Great Article on Book Piracy

[La Volpe]

You seem to basing loss on cost. But that doesn't really work because one can steal something acquired for free.

If you got the item for free, it still has an intrinsic value, even if it's just the materials it's made of, or a personal or sentimental value. Ergo, when it's stolen, you lose either the monetary value of what it was worth (say, a toaster that was gifted to you), or you lose the item that you held dear (say, you late grandfather's handkerchief).

But I can't imagine you'd be angry if someone brought a duplicator and copied your gift toaster. You'd still have the original. Ergo, the loss, whether it be financial or sentimental et al, is still the issue.

So yes, you can steal a fallen leaf from someone's yard, but could that really be regarded in the same light as stealing a lawnmower?

As for the example at the end, that turns on the question of what can be done with a "copy." A lawfully obtained copy can be distributed freely. But here's the primary difference between physical and digital that breaks down the analogy. When there is a physical copy that can generally only be read by one person at a time. And can only be given to a fairly limited number of people before the book becomes readable. However, with a digital copy, that can be distributed to an unlimited number of people for an unlimited duration. The potential for harm is much greater.

Let's run this scenario with Bob and Fred again. Fred buys an ebook. He reads the ebook, and enjoys it so much that he recommends the book to Bob. So he copies the ebook file and emails it to Bob. Bob reads the book (that Fred is no longer reading). Let's add James here too. Bob finishes the book, and emails it to James. James reads it (while neither Bob or Fred is reading it). After that, it is not copied again.

So following your assertions, none of the three did any pirating? Or are you saying that lending (or giving) a book to a friend is like piracy, but is excusable?

This is why distribution of a digital copy is theft, perhaps not under the common law definition, but the potential to harm is so great that it should be treated as a theft. Certainly not by the same standards as theft of personal property, but as a theft of intellectual property.

I want to agree, but the way you're saying this doesn't sit right. You say that piracy should be treated as theft, and then directly after that, you say that it should be treated by different standards.

I don't think we should be lumping theft and piracy together. They are different things with different consequences.

I think we all know who the biggest pirate in the world is. Martin, he even stole Tolkien's R.R.

Source:
-snip-

That was hilarious.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

If you got the item for free, it still has an intrinsic value, even if it's just the materials it's made of, or a personal or sentimental value. Ergo, when it's stolen, you lose either the monetary value of what it was worth (say, a toaster that was gifted to you), or you lose the item that you held dear (say, you late grandfather's handkerchief).

But I can't imagine you'd be angry if someone brought a duplicator and copied your gift toaster. You'd still have the original. Ergo, the loss, whether it be financial or sentimental et al, is still the issue.

Would I be mad? No, but the rights involved are different. Taking of my physical thing is something from copying it. My right is not involved, the maker of the toaster right is another story. If I was a toaster maker and I figured out some guy was copying my toasters I would be upset and that would be at the very least a tort if not a crime. Although what crime I don't rightly know. Certainly violation of various patents and copyright laws, which are or can be criminal offenses.

Let's run this scenario with Bob and Fred again. Fred buys an ebook. He reads the ebook, and enjoys it so much that he recommends the book to Bob. So he copies the ebook file and emails it to Bob. Bob reads the book (that Fred is no longer reading). Let's add James here too. Bob finishes the book, and emails it to James. James reads it (while neither Bob or Fred is reading it). After that, it is not copied again.

So following your assertions, none of the three did any pirating? Or are you saying that lending (or giving) a book to a friend is like piracy, but is excusable?

I'm saying it is excusable because of the various reasons that differentiate the situations. Loaning a physical book is limited in duration and intensity. Making a copy and giving it to a friend is much closer to piracy, but so minimal that I personally wouldn't do much about it. Still though, it is wrong since now there are two things out there instead of one, and I personally wouldn't do it, but that is more of a moral thing for me. But those two situations are orders of magnitude different from making a copy and uploading it to a pirating site where a potentially unlimited number of people, those who would and would not have bought the book, can come on and get the book for free.

I don't think we should be lumping theft and piracy together. They are different things with different consequences.

