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WWJSD: What Would Jack Sparrow Do?
It's apparently Mobileread/Dreamwidth crossover week, in which IP law and ebook piracy have become one of the hot new topics bouncing around the journalsphere. I hesitate to jump in, not so much because I'm not sure what to say, but because I'm not sure what there is to say that Mobileread doesn't have a dozen thirty-page threads about already.
We have discussed this. To death. Beyond death. There is no aspect of ebook piracy that hasn't been considered, counterpointed, analyzed by lawyers (from several directions), critiqued by hackers, patiently explained to newbies, ranted about, and used as the topic for random surrealist jokes. Even the US-centric aspects... MR shies away from discussions of race (of privilege of any sort), but it *is* a firmly international forum, and people from non-English-majority countries have a firm presence; they're quick to jump in and explain how the laws work differently in their country, and how US publishers don't consider them as real customers.
Still, I wouldn't have participated in those discussions if I didn't love the topic, didn't love poking at it from different directions.
Some thoughts I always keep in mind in these discussions:
1) Doctorow's right: things will *never* be harder to copy than they are right now. Any attempts to deal with digital content exchange, purchase, control, etc. will have to keep that in mind.
2) Treating all customers like potential criminals who are barely held in check by strict technological controls and insanely overpowered laws is not a plan for long-term success.
3) Book authors aren't just competing with other book authors anymore. They're also competing with fanfic authors, HuffPo, and Twitter. Convincing people to pay for digital content, when so much is available for free, is going to require major changes in marketing methods.*
4) Publishers who discuss "piracy" are not doing themselves any favors by refusing to give useful & accurate numbers. Claims that ebooks "need" to cost $12 or they'd lose money are claims that Baen should've gone bankrupt a decade ago.
5) Authors and other creators *should* get paid for their work. And publishers and editors who help them develop and distribute their work deserve a slice of the pie as well. All of us--authors, readers, cover artists, ebookstore developers, publishers, anyone who has an interest in books still existing twenty years from now--need to be trying to figure out how that can work with instant communication and near-infinite data copying & retention ability.
Publishers who yell about ebook piracy are ignored when they're not mocked; they're coming in on the coattails of the RIAA, using the same rhetoric, only without the same ability to wield lawsuits like battle-axes to destroy students' lives for sharing a bit of entertainment. (No one publisher has the scope of the RIAA, and ebooks don't bounce around the web nearly as much as music does.) Copyright laws about ebooks are extra-convoluted because there's so much public domain content involved, or content that's PD in some countries and not others.
Authors who yell are given a bit more respect ... but there's still a sense that they believe they're entitled to choose their readers, of "if my book isn't offered in your area, or in a way that's accessible to you, you shouldn't be reading it." And there's a bit of bafflement; people are left thinking, "so, you DON'T want me to read your books? In that case, what do you care if I download them or not?"
I recently noted that the legitimate way around DRM issues is time-consuming and feels like wasted effort; I don't quite mind putting in 10-15 hours for an ebook only I am ever going to read (I have several), but I'm not sure why anyone thinks this is a *good* thing. I'm also not sure why authors would prefer I buy a secondhand hard copy, for which they get no royalties and no record of the sale, and destroy the physical book, so nobody else will read it either, rather than downloading a copy from the darknet. (Authors are free to comment with why that's better for them.) I sometimes think of it as a form of penance for liking the wrong books, and work on shifting my tastes.
The digital book industry needs used ebooks, or something that fills that niche. The used bookstore, the reading club that hands last month's selection to the school library, the box of books left by the apartment mailboxes, the $5/bag of books at the rummage sale. We need eBookcrossing, so a book can float from email address to email address. And no, there's no obvious, simple way to do these without authors losing sales, much more than they do for pbooks that float around. OTOH, the lack of these has inspired and fueled alt.binaries.books, #Bookz, passworded Mediafire exchanges, and endless torrents. And some of those would exist anyway--but the lack of a coherent way to share ebooks the way we share pbooks means that there's no difference between emailing an ebook to a friend, and placing it on Rapidshare for a couple-hundred people to download. At least, authors and publishers seem to react with the same amount of ire to each.
Am I entitled to read whatever I want, when & how I want it? Of course not. But neither am I morally obligated to pay MSRP for every book I read. (I'm tempted to put in a bit about CD ripping and downloading MP3s of songs you have on vinyl, but I'm going to skip it, because they aren't quite parallel; authors can't make up for free copies by giving Writing Concerts.)
