you can see, it’s about as relevant as your statement about iPods.

Pirated files aren’t going to be as rampant on the Kindle as they are on the iPod for a very simple reason. To pirate stuff onto the Kindle, people would first have to buy it.

Mike, I’m sure that all of the book authors out there who make a living as writers will thank you for this post.

Now, let me just lift all of *your* work and make some money off it.

Oh, what’s that you say? Copyright laws?

Pshaw.

I own a sony ebook reader, and it has been very easy to convert my text files for viewing with it.

…. then why would you explain it!

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

OMFG, like ebook piracy is so bad. You should be so ashamed of yourself.

>> OMFG, like ebook piracy is so bad. You should be so ashamed of yourself.

>>OMFG, like ebook piracy is so bad. You should be so ashamed of yourself.

Glad you find the issue of copyright violation so funny, Chris.

But it’s a serious issue.

Many of us make our living from producing content — photos, words, music.

If we choose to give it away, fine. If we choose to charge for it, that’s our right.

It ain’t yours for the taking. Period.

Hey, here’s a thought. Why don’t you hand over one of your paychecks to me? Yeah, that’ll work.

Sound good?

Didn’t think so.

But that’s essentially what you are doing when you steal copyrighted work.

Frank: There is an open reader already, the iLiad from iRex. All of these devices are actually running Linux 2.4.

On the iLiad, you can ask for shell access to your device and then pretty much do whatever you want with it. I’m still working on a GTK application for it that enable the download of e-books and RSS feeds from my website using this device WiFi connection.

No big newspapers or recent books like on the Kindle, but anyone with an iLiad will be able to read thousands of public domain and CC books + any RSS feed for free.

I’m with Mick (#1) - Letting people know how to break the law makes you an accomplice to their crimes. This TC article is not news. It is inciting others to criminal acts for personal gain.

All the moral weaseling about such disclosures not having any effect, or about our being unable to change the behavior of some, is just more self-serving hogwash, or sad defeatism.

Sell me ebooks without DRM and I’ll buy them.

If they’re not available for purchase, only for rental (i.e. with DRM), then I’ll pirate them.

Your choice.

One big anti-piracy thing amazon did with the kindle is make the native formats supported very limited.

Are there any advantages to having a format other than txt? Yes, such as chapters, hyperlinks, embedded images, font size information, layout information, etc.

If you want pirated book on the kindle, you have two options. One, deal with the problems with txt. Two, convert with amazon, and let them know exactly what you’re pirating.

I’m guessing that the kindle format, with or without DRM, will remain a highly guarded secret.

Did you know that cars can be used for speeding? Who wrote this waste of bandwidth? It’s so obvious… it’s one of the selling points!

Given that the Kindle is a connected device, Amazon has the ability to see the contents of your personal files on the device. It’ll be interesting to see how they use this information.

As a writer who works hard to make a living with my words, it disturbs me that so many people here would see pirating my work as acceptable.

If you enjoy a writer’s work enough to want to read his/her book, why on earth would you not be willing to buy it legally? This mystifies me.

Joan Price
author of several books, which I hope you’ll either buy legally or get from your local library

The Baen Webscriptions site is doing just fine with no DRM at all. A ebook you buy from them is yours to read on any reader you please (they offer a variety of formats precisely for this purpose) yours to copy, archive, loan, give away… they’re cool with it.

Precisely because given a convenient, stable website from which to buy books, and a convenient way to pay a reasonable price for them, most people would *rather* pay than steal. Writers and publishers might want to take note. At least go over and ask Baen how it’s working for them!

In the meantime, when restrictive DRM makes it difficult for people to do reasonable things with their ebooks (read an ebook they paid for on any darn reader they please, for instance) reasonable people start learning how to break the rules, or how to find people to break the rules for them. That’s when dealing with people who make unauthorized copies becomes something “everyone does.”

Sure, it is possible to read unauthorized copies on a Kindle. Since the alternative would be for Amazon to have an iron monopoly on Kindle content, that’s a *good* thing.

