jwc57
Well-known
That's funny. I was going to post a "borrowed car" analogy yesterday. You could say a car thief doesn't actually "steal" your car, since you actually retain ownership.
Sparrow
Mentor
... strictly speaking it would be a trespass to goods in common law, but there's probably some tort law now anyway
rxmd
May contain traces of nut
The flaw behind this argument is the underlying somewhat misanthropic assumption that nobody will pay for an e-book "because pirating it is too easy".
In reality, there are plenty of success stories where people lowered the prices of their e-books from $2.99 to $0.99 and sales took off, or where music tracks are selling well online for $0.99 in spite of being DRM-free and completely trivial to copy and distribute.
People are no way near as bad as you seem to implicitly make them out to be; they are willing to support authors that they like and willing to pay for things, more so if you make it convenient to contribute a little bit.
A possible answer to the fine art photographer problem would be to strenghten the requirement of attribution when reproducing works by someone else (like you already have in scientific publishing, where unauthorized reproduction is monitored and sanctioned by academic institutions). Make it a requirement to have "Photo by Alberto Korda" somewhere on the Che T-shirt, for example. That way the reproduction automatically becomes an advertisement for the creator. If the creator wants his own income stream, he can still sell limited-edition handsigned fine art prints or the like, which is sufficiently material while allowing him to capitalize on the free recognition he gets.
Well it was you who brought up the surgeon, and the wedding photographer is just the equivalent of the surgeon, a person commissioned to do a service.
This end of your distinction is covered by copyright law to an extent that IMHO it shouldn't be. I'm exaggerating, of course, but should this service provider then by default enjoy government-granted additional monopolies on their work commissioned by somebody else, just because there are some fine art photographers, starving or not, who see the courtroom as their main instrument of feeding themselves?
Sparrow
Mentor
Roger Hicks
Mentor
1: The flaw behind your counter-argument is that because most people are decent, all are. This is clearly untrue. There needs to be a legal means of stopping commercial rip-offs, and this, in my view, is the reason why copyright exists. My own e-books are explicitly sold on the basis that more people are decent than not -- look at http://www.rogerandfrances.com/e-books.html where I say, There is no attempt at protecting that file, because we are relying on people being honest. Some people are going to steal it anyway, out of thoughtlessness, meanness or malice, but we believe that most people aren't like that, and besides,our prices are extremely affordable. -- so I am not misanthropic.
In fact, as you can see from the above, I am putting my money where my mouth is. Bear in mind that for you, this is a largely theoretical consideration. For me, it's a matter of income. I have therefore thought about it quite hard.
In other words, there needs to be SOME way of stopping someone exploiting my work on a commercial scale, or selling it for less than I sell it for. If I charge $9.99, to cover all the work I have put in to it, and someone can rip it off and sell it legally for $0.99, having put no work in to it except stealing it, you may rely upon someone turning up who will do so. In this context, some form of copyright protection is an indispensable back up.
(2) Hardly. Like me, they just want a back up to protect them from professional thieves.
Cheers,
R.
Roger Hicks
Mentor
Have you ever been murdered? To a large extent, that's what the law is there for: to discourage people who would, if there were no legal barriers, commit all sorts of crimes.
I have indeed pointed out to people that they can't use my work for nothing, and they have made redress or ceased to use the material.
Cheers,
R.
Jamie123
Mentor
I completely agree. I think a lot of people here seem to think that no one will pay for anything unless they are forced to. That's not true at all, IMO.
Back in the late 90's/early 00's I used to illegally download music off the internet all the time. That was even before Napster got popular and I had to comb the internet for websites that offered a particular song for download. And then it took around 15 minutes to download a single 3.5mb mp3 file. I didn't do it because I was a kid and just an asshole but because I just couldn't afford to pay $35 for a CD (yes, that's how much they cost over here back then) just to listen to that one song I liked. And there was simply no legal alternative for getting music off the internet.
Now I download music from iTunes all the time. It's not that I don't know how to get it illegally, it's just that I think $1/song is no big deal (actually it's close to $2 over here). I think it's worth it and I want to support the artist.