We need some middle ground. We need varieties of content in multiple formats, and ways to encourage sales, not just copying. And, as technology becomes common and computers work their way into low-income households, we need ways for ebooks to be available to them as well--we need ebooks not to be a medium for the wealthy and hacker-geeks only.
And copyright law needs an overhaul before it strangles international business and further widens the gap between "online business" and "online anonymous data exchange." Because the myth of the Noble Pirate, of Robin Hood, of the Rebel Alliance, is a strong one; publishers aren't in a position of "enforce the laws" but "convince people these laws aren't outdated, greed-driven bureaucratic nightmares wherein every successful violation is a victory over oppression."
No amount of name-calling or threats is going to make that point. It doesn't matter how accurate the names might be, or how much power is behind the threats. Authors and publishers who want to "fight piracy" need to convince the majority--not everyone, but a majority--of online readers that they're involved in fair, reasonable business practices.
ETA: it should be obvious I have many strong opinions about all this. More than any of those, I believe that this is complicated stuff, that IP law and consumer rights and digital networking are going through changes, and need to be examined extensively, from as many angles as people can tolerate, if we're going to find any useful answers. If this had simple, elegant answers, Kibo would've provided us with them fifteen years ago. So disagreement, even strong disagreement, is more than welcome.
We have discussed this. To death. Beyond death. There is no aspect of ebook piracy that hasn't been considered, counterpointed, analyzed by lawyers (from several directions), critiqued by hackers, patiently explained to newbies, ranted about, and used as the topic for random surrealist jokes. Even the US-centric aspects... MR shies away from discussions of race (of privilege of any sort), but it *is* a firmly international forum, and people from non-English-majority countries have a firm presence; they're quick to jump in and explain how the laws work differently in their country, and how US publishers don't consider them as real customers.
Still, I wouldn't have participated in those discussions if I didn't love the topic, didn't love poking at it from different directions.
Some thoughts I always keep in mind in these discussions:
1) Doctorow's right: things will *never* be harder to copy than they are right now. Any attempts to deal with digital content exchange, purchase, control, etc. will have to keep that in mind.
2) Treating all customers like potential criminals who are barely held in check by strict technological controls and insanely overpowered laws is not a plan for long-term success.
3) Book authors aren't just competing with other book authors anymore. They're also competing with fanfic authors, HuffPo, and Twitter. Convincing people to pay for digital content, when so much is available for free, is going to require major changes in marketing methods.*
4) Publishers who discuss "piracy" are not doing themselves any favors by refusing to give useful & accurate numbers. Claims that ebooks "need" to cost $12 or they'd lose money are claims that Baen should've gone bankrupt a decade ago.
5) Authors and other creators *should* get paid for their work. And publishers and editors who help them develop and distribute their work deserve a slice of the pie as well. All of us--authors, readers, cover artists, ebookstore developers, publishers, anyone who has an interest in books still existing twenty years from now--need to be trying to figure out how that can work with instant communication and near-infinite data copying & retention ability.
Publishers who yell about ebook piracy are ignored when they're not mocked; they're coming in on the coattails of the RIAA, using the same rhetoric, only without the same ability to wield lawsuits like battle-axes to destroy students' lives for sharing a bit of entertainment. (No one publisher has the scope of the RIAA, and ebooks don't bounce around the web nearly as much as music does.) Copyright laws about ebooks are extra-convoluted because there's so much public domain content involved, or content that's PD in some countries and not others.
Authors who yell are given a bit more respect ... but there's still a sense that they believe they're entitled to choose their readers, of "if my book isn't offered in your area, or in a way that's accessible to you, you shouldn't be reading it." And there's a bit of bafflement; people are left thinking, "so, you DON'T want me to read your books? In that case, what do you care if I download them or not?"
I recently noted that the legitimate way around DRM issues is time-consuming and feels like wasted effort; I don't quite mind putting in 10-15 hours for an ebook only I am ever going to read (I have several), but I'm not sure why anyone thinks this is a *good* thing. I'm also not sure why authors would prefer I buy a secondhand hard copy, for which they get no royalties and no record of the sale, and destroy the physical book, so nobody else will read it either, rather than downloading a copy from the darknet. (Authors are free to comment with why that's better for them.) I sometimes think of it as a form of penance for liking the wrong books, and work on shifting my tastes.