I have a lot of issues with this article, but I’ll focus on this:

“And while Apple sells lots of songs legally on iTunes, the vast majority of content on most iPods comes from home-ripped CDs or was obtained in violation of copyright laws.”

Exactly where did you get this “fact?” So you’re a journalist who uses general assumptons to make a point in print? By the way, copying material that you own onto an Ipod is not illegal.

I don’t have any illegal content on my ipod. Neither did 47 unrelated people whom I polled recently for a story. In fact, I couldn’t find any specific facts or figures for illegally downloaded material. I contacted Apple, Sony, EMI, Columbia, Microsoft, etc. and none of them could provide anything concrete. So exactly where did you get your figures, because I’m sure you did homework to make a sweeping coment about “the vast majority” being illegal content.

No? Any phone calls? Huh.

I did find seven people who acknowleded having copyright infringed matrial. An interesting fact? They were all under age 30. So perhaps people like you are disseminating this idea that copyright stealing does not equal theft.

As a writer, I’m not mortified by this idea of “stealing books” because frankly someone can always check out a library copy instead of purchasing it outright.

But as a journalist I’m AM mortified by your appalling and sloppy approach to this whole subject.

If I am at a friend’s house and they hand me their copy of a book - is this book now pirated?

If I receive a book (already read by someone) then is this piracy? (Why can’t I give my copy of an Amazon ebook to a friend?

If I am in the library and sit to read the book rather than check it out - is this piracy?

If I sit in B&N and read, rather than purchasing the book then am I stealing?

If I photocopy a book I own - for my own personal use - then NO - I am not stealing. For example, I prefer to write on the photocopies rather than directly into the book.

This begs the question - why is the definition of piracy and copyright laws being twisted to suggested any of the above is illegal? Is this ignorance or just a means to get other people emotional?

Finally, has someone tried to place FF or another Linux based browser onto a USB stick and see if they can surf the web through the Kindle connection?

@Catherine
“If we choose to give it away, fine. If we choose to charge for it, that’s our right.

It ain’t yours for the taking. Period. ”

You sound very sure of this, Catherine. I’m a professional writer too. Here’s my take.

It isn’t helpful to think of (c) as a right. It’s a misonomer (a double misnomer: it’s not about copying either).

(c) is a licence. It’s a licence bestowed on the author by the Commons, for a duration. All writing derives from the Commons (the pool of language, ideas), and so properly belongs to the Commons. It is the Commons that will eventually take full possession of it. To encourage writers, the Commons licences (c) to you for a duration.

Laywers may have mislead you into thinking in terms of “intellectual property”. That’s their business, and they thrive on it. Let them get on with it; we’re here for something different.

–
Chris

@Maxine

‘By the way, copying material that you own onto an Ipod is not illegal.”

YANALANAI (you are not a lawyer and neither am I) but this depends what country you’re in. Here in the UK, yes, Maxine, it is a breach of (c) to do this.

–
Chris

@Joan Price

“If you enjoy a writer’s work enough to want to read his/her book, why on earth would you not be willing to buy it legally? This mystifies me.”

It shouldn’t do, Joan. There’s no connection between the huge investment I make in the act of reading your book and entering your world on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the small payment I might or might not make for purchasing it.

What you gain is a reader, and this is everything to a writer. What you may or may not also gain is a meal. But a reader is not a meal.

–
Chris

@ Chris: I’m kinda sick of the notion that, since a thing has value in itself, it shouldn’t be concerned with monetary compensation. You find this foolishness applied to the arts (excepting the movie industry) and to education all the time (but, strangely, not to professional sports …). To suggest that Joan should write because she loves to write, and to get readers, is fine, but it doesn’t help her pay her bills. And if we want quality writing, we need to be willing to pay to support those who are taking the time to write well … so they can afford to continue to do so. This is a no-brainer.

