# Kindle e-Book piracy accelerates - from CNET



## retiredat47 (Jan 14, 2011)

From CNET news regarding the Kindle e-Book piracy.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-18438_7-20033437-82.html


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## evrose (Jan 7, 2011)

Doesn't surprise me at all.


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## NightGoat (Feb 2, 2011)

Something about pirating books I cannot understand; how is it that someone will take the time to remove the DRM, bundle up 2K of ebooks and then offer them up on a pirate site? What would one get for their efforts? 

I could see it with music pirating, maybe. Not morally however, in regard for effort though it takes but a few minutes to rip a whole CD. No scripts, no specialized software needed. But that whole DRM removal business is arduous.


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## evrose (Jan 7, 2011)

NightGoat said:


> Something about pirating books I cannot understand; how is it that someone will take the time to remove the DRM, bundle up 2K of ebooks and then offer them up on a pirate site? What would one get for their efforts?


There are MANY people out there who will go through the bother just to stick it to THE MAN. No really, that's all the motivation many people need...



> I could see it with music pirating, maybe. Not morally however, in regard for effort though it takes but a few minutes to rip a whole CD. No scripts, no specialized software needed. But that whole DRM removal business is arduous.


Hate to break the news to you, but you're VASTLY overestimating the difficulty of the process - especially to an expert hacker/programmer.

(which I'm certainly not, btw)


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## RiddleMeThis (Sep 15, 2009)

evrose said:


> Hate to break the news to you, but you're VASTLY overestimating the difficulty of the process - especially to an expert hacker/programmer.


Oh yes very much so.

ETA:Just about anyone can VERY easily strip the DRM from ebooks. I won't go it to details since its against board rules, but ya, it's INCREDIBLY easy especially now.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

NightGoat said:


> Something about pirating books I cannot understand; how is it that someone will take the time to remove the DRM, bundle up 2K of ebooks and then offer them up on a pirate site? What would one get for their efforts?


I don't get it either. It's extremely easy to do, but why? There is however apparently a large enough group that do it because they can and it makes them members of an "outlaw" community.


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## Sporadic (May 1, 2009)

NightGoat said:


> Something about pirating books I cannot understand; how is it that someone will take the time to remove the DRM, bundle up 2K of ebooks and then offer them up on a pirate site? What would one get for their efforts?


Speaking as a pirate, it is contributing and giving back to the community.

The people bundling up 2,000 ebooks in one torrent? They are most likely people looking to bump up their ratio or give back from things they downloaded (as in, it is not them breaking the DRM but just bundling stuff they downloaded together)



NightGoat said:


> I could see it with music pirating, maybe. Not morally however, in regard for effort though it takes but a few minutes to rip a whole CD. No scripts, no specialized software needed. But that whole DRM removal business is arduous.


It really isn't that hard to break the DRM on an ebook once you set it up. Much quicker than doing a 100% FLAC rip of a CD with EAC.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

NightGoat said:


> Something about pirating books I cannot understand; how is it that someone will take the time to remove the DRM, bundle up 2K of ebooks and then offer them up on a pirate site? What would one get for their efforts?
> I could see it with music pirating, maybe. Not morally however, in regard for effort though it takes but a few minutes to rip a whole CD. No scripts, no specialized software needed. But that whole DRM removal business is arduous.


Its hard to explain and there is a 10 page thread about it on here somewhere from a couple weeks ago were we spent a lot of time going back and forth about it with no minds being changed.


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## daveconifer (Oct 20, 2009)

Sporadic said:


> Speaking as a pirate


Ahoy, Matey! Shiver my timbers!


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## Sporadic (May 1, 2009)

daveconifer said:


> Ahoy, Matey! Shiver my timbers!


  Hey now, I didn't choose the term.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Sporadic said:


> Speaking as a pirate, it is contributing and giving back to the community.


There are a lot of nice folks here, when I outed myself as a pirate I caught a ration of "S" and got in an argument but all turned out cool . . . so if your feathers get ruffled try not to take it to personal.
Speak honestly and respectfully and the same will be returned.
From one pirate to another.


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## daveconifer (Oct 20, 2009)

Sporadic said:


> Hey now, I didn't choose the term.


But seriously, is there a cooler term?

[just to save a few people some effort -- yeah, I write and no, I'm not bummed out about pirating]


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

Sporadic said:


> Speaking as a pirate, it is contributing and giving back to the community.


Contributing to the pirate community?

You probably know this, but the term "pirate" was coined for patent and copyright violators right around the turn of the 20th century. Over 100 years of pirates!


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> There are a lot of nice folks here, when I outed myself as a pirate I caught a ration of "S" and got in an argument but all turned out cool . . .


Auge, I didn't catch that you were an initial seeder as well as a downloader. Is this the case?

I understand your "why I download" position, but I don't recall you discussing posting.

Sporadic, Auge is a good egg and "fought" fair when we recently discussed pirating. It was actually quite enlightening. I don't know if minds were changed, but I think some eyes opened a bit on both sides.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2011)

Sporadic said:


> Speaking as a pirate, it is contributing and giving back to the community.


So how does stealing from me and other authors "contribute" and "give back" to the community?


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Elk said:


> Auge, I didn't catch that you were an initial seeder as well as a downloader. Is this the case?
> 
> I understand your "why I download" position, but I don't recall you discussing posting.
> 
> Sporadic, Auge is a good egg and "fought" fair when we recently discussed pirating. It was actually quite enlightening. I don't know if minds were changed, but I think some eyes opened a bit on both sides.


Elk, I never upload torrents to a website like Pirate Bay.
They don't need my help.
I do have a VERY small (like 5 people) closed network were we pass around via email torrents that we make for each other. These people are all folks I hang out with on weekends, it's just an easy delivery system and unless one of us posts it on a website it's a closed system.

And thank you for the kind words.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> So how does stealing from me and other authors "contribute" and "give back" to the community?


I've already had a long and exhausting discussion about this recently . . . so unless needed I will try to sit here in the corner.


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## Sporadic (May 1, 2009)

auge_28 said:


> There are a lot of nice folks here, when I outed myself as a pirate I caught a ration of "S" and got in an argument but all turned out cool . . . so if your feathers get ruffled try not to take it to personal.
> Speak honestly and respectfully and the same will be returned.
> From one pirate to another.


I don't plan to argue with anybody. I have been trying hard lately to take the venom out of my writing. 



Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> So how does stealing from me and other authors "contribute" and "give back" to the community?


I doubt I've "stolen" (the use of that word is an argument in itself) from you or any other indie writer but basically



Elk said:


> Contributing to the pirate community?


yes.

When you start going further down the pirate hole (at least with torrents), you go from public sites to private ones that require an invite. They have alot of exclusive stuff or stuff you won't find elsewhere which inspires others to step up and return what other users have done for you.

- edit


Elk said:


> Sporadic, Auge is a good egg and "fought" fair when we recently discussed pirating. It was actually quite enlightening. I don't know if minds were changed, but I think some eyes opened a bit on both sides.


Do you have a link to that thread? Sounds interesting.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Sporadic said:


> I don't plan to argue with anybody. I have been trying hard lately to take the venom out of my writing.


Oh, I meant argue in the good positive sense, not fighting but rather an exchange of ideas and debate.



Sporadic said:


> I doubt I've "stolen" (the use of that word is an argument in itself) from you or any other indie writer but basically


Also well covered in the other long thread.



Sporadic said:


> When you start going further down the pirate hole (at least with torrents), you go from public sites to private ones that require an invite. They have alot of exclusive stuff or stuff you won't find elsewhere which inspires others to step up and return what other users have done for you.


Yup, exclusivity is the way to go. 
I started my own, 5 people I know and trust and each of them can bring in folks they trust . . . at the threat of being black balled and banned.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Sporadic said:


> Do you have a link to that thread? Sounds interesting.


http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,48980.0.html

I said my piece there, so I'll refrain from rehashing my thoroughly anti-piracy view points in this thred.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,48980.0.html
> 
> I said my piece there, so I'll refrain from rehashing my thoroughly anti-piracy view points in this thred.


That thread was tiring, wasn't it?


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

I just wanted to point out from the article:



> You can argue whether it was Napster or the rise of the iPod--or most probably both--that led to the huge amount of music piracy, but the book business will also take its share of big losses as it moves further into the digital realm.


Napster was around and pirating music like crazy for a solid two years before the iPod came out - people just burned the mp3s they were downloading to a CD instead of adding them to an mp3 player. I really don't think the iPod did much to contribute to mass piracy of music. What DID contribute was the increasing availability and affordability of broadband in residential homes.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> I do have a VERY small (like 5 people) closed network . .


Makes sense. I didn't think you were otherwise seeding.

Thanks.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

history_lover said:


> Napster was around and pirating music like crazy for a solid two years before the iPod came out - people just burned the mp3s they were downloading to a CD instead of adding them to an mp3 player. I really don't think the iPod did much to contribute to mass piracy of music.


I can't remember a time when people did not pirate.
I remember in the mid-1980s buying a second VCR to duplicate rented tapes. And YEARS before that I would buy tapes to record albums from friends . . . the stereos had that ability built in, you could record directly from a record, another cassette or the radio.



history_lover said:


> What DID contribute was the increasing availability and affordability of broadband in residential homes.


Good point, never thought of that.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

Sporadic said:


> . . . you go from public sites to private ones that require an invite. They have alot of exclusive stuff or stuff you won't find elsewhere which inspires others to step up and return what other users have done for you.


This is what I thought you meant. I think most of us can understand this as a motivation even if they don't like the concept of piracy itself.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

history_lover said:


> Napster was around and pirating music like crazy for a solid two years before the iPod came out - people just burned the mp3s they were downloading to a CD instead of adding them to an mp3 player. I really don't think the iPod did much to contribute to mass piracy of music. What DID contribute was the increasing availability and affordability of broadband in residential homes.


There were many portable players prior to the iPod, but the rapid proliferation of the iPod contributed to piracy - as did ready broadband.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

history_lover said:


> I really don't think the iPod did much to contribute to mass piracy of music. What DID contribute was the increasing availability and affordability of broadband in residential homes.


I think both mp3 players and broadband increased piracy. Both make it easier. Fast downloads from broadband, no need to burn to cds to listen etc. It went from something that took patience and some tech skills (to burn cd, convert to .wav format first if needed etc.), to something anyone could do.



Elk said:


> This is what I thought you meant. I think most of us can understand this as a motivation even if they don't like the concept of piracy itself.


Yeah, I think we all get the appeal. Get stuff for free is main reason to download. Give back to community, get access to pirate communities etc. is reason to upload/seed.

This disagreement (and completely fruitless argument) is over whether doing so is every ok or justifiable. As I said, we beat that dead horse to death repeatedly in the other thread, so no utility in beating it some more here!


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## NightGoat (Feb 2, 2011)

Thanks for the eye-opener people, really. I'm not opposed to DRM removal for personal use, it's just that... I must be the odd duck who actually enjoys the purchasing process. I like to seek out the books, read the reviews, d/l the samples. I simply value anything I pay for more than something I have not.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> This disagreement (and completely fruitless argument) is over whether doing so is every ok or justifiable.


Unfortunate you think it was fruitless, especially given the large number of posts you made in that thread.










I believe most of us found it quite interesting.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Elk said:


> Unfortunate you think it was fruitless, especially given the large number of posts you made in that thread.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Fruitless in the sense that no one changes their minds on the topic. At least not among pirates and anti-pirate types like myself. Glad some of you found it interesting so it wasn't a total waste of my time!


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

NightGoat said:


> I must be the odd duck who actually enjoys the purchasing process. I like to seek out the books, read the reviews, d/l the samples. I simply value anything I pay for more than something I have not.


Good point. I also like figuring out what books to get.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> Fruitless in the sense that no one changes their minds on the topic.


Perhaps not, but fleshing out one's own thoughts is often illuminating. Additionally one can learn from the opposing side.

Even though you otherwise made clear you value no one's opinions and thoughts but your own, I still hope you learned something.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

NightGoat said:


> I must be the odd duck who actually enjoys the purchasing process.


You didn't purchase the books you downloaded from Amazon, you paid to borrow them.



NightGoat said:


> I like to seek out the books, read the reviews, d/l the samples.


Oh, I do this exhaustively. I spend several hours a week reading about music and books to find what I want to listen to or read.



NightGoat said:


> I simply value anything I pay for more than something I have not.


If you define *pay* by the money you earned sure, but it can be defined also by the hours and effort you put into learning to do something (pirating) as well as the hours and effort you put into to find it and get it. I enjoy the books, music, film and television shows I pirate just as much as you do . . . but at a fraction of the cost, I don't even have cable television in my house anymore so there's at least $60 savings right there. I use my hard earned money for purchasing my 2000 ft. four bedroom home, my mini cooper and trips to fun places twice a year. . . not to mention food for me and my family.


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## NightGoat (Feb 2, 2011)

I guess I must earn a living that affords me the ability to have some luxuries, sustain my quality of life and not have to justify the means in which I acquire things.

Anyone have a pirated copy of "The Law of Attraction?"


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## daveconifer (Oct 20, 2009)

I'm not really understanding the logic, Aug.  I'll check the other thread so you can save your breath.  But it seems to me that you're not explaining why it's morally acceptable to do this.  You're merely explaining why it's beneficial to you...


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

NightGoat said:


> Anyone have a pirated copy of "The Law of Attraction?"


LOL, use _*The Secret*_ to get a copy of the new Tiesto album . . . you're a genius.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

daveconifer said:


> I'm not really understanding the logic, Aug. I'll check the other thread so you can save your breath. But it seems to me that you're not explaining why it's morally acceptable to do this. You're merely explaining why it's beneficial to you...


Yes, that's what I'm saying. The other thread was about the whys, this one I am having a bit of fun with.


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## daveconifer (Oct 20, 2009)

It's honestly not that big a deal to me, but I like understanding where people are coming from.  I'll check out the other thread...


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

daveconifer said:


> It's honestly not that big a deal to me, but I like understanding where people are coming from. I'll check out the other thread...


That thread took a lot of energy; I don't want to start over so soon after that one.
It would be simpler if you perused the other thread. I will make myself available if needed  but I would like to avoid a rehashing.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Elk said:


> I still hope you learned something.


Not really as I was always well aware of the reasons and justifications people give for piracy and nothing will ever convince me that it's every justifiable and not a moral and legal wrong.

That's why I don't care about others opinions on this topic. It's wrong in my eyes, end of story. I'm not interested in justifications, rationalizations nor excuses for why people engage in it.

Though as a criminologists I am mildly interested in how/why people can neutralize the wrongness of piracy and engage in it, while not doing the same for other crimes like shoplifting etc. That's a mildly interesting position, though I'm pretty sure it's just a function of the simplicity of piracy and the very low chances of getting caught that get people started on it. And once one is involved, its easy to use techniques of neutralization (from Sykes and Matza, 1957) to excuse/rationalize their behavior to alleviate guilt etc.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> Not really as I was always well aware of the reasons and justifications people give for piracy and nothing will ever convince me that it's every justifiable and not a moral and legal wrong.
> 
> That's why I don't care about others opinions on this topic. It's wrong in my eyes, end of story. I'm not interested in justifications, rationalizations nor excuses for why people engage in it.


And why we ended by saying "agree to disagree" as we started going in circles. A perfect time to end a discussion in my opinion.


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## ff2 (Oct 20, 2010)

daveconifer said:


> I'm not really understanding the logic, Aug. I'll check the other thread so you can save your breath. But it seems to me that you're not explaining why it's morally acceptable to do this. You're merely explaining why it's beneficial to you...


In one hand I hold my purchased (I purchased) copy of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."

In my other hand on my Kindle I hold a copy (that I again purchased) of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."

Why can I lend a dozen friends the first copy (for 2 weeks or 3 weeks or a month) and maybe lend the second to only one friend and only for 2 weeks? I "purchased" both copies. And, yes, what if I'm willing to delete my kindle copy while it is on loan. What is morally repugnant about one loan but not the other? My hardbound copy of the Lost Symbol was actually loaned to about a dozen friends before I read it and then I read it in ebook format. Why can I recoup some of my pbook costs and resell them (the author/publisher never make another cent) but not pbook costs?

And as we go down the legal road there are two avenues. I violate the law and give my drm-ed ebook away and someone does not get their money - illegal and maybe immoral. How 'bout I cross the street against the light - illegal but hardly immoral. So many different values.........


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## mayfire (Nov 11, 2010)

I just overheard a Best Buy salesman say that he bought his mother a Kindle and loaded it with lots of books he obtained "illegally" for free. And here I am disciplining myself each month to not overspend buying, yes buying, books on Amazon.


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## daveconifer (Oct 20, 2009)

ff2 said:


> In one hand I hold my purchased (I purchased) copy of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."
> 
> In my other hand on my Kindle I hold a copy (that I again purchased) of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."
> 
> Why can I lend a dozen friends the first copy (for 2 weeks or 3 weeks or a month) and maybe lend the second to only one friend and only for 2 weeks? I "purchased" both copies. And, yes, what if I'm willing to delete my kindle copy while it is on loan. What is morally repugnant about one loan but not the other?


I know these forum discussions get crossed up but just for the record, I don't think either of your examples are morally repugnant. Loaning in good faith is okay with me...


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

ff2 said:


> And, yes, what if I'm willing to delete my kindle copy while it is on loan. What is morally repugnant about one loan but not the other?


This is one of the current limitations of ebooks. Many would like to be able to loan them indefinitely to another. Once your copy is either deleted or otherwise made unaccessible this seems perfectly reasonable.

It isn't so much a ethics issue, but a contractual (Amazon's term of service) and a practical one. A good start would be to allow more than one loan for a nice period over two weeks.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Elk said:


> It isn't so much a ethics issue, but a contractual (Amazon's term of service) and a practical one. A good start would be to allow more than one loan for a nice period over two weeks.


Yep. While I'm strongly anti-piracy, I'm also pro-consumer. Those of us who buy things legitimately should have full fair use rights. We should be able to loan and giveaway/trade/sell digital content just like we can the paperbooks etc.

For that to happen then need to tweak the DRM licensing to allow unlimited loaning, permanent content transfers etc. One loses access to a paperbook when they loan it or give it a way etc., they can easily use the DRM scheme to allow the same type of loaning and transferring that can happen with physical media.

With no DRM it's to easy to give away copies while keeping your own. Though that's probably where we'll end up since the music industry long since gave in and scrapped DRM rather than going to less restrictive DRM that allows lending and transferring and people are now used to that system. Music is different though since artists make more money through touring (and selling t-shirts etc.) than selling CDs. Author's don't have that luxury. Nor to do movie creators. Well they can sell merchandise, but no tour revenue really. All ticket sales and book/dvd sales.


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## Sporadic (May 1, 2009)

NightGoat said:


> I must be the odd duck who actually enjoys the purchasing process. I like to seek out the books, read the reviews, d/l the samples.


I do the same thing. 