There are many different kinds of theft. Larceny, embezzlement, robbery, larceny by trick, false pretenses, forgery, and on and on it goes. Each one is judged by a different standard. Often turning on something as minuscule as whether title was transferred or mere possession. The common similarity is that someone has a loss of some kind, either in possession of a tangible object (things like a computer or a bike or a car or gasoline) or of some loss of actual money. Piracy, harms two interests 1) the interest to control how copies of your work are distributed through legal means. 2) monetary loss because at least some person would have bought the book but for being able to pirate it. This is why I say theft of intellectual property, which piracy is, needs to be controlled by some different but analogous standards to theft of tangible personal property. So we agree that piracy is not theft in the sense that it is stealing personal tangible property. But, it is theft of intellectual property, which is just as wrong.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

That was hilarious.

I love ERB. One of my favorites is Shakespeare v. Dr. Seuss. Julia Childs v. Gordon Ramsey is fantastic. And James Bond v Austin Powers is great.

 

[La Volpe]

Would I be mad? No, but the rights involved are different. Taking of my physical thing is something from copying it. My right is not involved, the maker of the toaster right is another story. If I was a toaster maker and I figured out some guy was copying my toasters I would be upset and that would be at the very least a tort if not a crime. Although what crime I don't rightly know. Certainly violation of various patents and copyright laws, which are or can be criminal offenses.

Fair point, though I only brought up the toaster duplication to show that stealing something the victim got for free is different than pirating (i.e. copying) something the victim got for free. Swap the toaster in my example with the grandfather's handkerchief, and we have the same point without the patent issues.

Also, I can't even imagine what a copyright and patent nightmare it would be if duplicators became a common thing (and we might not even be that far off, what with 3D printers and all).

I'm saying it is excusable because of the various reasons that differentiate the situations. Loaning a physical book is limited in duration and intensity.

So one can excuse piracy when it is limited in duration and intensity? It becomes a slippery slope when a person can excuse some piracy but not others. Then I might ask, is it okay to excuse a person who copies a piece of media only once, and never again?

Making a copy and giving it to a friend is much closer to piracy, but so minimal that I personally wouldn't do much about it. Still though, it is wrong since now there are two things out there instead of one, and I personally wouldn't do it, but that is more of a moral thing for me.

If I understand correctly, you're saying that the problem is only serious when the items/media are duplicated? But the same end result happens, whether or there is more than one item, or one item is passed around: people are consuming the media without paying for it.

But those two situations are orders of magnitude different from making a copy and uploading it to a pirating site where a potentially unlimited number of people, those who would and would not have bought the book, can come on and get the book for free.

The one difference, as you mentioned above, is intensity. Or rather, the potential for intensity. If the situation happens like my example with Fred, Bob and James, then the intensity is not more than that of a loaned book. So can we really define piracy by the potential for the intensity that would make it worse than book loaning?

If we do, then we're essentially punishing some people for an act that they're not committing (Fred, Bob and James), while letting others doing the exact same thing (loaning a book) off the hook.

Also, some of the pirates would have bought the book otherwise, but others wouldn't have. So now we're also pinning the actual loss (the people who would have bought the book, but instead pirated it) on both groups.

There are many different kinds of theft. Larceny, embezzlement, robbery, larceny by trick, false pretenses, forgery, and on and on it goes. Each one is judged by a different standard. Often turning on something as minuscule as whether title was transferred or mere possession.

I think we agree on this part, and we're only butting heads on semantics. For me, theft is not the same as robbery, for example. There is a degree of difference between the two that make it impossible for me to classify them as the same thing.

The common similarity is that someone has a loss of some kind, either in possession of a tangible object (things like a computer or a bike or a car or gasoline) or of some loss of actual money. Piracy, harms two interests 1) the interest to control how copies of your work are distributed through legal means. 2) monetary loss because at least some person would have bought the book but for being able to pirate it.

Your definition of loss seems too wide to me. If you cast the net too wide, you risk including most every crime. E.g. a murderer would be classified as a thief because he "stole" the victim's life, or "stole" the victim from the loved ones. And we can't classify a thief and a murderer under the same name, because their crimes are not the same, and the consequences of those crimes are not the same.