Copyright is a subset of intellectual property law, and does, in fact, directly relate to the “rights to copy” a work. Specifically, authors of a work are granted exclusive rights over that work (under U.S. and most other copyright laws), including: the right to copy/reproduce the work, the right to display/perform the work, the right to create derivatives from the work, and the right to sell or transmit these rights to others. Unless the author explicitly gives up these rights, he/she is the “exclusive” holder of these rights (which means other people can’t do that stuff without his/her say-so).

And, no, writing does not necessarily “belong to the Commons.” If I create a piece of writing, I can choose to share it with one or two people and then burn it if I want (because I created it), and the Commons can make no claims on me to prevent me from doing otherwise … unless its a fascist state you’re envisioning?

@ Kindler: You’re getting some things confused, the first of which is the self-evident fact that a physical book is different from a digital book and cannot, in fact, be in two places at once. Loaning a physical books, therefore, creates no legal problems, nor does giving a gift of a physical book.

Libraries work legally (and financially) with publishers to “loan” physical books, as well.

Technically, sitting in B&N and reading an entire book is probably not what B&N would prefer … they’re not a library. And it’s very unlikely that most people will read more than a chapter of a book they don’t own while sitting in a book store, so this is a kinda silly argument.

And finally, making a reproduction of an entire book is, in fact, a violation of copyright law.

So the only twisting I see is in your examples, coupled with a failure to recognize the significant differences between physical and digital media and the difficulties those differences bring with them.

@Eric
“I’m kinda sick of the notion that, since a thing has value in itself, it shouldn’t be concerned with monetary compensation. ” I didn’t say this. I said a reader is a not a meal. If you think a reader should necessarily be a meal, that’s your view. But it’s not the state of affairs.

“Copyright is a subset of intellectual property law”. Eric, the concept of “intellectual property” is a very recent (20th C) invention. (c) predates it by several centuries, and Tom Jefferson wouldn’t have the faintest idea what you were talking about if you made an assertion like this. I’d enjoy hearing you trying to explain it to him.

“…and does, in fact, directly relate to the “rights to copy” a work.” You say “in fact”. Have you read “Taking the Copy out of Copyright” ?

–
Chris

“Have you read “Taking the Copy out of Copyright” ?”

I supplied a URL for this, but TechCrunch swallowed it. I’ll try again:

http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/jf/MF.pdf

–
Chris

@ Chris: My point was that, as it stands currently, copyright is (in part) about copying and is a subset of intellectual property law. Nevertheless, the larger issue is what I’m interested in, not the semantics or legal history.

In the article you reference, this quote appears in the abstract:

“In [place of the right to control copying], we propose as an organizing principle the right to control public distribution of the copyrighted work.”

I agree that “copying of digital works is necessary for normal use of those works.” My primary concern is the distribution of copied works (thereby denying workers pay for their efforts), so if we can enact the kind of principle recommended here (and have it actually work), then I think that would be great.

Does that bring us all closer to an agreement?

Thanks for weighing in with the well-researched facts, Eric.

Cathy

@Eric
IMHO understanding the larger issue (which I’m also trying to do) is inseparable from semantics and legal history. For example, if we call it “stealing” (semantics), we’ve already sealed the argument. If we ignore Jeffersonian principles we have no way of making a judgement about the legal and sematic accretions that (c) has attracted, caddis-fly-like, over the past century (and particularly over the past couple of decades).

–
Chris

@ Chris: I didn’t mean to imply that history was irrelevant, just that I’m concerned with where we go from here …

As for history, TJ did support limited “monopolies” (i.e., intellectual property rights) for “individual inventors” (i.e., writers, artists, etc.). He does insist that they are not “natural” or inalienable rights, but he also agrees that they are beneficial to a society because they provide a means of support and encouragement to the inventor.

“Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody… The exclusive right to invention [is] given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society.”
–Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 1813. ME 13:333

So, I think TJ would understand my comment about intellectual property law, and furthermore would support laws that protect the interests of the individual artists. (I’m not, by the way, siding with “big business” … my concern is that artists have the chance to profit from their work, as any individual should have the chance to profit from his/her work, whatever the nature of the work might be, if that work is deemed useful / interesting / worthy of attention by the society.)