The digital book industry needs used ebooks, or something that fills that niche. The used bookstore, the reading club that hands last month's selection to the school library, the box of books left by the apartment mailboxes, the $5/bag of books at the rummage sale. We need eBookcrossing, so a book can float from email address to email address. And no, there's no obvious, simple way to do these without authors losing sales, much more than they do for pbooks that float around. OTOH, the lack of these has inspired and fueled alt.binaries.books, #Bookz, passworded Mediafire exchanges, and endless torrents. And some of those would exist anyway--but the lack of a coherent way to share ebooks the way we share pbooks means that there's no difference between emailing an ebook to a friend, and placing it on Rapidshare for a couple-hundred people to download. At least, authors and publishers seem to react with the same amount of ire to each.
Am I entitled to read whatever I want, when & how I want it? Of course not. But neither am I morally obligated to pay MSRP for every book I read. (I'm tempted to put in a bit about CD ripping and downloading MP3s of songs you have on vinyl, but I'm going to skip it, because they aren't quite parallel; authors can't make up for free copies by giving Writing Concerts.)
We need some middle ground. We need varieties of content in multiple formats, and ways to encourage sales, not just copying. And, as technology becomes common and computers work their way into low-income households, we need ways for ebooks to be available to them as well--we need ebooks not to be a medium for the wealthy and hacker-geeks only.
And copyright law needs an overhaul before it strangles international business and further widens the gap between "online business" and "online anonymous data exchange." Because the myth of the Noble Pirate, of Robin Hood, of the Rebel Alliance, is a strong one; publishers aren't in a position of "enforce the laws" but "convince people these laws aren't outdated, greed-driven bureaucratic nightmares wherein every successful violation is a victory over oppression."
No amount of name-calling or threats is going to make that point. It doesn't matter how accurate the names might be, or how much power is behind the threats. Authors and publishers who want to "fight piracy" need to convince the majority--not everyone, but a majority--of online readers that they're involved in fair, reasonable business practices.
ETA: it should be obvious I have many strong opinions about all this. More than any of those, I believe that this is complicated stuff, that IP law and consumer rights and digital networking are going through changes, and need to be examined extensively, from as many angles as people can tolerate, if we're going to find any useful answers. If this had simple, elegant answers, Kibo would've provided us with them fifteen years ago. So disagreement, even strong disagreement, is more than welcome.
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I think they're going to continue the ostrich impression until there's enough data to prove that Konrath is not an isolated anomaly, at which point we will be subject to much screaming and ranting about how some website-or-other (whichever one combines Lulu's PoD, Smashwords' multiformat, and a *coherent* search engine) is ruining the future of publishing.
Also, there will be much yelling about how free blogging is immoral because it devalues creativity. Fanfic will be evil for a new reason: because it's free! Don't we realize that authors can't sell books when we're giving it away! Fanfic should be locked away behind paywalls, in respect for the authors!
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Are we back to the pixel-stained technopeasant wretch? Because frankly I kind of love that phrase a lot.
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I sometimes want to yell at authors, your problem is not privacy. Your problem is TWITTER, which is dominating the eyeballs and braintime of your potential readers. You need to be more entertaining than facebook, not more available than the torrents. Because, with effort, an author *can* be more entertaining than social networking sites. They can't be more available than megaupload.
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Either Smashwords needs to get a real search engine (you can't even sort by price), or someone needs to declare themselves the self-publishing competition and set up something as good as Fictionwise. (FW has become mostly useless since B&N bought it.)
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Just to add that the oft-heard argument that a pirated copy = a lost sale in any and all cases is a fallacy. Especially while it ignores the fact that people getting introduced to something through a pirated copy can lead to them actually buying in the future.
I also think the content industry needs to realize that it's no longer a supplier's market, where they can decide who gets to buy what, when, and in which format, but that it's turning into a demand market, where the customer is expecting to be able to decide what to buy, when, where and in what format (and possibly, at what price).
And lastly, I think we're getting to the point where IP law is beginning to stifle the very creativity it was supposed to protect and encourage.
As you said, it's complicated, and the system needs an overhaul, and people trying desperately to hold on to the way things were isn't helping.
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I think that's not quite the law itself, but the corporate misuse of it. While everything is copyrighted from the moment it hits paper or disc, in reality, the law's only being used to support commercial production uses of copyrighted material.