This is why I say theft of intellectual property, which piracy is, needs to be controlled by some different but analogous standards to theft of tangible personal property. So we agree that piracy is not theft in the sense that it is stealing personal tangible property. But, it is theft of intellectual property, which is just as wrong.

I agree that piracy needs to be controlled. I'm saying that it can't just be lumped as theft and treated as such (which I think we both agree on). It is a complicated issue that needs to be carefully studied and understood.

The way I feel about piracy is the same way I feel about salami slicing (not cutting up meat, but rather the crime of stealing little bits of money, say 1 cent, from millions of people). I struggle to come up with a proper judgement on it because of its nature. One person doing it will do little to no harm. But the moment we stop condemning it, a lot of people will start doing it, which creates a massive issue. So the harm, I think, lies in the numbers of people doing it.

Ergo, I have no idea how to judge something like that, since if I were to judge it by the potential intensity it could have, I would be judging people who are not creating that intensity, or who are only a part of the massive whole. On their own, each person is not doing harm (or much harm), so I find it difficult to condemn the individual.

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I love ERB. One of my favorites is Shakespeare v. Dr. Seuss. Julia Childs v. Gordon Ramsey is fantastic. And James Bond v Austin Powers is great.

Ha! I'll definitely have to go listen to those.

 

[Caged Maiden]

When this discussion opened, and I read the original article, I had a single opinion on the matter: if someone copies and distributes someone else's book, it's wrong. Whether they do it for "art should be free" reasons or not. I mean, to me, an author has the right to decide unilaterally, whether their work is free or should be bought.

But the thing about book borrowing has brought up a subject we talked about years ago on this forum. Used books. Someone was talking about used books deserving royalties be paid to the writers. Hm...well, I used to frequent used bookstores in my small town in Missouri. A lot. It's the only place I bought books, really. When I lived in Wisconsin, I bought tons of books from a thrift store. More than I could ever read. And no author got paid for those books I bought for $.25 sometimes, but mostly $1. Anyways, so when I went to the used bookstore, they paid 1/4 cover price for used books, and only charged 1/2 cover price for you to buy used books. It was awesome!!! I got paid MORE for my used books than I paid for them from the thrift store, and then I got new (used) books, cheap! But that whole time, for years, I never actually paid an author. I never thought of that. I wasn't stealing books, but I wasn't supporting my favorite writers, either, looking back.

Thanks for this whole discussion. It's really eye-opening. I still buy most of my books in paperback, used, on Amazon, so I guess I'm still not paying authors...sort of shitty of me. For years I had no qualms about watching PPV fights for free online, because it wasn't worth the money to view them. I watched them because I really felt like the fighters didn't see the PPV money anyways, and Dana White didn't need to get any richer off the backs of his fighters. Sorry, fighters. I like you. I hate him.

Anyways, but I bought a photograph of a sunset from a photographer. It was $45. To some folks, that probably seems an incredible waste. I could have gone online, found a photo I liked in public domain, printed it, and framed it. But I was supporting someone I liked, someone I wanted to support. So I paid him, and the photo is something special to me. I didn't have to go to Yellowstone to take it, it has HIS emotion and care in it. But I could have gotten it for free, if I wanted to.

With used books, I bought them first because I was a young person and didn't have a ton of money. Later, I suppose I kept doing it because I sort of like the crap shoot of seeing what's in the thrift store. Bear with me here, because I promise it makes sense. When I go to a store, I don't read inside the books at all. I just knock about 5-10 into my cart, based on the cover, and then I pay for them. Later, when I'm bored, I open one of my "grab bag" finds, and see if I like it. If I do, I read it and keep it. If I don't, I donate it back to the thrift store. And the main reason I do that, is because I don't have to sift through anything and make decisions. That probably sounds weird. All I'm saying, is that the shelves are full of best-sellers. There's probably some garbage, too, but mostly, I find good books that other people just don't keep forever on shelves like my dad does. So I get to find them all in one place, rather than have to pick things for myself on bookshelves at B&N. Maybe it's because that's how I've always read. When I wanted a book, I'd go to my dad's shelves, and pick something to read. I never actually decided what I wanted on my own. Now that I'm old...I guess I'm still letting people who donate books show me what they liked.

