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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.
no subject
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.