Just because I download something doesn't mean I download everything. I purchase a ton of books, I have a Netflix account, I still purchases CDs if something cool comes with them (mainly because I don't like CDs or use them after ripping them to my hard drive) or I really want to support that artist. I also go to live shows and buy merchandise.



mooshie78 said:


> That's why I don't care about others opinions on this topic. It's wrong in my eyes, end of story. I'm not interested in justifications, rationalizations nor excuses for why people engage in it.
> 
> Though as a criminologists I am mildly interested in how/why people can neutralize the wrongness of piracy and engage in it, while not doing the same for other crimes like shoplifting etc. That's a mildly interesting position, though I'm pretty sure it's just a function of the simplicity of piracy and the very low chances of getting caught that get people started on it. And once one is involved, its easy to use techniques of neutralization (from Sykes and Matza, 1957) to excuse/rationalize their behavior to alleviate guilt etc.


That's fine.

Although, I don't get why the "why" isn't interesting and "how come" is, when the "how come" is pretty simple. I don't shoplift because it I did, I would be taking a physical product. The store would be out that product and I would be directly costing them for that item. No argument around that. With piracy, you are dealing with hypothetical. You could try to argue that everything I download is a lost sale but nothing is that black and white. There is no guarantee that if the file wasn't available for free, I would purchase it instead of passing on it all together. If you think about it, downloading it and me passing on it has the same end result of them not getting paid...except in one, I am also hurt by it. If piracy wasn't around, I could easily go to the library or buy used or borrow a friend's copy and enjoy the book while they still aren't getting any money from me.

And that's what I think this whole piracy thing is about. Power. They want the power to say "this is how it is going to be and you'll like it" and we want the same thing.


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## Alessandra Kelley (Feb 22, 2011)

But what about the authors who really need the money from their hard work to keep going?  While I understand the frustration with DRM (a stupid, brutal "solution" which upsets more honest customers than it stops pirates), I can't countenance simply taking someone's hard work and ripping it off en masse.

I agree that consumer's rights are important, and the industry attempts to straitjacket what you can do with content you've bought are pretty repellent.  But do consider the men and women who work their fingers off to create this stuff.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Sporadic said:


> Although, I don't get why the "why" isn't interesting and "how come" is, when the "how come" is pretty simple. I don't shoplift because it I did, I would be taking a physical product. The store would be out that product and I would be directly costing them for that item. No argument around that. With piracy, you are dealing with hypothetical. You could try to argue that everything I download is a lost sale but nothing is that black and white. There is no guarantee that if the file wasn't available for free, I would purchase it instead of passing on it all together. If you think about it, downloading it and me passing on it has the same end result of them not getting paid...except in one, I am also hurt by it. If piracy wasn't around, I could easily go to the library or buy used or borrow a friend's copy and enjoy the book while they still aren't getting any money from me.
> 
> And that's what I think this whole piracy thing is about. Power. They want the power to say "this is how it is going to be and you'll like it" and we want the same thing.


Well I'm not interested in the why or the how come really. As I said those are simple. It's getting stuff free (the why) and the "how come) is just rationalizations/neutralizations to make one's self feel ok doing something immoral/illegal.

The only thing that remotely interests me as someone that studies crime/deviant behavior is how the rationalization process differs compared to other types of crime/deviant behavior. As you note, part of it is that the harm done isn't as clear cut (or as severe) as shoplifting/theft since no store is losing a physical product. I agree with that.

But at the end of the day it's still wrong and illegal. You're still getting to own a copy of content you didn't pay for nor obtain through legal fair use means. So that's where you get all the BS (IMO) justifications of it not really being wrong, I wouldn't have bought it anyway, I could have just borrowed it from the library or a friend. And so on.

But even that stuff I'm not interested enough to study on my own as it's out of my research interest.

But anyway, piracy is an agree to disagree situation as we've done this debate to death together on CAG! (I'm dmaul114 over there).


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## MrPLD (Sep 23, 2010)

Alessandra Kelley said:


> But what about the authors who really need the money from their hard work to keep going? While I understand the frustration with DRM (a stupid, brutal "solution" which upsets more honest customers than it stops pirates), I can't countenance simply taking someone's hard work and ripping it off en masse.


I guess the problem is, in light of the negative (upsetting legit customers), there is no counteracting positive. "Pirates" will get a copy of the book and it will become DRM free and it will be distributed. So you're left with the good people being ultimately hindered by the DRM while the pirates still continue on unabated.

I don't agree with or condone piracy, no matter the 'apparent justification', content is not a life need, it's a want. I believe it's within the rights of the content producer to do what they set fit with their content and it's up to the consumer to decide if they're willing to licence/purchase it on those terms (we can say "no" to buying it). There can be a silver lining to piracy (more exposure etc). If you're a pro-piracy person, don't try claim those silvers as a moral payment to content creators, you've already taken one thing, don't try take another.

For my own content, I provide it DRM-free, this is for books, software and electronics that I create, however that is my personal choice as the creator.

DRM as a control mechanism against piracy is pointless and I strongly suspect a highly convenient ruse. DRM is about controlling your _legitimate_ customers.

Paul.


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## Sporadic (May 1, 2009)

mooshie78 said:


> But anyway, piracy is an agree to disagree situation as we've done this debate to death together on CAG! (I'm dmaul114 over there).


Ha, that we have!  I had no idea that was you. You should use the same username everywhere like I do 



Alessandra Kelley said:


> But what about the authors who really need the money from their hard work to keep going? While I understand the frustration with DRM (a stupid, brutal "solution" which upsets more honest customers than it stops pirates), I can't countenance simply taking someone's hard work and ripping it off en masse.
> 
> I agree that consumer's rights are important, and the industry attempts to straitjacket what you can do with content you've bought are pretty repellent. But do consider the men and women who work their fingers off to create this stuff.


It reminds me of pizza drivers. Seems like every major place has added a delivery fee plus a little * next to it saying it isn't a tip and be sure to tip your driver. It is an awkward situation to be put into. You know that the guy needs a tip to offset his horrible hourly wage...but why am I expected to offset that when they are charging me a fee for the delivery. In fact, why am I being emotionally strong-armed by a massive corporation in the first place?

I don't take from indie writers (you can replace writer with musician or any creator) because they are usually very reasonable priced and most of the money is heading straight to them. If they are on a major and the price is right, I'll buy (if I have money to spare). If it is not or something is wrong, I'll try to find an alternative way to get some cash to them (again, if I have money to spare). If there is no alternative and their publisher is being a prick by pricing it high or doing some other stupid thing I don't agree with, there is nothing else I can do. Guess they will have to hope there are enough people who _aren't_ like me to keep them afloat.


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## Basilius (Feb 20, 2010)

MrPLD said:


> DRM as a control mechanism against piracy is pointless and I strongly suspect a highly convenient ruse. DRM is about controlling your _legitimate_ customers.


In an unofficial survey of nine publishing executives and four agents, here's what those 13 people thought DRM was about:


> Eleven of the 13 agreed with me that DRM is necessary to protect sales. Ten of the 13 agreed with me that DRM is not an effective deterrent to piracy. *And 12 of the 13 agreed with me that DRM's main benefit is to prevent casual sharing!*


(emphasis mine, punctuation as in the original here: http://www.idealog.com/blog/what-the-powers-that-be-think-about-drm-and-an-explanation-of-the-cloud)

In a recent panel at the Tools of Change conference held a couple weeks ago, attendees were asked to raise their hand if they initially discovered their favorite authors by buying their books. Very few did so.

When asked, however, to raise their hand if they initially discovered their favorite authors by being lent a copy of their work, nearly everyone did.

When you put those two tidbits together, what you find is that what industry executives perceive as the main benefit of DRM has the side effect of cutting off a primary way people discover new authors.

(Edit: was missing a nerap)


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## MrPLD (Sep 23, 2010)

Basilius said:


> When you put those two tidbits together, what you find is that what industry executives perceive as the main benefit of DRM has the side effect of cutting off a primary way people discover new authors.


As an independent, I'm happy to see them continue with that delusion


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

Sporadic said:


> In fact, why am I being emotionally strong-armed by a massive corporation in the first place?


Except you are not being strong-armed by the pizza place (_strong-armed _by an asterisk?). You voluntarily ordered the pizza and to have it delivered. The options are to pick it up yourself, make your own, don't eat pizza, etc.



> If there is no alternative and their publisher is being a prick by pricing it high or doing some other stupid thing I don't agree with, there is nothing else I can do.


Sure there is, don't buy the product and don't steal it. Demonstrate that you won't accept the product.

Piracy hurts any claimed principle it stands for by sustaining the demand for the product. Piracy forcibly tells the producer that his product is highly desired. He thus has a reason to protect it with DRM and to sell it at a high price.

If no piracy, but also no purchases, the producer will get the message - no one wants his product. He will then fix it by removing DRM, lowering the price, etc..

I have yet to see a justification for piracy that isn't selfishly self-serving. "I didn't take much; it isn't really theft; he has so much money he will never miss the amount I took; I don't like DRM so I took the product anyway; digital isn't treated the same as physical, thus I can do what I want . . . )

This is where I appreciate Auge. He is intellectually honest. He detests DRM and many other aspects of the entertainment machine and refuses to buy the products. He readily admits that he cannot justify that he additionally takes the product. I can appreciate the integrity in these statements - even though it is a bit sideways.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

Basilius said:


> (Edit: was missing a nerap)


I like "nerap." I haven't seen that before.


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## Sporadic (May 1, 2009)

Elk said:


> Except you are not being strong-armed by the pizza place (_strong-armed _by an asterisk?). You voluntarily ordered the pizza and to have it delivered. The options are to pick it up yourself, make your own, don't eat pizza, etc.


Yes, I am. The emotionally before strong-armed is important. Every major pizza place has added a delivery fee but none of that money goes to the driver. Instead they would rather try to guilt me in to tipping on top of the delivery fee or I'm the jerk that is dumping on this poor guy delivering pizzas. You can say I voluntarily ordered the pizza and chose to have it delivered but I have always done that and now the rules changed where if I don't give extra money, I'm the jerk. That's the issue. Telling me not to buy it or to pick it up would only inconvenient me.

That's why it reminds of this. Because it is these massive corporations trying to pull people's heartstrings into doing something for the poor guy at the bottom of the chain.



Elk said:


> Sure there is, don't buy the product and don't steal it. Demonstrate that you won't accept the product.


What's the difference besides me being left out in the cold? Most of the time, I'm not against the product, just their presentation of it or the people behind it.



Elk said:


> Piracy hurts any claimed principle it stands for by sustaining the demand for the product. Piracy forcibly tells the producer that his product is highly desired. He thus has a reason to protect it with DRM and to sell it at a high price.


Not really. Piracy doesn't tell them anything. It could be because the price is too high, it could be because they did something stupid (staggered release, poor quality release, only made it available in one place) or it could be just because the person pirating is a prick (they could do everything perfectly and still have people go the alternative route...that's just the way certain people are and you will never be able to stop them short of bankrupting them or putting them in jail for an extended amount of time)

But you can bet any amount of money you have that they will blame piracy for everything even if their profit goes up or facts state that it didn't hurt nearly as much as they claim. It will also be used to try and restrict or exploit the people who legitimately purchase their product.



Elk said:


> If no piracy, but also no purchases, the producer will get the message - no one wants his product. He will then fix it by removing DRM, lowering the price, etc..


Not really, it can still be blamed on piracy while they still do nothing to fix their mistakes or move even further into their horrible decision. "We would do this...but piracy is just too prevalence so we are justified in our horrible decision or moving on" (certainly what is happening with PC gaming from the large developers)



Elk said:


> I have yet to see a justification for piracy that isn't selfishly self-serving. "I didn't take much; it isn't really theft; he has so much money he will never miss the amount I took; I don't like DRM so I took the product anyway; digital isn't treated the same as physical, thus I can do what I want . . . )


It's the same thing in the other direction. It is rare to hear a real instance of piracy hurting someone besides "oh, if piracy wasn't around *insert product here* would have turned from a success to a blockbuster or a blockbuster to a historic record setter" while they are making massive amounts of money or have their headquarters in a skyscraper in Manhattan.

Like this,










Only problem was, Zombieland was also the top grossing zombie movie of all time in America and made 73 million in America (102 million worldwide) on a 23.6 million dollar budget. 



Elk said:


> This is where I appreciate Auge. He is intellectually honest. He detests DRM and many other aspects of the entertainment machine and refuses to buy the products. He readily admits that he cannot justify that he additionally takes the product. I can appreciate the integrity in these statements - even though it is a bit sideways.


How am I not intellectually honest? Because I have other reasons besides DRM and won't go "I am 100% in the wrong"?

I don't think I am. I don't think I am any worse than a guy that goes to the library or buys only used or uses his DVR to skip commercials or has a Netflix account or any other "acceptable" way of sidestepping the artist or the company...only difference is, mine has been deemed "illegal" but I don't care about that.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

The point is that it's lame to make excuses and justification vs. just noting that piracy is wrong and you do it because you're selfish and would rather illegally acquire things than do without them when you don't want to pay for the product for whatever reason (DRM, think price is too high etc.).  And you say you don't care about the illegality--and that's fine.  Drop the other justifications and don't go around flaunting piracy on non-pirate sites.

No one gives a crap about what reasons/justifications people have for doing illegal and immoral things.  That does nothing to change the fact that the act is wrong.

I also don't get the arguments that piracy doesn't hurt because a movie (or other media product) made XX million dollars.  That doesn't change the fact that it would have made $X more if some who pirated had paid for a movie ticket or bought a DVD etc.

Same with the pizza delivery fees.  Yeah, it sucks that they added those charges.  But you are a jerk if you order and don't tip as it's not the driver's fault.  The solution is to not order pizza from places that charge delivery fees (around here some local joints don't, and have better pizza than the chains to boot) or to pick it up or just not order.  At the end of the day, it doesn't seem worth getting annoyed over a $2 delivery fee as it's just pocket change (and if it's not you shouldn't be ordering pizza in the first place).

But again, we've had these kind of debates a gazillion times on CAG and we'll never see eye to eye on these issues.  You're all about yourself and all anti-corporation yada, yada, yada.  And I'm all about protecting the rights of creators to profit from their work and corporations to run their businesses how ever they see fit (as long as not breaking the law) with consumers simply voting with their wallets and not giving any business to those who's practices they don't like (rather than pirating, not tipping drivers etc.).


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## MrPLD (Sep 23, 2010)

If you want to pirate stuff, so be it - just don't try and morally justify it or explain it away as a consequence of duress or other reasons. You alone are responsible for making the choice to acquire content in violation of the given terms and conditions _irrespective_ of how unfavourable they may be and regardless of what ever apparent gains you believe the actions lead it.


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## Jan Strnad (May 27, 2010)

We seem to be headed to a business built on the model of public radio: Lots of people listen to it, mooching off the contributions of those who value it enough to pay something for it.

<I use my hard earned money for purchasing my 2000 ft. four bedroom home, my mini cooper and trips to fun places twice a year. . . not to mention food for me and my family.>

And you think that writing a book ISN'T "hard-earned money"?

Sorry, but my opinion is that you're a selfish, self-centered asshole. YMMV.


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## Sporadic (May 1, 2009)

mooshie78 said:


> The point is that it's lame to make excuses and justification vs. just noting that piracy is wrong and you do it because you're selfish and would rather illegally acquire things than do without them when you don't want to pay for the product for whatever reason (DRM, think price is too high etc.).
> 
> No one gives a crap about what reasons/justifications people have for doing illegal and immoral things. That does nothing to change the fact that the act is wrong.
> 
> ...


I think selfish and justification are loaded words just like how people love to use steal and thief. If I said the same thing about you using your TIVO to fast forward through commercials (oh god, those pay for the show and if you don't watch live, you are hurting the network/show), people would look at me like I was crazy.

I have reasons for why I do stuff, if you don't think they are valid, that's fine but it doesn't automatically make you right or make me wrong just because a law says otherwise...especially on an issue like this. A law (and I'm pulling this out of the old memory so it could be wrong) also says that I can break the DRM on my disc but the tool I use to break it is illegal.

It does matter about how successful something is when people are literally posting "how can you justify taking money out of my hands" while doing a poor me routine as if they are going into the poor house when that couldn't be further from the truth. Or do you really think that a sequel to Zombieland was in danger because a million people downloaded it (even though it made back its budget five times over and was a runaway success)

The pizza delivery man thing, how am I the jerk for not tipping (well)? The companies has decided to charge what I would normally tip for the service (think my local Pizza Hut charges $2.50) while also not giving it to the driver. Seems like that is the delivery person's fight, not mine. Picking it up isn't an option when I don't have a car and money can get extremely tight around here (and it isn't like I am ordering pizzas every week, it is a rare treat for me). Guess you could say I have bigger issues if I don't throw around what little money I have to spare but I make do with what I have. -edit And all of my local places either have a delivery fee or a $20 minimum purchase on deliveries. So that choice is out.

But we are getting way off track and you are right we will never see eye to eye on this issue. But I do take offense to you saying that I am all about myself, that couldn't be further from the truth since I go to some pretty extreme lengths to support something I love (either through spending money or spreading the word)


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

It's just my take on you.  For instance, saying it's the delivery guy's fight and not yours is being all about yourself.  They're probably even more pissed than you about the delivery fee as they know it cuts into their tips do to people like you who tip less because of the fee.  But they can't do anything about it, especially in this job market where it's very hard to find other work.

But that's just my view.  Piracy is inherently selfish.  Stiffing a delivery driver because of a delivery fee out of his/her control is selfish.  

And if money being tight is an excuse, perhaps you (and other pirates) would be better served to focus more free time on getting through school faster (if you're a student) or otherwise doing whatever it takes to improve your lot in life so you have more disposable income rather than spending so much time pirating and consuming media!


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## Sporadic (May 1, 2009)

mooshie78 said:


> It's just my take on you. For instance, saying it's the delivery guy's fight and not yours is being all about yourself. They're probably even more p*ssed than you about the delivery fee as they know it cuts into their tips do to people like you who tip less because of the fee. But they can't do anything about it, especially in this job market where it's very hard to find other work.
> 
> But that's just my view. Piracy is inherently selfish. Stiffing a delivery driver because of a delivery fee out of his/her control is selfish.
> 
> And if money being tight is an excuse, perhaps you (and other pirates) would be better served to focus more free time on getting through school faster (if you're a student) or otherwise doing whatever it takes to improve your lot in life so you have more disposable income rather than spending so much time pirating and consuming media!


I guess. I mean you can say it is my responsibility to make up the difference when the company rips them off with a new policy but if I did, it would be doing just what the company wants me to do while the driver is still getting ripped off. Nothing would make a bigger rumble than the drivers themselves and that won't happen unless something changes for the negative for them.

We don't see restaurants charging gratuity and than pocketing it while putting a "this doesn't go to the waitress - plz tip ". That would be crazy but in this case it is ok (why I don't know but don't question it, just obey and do)

And I am working hard to better myself, hopefully to break into a media industry! I can't wait until I get in so I can blame the pirates for everything


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Sporadic said:


> I guess. I mean you can say it is my responsibility to make up the difference when the company rips them off with a new policy but if I did, it would be doing just what the company wants me to do while the driver is still getting ripped off. Nothing would make a bigger rumble than the drivers themselves and that won't happen unless something changes for the negative for them.