This has turned into an interesting look at my own psychology. I'm really moved by this new understanding of how I choose what to read. You know...this might have been what led me to be a writer. I wanted something different...so I wrote it. Wow.

 

[Russ]

I am getting a lot out of the discussion in this thread.

I look at it on kind of two levels. On an abstract level, intellectual property is just that, property, and as we move into the digital age more and more it is becoming more important than ever for people's livelihood. It is a hard mental shift to make, it is easy to think of a "thing" (a chair, or a car) as being property and thus worthy of protection but it is equally important to think about how ideas or expressions of ideas have commercial value and need to be respected. You can also think of it as reducing the scarcity of an item can lower or destroy it's value.

On a practical level, with used books in particular the "harm" appears to be pretty small and not a concern of any of the authors I have jawed about this subject with. With a used book, the author has gotten their $2 or whatever out of it and it might be passed along, on average, to a couple or three people, in a very inefficient way. Some harm, maybe, but not much. Now with piracy, you might sell one book and get your three bucks and the next thing you know thousands of copies are being distributed, potentially all over the world completely outside of your control. The magnitude of the individual act is so much larger and potentially so much more destructive.

I really like the practical moral dimension CM imports into the argument. I am at a place in my life where I can and do think about the moral and larger implications of my actions. I am quite lucky to be in such a position. So I try to make purchasing/reading choices keeping the authors/creators in mind to be fair to them, at least as much to be fair to me.

For instance, if I like a writer and I want to read their work I will almost always pre-order a copy of their next book, usually in hardcover, even if the writer is a friend of mine and I know they are going to give me a copy. Why? Because I support what they do and I feel that I should do whatever I can to contribute to their success if I want them to be able to keep doing what they are doing. I often feel grateful that person X is out there writing such amazing stuff for me to enjoy and I want to pay them back in a fair way for the enjoyment they are giving me.

Now many people are not in a position to act that way, but I think it only fair that you consider how your actions impact on other people before you take them.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

I agree with the writer - and on a very practical level. About six months ago I ran across a site that was giving away my books - specifically The Arcanist - happily, and in one month they'd managed to give away 1600 copies of it. (That's about five grand to me in one month.) Now I know most of those people would not have bought my book. But some of them might have if they liked it. Or they might have bought someone else's book, and pirates of other books might have bought mine in turn. The point is that those who might have bought it wouldn't simply because they could get it for free - so why should they pay?!

Now here's the thing. I'm a rich author right? Not hardly. I work hard at my writing and following a car crash and injury I no longer have another income. I do a lot better than most in earning from my writing but still am nowhere near as affluent as I once was. So the argument that writers can afford it is crap for me as it is in most cases.

The people who support piracy often think of themselves as some sort of Robin Hood. The truth is the opposite. They are stealing from those who make damned little money - certainly less than average - and giving it to those who have the money to buy the products but would rather spend it on something else. These pirates are the Sherriffs of Nottingham!

Next - art should be free. Bullshit! Maybe you can argue that Picasso etc is too dear, but what you're actually arguing is that artists shouldn't be able to make a living from their work. So pick your favourite artist, writer, musician, actor etc etc, and try sending them a letter explaining to them how they should do their art for free and have a "real job" fortheir income. Then ask them how many books they'll be writing. concerts they'll be giving, films they'll be making. The answer is of course damned few. If I work all day to make money, I simply don't have time to write. Payment for what I write is how I survive.

The poor readers can't afford my works?! Really?! I price competatively. You can get most of my ebooks for the price of a cup of coffee. Paper costs more of course. But you can also go to your library or join Kindle Unlimited and save more money. So how many people do you imagine are actually out there who can't afford my books? Damned few! And lets be honest, those people who steal my books aren't exactly stealing bread because they're starving. Chances are they have enough money to have a computer or ereader - unless they stole them too - and some form of internet connection. The reality is that they aren't pirating because they're hard up - they simply don't want to pay.

And yes, piracy is theft. I've bought two pirated dvd programs in my entire life, and the only reason I did it was because the shows were old and weren't available any other way and I desperately wanted to see them. I'm not proud of it. When the shows finally did come out on dvd, I bought them and threw my pirated versions away. Money's tight, but no matter what I am not a thief.

Cheers, Greg.