When orphan works legislature was bounced around, and people said, "so... what's considered a reasonable search? What about things that aren't in this proposed registry?" And the response was basically, "if you can't be bothered to register your works with a non-gov't, for-profit agency, you don't deserve copyright protection."
Googlebooks have started selling (and there's a mess that'll scramble the ebook industry if they fix some of their bugs), without the go-ahead on the settlement agreement, which is still in utter limbo. I wonder if Google & the plaintiffs are backing off, since they agreed to it--but it hasn't been signed by a judge because (among other things) the DOJ says it's not allowed.
Big tangled mess o' worms all around. And if publishers want the future to include their middleman activity at a profit, they really need to stop ignoring & insulting their customers.
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Oh yes, absolutely. Nothing wrong with a decent copyright law itself. As long as it doesn't get abused and stretched and stretched and streeeetched way beyond what it was originally intended for.
I don't know the deal with Googlebooks or the finer points of US law about that, but I do know Google doesn't (yet?) sell to non-US territories at the moment. Alas, I'd add. I do want to pay for my books but apparently very few people actually want my money...!
they really need to stop ignoring & insulting their customers
And yes, that would be a very good place to start.
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And while they could put stricter checks on things before they go live, they've decided to play the "safe harbor" game, in which they more-or-less claim that checking every book before selling, like a social networking site checking every post, would be impossible without destroying their business, so they only have to react to complaints. I think they're in a different category from social sites because they're profiting from every bootleg book they don't catch--but it'll take a big pack of lawyers to make that go anywhere in court.
If it helps, AFAIK you're not breaking any laws when you buy a bootleg book; it's like walking into a bookstore, making a purchase, and discovering that the publisher didn't have distribution rights in your region--the copyright holder can go after the publisher; they don't get to reclaim the book you bought.
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The pirate Kindle books I've come across were poor quality (scanned without checking and editing), so I always get a refund, but it's still annoying to have to go through that.
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And we'll be seeing a number of comparisons to the music industry, and much analysis of how that does & doesn't work, and a whooooole bunch of "Piracy ho! Sail the digital seas! The
East India Trading CompanyTime-Warner conglomerate can't tell me what to enjoy!", followed by authors declaring that anyone who has a digital copy of their work without paying full price for it is a dirty, malicious thief who should have their modem removed by force, which will get in the way of discussion that might lead to useful options.I don't mind the repetitive headbashing discussions; I have some hopes that new digital solutions will pop out of the screaming matches somewhere, because sometimes it works like that.
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One can hardly say the same now. Copy editors are losing their jobs everywhere, shoddy glue and spines means a lot of paperbacks start losing their pages after mild use, textbooks are created that are nearly indistinguishable from previous editions except for changed pagination and maybe "extras" that require an entirely new purchase, and books are turned down simply because they either aren't expected to earn "enough" or because no one's willing to develop a market for it. And let's not get into the absence of marketing most authors receive. I'd really like to see them defend their paychecks for what they add to the reading experience.
In short, what am I paying for when I buy a book that I couldn't get from free content elsewhere? This is the question that needs to be answered and I doubt very much any of them want to. As I told someone else in a similar conversation once, publishers act as if they are in a luxury goods business -- that what they sell is worth it because they say it is, rather than because it actually has much added value.
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what am I paying for when I buy a book that I couldn't get from free content elsewhere?
Even shoddy editing from mainstream publishers beats the hell out of a lot of self-published works. There's stuff at Smashwords that makes me wince. It's like seeing a fanfiction.net mary-sue specials feed thrown into a blender with today's business buzzwords attached.
However, there's a growing awareness that the level of editing/proofing available through pro publishers isn't any better than what's available freelance (or, for certain authors, self-editing), and publishers are going to start having to *prove* that they provide something other than a filter to keep out the worst of the dreck. Konrath has a post about book acquisitions that's spot on. Publishers *do* provide a set of useful services ... but authors are going to have to seriously consider whether those services are worth a 50-80% cut of the list price.
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The biggest problem is that authors don't want to be directly out of pocket before they can even get a book into the marketplace, and without publishers they'd have to pay for editing (and yet be much less likely to take the comments/corrections seriously) and also take on a number of other tasks which would certainly incur time and probably expense. Without question a good publisher/editor will be very helpful in producing a quality product. But considering the "quality" of some best sellers, I'd say having good marketing people is probably the ultimate benefit.