Again, the better way to bring about change is to not give companies your business when you don't like their policy. When you don't tip well, you're just shafting the driver and sending no message to the pizza joint owner. The drivers may complain as you note, but the owners don't give a sh**. Times are hard, they can find anyone to deliver if drivers quit when tips go down. Unskilled labor has no power to change company policy as there's a huge surplus of unskilled laborers out there. And pizza delivery type jobs are never going to unionize etc. Only customers voting with their wallet will bring around any change--letting the management know why you stopped doing business with them helps as well.

Also, some stores do give drivers some of the delivery fee (goes into a fund to reimburse them for gas at one place where I know someone who's a driver), so it doesn't always just go to the store. But probably does more often than not.

I seldom get delivery anymore as the best pizza places around here don't deliver at all so I usually just walk and grab some from my office for lunch every now and then. If I do order, I try to order from a place with no delivery fee. Some do have $20 minimums, but I usually spend more than that anyway on a specialty pie and some wings or breadsticks etc. anyway when splurging (money and calories) on pizza! I always tip $5 or 20%--whichever is greater.

And best of luck with your career development!


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## Sporadic (May 1, 2009)

mooshie78 said:


> Again, the better way to bring about change is to not give companies your business when you don't like their policy. When you don't tip well, you're just shafting the driver and sending no message to the pizza joint owner. The drivers may complain as you note, but the owners don't give a sh**. Times are hard, they can find anyone to deliver if drivers quit when tips go down. Unskilled labor has no power to change company policy as there's a huge surplus of unskilled laborers out there. And pizza delivery type jobs are never going to unionize etc. Only customers voting with their wallet will bring around any change--letting the management know why you stopped doing business with them helps as well.
> 
> Also, some stores do give drivers some of the delivery fee (goes into a fund to reimburse them for gas at one place where I know someone who's a driver), so it doesn't always just go to the store. But probably does more often than not.
> 
> ...


Which one is it? The owners don't give a sh** (if I don't tip on top of the delivery fee and the drivers complain about not making enough) or that I can actually get them to change their mind (if I don't order from them...which also means I don't order pizza anymore since they all do it)? Because I have quit things basically on a whim before (everything from products to whole companies) and change never comes. They continue to do their thing and the only person getting hurt, at the end, is me.


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## Bigal-sa (Mar 27, 2010)

Things that drive me down the piracy road:

"This title is not available for customers from your location"

$2 surcharge for international customers

Excessive price ($10+) for an OCRed copy of an older book which has been poorly proofread

While these have led me to support indies to a great extent, the indies also need to have decent proofreading done to their work and not have their *customers* do that for them.


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> I think both mp3 players and broadband increased piracy. Both make it easier. Fast downloads from broadband, no need to burn to cds to listen etc. It went from something that took patience and some tech skills (to burn cd, convert to .wav format first if needed etc.), to something anyone could do.


I don't agree - burning a CD is/was pretty easy, software for it was easy to come by and you just move the files across and click "burn" as most software did any conversions necessary for you. It's no more difficult than adding files to a portable device.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Sporadic said:


> Which one is it? The owners don't give a sh** (if I don't tip on top of the delivery fee and the drivers complain about not making enough) or that I can actually get them to change their mind (if I don't order from them...which also means I don't order pizza anymore since they all do it)? Because I have quit things basically on a whim before (everything from products to whole companies) and change never comes. They continue to do their thing and the only person getting hurt, at the end, is me.


Well, what you say is true. Owners don't give a shit about anything but their bottom line. So you not patronizing them, or drivers complaining, won't make a difference on the small scale and they'll only care if a lot of people do. Let them know why you're not patronizing them. Write a letter to the editor of the local paper to try and organize more of an effort if you care that much. But that's probably a lost cause as most people don't care about an added $2-3 charge.

But again, your post gets at your selfishness. You'd rather enjoy your pizza and punish the driver by not giving a good trip, that "hurt" yourself by not being able to get pizza delivered. That's caring more about your own interests over someone else's--aka selfishness. And I don't mean it as some grave insult as the vast majority of people are like that. Hell I am in many regards, just not when it comes to money as I've never cared much about money and have a decent amount of disposable income anyway so it's not something I stress over.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Elk said:


> This is where I appreciate Auge. He is intellectually honest. He detests DRM and many other aspects of the entertainment machine and refuses to buy the products. He readily admits that he cannot justify that he additionally takes the product. I can appreciate the integrity in these statements - even though it is a bit sideways.


_intellectually honest_, classic . . . I've been categorized . . .    

To clarify, I do purchase books _(over 100 on Kindle and a couple hundred first edition hardbacks),_ I have purchased albums when I go to shows, I go to the cinema a few times a year _(I prefer art house rather than blockbuster)_ and 99.9% of the movies I pirate I first rent them from Netflix then rip them to my hard drive and the majority of my software I have paid for.
Until recently _(two weeks ago)_ I paid for cable television including HBO but still downloaded the shows I watch as they are portable and the ads are taken out.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Jan Strnad said:


> We seem to be headed to a business built on the model of public radio: Lots of people listen to it, mooching off the contributions of those who value it enough to pay something for it.
> <I use my hard earned money for purchasing my 2000 ft. four bedroom home, my mini cooper and trips to fun places twice a year. . . not to mention food for me and my family.>
> And you think that writing a book ISN'T "hard-earned money"?
> Sorry, but my opinion is that you're a selfish, self-centered [expletive]. YMMV.


What does YMMV mean?

As to the rest of it, you are entitled to your opinion of me . . . and you probably aren't that far off when it comes to piracy. But in real life I am a great friend and my wife and I are charitable folks, we adopted from the state and have given back in lots of ways all year long . . . I say this just so you know that I am not just some miscreant.

My piracy is a mixture of wanting something and fighting a system I have problems with . . . I do not expect anyone to agree with me, but I feel strongly that the system needs to change.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Sporadic said:


> I think selfish and justification are loaded words just like how people love to use steal and thief. If I said the same thing about you using your TIVO to fast forward through commercials (oh god, those pay for the show and if you don't watch live, you are hurting the network/show), people would look at me like I was crazy.
> I have reasons for why I do stuff, if you don't think they are valid, that's fine but it doesn't automatically make you right or make me wrong just because a law says otherwise...especially on an issue like this. A law (and I'm pulling this out of the old memory so it could be wrong) also says that I can break the DRM on my disc but the tool I use to break it is illegal.


I couldn't agree more.



Sporadic said:


> It does matter about how successful something is when people are literally posting "how can you justify taking money out of my hands" while doing a poor me routine as if they are going into the poor house when that couldn't be further from the truth. Or do you really think that a sequel to Zombieland was in danger because a million people downloaded it (even though it made back its budget five times over and was a runaway success)


I'm not sure what you mean here&#8230; sorry



Sporadic said:


> The pizza delivery man thing, how am I the jerk for not tipping (well)? The companies has decided to charge what I would normally tip for the service (think my local Pizza Hut charges $2.50) while also not giving it to the driver. Seems like that is the delivery person's fight, not mine. Picking it up isn't an option when I don't have a car and money can get extremely tight around here (and it isn't like I am ordering pizzas every week, it is a rare treat for me). Guess you could say I have bigger issues if I don't throw around what little money I have to spare but I make do with what I have. -edit And all of my local places either have a delivery fee or a $20 minimum purchase on deliveries. So that choice is out.


I have a problem tipping food service folks . . . not all of them, if a server is part of my enjoyment of an eating experience . . . has knowledge of the food and wine, makes good recommendations . . . etc. I will tip.
If a barista makes me a mocha and passes it through a window, I say thank you and drive away . . . why should she get a tip when the person that makes my Big Mac does not . . . is it not the same level of service? Perhaps the real problem is either they need to get a job that pays a living wage or the company needs to pay a couple dolor's more an hour&#8230; without raising prices, distribution of wealth from the top down&#8230; not from the middle.


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## Joe Chiappetta (May 20, 2010)

That's one of the reasons why I don't put DRM on any of the eBooks that I publish.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> Well, what you say is true. Owners don't give a sh** about anything but their bottom line. So you not patronizing them, or drivers complaining, won't make a difference on the small scale and they'll only care if a lot of people do. Let them know why you're not patronizing them. Write a letter to the editor of the local paper to try and organize more of an effort if you care that much. But that's probably a lost cause as most people don't care about an added $2-3 charge.


This was why I tried to be open and honest in the other thread when I outed myself as a pirate. I have since figured out that this is the wrong venue as several folks here are writers with a vested interest for the statuesque. And others are probably so conditioned to saying that piracy is immoral is now a kneejerk reaction. Like when they see a pregnant woman enjoying a cup of coffee . . . they make tisking noises and shake their heads when there is no evidence that coffee in moderation has a negative effect on the baby . . . but rather than go out and get their own opinion they latch onto the popular one.
And of course there are several people here who don't fall into either of the categories and honestly have a well thought out reaction or opinion.


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## Guest (Feb 22, 2011)

ff2 said:


> In one hand I hold my purchased (I purchased) copy of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."
> 
> In my other hand on my Kindle I hold a copy (that I again purchased) of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."
> 
> Why can I lend a dozen friends the first copy (for 2 weeks or 3 weeks or a month) and maybe lend the second to only one friend and only for 2 weeks? I "purchased" both copies. And, yes, what if I'm willing to delete my kindle copy while it is on loan.


Because when you loan a physical product, you are deprived of that product. You do not have it. You have given it away. With an electronic product, you do not give it away. You make a copy and give the copy to the other person. You are not deprived of the electronic copy you already have.

The Supreme Court made a clear distinction between the words of a book and the delivery format. When you buy a book, you buy ownership of the book, but not the author's words. You do not gain a right to copy those words and give them to others. Therefore, while you can share the physical book with others, you have no right to copy the author's words and give them away.

Whether or not you are willing to delete your copy has no bearing on the equation. You do not own the author's words. You can no more copy a digital file and give it away than copy a physical book and give it away, even if you promise to destroy the original book.


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## drafter69 (Mar 21, 2009)

There are many people who resent the price being charged by publichers for the "privledge" of reading a book.  If I buy a book I can read it and then pass it on to others who can read it.  The mentality of the publishers seem to be a need to control the book at every level.  

It will not work.  The more they try to "protect" the book from being shared the more it will fail.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

drafter69 said:


> There are many people who resent the price being charged by publichers for the "privledge" of reading a book. If I buy a book I can read it and then pass it on to others who can read it. The mentality of the publishers seem to be a need to control the book at every level.
> 
> It will not work. The more they try to "protect" the book from being shared the more it will fail.


As I have said before, if I pay for something . . . I want to do with it as I please.


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## Guest (Feb 22, 2011)

Sporadic said:


> If there is no alternative and their publisher is being a prick by pricing it high or doing some other stupid thing I don't agree with, there is nothing else I can do. Guess they will have to hope there are enough people who _aren't_ like me to keep them afloat.


There is always an alternative. *YOU DO WITHOUT*. That is what grown ups do. They don't whine like teenagers and demand that people cow down to them and just give them what they want. There is no Constitutional right to have whatever you want for free just because you think something is overpriced or you dislike the creator. There is no Biblical justification for taking something without paying for it. There is no ethical justification for taking something without paying for it. There is only a borderline sociopathic sense of entitlement and an inability to see beyond yourself. And when called out for the bad behavior, you play the "victim" when you are in fact the aggressor. You are like a husband who beats his wife and insists "If you didn't make me so mad, I wouldn't have to beat you." You justify victimizing others by making them your enemy. This is the same logic that dictators use to justify genocide and terrorists use to justify murder. And no, I'm not saying piracy is akin to murder. But what I am saying is that the thought process is identical.

No, I don't support DRM. I think it is pointless. I doesn't stop scumbags and it annoys honest customers. But that doesn't mean I will pretend what pirates do is in any way, shape or form justified. It isn't. You are taking something that does not belong to you, solely because you don't agree with the price or you decide you don't like someone. Think through the logic of your own thought process. Where does the line get drawn? At what point is your personal hatred of a human being not enough for you to cross the line? So an author deserves to have his book pirated because it is overpriced or you don't like him? Does The Gap deserve to have clothes shoplifted simply because I think their prices are too high? Do they owe me a free sweater just because I want one but can't afford it or refuse to pay for it? Does the battered wife deserve to be beaten just because her husband thinks she is being unreasonable? Does a woman deserve to be raped simply because her rapist decided she dressed like a slut and was "asking for it"?

You can argue that publishers aren't really losing anything if you make a copy because they didn't have anything investd in a physical product. This is the common justification. But it is not valid. Because the bulk of a publishers cost are not in the physical product. They are in up front costs like advances, editing, proofreading, design, cover art, and all of the expenses a business has. Rents, utilities, administrative staff, accountants, etc. Publishers price products based on their overhead.

And this is not on a per book basis, because most books LOSE MONEY. It is on an overall basis. A publisher may need to sell 50,000,000 books a year to turn a profit. They may have one runaway bestseller that sells 10,000,000, but the majority of their titles will sell under 10,000 each. The one or two bestsellers are subsidizing the hundreds of other books that never break even. This has always been the case with publishing. This is what people don't get. People hear about the number of sales Twilight or Harry Potter make and think "they make so much money they don't need any more." But those books are the exception, and those few mega sellers subsidize all the lesser known authors.

So the more you pirate, and the more you encourage piracy, the fewer overall books that are sold. The fewer overall books sold, the more dependent publishers become on the megasellers. The more dependent publishers become on the megasellers, the more gun shy they become in terms of taking chances on experimental authors. The more they have to start cutting costs. It becomes a downward spiral.

So piracy is not a victimless crime, and it is not a crime without consequence. There are very real consequences to the people involved. I don't expect anything I say to change the mind of a pirate. I just hope people thinking it is OK to do this and adopt the pirate mentality will think twice. We are the sum of our decisions in life, and I prefer that people see me as an honest person who respects the rights of others instead of a self-important, brat with a sense of entitlement to other people's hard work.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> There is no Constitutional right to have whatever you want for free just because you think something is overpriced or you dislike the creator. There is no Biblical justification for taking something without paying for it. There is no ethical justification for taking something without paying for it. There is only a borderline sociopathic sense of entitlement and an inability to see beyond yourself.


I can spend an hour on the net and prove you wrong on each and every one of these points. There are political and social reasons to do each of these.



Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> There is only a borderline sociopathic sense of entitlement and an inability to see beyond yourself. And when called out for the bad behavior, you play the "victim" when you are in fact the aggressor. You are like a husband who beats his wife and insists "If you didn't make me so mad, I wouldn't have to beat you." You justify victimizing others by making them your enemy. This is the same logic that dictators use to justify genocide and terrorists use to justify murder. And no, I'm not saying piracy is akin to murder. But what I am saying is that the thought process is identical.


Wow.
This is how people argue?
By saying the most extreme thing they can think of?
This does not support an argument and everything you are saying is correlative.
Try using facts to argue rather than rhetoric or pathos. 
Comparing me to a dictator or an abusive husband is low and pandering, try stating your point like an educated adult that you seem to be and accuse me of not being.

As for the rest of your post, it does not matter to me in the least what a publisher pays for a book. I have heard this argument by more articulate people than you to no effect.

Edited to exchange a harsh word for one less so.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

I was a small press publisher, I published genre fiction. All this experience did was to help foster my beliefs that the system only supports the major brand names in publishing and authorship.

I have friends that are writers, musicians and artists so I am not completely apathetic.

I challenge some of you to read several articles about the “other” side of the argument, get educated on both sides. Then come back and talk about it, it may or may not change your mind but I think it would widen the grey area for you.

Make an effort to use less rhetoric and pathos in your argument, come up with your own opinion not something learned by rote.


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## splashes99 (Aug 11, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> There is always an alternative. *YOU DO WITHOUT*. That is what grown ups do...yadda yadda yadda...


Just wow. I know you've been on here a lot longer and more often than I have, but geez...this may be getting into a different area, but posts like this aren't the best advertisement for someone to check out all your books in your signature area. It's really a turn-off. Maybe you're a fantastic writer with a great story to tell, but it is very hard to separate a personality from their work.

I don't mean you should post all sugary sweet or anything, but it's one thing to state a legitimate opinion and debate, but totally another to verbally attack someone who is stating their opinion, call them names and be incredibly self-righteous. These also aren't things a GROWNUP should do.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> Make an effort to use less rhetoric and pathos in your argument, come up with your own opinion not something learned by rote.


It's not something learned in rote. Taking things that are for sale and copyrighted without paying for it is wrong--legally and morally.

And you have admitted that--which is refreshing for a pirate. So I don't see why you keep trying to justify your actions and argue the point.

It doesn't matter that you don't like DRM, hate corporations etc. etc. That doesn't change that piracy is wrong, and that people are not entitled to acquire things that are not freely available without paying for them.

But again, we did that to death in the other thread, and we'll never see eye to eye as have more socialist/communistic views of property etc. where I'm more of an every man for himself capitalist. 100% so for luxury products, though I do lean much further left on basic needs like food, shelter and health care that I think everyone should have access to. But not everyone has a right to access luxuries like arts and entertainments. If they want those they can not fail at life and work to better themselves and make a decent income. Or they can rely on libraries and other forms of fair use.

Anyway, we already agreed to disagree, so I'm not sure why I got drug into this again other than killing time and relaxing briefly while eating my lunch!


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> It's not something learned in rote. Taking things that are for sale and copyrighted without paying for it is wrong--legally and morally.
> 
> And you have admitted that--which is refreshing for a pirate. So I don't see why you keep trying to justify your actions and argue the point.
> 
> ...


I don't think I am trying to repost my arguments.
It's just that something's folks say or the tone they take gets me fired up.
Some folks expect a person to see their point of view and be respectful, but do not return the favor.
Some folks try to argue without really knowing how and end up using fallacious arguments such as the last person who used *Ad Hominem* as an argument: _attacking the person instead of attacking his argument._
I don't know, perhaps I will just sit this one out if I can&#8230; no promises.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Piracy is a individual flaw.  If one engages in it, it extremely lowers my opinion of them.  So I can see where the ad hominem comes from.  I try to avoid it somewhat myself, but it's tough as it's just a case where people like me have little respect for people that pirate stuff, and none for people who try to justify it.

Point being it's not really a case of having an argument to attack.  What is being tacked is a behavior--piracy--that says something about the person who engages in it just like any other crime.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> Piracy is a individual flaw. If one engages in it, it extremely lowers my opinion of them. So I can see where the ad hominem comes from. I try to avoid it somewhat myself, but it's tough as it's just a case where people like me have little respect for people that pirate stuff, and none for people who try to justify it.
> 
> Point being it's not really a case of having an argument to attack. What is being tacked is a behavior--piracy--that says something about the person who engages in it just like any other crime.


Except that it's not like every other crime. Not like beating woman or being a dictator or the rape that she mentioned as well.

I pirate media, but that is not the sum of who I am.