So I’m asking: where do we go from here? Your suggestion, that I quoted in an earlier comment, is a good starting point. And whatever happens to the law, it should focus on protecting the rights of the artists, not the corporations (and I think TJ would agree). But the protection still needs to happen.

And, yes, I’m still saying that copying-and-distributing someone else’s work without permission or pay is “stealing” (under current laws) and should, IMHO, continue to be called “stealing,” as doing so lessens the potential profits of the writers, editors, designers, etc. of a book (or writers, actors, production crew, etc. of a film … and so on). I believe those individuals are entitled to profit from that work (and simply giving someone attribution doesn’t compensate for that).

It’s unfortunate but written content publishers will have to re-analyze their business model.

@Eric
“So, I think TJ would understand my comment about intellectual property law…”

No. I think he wouldn’t understand why you were calling it “property”. The quote you cite makes this clear, and this seems to be TJ’s stance passim. It was Madison who managed to pursuade TJ that this limited monopoly thing would be a good idea, but I don’t get the impression that TJ was ever crazy about it. Neither of them ever saw artistic works as anyone’s “property”

“And, yes, I’m still saying that copying-and-distributing someone else’s work without permission or pay is “stealing” (under current laws)”

Well. no. Even the more stringent new laws don’t confuse unauthorised use of (c) with stealing. Stealing is:

1. Intention

2. permanantly to deprive someone

3. of property.

But this discussion has encouraged me to start a new movement. It makes sense and is completely right that good deeds should be rewarded. It takes time and trouble to perform good deeds, and the world is better for them. So I intend to legislate that in order to encourage the performance of good deeds, any recipient of a good deed should pay a sum of money to the do-gooder. The deed itself will henceforth be known as “the property” of the do-gooder, and its transfer to the do-goodee will be considered as a form of limited licence. Lots more work for lawyers, but, oh, what a lovelier world it will be.

I lied. I’m not really going to do this. It’s just a thought experiment.

–
Chris

>What you gain is a reader, and this is everything to a writer. What you may or may not also gain is a meal. But a reader is not a meal.

Excuse me, but I’m a professional writer. Profession. Writer. I’m not groveling and skipping meals in order to get pirate readers. The readers I value are those who respect that if my writing merits their attention, it also merits (and legally requires) that they read my book legally, i.e. either buying it or borrowing it from the library.

I am offended that you think I should be grateful for you donating your time to read my book when all it costs me, in your terms, is a meal, so that you could pirate it.

Did you eat yesterday? Was it because you did good work and were rewarded by receiving your pay for it? Shouldn’t I and the other professional writers receive the same?

Joan Price
author of several books, which I hope you’ll either buy legally or get from your local library

@26
Try reading a book on a PDA for 2 hours. Eyes hurt much? That’s because a PDA is backlit (unlike real books).

eReaders, like Sony’s and Amazon’s, are not backlit. That is the point. This is why an e-reader is superior to a PDA or Laptop for books. So, yes you need a separate device for reading. A backlit PDA is not a suitable replacement for a reader.

I’d be pretty careful about using BitTorrents techology to break the law. The developer himself noted, in an interview with The New York Times, BitTorrent users’ identities aren’t cloaked—“their numeric Internet addresses are viewable.”

Book publishers love to take people to court.

I’m a writer, so I’m not happy it’s that easy to rip off a book. But most freelance writers are at the bottom of the income heap anyway (unless you’re a best-selling author), so I guess most of us will suffer in silence. Thing is, I don’t think our publishers will.

I did a story about the FBI sting on the EliteTorrents network, including some info about the technology in general. Hope it’s okay to specify the link in the spirit of sharing; if not, well I’m sure you have tech ability to zap this: http://coveringflorida.blogspo.....ating.html

best, KBD

@Joan Price
“Excuse me, but I’m a professional writer. Profession. Writer. ”

Me too, Joan. So we can speak frankly, pro to pro.