Will everybody stop downloading stuff for free in the future? Of course not. But I do believe that enough people are willing to support the creative arts so that they are sustainable. Maybe the price has to be adjusted. Maybe there will be less money to be made. Maybe film stars won't get paid millions of dollars for making movies. So what? No one says you have to get rich being an actor.
People will pay for good music and good movies.
jwc57
Well-known
To me the long and the short of it is.....if it didn't have value, no one would copy, pirate it, infringe it.
Didn't Stephen King try ebooks on a honor system a decade ago and found that at $1, people would download his chapters without paying?
Didn't Stephen King try ebooks on a honor system a decade ago and found that at $1, people would download his chapters without paying?
rxmd
May contain traces of nut
I did not say that you were misanthropic; but I think that assuming you want your statement about selling one e-book and then having everyone pirate it to be taken literally, it is based on an inherently misanthropic assumption that everybody is ready to pirate your e-book, which IMHO isn't true. That not all people are good either is IMHO trivial and somewhat irrelevant, as long as you find a business model that gives you a good balance of income stream and effort.
The problem I have with your view is that the way copyright currently works is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, it does grant some protection to you as an e-book author. But it also grants (IMHO) disproportionate monopolies to a large number of service providers whose job is essentially equivalent to that of typesetters, metalworkers, plumbers, doctors etc. who have to make their living without this kind of protection. It results in absurdities such as (I'm repeating myself here) the staff of US cafés being forbidden to sing Happy Birthday To You for a client because it counts as unlicensed commercial performance of a copyrighted work. (Elsewhere I mentioned the Girl Scouts being asked in 1995 by the US songwriters' association to pay royalties for singing songs like Yesterday, Over the Rainbow, Puff the Magic Dragon etc. at scout camps.) In its current legal interpretation it results in people being ordered to pay abnormal and IMHO unjustifiable amounts of damages for downloading individual songs, and in people getting sued because they produce a picture of a red London bus in front of a black-and-white Parliament building that is somewhat similar to, but clearly nowhere near a copy of another picture sold by a commercial agency. So it may achieve some of the protection you want, but it also achieves a lot of side effects that are, by and large, extremely ugly and deeply morally wrong in my book, and it is in deep need of an overhaul.
There are a lot of things one could think about. Legalizing non-commercial copying would address all of the "professional thieves" issues that you were mentioning, for example. Requiring attribution would make sure that even if your work is used by someone else, you get the necessary adjustment for it. Elsewhere people are discussing the idea of alternative compensation systems for creators of digital content. Each of those would be better than what we currently have. But simple adherence to the status quo, while quietly reaping the benefits of the ever-longer protection terms and ever more intrusive scare tactics pushed by Disney et al., seems to me too simple and exactly the kind of reliance on outdated business models that is IMHO being rightfully criticised.
rxmd
May contain traces of nut
Or read it.
I guess that was mainly because a decade ago, paying $1 online was comparatively inconvenient. People tend to underestimate the importance of convenience. Now that it's a one-click affair, all major e-book stores have thousands of $1 titles and they're selling really well; for some authors the $1 e-book was the key to selling literally millions of them.
jwc57
Well-known
All this reminds me of a article I came across a couple of months ago...maybe even here. No one should own a patent or copyright, because the product, invention, or idea already existed...and was just waiting for someone to make it known to the rest of the world. In other words, everything exists already and it isn't fair to everyone else that one person found it first and wants to make money from it.
jwc57
Well-known
It wasn't that big of a deal because a lot of people did pay. Even iTunes existed back then, but people would rather "share" for free at Napster, than pay.
Roger Hicks
Mentor
I should be most obliged if you could précis a few of the more workable ones. Sure, nothing matters "as long as you find a business model that gives you a good balance of income stream and effort" -- but what business model have you in mind? And while these people are mumbling their theories and abstractions, I still have to eat.