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## splashes99 (Aug 11, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> Piracy is a individual flaw. If one engages in it, it extremely lowers my opinion of them. So I can see where the ad hominem comes from. I try to avoid it somewhat myself, but it's tough as it's just a case where people like me have little respect for people that pirate stuff, and none for people who try to justify it.
> 
> Point being it's not really a case of having an argument to attack. What is being tacked is a behavior--piracy--that says something about the person who engages in it just like any other crime.


Any behavior "says" something about a person who engages in it - including legal behaviors. So if someone engages in a behavior that you (that is a general 'you') dislike, it is okay to call people names instead of stating your opposing position on that behavior?


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> Except that it's not like every other crime. Not like beating woman or being a dictator or the rape that she mentioned as well.


No one other than that one poster, tried to equate it with more serious crimes. I agree that part of the post was silly hyperbole.

Piracy is a minor, property crime. More on par with something like shoplifting or theft, but even lesser in severity than those since a store didn't lose a physical product.



> I pirate media, but that is not the sum of who I am.


No one said that either. But piracy is a character flaw and shows you're selfish in at least one area of your life, and have moral failings in at least one area. Doesn't mean you're a bad person by any stretch of the imagination. But at the same time, doing good things in other areas of life doesn't excuse moral failings in that area.

Everyone has their flaws. Piracy is a relatively minor level (unless done on a huge scale, done for profit etc.), but still a flaw.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

splashes99 said:


> Any behavior "says" something about a person who engages in it - including legal behaviors. So if someone engages in a behavior that you (that is a general 'you') dislike, it is okay to call people names instead of stating your opposing position on that behavior?


As I said, I try to avoid petty name calling. There's no utility in that.

But yes, it's ok to form low opinions of people who do things you find offensive, morally wrong etc. That's the essential basis of socializing patterns. We flock to those who lead similar lifestyles, have similar values etc. and shun those who are diametrically opposed in morals, values etc.


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## Guest (Feb 22, 2011)

auge_28 said:


> I can spend an hour on the net and prove you wrong on each and every one of these points. There are political and social reasons to do each of these.


Just because something is on the internet does not make it true. Your "political and social" reasons to take what you do not have a right to are self-serving and require a circular argument. I want it. You have it and won't give it to me. Therefore I will take it and maybe if I like you I will pay you later. If not, screw you. THAT is the essence of the pirate argument.



> Comparing me to a dictator or an abusive husband is low and pandering, try stating your point like an educated adult that you seem to be and accuse me of not being.


But you don't CARE about logic. You said yourself you've heard the arguements before and DON'T CARE. You said you DON'T CARE about the arguements against piracy. You don't CARE about the feelings or wants of creators. You don't CARE about the law. You don't CARE about ethics. You don't CARE about whether or not a creator wants to be paid. The only thing you, and all pirates, care about are yourselves. You might hide it in overwrought diatribes about the evils of corporate America or whatever, but at the end of the day you would still do it even if DRM dissappeared tommarow and all books were 99 cents, and everyone said "please" and "thank you." Because you DON'T CARE about anyone but yourself. You believe yourself to be the final arbiter of who does and does not deserve to be compensated, and how much. You believe you and you alone have the final say in whether or not authors get paid. You are not Robin Hood stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. You are pirates stealing to benefit yourselves.

The logic of a pirate is the same as any other sort of sociopath. They believe that the norms of society do not apply to them, on the basis that they decided they do not apply. They believe themselves entitled simply because they want want want, without caring about what others may want. And they use all sorts of statements to justify their behavior, usually making it the fault of the people they pirate. You blame the victim, then play the victim card when you are called out on it. It is never your fault. It is always someone else's fault. They DESERVE to have you pirate their stuff. This mentality is the very essence of socipathic behavior.


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## splashes99 (Aug 11, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> No one said that either. But piracy is a character flaw and shows you're selfish in at least one area of your life, and have moral failings in at least one area. Doesn't mean you're a bad person by any stretch of the imagination. But at the same time, doing good things in other areas of life doesn't excuse moral failings in that area.
> 
> Everyone has their flaws. Piracy is a relatively minor level (unless done on a huge scale, done for profit etc.), but still a flaw.


I still think that all of this misses the point...morality and legality are not the same thing. I see those in this thread who are against piracy stating that it is a crime and thus shows moral failing, instead of separating the two. When auge and sporadic have explained their theories and reasoning, it has been said "Don't justify it, just admit you are doing something wrong!"

Say stealing...what about that oft-cited story of a starving man who steals a loaf of bread for his also-starving kids. He stole. That is against the law. So, obviously he has a character flaw and a moral failing in at least one area? And is selfish because he WANTS something that he doesn't want to pay for?

I know it is an example, but the point comes in that right and wrong in this case may not be as clear cut as some posters like to believe. Explaining the pirate's reasons behind not considering this to be immoral is not 'trying to justify why it is okay for you to do this terrible thing.' Many things have been considered moral failures or illegal until enough happened that the social structures and/or laws changed.

On the name calling, I know you weren't doing that, but I point it out because it's another example of justifying a behavior that is not acceptable...but in this case, you say you can understand why Julie did it. To me, name calling and personal attacks are a behavior that I do not like. Yes, we do all use things like that to form our opinions of people, but it is interesting to me that it is fine to justify and thus excuse behavior like that, but in the case of piracy people should just step up and say "I am doing something wrong!" instead of justifying their beliefs.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Disagree.

Taking something (acquiring a permanent copy) that is copyrighted and for sale is wrong in and of itself.  That it's illegal is just an added kicker to the wrongness.  But even if there were no laws against piracy.  It is still a wrong in my eyes--lesser than theft of a tangible, physical product.  But in the same spirit.  

It's a mala en se (evil in itself) offense to me, not a mala prohibita (evil only because illegal) offense to me.  And nothing anyone can offer in the way of excuses, justifications, rationalizations etc. will ever change my mind on that.

I'll never have any respect for the act of piracy, nor any interest in reasons why people do it.  They can still be "good" people as this is a minor offense.  But the act itself is inherently wrong in my eyes.

As for name calling, I in no way justified it--just said I understand her frustration.  

You and others (myself included) are free and right to form lower opinions of people who can't argue with resorting to name calling.  We're all responsible for our own behavior and actions, and should act with knowledge that everything we say or do will shape how others think of us.


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## Guest (Feb 22, 2011)

splashes99 said:


> Any behavior "says" something about a person who engages in it - including legal behaviors. So if someone engages in a behavior that you (that is a general 'you') dislike, it is okay to call people names instead of stating your opposing position on that behavior?


If, according to the pirates, it is OK to violate the law and pirate the work of people they do not like, then why should I have to bite my tongue and not speak my opinion honestly about them?

And go back and read what I wrote. I specifically said "_And no, I'm not saying piracy is akin to murder. But what I am saying is that the thought process is identical_." I am talking about the thought process. Yes, it was hyperbole, but sometimes that is needed to get a point across. The thought process of "you did something I don't like, and therefore I will do something bad to you" is the same between a pirate and an abuser or road rage and on up the food chain.

And yes, I have been on the receiving end of pirate pettiness. I've had people seed my books just because I sent them a rejection letter and they wanted to get back at me, or because I said something in a forum they don't like. Or because I left a book review they didn't agree with. So no, I have no respect for them because time and time again they show their true colors. For all their talk about "information wanting to be free" they are a petty and vindictive group that use piracy to "get back" at people they don't like.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> For all their talk about "information wanting to be free" they are a petty and vindictive group that use piracy to "get back" at people they don't like.


Or companies they don't like etc. Very few are truly about freeing information, the common good of the public domain (crap I don't believe in anyway when it comes to arts and entertainments--these are luxuries, not basic needs and rights). Those types of things are just usually excuses for behaviors done for 1) wanting stuff for free as they can't afford it or think it's priced so high, and 2) wanting to make some "statement" against corporate greed since they're stuck at the bottom of the financial ladder.

Like I said, I get your frustration. But do think points are better argued without name calling and hyperbole. Though again I understand the frustration and sometimes lower myself to that level when arguing with pirates--so I try to mostly avoid it these days.

I really wish these boards had an ignore user feature so I could just block the flagrant pirates like I do on other sites.


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## splashes99 (Aug 11, 2010)

Mooshie, obviously everyone is entitled to their opinion.  Although I quoted you, it wasn't 'directed' at you (or not just at you, in any case).  No one has told you that you were WRONG for your opinions of people who engage in those behaviors.  However, it is still interesting to me how auge and sporadic are being told they need to admit that they are wrong, when no one is jumping on those like you, who are on the other end of the spectrum.  

As you (and those others outspoken against piracy) are allowed to have your opinion on a moral matter, I should think the others who don't see it as a moral failure should also be allowed to have their opinions. 

Julie, I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with any side.  However, I would think that it is possible to speak honestly without calling names ("sociopath" "spoiled brat").  Your arguments would carry a lot more weight with something to back them rather than just ranting.    

by the way, I have paid for all my books, and have no idea how one would even go about stripping DRM...I just think that this topic isn't as black and white as some like to think, and that EVERYONE should be able to have an opinion on a moral topic whether it is a popular stance or not.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

splashes99 said:


> However, it is still interesting to me how auge and sporadic are being told they need to admit that they are wrong, when no one is jumping on those like you, who are on the other end of the spectrum.


Because our stance is morally right. There's nothing to jump on us about--other than the name calling and hyperbole by Julie. Not saying we're perfect. As I said, everyone has their flaws and there are plenty of other areas people could jump all over me. 



> As you (and those others outspoken against piracy) are allowed to have your opinion on a moral matter, I should think the others who don't see it as a moral failure should also be allowed to have their opinions.


Sure. People can post whatever they want (within forum rules of course!). And I (and anyone else) can post our feelings on our thoughts/reactions to the posts. That's how message boards work.

My opinion is that pirates should be like Auge and just admit that it's wrong and not try to justify it. Others are free to ignore than and keep posting justifications etc. (again, which this site had an ignore user feature to block such folks). People like you are free to post your more middle ground posts etc. That's how discussion forums work. People post, people react.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

splashes99 said:


> I still think that all of this misses the point...morality and legality are not the same thing. I see those in this thread who are against piracy stating that it is a crime and thus shows moral failing, instead of separating the two. When auge and sporadic have explained their theories and reasoning, it has been said "Don't justify it, just admit you are doing something wrong!"


I did admit it, but followed it by saying that perhaps it should not be wrong or that the two ideas should meet closer to the middle.



splashes99 said:


> I know it is an example, but the point comes in that right and wrong in this case may not be as clear cut as some posters like to believe. Explaining the pirate's reasons behind not considering this to be immoral is not 'trying to justify why it is okay for you to do this terrible thing.' Many things have been considered moral failures or illegal until enough happened that the social structures and/or laws changed.


That's what I am trying to say.



splashes99 said:


> . . . but in the case of piracy people should just step up and say "I am doing something wrong!" instead of justifying their beliefs.


Why can't we do both?
Are our opinions invalid?


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> If, according to the pirates, it is OK to violate the law and pirate the work of people they do not like, then why should I have to bite my tongue and not speak my opinion honestly about them?
> 
> And go back and read what I wrote. I specifically said "_And no, I'm not saying piracy is akin to murder. But what I am saying is that the thought process is identical_." I am talking about the thought process. Yes, it was hyperbole, but sometimes that is needed to get a point across. The thought process of "you did something I don't like, and therefore I will do something bad to you" is the same between a pirate and an abuser or road rage and on up the food chain.
> 
> And yes, I have been on the receiving end of pirate pettiness. I've had people seed my books just because I sent them a rejection letter and they wanted to get back at me, or because I said something in a forum they don't like. Or because I left a book review they didn't agree with. So no, I have no respect for them because time and time again they show their true colors. For all their talk about "information wanting to be free" they are a petty and vindictive group that use piracy to "get back" at people they don't like.


Yet another false argument.

*Argument By Generalization:* _Drawing a broad conclusion from a small number of perhaps unrepresentative cases. (The cases may be unrepresentative because of Selective Observation.) _


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## Guest (Feb 22, 2011)

auge_28 said:


> Yet another false argument.


What is false about it? Is it false that Sporadic specifically said he pirates stuff because a publisher ticked him off or priced too high? Is it false that I have in fact had pirates seed my books for the reasons I mentioned? Or did I hallucinate finding my books on those bit torrent sites?


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

Sporadic said:


> Telling me not to buy it or to pick it up [pizza] would only inconvenient me.


Yes, it would - a little. Poor baby.

You are incorrect in claiming that none of the delivery fee goes to the driver however. He is receiving an hourly wage as well. Just like a waitress he also relies on tips. We all know this. If you are uncomfortable and unwilling to pay for the service, don't order it. If you ask for it, be responsible and provide a tip.



> Piracy doesn't tell them anything. It could be because the price is too high, it could be because they did something stupid (staggered release, poor quality release, only made it available in one place) ...


Piracy tells a provider that his product is in demand. Pirates wouldn't take the product if they didn't want it - true?

If they are taking the product without compensating the copyright holder there is a loss, even if only 5% of pirated copies would realize an actual sale.



> It is rare to hear a real instance of piracy hurting someone


Are you really claiming that piracy has no impact on the copyright holder?



> How am I not intellectually honest?


No one has claimed this, at least to my knowledge. Instead, I was commending Auge in his intellectual honesty. He is direct and clear in his reasons. Why so defensive?



> I don't think I am any worse than a guy that goes to the library or buys only used . . .


You are kidding, right?

The library copy is legal and not being copied. One person reads it at a time. Completely appropriate. Buying used is also completely legitimate. Piracy creates an illegitimate copy while the original is still there as well. The violation is the creation of an additional, unpaid for copy.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> What is false about it? Is it false that Sporadic specifically said he pirates stuff because a publisher ticked him off or priced too high? Is it false that I have in fact had pirates seed my books for the reasons I mentioned? Or did I hallucinate finding my books on those bit torrent sites?


False Argument: An argument that sometimes fools human reasoning, but is not logically valid.

In your specific case: Making assumptions about a whole group or range of cases based on a sample that is inadequate (usually because it is atypical or just too small). Stereotypes about people ("librarians are shy and smart," "wealthy people are snobs," etc.) are a common example of the principle underlying hasty generalization.

Mooshie acknowledges that his arguments are personal and biased, so do I. You on the other hand seem to want to argue in broad sweeping gestures and state opinion as fact.

You are a writer, you should know how to argue or debate. Have you attended writing courses? Have you taken speech writing classes? Have you studied logic and or philosophy?
If not than perhaps you should leave arguing to those that know how.


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## Basilius (Feb 20, 2010)

Original:



> It is rare to hear a real instance of piracy hurting someone





Elk said:


> Are you really claiming that piracy has no impact on the copyright holder?


Careful the extrapolations here. There is a large difference between "rare" and "none" and "hurting" and "no impact".

It is impossible to claim piracy has no impact on sales. It is also impossible to quantify the exact impact it has. I _do_ know many cases of people noticing increases in sales after noticeable piracy activity. Again, it is not a definitive, traceable link.

Frankly, I've heard more actual evidence supporting the fact that piracy increases sales than I've seen actual evidence to the contrary. Studies financed by media companies, or companies that sell piracy tracking or countermeasures, do not count as evidence.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

history_lover said:


> I don't agree - burning a CD is/was pretty easy, software for it was easy to come by and you just move the files across and click "burn" as most software did any conversions necessary for you.


You clearly came to computers late in their development. 

Back in the dim dark ages CDs were a lot of work to copy and took a good deal of technical sophistication.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Elk said:


> You are kidding, right?
> 
> The library copy is legal and not being copied. One person reads it at a time. Completely appropriate. Buying used is also completely legitimate. Piracy creates an illegitimate copy while the original is still there as well. The violation is the creation of an additional, unpaid for copy.


Elk, if I may help here:

I believe Elk is saying that a publisher printed paper copy was purchased and has limited uses before it falls apart and needs to be repurchased or tossed away, same point for used books. Piracy creates a digital copy that can spawn millions of identical copies as perfect as the origenal.

Elk, let me know if I paraphrased this for you correctly.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Elk said:


> You clearly came to computers late in their development.
> 
> Back in the dim dark ages CDs were a lot of work to copy and took a good deal of technical sophistication.


it used to take most of a day to burn a DVD, and several hours to burn a CD . . . and more often than not it would fail and you need to start over.
I remember those days.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

Basilius said:


> It is impossible to claim piracy has no impact on sales. It is also impossible to quantify the exact impact it has.


Both statements are true.

This is also why the law provides a number of means for establishing damages in a copyright infringement case. It is difficult to quantify.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Basilius said:


> Frankly, I've heard more actual evidence supporting the fact that piracy increases sales than I've seen actual evidence to the contrary. Studies financed by media companies, or companies that sell piracy tracking or countermeasures, do not count as evidence.


Two comments on that.

1. It doesn't justify piracy. What it should do is show up and coming authors, musicians etc. that they can build a fanbase by giving away books, songs etc. But that's up to them to decide to take advantage of that possibility. If they decide not to make their material freely available, then no one is entitled to pirate it.

2. It really only applies to indie writers, up and coming bands etc. Famous writers, musicians only stand to lose money from piracy as they already have a big following and don't need to build a fanbase/name recognition as they already have that.

Sub point to number two, from what I've seen most piracy is of major authors, famous bands, major Hollywood movies etc. as those are what have the broadest appeal. So the utility of point 1 is outweighed by lost sales of established artists in number 2 most likely.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> I believe Elk is saying that a publisher printed paper copy was purchased and has limited uses before it falls apart and needs to be repurchased or tossed away, same point for used books. Piracy creates a digital copy that can spawn millions of identical copies as perfect as the origenal.


Yes. And much, much better stated than my version.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Elk said:


> This is also why the law provides a number of means for establishing damages in a copyright infringement case. It is difficult to quantify.


That law is very flawed--hence the huge settlements. It's not that hard to quantify the damage done in individual cases.

If someone is caught pirating an e-book that has an MSRP of $10, then they did $10 of damage. Make it a misdemeanor crime and fine them $10 plus 25% or something to add a deterrent effect.

As it is now, the law suits the RIAA is winning are absurdly disproportionate to the value of the files the person pirated.

Punishing uploaders gets trickier since you'd have to track how many people downloaded from their seed etc. Uploading should be treated more harshly IMO, as that's where the illegal copies are being made and distributed. But fines are tough as it's hard to quantify on a per file basis so some other scheme would likely be needed. Bet it set higher fines, probation etc.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> That law is very flawed--hence the huge settlements. It's not that hard to quantify the damage done in individual cases.
> 
> If someone is caught pirating an e-book that has an MSRP of $10, then they did $10 of damage. Make it a misdemeanor crime and fine them $10 plus 25% or something to add a deterrent effect.
> 
> ...


As most folks here are anti piracy it stands to reason that they would not know how it works, nor should they be expected to.

Peer2Peers like eMule, Nap-ster and LimeWire and Torrents utilize distributed hash tables, a class of decentralized distributed systems (read as no central server, but rather the storage on each users machines) that provide a lookup service similar to a hash table: (key, value) pairs are stored in the DHT, and any participating node (user) can efficiently retrieve the value associated with a given key enabling peers to find the data without relying on a centralized index server.