“I’m not groveling and skipping meals in order to get pirate readers.”

No grovelling required — although I’m not sure what you mean by “pirate readers” here. There are several classes of reader who will enjoy your books without any payment to you. How are you going to deal with libraries, with friends who lend to friends, with second-hand book purchasers? Calling them — or indeed any other kinds of readers — “pirates” won’t help you think straight about this. (Real pirates loot and murder on the high seas).

Readers come to us in all shapes and forms, Joan. When they stop coming — that might be the time to grovel, if that’s your thing.

“The readers I value are those who respect that if my writing merits their attention, it also merits (and legally requires) that they read my book legally, i.e. either buying it or borrowing it from the library.”

Writers’ valuation of their readers isn’t at all important in the grand scheme of things. Or probably at all. What might matter somewhat is how our readers (of all kinds) value us. In dollars and cents, perhaps. But more importantly, otherwise.

“I am offended that you think I should be grateful for you donating your time to read my book when all it costs me, in your terms, is a meal, so that you could pirate it.”

As a pro writer for most of my life I can’t ever remember being offended by the fact of having been read. I have felt waves of anger reading some of the contracts publishers have attempted to present me with, but that’s about the extent of my wrath.

“No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money” — a useful guideline from S. Johnson when dealing with publishers. But you can’t derive from this the corollary that readers who don’t pay you are rogues and thieves.

The bond between a good writer and a good reader (both skills of course are required) is immensely powerful. In comparison the cash nexus to which you attach such importance really hardly figures. I don’t discount it altogether: royalties trickle in, as Jefferson intended, encouraging me and feeding me while I get on with the next lot of work. But it really isn’t worth getting into a fight with folks who go out of their way (in whatever fashion) to become your readers. Fight publishers, by all means — they’ve been gypping you for centuries. And all power to the Hollywood writers in their dust-up with the bean-counters in the studios.

“Did you eat yesterday?”

And today, Joan. And for tomorrow I’m figuring out how I’m going to get Joan to pay for the meal writing this carefully crafted entry has surely earned me.

–
Chris

Chris, I’m curious.

Are you an independent, or do you have a job and write on the side? I include teaching as a job. If writing independently is your full-time job, would you share some publication credits with us? Thx. KBD

Followup to my question to Chris: I did a search, and see you’ve worked with the BBC. So I’m thinking you’d like to do away with the license fee for viewing? And I’m thinking you did the work for free? I have to admit writing for free is admirable, although it isn’t an option I can afford. best, KBD

@Kay B. Day
Kay, I think you’re confusing yourself. Nowhere have I said writers shouldn’t get paid. What I’ve been trying to say here is that a writer’s relationship with his or her reader isn’t primarily — or even very interestingly — based on the cash nexus.

I’ve been a full time pro writer since I stopped acting in the mid-’70s. You’re right — I’ve written for the BBC and for Independent TV over here in the UK, and I also write books and articles. I get paid for what I do. But I don”t see it as any part of my duties, obligations or routine to be personally responsible for collecting dues from my readers and viewers. People seem to like my stuff. That’s great. Some people even seem to pay for my stuff. Well, fine. Other people, who evidently like my stuff but for whatever reason don’t feel like paying for it, get hold of it through public libraries, borrowing from friends or downloading from the Internet. Why should that upset me?

C’mon, guys. On a scale of Gitmo to Iraq, how important is it that some fan kid might be enjoying a Doctor Who story of mine downloaded from The Pirate Bay? Serious, eh? How many lashes would you want to give the little bastard?

–
Chris

Chris, thanks for responding. I wouldn’t give the “little bastard” a single lash, holding a strong belief that corporal punishment is fairly useless in the grand scheme.

On the other hand, I admit you and I have a different approach to the reader. Yes, I appreciate my readers, immensely. No, I am not personally responsible for collecting–my publisher, small literary house that he is, does that for me. Note libraries do pay for their books, and a very small royalty trickles down to the author. And of course if my content goes on a Web site or into a print pub, I am compensated for that as well.