Of course I was exaggerating when I gave the example of selling one copy, which is then pirated, but I think most people would realize that I was exaggerating, simply for the sake of clarity. As I have demonstrated, I am betting on that not happening. But unless there is a mechanism for prohibiting mass distribution by others, then, as I say, I really believe that there are those who will do exactly that, out of (as I said) "thoughtlessness, meanness or malice." If you really believe "That not all people are good either is IMHO trivial and somewhat irrelevant", you must have led a very sheltered life. Perhaps reading law made me more jaundiced (or realistic) about such things. Also, as I say, this is not a matter of empty theory for me. It's my livelihood.
It's all very well to say that a legal system which permits paying me may cause misfortune to others, but equally, NOT paying me is a pretty major misfortune to me. In this case, I'm the baby you're throwing out with the bath water.
Besides, what is 'non-commercial' use? If someone steals one of my books and distributes it for nothing, that may be 'non-commercial' to him, but it's extremely commercial from where I'm standing.
Your argument about typesetters, plumbers, doctors, etc., is completely false, because they are paid to do a set amount of typesetting, plumbing, doctoring, etc., in full, at the time they do the work. Writing rarely works that way, unless you can get a huge advance from a publisher, which ain't gonna happen with e-books.
Cheers,
R.
huntjump
Well-known
I am not sure who has made that argument jamie, but just because most people would pay for the intellectual property without copyright laws does not lead to the conclusion that copyright laws are unnecessary.
Copyright laws may very well protect only against a minority of users, but that might be precisely the point. The majority of people will not commit armed robbery, even if the law didn't say you couldn't...but it wouldn't lead someone to the conclusion that the law protecting against it isn't necessary.
x-ray
Mentor
Yes, absolutely this is theft.
I regularly find some of my images scattered about the internet without my permission. The particular images that are popular were part of a documentary project that I spent three years doing and several thousand dollars. I've spnet three more years marketing this work and spent thousands more. All of the images are registered with the copyright office. I make my living from my photography and have made a good deal of money from these images. I also find them on ebay in the form of prints, cards, buttons, greeting cards and etc. With others making money and using my images without my consent. In my book this is absolutely theft.
It's not just my documentary work, my art is also copied and sold without my permission. I've shut down two groups infringing my copyright and have decided to take whatever steps necessary to stop these people.
rxmd
May contain traces of nut
Actually iTunes (or rather the iTunes Store) didn't exist ten years ago; it was established in 2003, in the beginning only in the US, and the music selection was far from great. Adoption only took off after about 2006 - you can see that it took three years for the first billion song downloads, and then only one for the second. Napster, on the other hand, was shut down already in 2001 and AudioGalaxy in 2002.
It's pretty much the other way round; the availability of convenient one-click music stores with DRM-free tracks that would work on all your players came after the end of the music file sharing boom and largely supplanted it, through establishing a more convenient, while legal, distribution channel. The music industry still blames its losses on piracy, but this is pretty clearly wrong; in those countries that have very strict piracy laws (e.g. France) you do see a decrease in piracy, but the music industry is running the same losses as everywhere else.
celluloidprop
Well-known
Photography and writing are not in the same boat as music and software.
A photographer or writer can ensure that there's little or no piracy of work by only publishing via print and not putting photographs online. There is a chance, sure, that work will be scanned and posted but that would be time consuming and of inferior quality.
You're cutting off potential income streams by doing so, but that's the risk/reward of going to extremes to thwart piracy.
A photographer or writer can ensure that there's little or no piracy of work by only publishing via print and not putting photographs online. There is a chance, sure, that work will be scanned and posted but that would be time consuming and of inferior quality.
You're cutting off potential income streams by doing so, but that's the risk/reward of going to extremes to thwart piracy.
Jamie123
Mentor
As far as I know the iTunes store was launched in 2003 and they only started selling eBooks since the iPad was released.
I don't think pirated eBooks were much of a problem before eBook readers and tablets became popular as most people don't like to read a book sitting at the computer.
Edit: rxmd beat me to it.
Roger Hicks
Mentor
ferider
Mentor
Frivolous law suits are an entirely different problem and very specific to the Anglo Saxon legal systems. People also have sued McDonalds over serving fat food or hot coffee ... Among others, frivolous lawsuits are fueled by how lawyers are paid, IMO.
Laws relevant to IP theft are rather similar across many more countries. Which is good since the internet is global.
Roland.