So in this system even if you are downloading you are also uploading and this I think is used to give merit to the extremely high fines as you may only be downloading one copy but you are participating in a system that makes available the file for several hundreds or thousands of users simultaneously from your machine.

_Edited because when I submitted, the word Nap-ster had a hyperlink in it somehow, so I added a hyphen._


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> That law is very flawed--hence the huge settlements.


Such as? The RIAA offers to settle cases of _seeding _pirates for a couple of thousand dollars. Is this what you are considering huge?



> The law suits the RIAA is winning are absurdly disproportionate to the value of the files the person pirated.


I am aware of only one case that went to verdict (Minnesota Federal District court). This was against someone that made songs publicly available to others, a seeder. The jury awarded $80k/song which the court remitted to $2,250/song. She could have settled for roughly $5,000 but instead chose to go to trial - and then lied to the jury. Juries don't like this.

Are you aware of any other cases?


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

$2000 is a lot of money to me . . .


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> So in this system even if you are downloading you are also uploading and this I think is used to give merit to the extremely high fines as you may only be downloading one copy but you are participating in a system that makes available the file for several hundreds or thousands of users simultaneously from your machine.


Excellent point Auge.

Also, while you can tell the software not to also upload, this makes the download very slow.

The entire system fails if downloaders do not also upload. Thus the software punishes non-uploaders by making their downloads take forever.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> $2000 is a lot of money to me . . .


It is to most of us. 

But it is an amount proportionate with criminal fines, etc.

Remember, this amount is what the RIAA will often settle for instead of bring a civil case for damages against a seeder - those that leave a complete copies of a songs on their hard drive for anonymous unlimited downloading by others.

I am not aware of occasional downloaders being pursued in any way - other than knowing that the less sophisticated can get warning emails from their PSP and others.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Elk said:


> I am not aware of occasional downloaders being pursued in any way - other than knowing that the less sophisticated can get warning emails from their PSP and others.


I got two of these when I started; the outcome of these letters was for me to get better at covering my tracks by learning what it is they look for . . . because obviously, they can't have eyes on everything.

_I would explain further but that might be construed as teaching piracy and might get me warned or kicked off the board, I don't want that._


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Elk said:


> Such as? The RIAA offers to settle cases of _seeding _pirates for a couple of thousand dollars. Is this what you are considering huge?
> 
> I am aware of only one case that went to verdict (Minnesota Federal District court). This was against someone that made songs publicly available to others, a seeder. The jury awarded $80k/song which the court remitted to $2,250/song. She could have settled for roughly $5,000 but instead chose to go to trial - and then lied to the jury. Juries don't like this.
> 
> Are you aware of any other cases?


I'm just going by cases where people have not settled and get hit with 5 figure or 6 figure fines. There have been a few of that nature--at least in the media. Probably not as prevalent as the media (and pirates) make you believe. Anyway, no time or patience to go look for arguments, but I'm sure googling RIAA law suits would pop up some articles.

But even $2,000 is too much if it's say 10 albums that would cost $100 or so to buy legally on mp3. But that's the nature of criminal justice in the US. We're uber punitive despite decades of research showing that the severity of punishment has very little deterrent impact, while it's the certainty of getting caught that matters.

The punishment only needs to be enough to make the costs outweigh the benefits. Hence my MSRP +25% (whatever) punishment. Once you go beyond that tipping point of having the costs outweigh the benefits, then additional punishment is a waste. But our justice system from the 70s on has been more based on retribution than deterrence or rehabilitation etc.

And none of it matters if the chances of getting caught (certainty) are very low as the costs don't matter if they are very unlikely to be applied. And that's the big rub with dealing with piracy. How can we ever get certainty up enough to make punishment matter?

My guess is that we can't. My hope is that if we eventually make it a misdemeanor crime with arrest record etc. that will deter some people and help send the message that piracy is wrong and hopefully lessen the extent to which is it viewed as an acceptable behavior.

Just having big law suits (with smaller settlements) that don't fit the crime just serves to create more ill will toward media corporations and fuel more piracy as it's easy to hate corporations. Make the punishments fit the harm done by the crime, make them crime rather than civil etc., and I think we can create a more clear connection between the act and the harm done and at least erode some the prevalence views that piracy is ok.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> The punishment only needs to be enough to make the costs outweigh the benefits. Hence my MSRP +25% (whatever) punishment.


For me the costs to benefit ratio is somewhere around:

About 5500 Books at $10 each = $55,000
About 1000 Albums at $10 = $10,000
About 2500 Movies at $15 = $37,500

Grand total for me = $102,500 + 25%


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

May I ask for your opinion on something?

When it comes to movies, as I have said 99.9 percent I have rented, ripped and sent the original back and I have never made them available online.

In my mind I have paid to watch them but have not yet had the time, so it’s part of my retirement fund.  

I know that some of you will say that I should watch it once and toss it out as that fits my agreement with Netflix, but how is it any different than recording a movie on my DVR or VCR? I paid for it, just like you paid for your cable subscription. Is my paradigm much different than yours? 

For that matter why is it ok to record a song off the radio? Some of you will say that the entire album is not played on the radio or that not all albums are played on the radio . . . but isn’t that semantics?


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> For me the costs to benefit ratio is somewhere around:
> 
> About 5500 Books at $10 each = $55,000
> About 1000 Albums at $10 = $10,000
> ...


And that's what you get for being an extreme pirate. *shrugs* Hell, piracy at the level should probably move from misdemeanor to felony and see probation and or prison time IMO.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> And that's what you get for being an extreme pirate. *shrugs* Hell, piracy at the level should probably move from misdemeanor to felony and see probation and or prison time IMO.


_This part opinion >_ The way the laws are now I agree with you.
_This part subjective >_ Providing I was sharing on a large scale.


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## Martel47 (Jun 14, 2010)

Oh, and to those who think that not tipping pizza delivery drivers because of the added delivery fee doesn't hurt you.  Ask some delivery guys what they do to your pizza if you're a known low or non-tipper...just sayin'.

The only time I've engaged in "piracy" since I really started to research and understand ideas of intellectual property was when I wanted books that weren't available for kindle, of which I already had physical copies (and still have), and I didn't want to take the time to scan and OCR myself.  That was a convenience thing for me, but if the e-books had been available I probably would have just purchased them because that's less hassle than dealing with torrents and possible viruses, and still feeling kind of bad about it.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> I know that some of you will say that I should watch it once and toss it out as that fits my agreement with Netflix, but how is it any different than recording a movie on my DVR or VCR? I paid for it, just like you paid for your cable subscription. Is my paradigm much different than yours?


That's it in a nutshell. Why pay for netflix when you don't have time to watch movies now? Go without and sign up to whatever rental service is around when you retire.

I'm busy as well. I'm lucky to watch one or two movies or tv shows on Netflix a week between my discs and streaming. But I don't feel any need to copy things to have around for later when I have more time.

Making an illegal copy is never justifiable in my eyes period, so that's pretty much my opinion on that.

Your post does bring up a thing that baffles me about pirates. You all have some sick obsession with hoarding tons of content you'll never consume. What's the point of stealing 5,000+ books. You'll never read a fraction of them and could end up with huge fines etc. if ever caught. Something's wrong with your logic there.



> For that matter why is it ok to record a song off the radio? Some of you will say that the entire album is not played on the radio or that not all albums are played on the radio . .


Inferior quality. Not an exact copy. And it's something that probably shouldn't be ok, but is impossible to enforce so it gets covered by fair use. Same with taping things off TV to a VCR or DVR.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Martel47 said:


> Oh, and to those who think that not tipping pizza delivery drivers because of the added delivery fee doesn't hurt you. Ask some delivery guys what they do to your pizza if you're a known low or non-tipper...just sayin'.
> 
> The only time I've engaged in "piracy" since I really started to research and understand ideas of intellectual property was when I wanted books that weren't available for kindle, of which I already had physical copies (and still have), and I didn't want to take the time to scan and OCR myself. That was a convenience thing for me, but if the e-books had been available I probably would have just purchased them because that's less hassle than dealing with torrents and possible viruses, and still feeling kind of bad about it.


Hello Martel, 
Would you say that is a matter of semantics?
Isn't piracy, piracy no matter how you slice it?
How is one person's idea of piracy more acceptable than another's?
The law is the law after all, isn't it?
I'm not picking on you, I would like those questions answered if you have the time please4.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> _This part subjective >_ Providing I was sharing on a large scale.


Sharing makes it worse. But that level of downloading alone is a grave offense IMO. I mean you're into extreme levels of felony grand theft if that was tangible, physical products.

So to me, small piracy should just be a fine with no arrest record. Piracy of say $500-5,000 of MSRP value should be misdemeanor with still just a fine, maybe some light probation. Above that then it should probably start getting into felonies with longer probation.

I'd probably limit any jail/prison terms to the major uploaders and distributors though. Prisons are over crowded as is.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> Hello Martel,
> Would you say that is a matter of semantics?
> Isn't piracy, piracy no matter how you slice it?
> How is one person's idea of piracy more acceptable than another's?
> ...


I'd only call it piracy if he got rid of the physical book and kept the e-book he created personally.

Otherwise it's like buying a CD and ripping it to MP3s. Perfectly legal. But if you get rid of the original cd, you must destroy the mp3s. I don't see why books or movies should be the same.

Movies currently are as courts have ruled it illegal to crack the encryption on DVDs and Blurays. I disagree as one should be able to make a digital copy for themselves as long as they keep the original disc and don't distribute the copies. Though the rising prevalence of included digital copies is making that a bit of a moot point.

Books I'm not sure there's a ruling yet on whether it's ok to create an e-book for personal use as long as you keep the paper book yet.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> That's it in a nutshell. Why pay for netflix when you don't have time to watch movies now? Go without and sign up to whatever rental service is around when you retire.
> 
> I'm busy as well. I'm lucky to watch one or two movies or tv shows on Netflix a week between my discs and streaming. But I don't feel any need to copy things to have around for later when I have more time.
> 
> Making an illegal copy is never justifiable in my eyes period, so that's pretty much my opinion on that.


At least you are consistent, I appreciate that.



mooshie78 said:


> Your post does bring up a thing that baffles me about pirates. You all have some sick obsession with hoarding tons of content you'll never consume. What's the point of stealing 5,000+ books. You'll never read a fraction of them and could end up with huge fines etc. if ever caught. Something's wrong with your logic there.


Can't argue with you here, perhaps I can argue insanity or mental defect . . . 



mooshie78 said:


> Inferior quality. Not an exact copy.


Hey, no fair turning my own posts against me . . . 



mooshie78 said:


> And it's something that probably shouldn't be ok, but is impossible to enforce so it gets covered by fair use. Same with taping things off TV to a VCR or DVR.


Sounds like you are describing piracy in general.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> Sounds like you are describing piracy in general.


Not really. Illegal downloading and uploading, at least, happens online and can thus be traced and enforced to some level. Would probably take creating some cyber law enforcement agency to do it though. So it's very difficult to enforce, but not impossible. Piracy for profit is even easier as if online their are financial records, if in public their are black markets that can be investigated etc.

Things like taping off the radio, or burning mix tape cds etc. are just nearly impossible to detect. So the industry has little choice but to live with those things cutting some sales. Other forms of piracy there are some realistic ways to try to combat it. But just like any crime it will never be eliminated, just reduced.


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## Martel47 (Jun 14, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> I'd only call it piracy if he got rid of the physical book and kept the e-book he created personally.
> 
> Otherwise it's like buying a CD and ripping it to MP3s. Perfectly legal. But if you get rid of the original cd, you must destroy the mp3s. I don't see why books or movies should be the same.
> 
> ...


_This_

I actually did think about this in terms of CD-->MP3 or ROMs for my old Nintendo cartridges that I still have. I think it falls under fair use. I don't intend to distribute and I don't intend to get rid of the physical books in this case. The only thing I didn't do was make the copies myself, but I never did that with ROMs to use on an emulator and everything I ever researched about that seemed to indicate it was legal to download if you had the cartridge.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> But just like any crime it will never be eliminated, just reduced.


Or perhaps it will be made less illegal.

Damn it, looks like we cleared the room again. And I was trying to avoid arguing for piracy I just wanted to try to explore other folks idea of piracy . . . didn't do a great job avoiding the arguing stuff . . . oh well.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Martel47 said:


> _This_
> 
> I actually did think about this in terms of CD-->MP3 or ROMs for my old Nintendo cartridges that I still have. I think it falls under fair use. I don't intend to distribute and I don't intend to get rid of the physical books in this case. The only thing I didn't do was make the copies myself, but I never did that with ROMs to use on an emulator and everything I ever researched about that seemed to indicate it was legal to download if you had the cartridge.


Fair enough, but let me ask you this.
When you downloaded these files were you on a p2p network?
Did you inadvertently upload as well _(as described in my earlier post)_?


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## Martel47 (Jun 14, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> Fair enough, but let me ask you this.
> When you downloaded these files were you on a p2p network?
> Did you inadvertently upload as well _(as described in my earlier post)_?


The ROMs didn't come from a p2p. Since the books I downloaded were, this would have been a problem, but I downloaded the software just for these books and didn't have any files available to share until it downloaded, and I haven't used it since, so no, I didn't share.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Martel47 said:


> The ROMs didn't come from a p2p. Since the books I downloaded were, this would have been a problem, but I downloaded the software just for these books and didn't have any files available to share until it downloaded, and I haven't used it since, so no, I didn't share.


But you did share; as you were downloading you were also uploading.
I'm not saying this to throw you in with us bandits, as I said earlier folks don't have a full understanding of how it works and even though you may have intended to be on the up and up if they caught you, you may not have had a legal leg to stand on. Yes it's legal to have a backup, but it's illegal to make the file in part or its entirety available for others.


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## Gripweed (Jan 28, 2011)

Two simple hypothetical situations...

1) I get a DRM-free e-copy of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" from a torrent site.

2) I go to a public library and sign out a hardcover copy of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."

How are these two things different?

Benjamin Franklin was not only a revolutionary but he was a pirate as well.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Gripweed said:


> Two simple hypothetical situations...
> 
> 1) I get a DRM-free e-copy of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" from a torrent site.
> 
> ...


1. The copy is illegal.
2. You can keep the copy permanently and make an unlimited number of copies to distribute to others. The library book only one person can have it at a time and no one can keep it permanently.

The corollary would be libraries that check out e-books with expiration dates on them and where only one person can have each file at a time etc. That's the equivalence as that is also covered by fair use.

Illegal copying of files, illegal distribution of said copies, and illegal downloading of said copies is not covered by fair use laws and is a violation of copyright laws.

That's the difference, and it exists as many more sales can be lost through piracy than library checkouts due to the scale (unlimited copying possible easily with digital files) and the ease of piracy vs. going to the library and waiting for things to be available and dealing with due dates.


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## Basilius (Feb 20, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> Two comments on that.
> 
> 1. It doesn't justify piracy. What it should do is show up and coming authors, musicians etc. that they can build a fanbase by giving away books, songs etc. But that's up to them to decide to take advantage of that possibility. If they decide not to make their material freely available, then no one is entitled to pirate it.
> 
> ...


I'm not justifying anything. I'm stating there is no authoritative evidence on the effects of piracy either way.

I'm of the opinion that as long as it's perceived that piracy hurts the publishing corporation more than it hurts the artist (which, given current revenue splits, is generally the case) then piracy will continue relatively unabated as long as the internet exists. And probably longer. The artist is unfortunately caught in the crossfire.


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## Martel47 (Jun 14, 2010)

Basilius said:


> I'm not justifying anything. I'm stating there is no authoritative evidence on the effects of piracy either way.
> 
> I'm of the opinion that as long as it's perceived that piracy hurts the publishing corporation more than it hurts the artist (which, given current revenue splits, is generally the case) then piracy will continue relatively unabated as long as the internet exists. And probably longer. The artist is unfortunately caught in the crossfire.


That's funny. I've always been under the impression that piracy hurts the artist more than the corporation, at least percentage wise. The corporations can weather loss a lot better than individual authors. You're statement here is the first time I've ever heard the belief that the corporation is hurt more. Which is funny, because I've heard pirates, like shoplifters, make the case that what they take illegally doesn't hurt anyone because the company can afford it. There seems to be a contradiction between your reasoning and the reasoning of pirates I've discussed with elsewhere.


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## Guest (Feb 23, 2011)

Gripweed said:


> 1) I get a DRM-free e-copy of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" from a torrent site.
> 
> 2) I go to a public library and sign out a hardcover copy of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."


Already answered. But I will repeat it , again.

When you buy a book or CD, you buy the physical item. You do not buy the rights to the content. Copyright protects the _presentation of an idea_, not the delivery format. If you own a physical thing, you can give it away. Copyright law cannot prevent you from giving away a physical item you own. When you loan a book, you no longer have it.

A digital file cannot be "loaned". It can only be copied. When you give a copy to someone else, you still have the original file.

I don't understand why this is so hard to grasp.


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## Guest (Feb 23, 2011)

auge_28 said:


> May I ask for your opinion on something?
> 
> When it comes to movies, as I have said 99.9 percent I have rented, ripped and sent the original back and I have never made them available online.


This is called time shifting, which is perfectly legal when done for _your own personal use._ This has been settled law since the 1970's and the rise of VCRs. It is the same logic that lets you make copies of pages in a book while at the library to take home and use for notes later or a back up of a CD. Where you get in trouble is when you make additional copies to give to friends, or if you downloaded an illegal copy from a torrent.


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## daveconifer (Oct 20, 2009)

When it comes to digital files, there's absolutely no value in harking back to examples of how things were done when it was all physical objects.  As with all technology, there's rarely a suitable analogy, although it's easy to draw on and fall for such analogies.  

I see no point in comparing ebook policies with DTB policies for this reason.  We're still sorting this out, and will be for years, but I think it's pretty clear that just because we did X with a paper copy, it's not necessarily okay/productive/morally acceptable to do with a digital copy.  

Just thought I'd throw out my useless generalization for today...


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## Rory Miller (Oct 21, 2010)

I don't have anything to add to an already long thread, except that I really loved this guy from the original post:










Can Javoedge or M-edge or someone hurry up and make accessories so I can make my kindle look like this on display when I charge him?


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> I'm just going by cases where people have not settled and get hit with 5 figure or 6 figure fines.


There have not been any such cases. Only one case so far has gone to trial - as I previously cited. If you learn of any other, please post the specifics.



> But even $2,000 is too much if it's say 10 albums that would cost $100 or so to buy legally on mp3.


Again, these settlements have been with long time _seeders_ of copyrighted works, not the occasional downloader.



> And none of it matters if the chances of getting caught (certainty) are very low as the costs don't matter if they are very unlikely to be applied.


I agree. This is the primary issue.

My guess is that a lot of media pirates would be happy to steal many other products (including electronics equipment, etc.) if they felt they had an excellent chance of getting away with it.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> When it comes to movies, as I have said 99.9 percent I have rented, ripped and sent the original back and I have never made them available online.
> 
> In my mind I have paid to watch them but have not yet had the time.
> 
> I know that some of you will say that I should watch it once and toss it out as that fits my agreement with Netflix, but how is it any different than recording a movie on my DVR or VCR?