I can’t compare Gitmo and Iraq to this–for me that won’t work because the political issues are apart from the financial issues relevant to those of us who earn our living writing. I might be easily able to scale my political priorities, but that scale would not be related to a scale delineating the priorities in my business.

I’m thinking that Doctor Who story would have rewarded you initially, however, in that you would have been paid for the broadcast usage to begin with?

I can tell you are a dreamer, Chris, and we can always appreciate that sort of approach. But it just won’t work for those of us who have, for many years, depended on writing as a business. Note we may enjoy those blissful moments when the pen is arrested by what I call a creative seizure–time seems to dissolve and the muse has us firmly in her grip.

But once that bliss concludes, I expect compensation. And I’m thinking you and I have a very different perspective that neither of us will agree to yield.

I’m also thinking you posed some interesting questions, as did the blogger at TechCrunch. best, KBD

@ Chris: I understand and concede your point about artistic work not being “property,” but can’t stretch that to your assertion that TJ “wouldn’t have the faintest idea what [I was] talking about.” I didn’t come up with the term “intellectual property” anyway …

As for “stealing”:

1. Intention = Those who obtain pirated copies of things are generally intending to do so.

2. permanently to deprive someone = They don’t plan on paying me later.

3. of property. = Is money not property? If someone puts a gun to my back in the street and demands my money, has he not stolen from me? If someone were going to give me money, and a third party ran by and took that money from the first so that it never reached me, wouldn’t that be called stealing? The argument (at least for me) is over whether or not an author has been deprived of money he/she would otherwise have gained … isn’t it? [If I have the wrong legal term, forgive me ... but the concept isn't difficult.]

Look, I think CreativeCommons is great. I think creating intellectual work and sharing it with others freely, for the general betterment of all, is wonderful. When I write on a blog, or contribute to a wiki, or design educational products, I’m more than happy to let anyone take anything they want and use it however they want. It would be nice if they credited me for it, but even that’s not a huge deal.

I also agree with your suggestion that the larger battle is between publishers and writers, not writers and their potential readers.

And I’m not interested in controlling and tracking digital files. I don’t think anyone can create a way to “lock” a file that someone else can’t find a way to “unlock,” so that seems like a never-ending (and pointless) battle.

All I’m saying is, writers (who want to get paid) deserve to get paid if others are enjoying the benefit of the writer’s works. Not taking steps to ensure that the creations of those writers are used in ways that generate income for the writer is, therefore, irresponsible (at least, in a society that values–truly values–intellectual and artistic creations). I’m not saying DRM is the solution (see above), and I suspect the answer lies more in reforming the ways in which revenue is generated and distributed.

I don’t have a solution. But if we can’t find a way (as a society) to at least agree on the problem, then we’ll have a hard time moving forward.

So my argument is with those who feel it is their “right” to have any digital file they want, with no restrictions or obligations, simply because it’s digital. (Curiously, people don’t tend to act or think that way with physical things, and those who do are generally labeled “criminals.”) That attitude of entitlement is implicit in so many of the DRM conversations, and that’s what I’m arguing against.

I don’t know if we can go further in this discussion, here, and in this medium, though I’m not intended to cut off the conversation. I sincerely appreciate your thoughts and challenges so far, and you’ve helped me to clarify my thinking. I wish you well in your writing.

This discussion has gone off on quite an interesting tangent and mirrors one that is going on right now on the mobileread website in re the shutdown of “demonoid” which I believe was a torrent site of some sort.

I write software for a living. It is all distributed electronically. Some people use it without paying the license fee we ask.

They do not steal it from me; I still have it, both in product and source form. You cannot steal it. It is impossible.

What you can do, is deny me compensation for it..but it cost me (literally) pennies. If it didn’t come from my server(s)…the cost to me was Zero.

Contrast this with a stockroom full of boxes of software. Ouch. That hurts. because of the nature of the beast, I’ve opted to not take that particular risk (anymore) for the foreseeable future.