This is an interesting question.

Recording a broadcast movie for later viewing was held acceptable by the Supreme Court with the explanation that it is merely time-shifting. I don't recall the Court addressing whether one can view it multiple times but I don't think it came up.

Your contract with Netflicks certainly does not contemplate your copying and viewing the movie more than once. OTOH, I don't have a problem with copying it to view later if you don't have the time to watch it immediately and then deleting it. This is just time-shifting.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> Inferior quality [copy off of a radio station]. Not an exact copy. And it's something that probably shouldn't be ok, but is impossible to enforce so it gets covered by fair use. Same with taping things off TV to a VCR or DVR.


You have misused the phrase "fair use" many times and thus I feel I should comment.

"Fair Use" is a provision of the Copyright Act which provides a potential defense to copyright infringement. It does not set forth public rights to copy.

The provision provides a list of purposes for which the reproduction of portions of a copyrighted work may not be considered infringement. These include things like quoting sections of a work as part of a review, for scholarship/research, news reporting and the like. There are a number of factors that are to be applied to a particular situation to determine whether the use is infringement.

There is nothing in copyright law that allows making an "inferior copy" such as transcoding a CD to MP3, or recording to VCR or analog tape. Similarly, there is no provision that allows making back-up copies for playing a CD in your car. These are all infringement. See, e.g., the RealDVD case. The court explicitly ruled that consumers never have the right to copy DVDs. (RealDVD subsequently payed $4.5 million, agreed to stop manufacturing their DVD copy device and refunded the price of the devices to those that purchased them.)

As a practical matter however, the RIAA has made it clear it doesn't care if a legitimate owner transcodes a CD to MP3 or makes a back-up copy for a car CD player. This behavior isn't of concern.



> Movies currently are as courts have ruled it illegal to crack the encryption on DVDs and Blurays.


No. It is the other way around. The Federal Appeals Courts have ruled that breaking a digital security system to access software is not a violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. However, making and distributing software that break DRM is illegal.


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## dbeman (Feb 23, 2011)

NightGoat said:


> Something about pirating books I cannot understand; how is it that someone will take the time to remove the DRM, bundle up 2K of ebooks and then offer them up on a pirate site? What would one get for their efforts?


Presumably so that others will "pay it forward" and upload books of their own, thereby creating a library of thousands of books while only paying for hundreds. But I also suppose there are some who do it for the badge of (dis)honor amongst fellow hackers.



NightGoat said:


> I could see it with music pirating, maybe. Not morally however, in regard for effort though it takes but a few minutes to rip a whole CD. No scripts, no specialized software needed. But that whole DRM removal business is arduous.


The only reason I would ever consider the removal of DRM to be even slightly morally OK would be if paid for content for use with one device and wanted to port it over to another device for their own personal use.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Elk said:


> You have misused the phrase "fair use" many times and thus I feel I should comment.
> 
> "Fair Use" is a provision of the Copyright Act which provides a potential defense to copyright infringement. It does not set forth public rights to copy.


I disagree. Fair use laws allow some forms of copying (though maybe I'm wrong on those cases with cds to mp3s etc.).

For instance, most every university library has copy machines on every floor of the stacks as fair use laws allow copying of portions of books etc. for personal, educational use.

It gets trickier when its say a professor like me giving out PDF copies of things to students to read. My university is actually being sued over that issue currently. The guidelines the university lawyer has made available (in form of checklist) is it's probably fair use to provide such readings if it's factual info rather than fictional, only a small portion of a book (1 or 2 chapters) and not the whole thing etc. etc.

In any case, I will say that while I'm anti piracy, I'm also strongly in favor of expanding and clarifying fair use laws. Those of us who buy something legitimately should be able to do whatever we like (beyond plagiarizing it, making and distributing illegal copies etc.) in terms of making copies for personal use, having ability to loan or sell the content (need DRM with license transferring options for this to work with digital content) etc.

Hopefully my university will win their lawsuit and at least lead to some clarification and expansion of fair use laws in education settings.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> This is called time shifting, which is perfectly legal when done for _your own personal use._ This has been settled law since the 1970's and the rise of VCRs. It is the same logic that lets you make copies of pages in a book while at the library to take home and use for notes later or a back up of a CD. Where you get in trouble is when you make additional copies to give to friends, or if you downloaded an illegal copy from a torrent.


I did not know this; I will have to look into it.
Thank you Julie.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> When you buy a book or CD, you buy the physical item. You do not buy the rights to the content. Copyright protects the _presentation of an idea_, not the delivery format.


Just a small argument with this point, as a publisher I negotiated for printing rights from authors and this included formats such as hardback, paperback, digital . . . etc.
Admittedly not an important distinction but there it is.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> I did not know this; I will have to look into it.
> Thank you Julie.


But it wouldn't apply for Netflix as you're violating the terms of service for them, and courts have not ruled (to my knowledge) that it's ok to make copies of DVDs or Blurays that have encryption on them.

The time shifting only applies to recording things from TV and radio as far as I know.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Elk said:


> My guess is that a lot of media pirates would be happy to steal many other products (including electronics equipment, etc.) if they felt they had an excellent chance of getting away with it.


In my case, and I cannot speak for others obviously, I do not fit your assumption.
I am not offended by it either; I understand how someone who thinks that piracy is theft will wonder why a thief would stop at stealing just one thing. However I remind you that for a large number of us it's a philosophy thing not a deviant thing . . . unless Like Mooshie, you are the no tolerance type who believes that regardless of reason a thief is a thief, yet another opinion that does not offend me in the least.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

dbeman said:


> The only reason I would ever consider the removal of DRM to be even slightly morally OK would be if paid for content for use with one device and wanted to port it over to another device for their own personal use.


You do realize that this is piracy don't you?
I will state again my confusion over why other peoples piracy is held in higher regard than mine . . . you folks talk about "morally this" and "ethically that" and then go on to share your own loopholes around the laws.

I will also state again that Amazon and similar places do not add DRM to protect the artist . . . the DRM is added to protect / control the delivery system and device you can use it on . . . no matter what their press says.

Please folks, spend an hour or two reading articles from folks that do not support DRM if you haven't, you may be surprised.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

I think auge is in the majority.  I don't think most pirates would steal tangible products if they could get away with it.

This is the one point I said earlier in the thread that I find mildly interesting about piracy being a criminologist.  It's just not viewed as a crime by most who do it--though some like auge at least acknowledge that it's a wrong.

And I don't think it's just the "philosophy" thing either.  If they hate high prices and big corporations, that philosophy should spread to wanting to steal or otherwise damage large retail chains that mark up prices dramatically etc.  Yet I don't think most would commit thefts even if they knew they were just as unlikely to get caught shoplifting the new Eminem cd as they were downloading it from a torrent.

There's just the interesting social phenomenon that's happened where illegal downloading is viewed in many circles as perfectly acceptable and not a crime or moral wrong.  And for most of these that doesn't extend into other forms of law breaking or deviant behavior.  If find that interesting (only mildly so though) as a social scientist.

And it's the number 1 thing that must be combated if piracy is ever going to be reduced.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> But it wouldn't apply for Netflix as you're violating the terms of service for them, and courts have not ruled (to my knowledge) that it's ok to make copies of DVDs or Blurays that have encryption on them.
> 
> The time shifting only applies to recording things from TV and radio as far as I know.


I'm not sure that making copies is covered in my license agreement with Netflix . . . never read it, I think I will check . . . not that it really matters as they are not the copyright holders.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> You do realize that this is piracy don't you?
> I will state again my confusion over why other peoples piracy is held in higher regard than mine . . . you folks talk about "morally this" and "ethically that" and then go on to share your own loopholes around the laws.


It's not piracy.

Piracy is acquiring copyrighted material without paying for it and/or making copies and illegally distributing them to others.

If you've bought content legally, making a copy for yourself is not piracy. It's currently a violation of DRM agreements on somethings like e-books and DVDs. While allowed for others like ripping CDs to MP3s. So it's a bit of a gray area, but it's not piracy as the product was paid for and no copies are being distributed. At most it's a DRM agreement violation.

And that's the main area where fair use laws need expanded. Legitimate consumers shouldn't be hampered by DRM that does nothing to stop pirates like you anyway, and they should be allowed to put an e-book on all their e-reader devices just like they can put their mp3s on every mp3 player and computer they own etc.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> I'm not sure that making copies is covered in my license agreement with Netflix . . . never read it, I think I will check . . . not that it really matters as they are not the copyright holders.


True, even if it's not in the agreement, it's still not covered by the time shifting as all the encryption breaking software is illegal. So that law only applies to TV recording.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> I think auge is in the majority. I don't think most pirates would steal tangible products if they could get away with it.
> 
> This is the one point I said earlier in the thread that I find mildly interesting about piracy being a criminologist. It's just not viewed as a crime by most who do it--though some like auge at least acknowledge that it's a wrong.
> 
> ...


Very interesting, and has a ring of truth as well.
I will have to ponder this a bit.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Re: Netflix--illegal copying is mentioned in the terms of service.

Intellectual Property

Copyright

The Netflix service, including all content included on the Netflix website and user interfaces, or delivered to members as part of the service, including DVDs, movies and TV shows you can watch instantly, text, graphics, logos, designs, photographs, button icons, images, audio/video clips, digital downloads, data compilations, and software, are the property of Netflix or its suppliers and are protected by United States and international copyright laws or other intellectual property laws and treaties. The compilation of all content and any software or other materials provided by Netflix on our website and user interfaces, or in connection with the Netflix service are the exclusive property of Netflix and its licensors and are protected by the copyright and trade secret laws in the territories in which the Netflix service operates and by international treaty provisions. Content shall not be reproduced or used without express written permission from Netflix or its suppliers. You agree to adhere to the restrictions set forth under "Netflix streaming software" and "Limitations on Use." You agree not to decompile, reverse engineer or disassemble any software) or other products or processes accessible through the Netflix service, not to insert any code or product or manipulate the content of the Netflix service in any way that affects the user's experience, and not to use any data mining, data gathering or extraction method.* Netflix reserves the right to terminate your membership hereunder if Netflix, in its sole and absolute discretion, believes that you are in violation of this paragraph, such violations including the Netflix software restrictions, copying of movies and TV shows provided to you by us, the or the copying or other unauthorized use of our proprietary content. *Netflix does not promote, foster or condone the copying of movies or TV shows or any other infringing activity. The use of the Netflix service, including movies and TV shows made available to you by us, is solely for your personal and non-commercial use. Please see the instructions at the end of these Terms of Use for notifying us of the presence of any allegedly infringing content of the Netflix service, including any on the Netflix website or user interfaces.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> It's not piracy.
> 
> Piracy is acquiring copyrighted material without paying for it and/or making copies and illegally distributing them to others.
> 
> If you've bought content legally, making a copy for yourself is not piracy. It's currently a violation of DRM agreements on somethings like e-books and DVDs. While allowed for others like ripping CDs to MP3s. So it's a bit of a gray area, but it's not piracy as the product was paid for and no copies are being distributed. At most it's a DRM agreement violation.


If in fact it is not illegal than it is not piracy, and I stand corrected.



mooshie78 said:


> And that's the main area where fair use laws need expanded. Legitimate consumers shouldn't be hampered by DRM that does nothing to stop pirates like you anyway, and they should be allowed to put an e-book on all their e-reader devices just like they can put their mp3s on every mp3 player and computer they own etc.


I totally agree.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> If in fact it is not illegal than it is not piracy, and I stand corrected.


Even if illegal, it's still not piracy. Piracy is acquiring and/or distributing copyrighted material illegally.

Making a copy of something you bought for personal use is nothing more than a violation of the DRM agreement--currently that's not illegal I don't think. But even if it was, or became so, it would be a different crime than piracy since the copy was paid for and not distributed to someone other than the purchaser (thus no lost sales).


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## s0nicfreak (Jun 10, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> It's not piracy.
> 
> Piracy is acquiring copyrighted material without paying for it and/or making copies and illegally distributing them to others.
> 
> ...


Actually, the act of making an unofficial/unapproved copy is pirating. So if you break the DRM and copy a file onto another of your devices, you are actually pirating. It isn't illegal, but it is pirating.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> Re: Netflix--illegal copying is mentioned in the terms of service.
> 
> Intellectual Property
> 
> ...


And there it is.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

s0nicfreak said:


> Actually, the act of making an unofficial/unapproved copy is pirating. So if you break the DRM and copy a file onto another of your devices, you are actually pirating. It isn't illegal, but it is pirating.


Agree to disagree

To me the definition of piracy is illegally acquiring and/or distributing copyrighted material. Just breaking DRM is a separate offense, that (as long as the content was bought legally in the first place) only becomes piracy if copies are made and distributed.

But that's just me. I f'ing hate words that don't have VERY specific meanings. Especially when we're talking legal matters as you need clear definitions to define behaviors so they can have differential penalties etc.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> Agree to disagree
> 
> To me the definition of piracy is illegally acquiring and/or distributing copyrighted material. Just breaking DRM is a separate offense, that (as long as the content was bought legally in the first place) only becomes piracy if copies are made and distributed.
> 
> But that's just me. I f'ing hate words that don't have VERY specific meanings. Especially when we're talking legal matters as you need clear definitions to define behaviors so they can have differential penalties etc.


I agree, it's best to have an established lexicon.
If someone shows me that removing is not pirating, I won't call it that. I think a good yardstick for the term pirating should be whatever the law says it is.
Such as: _Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works._
The wiki article says nothing about DRM that I could find.


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## Guest (Feb 23, 2011)

mooshie78 said:


> But it wouldn't apply for Netflix as you're violating the terms of service for them, and courts have not ruled (to my knowledge) that it's ok to make copies of DVDs or Blurays that have encryption on them.
> 
> The time shifting only applies to recording things from TV and radio as far as I know.


Sony vs Universal, which is the case in question, did not limit time shifting to TV. It merely cited TV as the example. The courts have generally interpreted the ruling that so long as you have a legally obtained copy, it is acceptable to make a copy for your own use to enjoy later. In the case of netflix, it probably violated the user agreement, but not the spirit of the law. Again, copyright law does not have anything to with physical product. Only format. If you paid X to watch the movie, but didn't have time to watch it before you have to return the tape, then making a copy for the sole purpose of watching it later would be in the spirit of the law and no different than taping a TV show to watch later when you are home.

It goes back to the original intent of copyright law. Copyright protects the presentation of the idea, not the delivery format. Once you understand that point, the laws make more sense. If you acquire a legal copy of a copyright material, you can enjoy it personally. If you buy a CD and want to burn it to your computer to mix your own music for your own use, have at it. If you buy a book for the Kindle and back it up to your hard drive, fine. But the second you upload that file and start sharing it with other people, you are now taking the intellectual property of another person and depriving them of their rights to it.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> I agree, it's best to have an established lexicon.
> If someone shows me that removing is not pirating, I won't call it that. I think a good yardstick for the term pirating should be whatever the law says it is.
> Such as: _Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works._
> The wiki article says nothing about DRM that I could find.


Yeah, legally it needs a TON of clarification.

Piracy needs to be defined much more clearly. Any penalties for breaking DRM for personal use need defined (if there are to be any). Fair use laws need a ton of clarification etc.

Again, the way to do it in my view is to make piracy a criminal manner, with punishments proportionate to the value of the content plus a small extra fine as I outlined earlier in the thread. Define it clearly as acquiring or distributing copyrighted material illegally.

DRM is a separate issue. Hopefully an expansion of fair use will come with criminalizing piracy and DRM will be banned and that will be a moot point. It doesn't stop piracy and just infringes on fair use of legitimate purchasers.


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## Guest (Feb 23, 2011)

Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, breaking DRM for personal use is not illegal.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/26/technology/iphone_jailbreaking/

Breaking DRM so you can read your Kindle book on another device, not illegal.
Breaking DRM so you can make copies of the book to give to your friends, illegal.
Breaking DRM to reformat your Kindle book in a special format for your own use (such as enabling tect-to-speech), not illegal.
Breaking DRM to reformat a Kindle book to upload to a file sharing site, illegal.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Sony vs Universal, which is the case in question, did not limit time shifting to TV. It merely cited TV as the example. The courts have generally interpreted the ruling that so long as you have a legally obtained copy, it is acceptable to make a copy for your own use to enjoy later. In the case of netflix, it probably violated the user agreement, but not the spirit of the law. Again, copyright law does not have anything to with physical product. Only format. If you paid X to watch the movie, but didn't have time to watch it before you have to return the tape, then making a copy for the sole purpose of watching it later would be in the spirit of the law and no different than taping a TV show to watch later when you are home.


I suppose. But it still doesn't seem "right" in the sense that you paid to rent a movie. If you make a copy of it you have a permanent copy of it that's largely identical in quality to the DVD you rented.

With taping something from TV to VCR in the past you had a lower quality copy that degraded overtime. With DVRs the copy is same quality, but it's not really permanent. You'll eventually upgrade to a newer DVR, or have it die, or switch cable/satellite companies etc. I guess DVD recorders are a touchier issue, but hardly anyone seems to use those vs. DVRs.

But I do get the equivalence you're making. Both are kind of sucky cases for copyright holders since rentals and TV airings aren't meant to provide subscribers with permanent copies. Maybe DVRs should have the software delete content after 1 years from recording date.

But in any case the Netflix copying wouldn't get covered by that law since software to break encryption on DVDs and Blu Rays is currently illegal. So that prohibits any time shifting there currently. And the user agreement makes it clear that Netflix can terminate the account if they find out you're making copies of content they provide. Personally, I doubt the care as they get the same money per subscription anyway. So that's just language in the agreement to cover their own asses from being sued by copyright holders.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, breaking DRM for personal use is not illegal.
> 
> http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/26/technology/iphone_jailbreaking/
> 
> ...


That's what I thought. Thanks for the link.

Hence the need to define piracy as involving acquiring or distributing content illegally. Not just making copies for your own personal use.


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## dbeman (Feb 23, 2011)

auge_28 said:


> You do realize that this is piracy don't you?
> I will state again my confusion over why other peoples piracy is held in higher regard than mine . . . you folks talk about "morally this" and "ethically that" and then go on to share your own loopholes around the laws.
> 
> I will also state again that Amazon and similar places do not add DRM to protect the artist . . . the DRM is added to protect / control the delivery system and device you can use it on . . . no matter what their press says.
> ...


I do realize that some may consider this piracy, but I find it no different than buying a CD and putting a few tracks on my iPod; or purchasing a non-protected .epub and reading it on both my laptop and my iPad.

Since I'm not acquiring or distributing the content illegally I'm pretty sure I'm in the moral and legal clear. Then again the law and common sense are sometimes complete strangers.


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## s0nicfreak (Jun 10, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> That's what I thought. Thanks for the link.
> 
> Hence the need to define piracy as involving acquiring or distributing content illegally. Not just making copies for your own personal use.


We already have a term that clearly means acquiring or distributing content illegally: copyright infringement. Piracy is a different term.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> But in any case the Netflix copying wouldn't get covered by that law since software to break encryption on DVDs and Blu Rays is currently illegal.


Here's some confusion again . . . sorry.
I am under the impression that selling/distributing the software is illegal (in America) but having it and using it is not.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

s0nicfreak said:


> We already have a term that clearly means acquiring or distributing content illegally: copyright infringement. Piracy is a different term.


It's the same thing:

The practice of labeling the infringement of exclusive rights in creative works as "piracy" predates statutory copyright law. Prior to the Statute of Anne 1709, the Stationers' Company of London in 1557 received a Royal Charter giving the company a monopoly on publication and tasking it with enforcing the charter. Those who violated the charter were labeled pirates as early as 1603. After the establishment of copyright law with the 1709 Statute of Anne in Britain, the term "piracy" has been used to refer to the unauthorized manufacturing and selling of works in copyright. Article 12 of the 1886 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works uses the term "piracy" in relation to copyright infringement, stating "Pirated works may be seized on importation into those countries of the Union where the original work enjoys legal protection." Article 61 of the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) requires criminal procedures and penalties in cases of "willful trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on a commercial scale". Piracy traditionally refers to acts intentionally committed for financial gain, though more recently, copyright holders have described online copyright infringement, particularly in relation to peer-to-peer file sharing networks, as "piracy."


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## s0nicfreak (Jun 10, 2010)

That does not say they are the same thing. It says copyright holders use it to mean the same thing, even though it does not mean the same thing.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

s0nicfreak said:


> That does not say they are the same thing. It says copyright holders use it to mean the same thing, even though it does not mean the same thing.


I'm just saying piracy should change to that definition. Copyright infringement should be used to refer to things like using a song or other item in a commercial or movie without paying royalties, plagiarism etc.

As it is currently, the term copyright infringement is way too broad. It's ok from civil law (where it is now) as that's more subjective. To move piracy to criminal law like I want to see happen would require much narrower and specific crime types and not broad labels like copyright infringement.

And even the piracy label really doesn't work, so the argument is kind of moot. We'll need to see things like "Misdemeanor Illegal File Downloading"; "Felony Illegal File Downloading" and corollaries for illegal uploading etc.


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## Gripweed (Jan 28, 2011)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Already answered. But I will repeat it , again.
> 
> When you buy a book or CD, you buy the physical item. You do not buy the rights to the content. Copyright protects the _presentation of an idea_, not the delivery format. If you own a physical thing, you can give it away. Copyright law cannot prevent you from giving away a physical item you own. When you loan a book, you no longer have it.
> 
> ...


I have no problem grasping what you are writing. I just don't agree with you. To me both of these situations are pirating. As an author do you feel any better about the loss of money to you if a library loans out your book to 1000 people? 1000 people that could have and should have paid for the privilege of reading that book. How is that any different than the money lost to an e-book being available on a torrent site? I'd be willing to wager that more money is lost to libraries and second-hand book stores than currently with torrenting and other Internet file sharing. The percentage may change in the future but for now that seems to be the case.

By the way, with e-books you do also get a physical item. It is a series of ones and zeros. To that series an e-book store (Amazon, in our case) adds additional ones and zeros that are called DRM. They are not part of the author's content or as you say, "presentation of an idea". Since they are not part of the copyright, they can be removed. Again, you say "If you own a physical thing, you can give it away." Therefore I can give away a series of ones and zeros to anyone I want.

Having said all that, I have never pirated a book in my life nor do I ever intend to. I also don't own a library card.


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## Gripweed (Jan 28, 2011)

mooshie78 said:


> The library book only one person can have it at a time and no one can keep it permanently.


Do you really think an author cares whether only one person can have it at a time and who winds up with it in the end?
If I were an author I would be more concerned with my lost profits. It doesn't make any difference to me whether a person loans the actual book to 5 friends or whether the person photocopies the book five times and gives the copies away to friends. In either event I've potentially lost 5 sales of the book. But in the silly world of copyright law, the former is ok and the latter is not.


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## Pirate (Jul 5, 2009)

If this has been said earlier in this thread, my apologies.

I go back a long way, before there was such a thing as a "Personal Computer" and saw it with pirated software when the PC came out.

The industry formula is as follows:  Pirated copy - actual sales = Lost revenue. 

The vast majority of pirated "Stuff" is pirated because it can be had for free and will never used, listen to or read. The person that pirates it would never have bought it in the first place so in reality the authors/publishers are not losing nearly as much money as they think.
Example: At the pirate site you can download 2000 books. 2000 books times $7.95 equals $15900. Is that person going to walk in to a book store and plop down that much money and just start pulling books off the shelves in the hopes that s(he) will find a dozen or so that may be interesting enough to read, because that is what you are doing when you buy  the 2000 books.  Nope. ain't gonna happen.
I read all the time and I'm very choosy what I spend my time reading. I do a lot of research on the book before I buy it. I buy it so the author will write another good book.

Just my $0.02 worth.

I'll do another post as to why I would strip the DRM from my legally purchased books for my own use.


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## screwballl (Jan 4, 2011)

I think it is summed up very nicely here:



> Alas, so far [piracy in general] hasn't been dealt with effectively and I doubt it ever will be. It won't cost me much now--and it may even help me find a few readers who might not have read my book...


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> I disagree. Fair use laws allow some forms of copying (though maybe I'm wrong on those cases with cds to mp3s etc.).


You may disagree, but this is not how the law works. 

17 U.S.C. § 107 provides that certain acts are not infringement and are a _defense _to a claim of copyright violation, but do not provide rights to copy.

This appears to be semantic distinction but is not. The law protects certain acts from civil claims of infringement but it does not provide rights to the public to make copies.

The problem is that Congress, in its wisdom in naming a code provision, called the defenses "fair use." In normal parlance your interpretation of the phrase is completely reasonable.



> For instance, most every university library has copy machines on every floor of the stacks as fair use laws allow copying of portions of books etc. for personal, educational use.


As I already pointed out, portions of a work can be copied for nonprofit educational purposes. If this is the purpose, the copying is partial, for purposes of research or criticism, then the person doing the copying has a defense to a claim of infringement.



> I'm also strongly in favor of expanding and clarifying fair use laws.


Intellectual property law is complex and nuanced. Congress has made it difficult to apply the law. It sets forth examples of what might be considered non-infringing and provides four factors to be considered, while allowing the courts to further consider additional factors. Thus, there are few bright line rules.

More accurately it appears that what you would like is a diminution of intellectual property rights, not an expansion of fair use. That is, provisions of the Copyright Act that state that a copyright holder does not possess the exclusive right to control duplication and distribution but instead has limited rights.



> Hopefully my university will win their lawsuit and at least lead to some clarification and expansion of fair use laws in education settings.


The law in this regard is quite clear. If there is a lawsuit I suspect there was a fairly whole-cloth copying of a work to sidestep paying for it. Unfortunately many educational institutions have grown accustomed to making copies, claiming "fair use."


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## Pirate (Jul 5, 2009)

*Why I would strip the DRM from my own copy of an e-book that I have bought.*

I love Amazon and they forever changed the way people read when they came out with the kindle.
I bought the D2 when it first came out. Then sold it at half price to my daughter and bought myself a DX as soon as it came out. Later I bought a D3 as a gift for my daughter.
With a paper back book you can read it at home, take it in a car, camping, backpacking etc. Yea, I know you can do all that with the kindle.
I also have the kindle app for android on my Spring EVO (4.3 inch screen) and it is actually quite readable. I have the K app also on my Dell Streak (5 inch screen) and my Galaxy Tab (7 inch screen). My EVO and Streak are both more portable than a kindle and the Tab is right there with the D3 although a bit heavier but not much. Battery life really sucks on all three when you are reading. But here is the BIG Plus. They have color screens which is really nice when there are color illustrations in the book. And they have a fully functioning browser. I can stop in the middle of a paragraph, launch the browser and look up additional information about what I am reading. And yes I do this a lot. At home I now do most of my reading on the Tab and when I'm out and about I use the Streak or EVO .At some point down the road there may be a 'device' that for me is superior to the kindle and amazon might not support it. I can then take my non DRM file to that device to read.
I just really abhor someone telling me what I can and cannot do with something that I have legally purchased. I can give or sell a paper back book to anyone I so choose for any price, to be used anyway that person wants. As long as I don't keep a copy of the e-book I should be able to do the same thing.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> If you've bought content legally, making a copy for yourself is not piracy. It's currently a violation of DRM agreements on somethings like e-books and DVDs. While allowed for others like ripping CDs to MP3s.


No. This is a copyright violation under the Copyright Act.

The RIAA, for one, has made clear however that a backup or transcoding by the legitimate owner is not of concern. Thus, while infringement, it will not result in civil prosecution for damages by the RIAA.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Again, I'm more talking about where I think laws need to go/what I think they should be rather than what they are currently.

Illegal downloading and uploading should be criminalized.

Copyright infringement should be a civil matter (as now) and limited to things like plagiarism, using things without paying royalties etc.

DRM should be moot as such laws should be struck down in an expansion of fair use (or whatever you want to call it) as people who buy something should be able to do whatever they want with it outside of plagiarizing it, distributing copies to others etc.

Like I've said, fair use laws need expanded (or intellectual property laws trimmed as you seem to want to call it, and that's fine) along with steps taking to clarify piracy laws, criminalize them and separate them from other types of copyright infringement like plagiarism etc.

Just my 2 (or many more!) cents on the issue.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> I'm more talking about where I think laws need to go/what I think they should be rather than what they are currently.


Perfectly reasonable. The problem however is that you have repeatedly misstated current law. It is difficult to discuss how the law should be changed when the current law is misrepresented.



> Illegal downloading and uploading should be criminalized.


They already are. 17 U.S.C. §506.



> DRM should be moot as such laws should be struck down in an expansion of fair use (or whatever you want to call it) as people who buy something should be able to do whatever they want with it outside of plagiarizing it, distributing copies to others etc.


It is already legal for the proper owner of a digital file to defeat DRM. It is illegal however to design and distribute software which removes DRM.

BTW, Fair Use is analogous to self defense. The self defense doctrine does _not _set out a right to kill ("Fair Kill"?), only a defense to a murder charge. The Fair Use provision of the Copyright Act serves the same purpose; a defense to a claim of copyright infringement. Fair Use does _not _set forth public rights to copyrighted works.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Elk said:


> Perfectly reasonable. The problem however is that you have repeatedly misstated current law. It is difficult to discuss how the law should be changed when the current law is misrepresented.


Fair enough. I'll stop talking about it as I'm not a lawyer.



> They already are. 17 U.S.C. §506.


But isn't it mostly just a civil law--hence the RIAA lawsuits. Rather than a criminal law that is investigated by law enforcement and prosecuted in criminal court. At least in the case of personal uploading and downloading and not things like selling bootleg copies of things etc.?

I think things like the RIAA lawsuits need to stop as they have no deterrent impact and we need to be finding ways to catch more pirates and get them in criminal court as the threat of a criminal record should have more deterrent impact even with much smaller and more proportionate fines.



> It is already legal for the proper owner of a digital file to defeat DRM. It is illegal however to design and distribute software which removes DRM.


Which is retarded. DRM needs to go away period.



> BTW, Fair Use is analogous to self defense. The self defense doctrine does _not _set out a right to kill ("Fair Kill"?), only a defense to a murder charge. The Fair Use provision of the Copyright Act serves the same purpose; a defense to a claim of copyright infringement. Fair Use does _not _set forth public rights to copyrighted works.


Fair enough. I'm just saying it needs to change. Fair use laws (or call them something else) need to set forth clear rights of what legitimate consumers can do with content they buy. And copyright laws (or call them something else) need to be designed to protect a copyright holders sole right to distribute and profit from their creations, and be very specific in criminalizing specific forms of piracy. They're too broad now, mostly not criminal law, and weren't originally designed for that purpose.

So excuse any misstatements I made about existing law, the above is what I think the law should be.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> But isn't it mostly just a civil law--hence the RIAA lawsuits.


No.

17 U.S.C. § 506 is the criminal provision.



> DRM needs to go away period.


This is an issue for the market, not law.

DRM is currently fairly effective for ebooks. Thus it remains. If DRM was useless in protecting ebooks, there would not be so many complaining of DRM. 



> Fair use laws (or call them something else) need to set forth clear rights of what legitimate consumers can do with content they buy. And copyright laws (or call them something else) need to be designed to protect a copyright holders sole right to distribute and profit from their creations, and be very specific in criminalizing specific forms of piracy.


All of this already exists. You have identified a self-education issue, not a failure in the statutory scheme.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

It doesn't all exist.

There aren't people getting criminal charges and small fines for illegal downloads or uploads.  They're getting civil suits.  They should be getting misdemeanor criminal records and fines in line with the value of the stuff pirated as I've outlined.

Fair use laws aren't clearly delineated in terms of defining legitimate use (rather than protecting copyright holders/being things they just don't enforce) hence the law suit my university is going through.  The whole purpose of it is to clearly define fair use in education settings.  And we need similar clarifications in terms of things like being able to loan or sell e-books etc.

So even if the laws are there, they need clarified and enforced more uniformly.  Some need moved into criminal court in practice etc.

But we're going in circles, so I'm dropping from this discussion.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Elk said:


> DRM is currently fairly effective for eBooks. Thus it remains. If DRM was useless in protecting eBooks, there would not be so many complaining of DRM.


Good morning Elk.

I'm pretty sure we covered this, but . . .

1.	Pirates are not complaining about DRM, we have no problem getting past it . . . at best it's a minor nuisance as it adds a step to getting what we want . . . and not a difficult step at that, we set it up once, then push a button.

2.	If a pirate even mentions DRM it is to point out that it is more of a nuisance to those that paid money for the item, there is not a single thing that I cannot get in as little as a couple hours, books, movies, music, video games for any console or PC and software. The books and music is playable by any device that supports that file structure or I can convert it to another file structure. You can read your Kindle book only on your kindle device.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

And yes, that's why DRM is not effective.

Pirates don't complain about it.  Just legitimate users who want to put an e-book on different e-readers, want the ability to loan an e-book an unlimited number of times like they can a paperbook etc.  It's just a hassle for legitimate users.

It's not one I care much about as I seldom loaned books and never resold them and don't have other brand e-readers.  But I hated it back when MP3's had it and refused to buy any until it was gone as I do have multiple MP3 players, multiple computers etc. I listen to my music on.  So I feel the pain of those who are burdened by it when it does nothing to fight piracy.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Pirate said:


> *I just really abhor someone telling me what I can and cannot do with something that I have legally purchased*. I can give or sell a paper back book to anyone I so choose for any price, to be used anyway that person wants. As long as I don't keep a copy of the e-book I should be able to do the same thing.


*As I have mentioned on this board many times, you do not own the book you so-called purchased from Amazon.*

_1976 Copyright Law (Title 17, Chapter 1, § 109)- after being upheld by the Supreme Court since 1908-which states "the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord." Meaning after I buy a book, a movie, or any other copyrighted item, I can do whatever I would like with that material with the exception of duplicating it; I could sell it, lend it, trade it, rent it or even throw it out the window.

The trade in used books has been an important part of our culture in the way that selling used audio or video recordings has not. Our culture would certainly be much poorer without Powell's Books in Portland, Ore., or Witherspoon Books in Princeton, N.J., or Manhattan's Strand Bookstore.

Some probing into the End-User Licensing Agreement (EULA) for the Kindle reveals something that seriously undermines my previous claims about the first-sale doctrine. Even though I click "Buy now with 1-click" on the "Kindle Store" to purchase books, Amazon does not consider the transaction to be a sale in the traditional sense, meaning the first-sale doctrine would not apply. Instead of selling me a digital "copy" of the book, "Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use." Apparently, Kindle users never buy books, they just license them under a restrictive set of conditions. The EULA then stipulates, "Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content. "
Fortunately, Amazon's view that purchasing an eBook merely grants consumers a license rather than ownership of a product could be challenged. Columbia University Law students quoted on Gizmodo argue, "Just because Sony or Amazon call it a license, that doesn't make it so&#8230;That's a factual question determined by courts&#8230;Even if a publisher calls it a license, if the transaction actually looks more like a sale, users will retain their right to resell the copy."_

*Full article here: http://ipinthedigitalage.com/drm-and-the-first-sale-doctrine-on-the-amazon-kindle/*


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

> 1976 Copyright Law (Title 17, Chapter 1, § 109)- after being upheld by the Supreme Court since 1908-which states "the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord." Meaning after I buy a book, a movie, or any other copyrighted item, I can do whatever I would like with that material with the exception of duplicating it; I could sell it, lend it, trade it, rent it or even throw it out the window.


This also seems to put to rest the question of why libraries and used book sellers aren't piracy.
Settles the argument for me, if it's legal it can't be piracy in my book.

It does not however settle the argument of which is the better way for a writer to lose sells: a library, book seller or pirate . . . for those that like to pick nits.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> It doesn't all exist.


Sorry, Mooshie, but it does. I even provided you with the citation.



> There aren't people getting criminal charges and small fines for illegal downloads or uploads.


There are criminal prosecutions for major seeders, but few for smaller actors. This isn't a statutory issue, but one of prosecutory resources. Oddly enough, federal prosecutors have much better things to do. I doubt as a society that we are willing to expend the resources necessary to prosecute misdemeanor downloading.



> They're getting civil suits.


This may be a better use of resources. The copyright owners are suing to protect their interests and pick those infringers which they feel are the biggest problem or will deter others. The law could be changed to make this prosecution easier, but I believe society would be uncomfortable with this.



> Fair use laws aren't clearly delineated in terms of defining legitimate use.


Have you actually looked at the law and commentary? It is quite clear. I have also set forth many specifics in this thread and elsewhere.

Your university should not have an issue. This area is the earliest clarified. Unfortunately educators as a group fail to heed the law and love to print wholesale copies of materials as handouts, even charging students for the price of the copies. This is not a failure of the law but an unwillingness to follow it.

However, if you want to discuss the case itself you will need to post the specifics.



> But we're going in circles, so I'm dropping from this discussion.


Hardly. You just don't like where the discussion is going.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> 1.	Pirates are not complaining about DRM, we have no problem getting past it


Very true. When I describe many complaining about DRM I am referring to the average user interested in copying his ebook for a friend.



> 2.	If a pirate even mentions DRM it is to point out that it is more of a nuisance to those that paid money for the item,


Also very true. DRM only slows casual users from sharing. It also prevents the average user from transcoding his legally purchased file for use on another device.

Amazon is an interesting partial solution to this problem. It allows multiple Kindles on an account, as well as offering Kindle readers for various devices. This allows the legitimate user to read his ebook on multiple platforms. The obvious limitation however is that it does not allow reading the ebook on other devices, such as a Sony, which the buyer may own.

Removing Amazon's DRM and selling the file itself to another are legal under copyright law but violate Amazon's Terms of Service.

I'm with you in asserting that ebooks should be DRM free and there should be no restriction on transcoding. We should also be able to easily sell, loan and gift them. In exchange, we as users need to agree that we will not make copies for others and, if we sell the file, we do not retain a copy.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> As I have mentioned on this board many times, you do not own the book you so-called purchased from Amazon.