But you know what? A great many people pay what we ask. It is…unrealistic, untenable and unbelievable many in the content creation fields actually hold this…hostile, anti-consumer notion that DRM is the solution to a problem that 1. they little understand 2. is a moral issue, not a technological one and 3. is insulting to their customers.

Look. People aren’t as stupid as many of us that spend a lot of time on the internet like to believe. They do jobs that require them to move objects of value from A to B…to build them, to manage them.

What we do is in essence, etherial to them. You Picture, your song, your book or my software does NOT hold the same value to them when wrapped in a DRM shell because they *cannot resell it and recoup any monies when they are done with it*…it is effectively a rental.

I find it INSULTING that publishers want to charge Damned Near Paper Book MSRP for an *ebook*.

While to YOU the author, the book is “nothing without the words”…I assure you to the consumer, your book customer, there is more value in being able to ditch those words for some other tangible thing than not.

The problem appears to be that many of us in these data-passing industries seem to be almost completely devoid of this realization: data-only products are worth less in the Really-for-Real world, and DRM-restricted ones with no resale rights, doubly so.

I’ve asked. Perhaps you might wish to consider this notion as well

@ Eric, No. 80:

The following is flawed:

“3. of property. = Is money not property? If someone puts a gun to my back in the street and demands my money, has he not stolen from me? If someone were going to give me money, and a third party ran by and took that money from the first so that it never reached me, wouldn’t that be called stealing? The argument (at least for me) is over whether or not an author has been deprived of money he/she would otherwise have gained … isn’t it? [If I have the wrong legal term, forgive me … but the concept isn’t difficult.]”

Your (ehem) “property” in this case is NOT money. “Potential revenue” is not revenue earned. No one has stolen money from you. You never had it. On the other hand, the question you must ask yourself is do these acts cost you money you already have?

The answer, is of course, they do not.

Look, no one is saying that people should be able to use and enjoy these things without paying for them…it is morally wrong, probably. it is certainly ethically suspect.

I don’t believe you solve the problem tho with a dishonest discourse on the thing.

I went thru this, kicked it, fought it, beat it and burned it…and at the end of the day…I still get paid.

There is no effective way to stop this without causing even more destruction. The only way to stop it is by a level of control on a “government” level of the flow of electronic information that really isn’t worth it, in the grand scheme of things.

The more I read and research, the more I’m becoming convinced that: a) my concerns and the principles behind my objections are right, and b) my understanding of the issues and how they impact my concerns and the principles behind my objections, and therefore my ideas about how best to argue over and proceed on these issues, is lacking.

It seems that a major problem with this issue is that most people don’t have a decent understanding of what the issues–legal, ethical, and economic–really are. I consider myself a pretty online/tech-savvy, liberal, well-informed “citizen,” and yet I sense, as I dive deeper, that there’s a lot of misunderstanding on both sides of this issue.

I’m starting with Lessig’s Free Culture (http://www.free-culture.cc/) and will take it from there. (Yes, I’ll purchase a copy.) Anyone have other “must read” suggestions on either (preferably both) sides of this?

Thanks for the conversation, everyone.

Most of the books on my personal list of “must read before I die” are in the public domain, and available in txt format from Gutenberg.

Ahead of the delivery of my Kindle in January I’ve already downloaded 750 ebooks, about 100 of which fit the above description.

I look at the Amazon purchase option as a nice addition, but figure only about 40% of my reading will be from books that will cost me any money.

Why not a Sony ebook? I’ve used the Kindle, and it’s a fantastic solution to my repetitive stress disorder afflicted hands and wrists. Pressing “next page” is physically painful on the Sony units, but easy and gentle on the Kindle. And I didn’t hit the page changing buttons “accidentally, because when I picked up the unit in a hurry, I pick it up “landscape” style, not “portrait”, voila, no buttons. It’s convenient to hold balanced on the hand, without gripping the top, which seems to be what’s tripping up people with accidental page changes.