You own it, but what you own is limited.

As the TOS provides, "Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon."

You _own_ this copy but it can only use on Amazon authorized devices. It is similar to buying a piece of software which requires a dongle. You own the software, but if you sell it you need to also supply the hardware for the new owner to use it.

Here the hardware is the device upon which the software is used, a Kindle. This is much more restrictive than a dongle, but is similar in concept.

None of this would bother us in the physical world. We buy many things that can only be used with a specific physical device. The fact that an e-file is so easily copied and transcoded makes such limitations on a file frustrating however.

Of course, none of this would be an issue if no one made illegal copies of ebooks.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> This also seems to put to rest the question of why libraries and used book sellers aren't piracy.


Yup. I've never understood why anyone thinks a library or selling used books is a form of piracy.



> It does not however settle the argument of which is the better way for a writer to lose sells: a library, book seller or pirate.


It is an interesting question.

The difference to the person wanting to read a book is one of effort. It is really easy to download an ebook. It takes a great deal more effort to go to a library or to a book store. The later also takes your money.

Both free and easy is tempting to everyone.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Elk said:


> There are criminal prosecutions for major seeders, but few for smaller actors. This isn't a statutory issue, but one of prosecutory resources. Oddly enough, federal prosecutors have much better things to do. I doubt as a society that we are willing to expend the resources necessary to prosecute misdemeanor downloading.


I wonder if they don't just cherry pick a couple here and there for big news to use as a deterrent to frighten the casual downloader . . . the equivalent to the bogeyman.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Elk said:


> Yup. I've never understood why anyone thinks a library or selling used books is a form of piracy.
> 
> It is an interesting question.
> 
> ...


Pirating costs more than a library card, gotta buy a computer, gotta pay for internet, gotta spend time learning how. I'm not really arguing this point, just pointing it out.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Elk said:


> There are criminal prosecutions for major seeders, but few for smaller actors. This isn't a statutory issue, but one of prosecutory resources. Oddly enough, federal prosecutors have much better things to do. I doubt as a society that we are willing to expend the resources necessary to prosecute misdemeanor downloading.
> 
> This may be a better use of resources. The copyright owners are suing to protect their interests and pick those infringers which they feel are the biggest problem or will deter others. The law could be changed to make this prosecution easier, but I believe society would be uncomfortable with this.


The problem is the law is too broad. We need clearly, state level laws (not federal statutes that are rarely enforced) that specify misdemeanor crimes for illegal uploads and downloads that are handled much like shoplifting--but a tad less severely. That's the only way it will ever send a message that piracy is not right and is in fact crime. Give people some arrest records and they'll get the message.

Law suits will never work as the chances of getting caught are way too slim and they don't send the same message of something being a crime. Policing it will still be the problem. In my view that's where the industry money should go, funding agencies that work with ISPs to detect piracy and forward information on to prosecutors.

It's probably all a pipe dream, so I just thank my lucky stars I don't make my living trying to sell any creations to our shitty society as piracy is going to make it harder and harder for anyone to make a living writing etc. other than the lucky few who hit the big time.



> Your university should not have an issue. This area is the earliest clarified. Unfortunately educators as a group fail to heed the law and love to print wholesale copies of materials as handouts, even charging students for the price of the copies. This is not a failure of the law but an unwillingness to follow it.


That wasn't it at all. It was related to posting content for free to students on the course WebCT web sites for them to read. And it was limited to chapters from books (1 or 2, not whole books) and journal articles which is stupid as the students could get them for free themselves off the library website anyway (just easier to post them than answer 50 e-mails from idiot students who can't figure out the library website on their own). It's just a case of publisher greed for the most part, though I'm sure there were a few cases of people posting a whole book or something--what the University is arguing for is the right to distribute partial content from books, journal articles from journals which are part of our electronic subscriptions to students for free, for educational purposes. Not giving whole books. Not selling course reader packs etc.

But that's as specific as I can get without giving away where I work, and it's not something I'm that interested in discussing anyway as my piracy and fair use opinions are rock solid and I don't really give a crap what anyone else thinks about the topic. I'm just posting to try and sway some people to my side, and that's it.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Elk said:


> You own it, but what you own is limited.
> 
> As the TOS provides, "Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon."
> 
> ...


*I don't want restrictions on what I own . . . If I can't sell it, trade it or give it away, I don't own it ! ! !*

The following is from an old story but it still holds water.

_Think you own your e-books? Amazon reverses purchases, raising questions of user rights. 
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, Computerworld Jul 20, 2009 9:44 am

During the night of July 16, while Amazon Kindle owners slept, Amazon was quietly deleting their copies of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. Most people who are upset about this were upset and surprised that Amazon would unilaterally delete their books. They're missing the real points.

Whether Amazon had the right to do this is an argument for another day. There is no question that they badly mishandled it. At the very least, Amazon should have told their buyers that it had turned out they hadn't the rights to sell e-copies of those books and that they were going to need to remove them. That appears to be what Amazon will do in the future, or that Amazon will let people who bought copies in good faith keep them while not selling any more copies in the future.

Fine, but none of that touches on the real problems. *Amazon is telling you that you will never own any book you buy for your Kindle.* This is the old DRM (digital rights management) trap that won't let you make back-ups of your DVDs, snaring yet another media's users.

I had liked the idea of Kindle and thought about buying one. I already have e-book applications on my computers and on my iPod Touch, including Kindle on the Touch. Forget about that now. Without the freedom to truly control and own any intellectual property that we're either given or buy, the Kindle and other devices like it are just attractive traps._


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

I do agree with that.  There needs to be a system in place for unlimited loaning, trading, selling etc. of e-books.

If not, then they should cost a good deal less than their paper counterparts where you can do all those things with IMO.

That said, I buy books as I didn't do much of that stuff before anyway, and like not having to have a paper book to find space for or hassle with donating (not worth the hassle to sell since I'm not hard up for cash) so it's worth it for the convenience to me since the DRM doesn't really affect me much personally.

But for people who do all that stuff, they're really getting less value buying an e-book that's usually around the same cost at the paperback but has less options for what they can do with it.  So I feel their pain.  

At the same time, I feel for authors and publishers with the risk of piracy and people giving copies to friends etc. if there was no DRM.  Musicians can weather it easier since they make more money from tours and merchandising than album sells anyway.  Authors don't have many options to make money from their work beyond selling copies of it.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Elk said:


> We buy many things that can only be used with a specific physical device.


What things do we purchase that are device specific that I cannot sell, trade or gift?
Excluding of course organ transplant . . .


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## nicknicknick (Apr 6, 2010)

> As an author do you feel any better about the loss of money to you if a library loans out your book to 1000 people?


I don't know about US libraries but in Australia (and I think the UK) copyright owners register with an agency that pays authors/illustrators dividends from books loaned via libraries or photocopied by universities.
Each year we notify the agency as to what texts we've published etc.

I've got no problems with 'file exchange/personal use' pirates but if someone was *reselling* something of mine and i wasn't getting a cut i'd be sad.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> What things do we purchase that are device specific that I cannot sell, trade or gift?
> Excluding of course organ transplant . . .


Computer software. Many programs I uses are tied to single machine licenses. Though I can transfer those to other machines, but it requires calling and having it de-registered and getting a new key for a new PC.

Other than that, Kindle books are the only other one I personally buy and use.

MP3s used to be DRM'd but, I never bought any until DRM was gone and stuck with CDs back then. Maybe some digital movie files, but I'm not sure if anywhere sells DRM'd digital copies. Mostly it just seems to be rental video on demand, and including digital copies with DVDs/Blurays.


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## Basilius (Feb 20, 2010)

Elk said:


> You own it, but what you own is limited.
> 
> As the TOS provides, "Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon."
> 
> ...


I posit that if Amazon can legally restrict how I use what I paid for, I don't own it. I'm licensing it under their purview.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> I wonder if they [Federal criminal prosecution] don't just cherry pick a couple here and there for big news to use as a deterrent to frighten the casual downloader . . . the equivalent to the bogeyman.


Given the resources it takes to prosecute a criminal case in Federal court it makes little sense other than to pick out the big guys for prosecution. We can all speculate if the cases brought are for the purpose of punishing the criminal, retribution, deterrence, etc.



> Pirating costs more than a library card, gotta buy a computer, gotta pay for internet, gotta spend time learning how. I'm not really arguing this point, just pointing it out.


All true - but many already have all of the above resources. Such as everyone on this board.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> The problem is the law is too broad.


Huh? If it is "too broad" it will already do what you want, and more.



> (not federal statutes that are rarely enforced)


And you know this how? You didn't even know there is a federal criminal law. 



> specify misdemeanor crimes for illegal uploads and downloads that are handled much like shoplifting--but a tad less severely. That's the only way it will ever send a message that piracy is not right and is in fact crime.


We could easily do this. It is a question of resources.



> In my view that's where the industry money should go, funding agencies that work with ISPs to detect piracy and forward information on to prosecutors.


There is already a great deal of work going on in this fashion. Thus P2P users invoke Peer Block and similar tools.



> That wasn't it at all. It was related to posting content for free to students on the course WebCT web sites for them to read. And it was limited to chapters from books (1 or 2, not whole books) and journal articles


I assume you see that this is precisely equivalent to "printing wholesale copies of materials as handouts," merely with a different method of delivery. It's a clear violation of the electronic subscription license, particularly when you are reproducing whole chapters.



> it's not something I'm that interested in discussing anyway as my piracy and fair use opinions are rock solid and I don't really give a crap what anyone else thinks about the topic.


You will be much more effective if you research the law you are attempting to discuss, and the interplay between these laws and society, especially those that are engaged in piracy. It's quite an opportunity to discuss these issues with someone like Auge who is open and direct.

You claim to be a criminologist in academia. If so, you guys thrive on this stuff - you know how to do basic legal research, you know how to analyze the relationships between the law and social anthropology. Yet you are here misstating the law, have little sense of how the works and is applied, and repeatedly assert you have no interest in what others think - the very ground of sociology. Criminologist? Academia?


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Criminologists don't thrive on that stuff at all.   We have absolutely NO training on law (unless we have 2 degrees) and very few of us do anything related to legal matters.

We're basically sociologists who only study crime.  We study things like theories of why people commit crime, evaluating different police strategies, rehabilitation programs and things of that nature.  We don't study the law itself and I got a Ph D from the number one Criminology doctoral program and they don't even offer any classes remotely related to law.  Nothing, at all.  We're not legal scholars.  We know nothing about the law or legal research, other than the few colleagues I have who have both JDs as well as Ph Ds in criminology or sociology.  We learn , teach and research about criminological theory and the functional parts of the criminal justice system--police management and tactics, prison organization and rehabilitation programs, the impacts of sentencing policies (not legal statutes but just study the impact of longer sentences on recidivism, racial disparities in sentencing etc.), community crime prevention programs, juvenile delinquency etc.  Legal research is in the real of law schools, not criminology and criminal justice.

But you're right that I'm not knowledgeable on it, and I don't have the time or interest to read up on it to argue better about it on the net.  So I'll drop out of that discussion.  I don't care what the current law is, whether it needs changed or not etc.  I just want much more enforcement of it at both the major seeder and small time downloader level and I want it done in criminal court to send the message that piracy is a crime and punish these loser scumbags who do it.  I couldn't care less if that can be done with the current laws or requires some working.  I care about the ends I want, not the means of achieving them.  That's for the law nerds to figure out!   Us criminologists have got bigger fish to fry like trying to figure out how to best prevent crime and make society safer. 

As for the fair use issue, you're right on what the law is currently.  My university is trying get it expanded as things like research monograph books, scholarly journal articles etc. don't make money anyway, and the authors generally don't care as they've written these things just to get knowledge out and to be used in classes etc.  Textbooks, fictional works etc. are another matter, but our university is very clear that you can never give out those things. 

But we should be able, in the view of our university's legal staff, be able to give out a chapter or two of a research monograph (doesn't take sales as no one would have students buy a book for just one chapter), journal articles (can't buy past issues of most anyway as most are subscription only--and they're freely available to students through the library website anyway).  You're right that it's not currently allowed by fair use--at least not clearly so.  Our university legal team feels it should be, and from the last I heard it was looking good on us winning the law suit and hopefully leading to some expansion/clarification of these uses in academic settings.

But with that, I'm done with this thread and going to take a long break from this site period.  Waste too much time here for someone that doesn't use their Kindle all that much.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

Basilius said:


> I posit that if Amazon can legally restrict how I use what I paid for, I don't own it. I'm licensing it under their purview.


This is true for all items we buy which contain intellectual property.

For example, we buy physical books. We can do any thing we choose with the container - but we do not own the content. This is also true of software. We own the CD and can sell it, but the program is licensed to us for our use. The fact that ebooks are the same should not be uncomfortable.

It goes further than this. I own the bike but do not own the Schwinn name on the side, any patented design features, etc.


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## Elk (Oct 4, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> We're basically sociologists who only study crime. We study things like theories of why people prevent crime, evaluating different police strategies, rehabilitation programs and things of that nature.


You are comfortable studying crime (which by definition is a violation of a law or moral code) and how to prevent it while actively misstating the law and making no effort to understand it?

If you say so . . .


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Elk said:


> You are comfortable studying crime (which by definition is a violation of a law or moral code) and how to prevent it while actively misstating the law and making no effort to understand it?


No need to be a jerk. If you think criminology is a joke, so be it. Almost no Criminology and Criminal Justice professors at even the top programs have ANY backing in law whatsoever.

We mostly study serious crimes like murder, robbery, burglary etc. We study why people commit them, what police (and others) can do to prevent them, what programs work to reduce recidivism among people arrested for crimes etc. None of that requires any active knowledge of the legal statutes behind them. We don't care WHY things are illegal or considered deviant behavior for the most part. We care why people violate laws and social norms and what we can do to stop it.

Criminology in general is just not concerned with the specifics of what the law is, that's an area for law professors. Criminology is a more practical field concerned with theories that attempt to explain deviant behavior and study the practical workings of the police, courts and corrections.

There are some exceptions of course. If a criminologist wanted to study enforcement of piracy, then sure they'd need to read up on the laws. But few of us bother as we have no training in legal research, how to read legalese etc. so it's just not worth the effort for most of us to research such things vs. staying in our sociological comfort zones.

And with that I'm done with the thread, and again lament that this stupid site doesn't have an ignore user feature. So maybe I'll make my long break a permanent one. Seems this site is just as full of jerks as mobileread. Lots of [expletive] in the bookworm crowd I guess.


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## Guest (Feb 25, 2011)

auge_28 said:


> What things do we purchase that are device specific that I cannot sell, trade or gift?
> Excluding of course organ transplant . . .


I paid $10 for a Little KT virtual pet on World of Warcraft. I can't trade or sell him. He only works in the game.
I also bought the pandaran monk and the celestial steed...I have issues...I know. I purchased the ability to have those items in game. They are pretty useless to me anywhere else.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

mooshie78 said:


> And with that I'm done with the thread, and again lament that this stupid site doesn't have an ignore user feature. So maybe I'll make my long break a permanent one. Seems this site is just as full of jerks as mobileread. Lots of [expletive] in the bookworm crowd I guess.


I thought we were getting along pretty well as two fellas on nearly polar sides of an issue.
It is difficult to debate someone that repeatedly states that he has no respect for you and has no interest in broadening his opinion on a subject.
But if you need a break, then you need one. Sorry to see ya go.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> I paid $10 for a Little KT virtual pet on World of Warcraft. I can't trade or sell him. He only works in the game.
> I also bought the pandaran monk and the celestial steed...I have issues...I know. I purchased the ability to have those items in game. They are pretty useless to me anywhere else.


Ok, you got me there . . . kinda. 

It might just be my expectation . . . I am used to buying and owning printed books then being able to do with them what I want.

This is no excuse to pirate them, I don't even know if it's a justification to remove the DRM as the restrictions were available for us to read before we paid a single penny on a book.

In truth DRM is a separate argument than Piracy, they often get mixed up. In my mind Piracy regardless of reasons and intentions is by definition an illegal act. Rather it should be illegal or to what extent it should be legalized is open for debate.

DRM being used to restrict the legal use of a product should be done away with completely, especially since everyone and there dogs know it is useless to prevent piracy. . . I think it's a matter of lesser evils here. Yes, if it's removed than the so-called casual piracy may increase, but perhaps if they removed the illusion of DRM and concentrated their efforts on fighting the availability of illicit files being downloaded from the web that may be the better fight.

Media makers are used to having folks loan or sell their products so the casual pirate should not be any bigger of an issue . . . it's the pirate that uploads the product and then thousands or millions of people download it that is the real issue here.

For any single book that I have purchased or pirated I will be able to find at most one or perhaps two of my friends and family that would like to read it . . . no big loss in review here, right? However if I lumped 2500 books and make them available on the net then thousands or millions of people will want and get them, even if they don't read but a hand full . . . lesser of evils, seems obvious to me.


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## Guest (Feb 25, 2011)

auge_28 said:


> In truth DRM is a separate argument than Piracy, they often get mixed up. In my mind Piracy regardless of reasons and intentions is by definition an illegal act. Rather it should be illegal or to what extent it should be legalized is open for debate.
> 
> DRM being used to restrict the legal use of a product should be done away with completely, especially since everyone and there dogs know it is useless to prevent piracy. . . I think it's a matter of lesser evils here. Yes, if it's removed than the so-called casual piracy may increase, but perhaps if they removed the illusion of DRM and concentrated their efforts on fighting the availability of illicit files being downloaded from the web that may be the better fight.


I agree. DRM is a separate issue. Though in some ways, DRM may increase the probability of piracy by creating accidental pirates.

One of the reasons I voice my opinion so strongly against pirates is that silence equals endorsement. We tend to glamourize pirates as heros of the little guy...Robin Hoods liberating media for the people. They aren't. They are simply selfish individuals taking what they want for themselves, but our current culture loves to justify bad ethics. They bring up straw man arguements (like library lending) that ignore the intention of a pirate, which is to get something they are not entitled to for free and with no compensation to the owner.

So you have a culture that on a certain level turns a blind eye to the unethical aspects of piracy by glorifying the "noble pirates".

Add to this a general, subconscious belief that if something is on the internet, it must be free. _Individuals_ are smart, but collectively we humans are really stupid. We see something posted online and we don't think twice about copying and pasting it elsewhere, and we never really think about where things cam from in the first place.

So now you have this teenager, who already has a strong sense of entitlement, looking for his favorite book or CD. He finds it and buys it, but then he gets frustrated because the DRM prevents him from ixing the CD or from copying the book to his ipad to read, even though he paid for it.

At this point, he goes searching for ideas and eventually he stumbles on a site that has the book or CD FOR FREE! If it is on the internet, it must be legal, right? Because even today the average person has no idea how cheap a website and server space is, nor how asy it is to set up a website to begin with. He doesn't even KNOW he's doing something illegal, because it never occurs to him that there is something wrong. Because while he might be a smart kid, as a human he suffers from the same fundamental stupidity that blinds all of us. As a species we have never internalized the truism that if something seems too good to be true, it probably isn't. We understand it consciously and can recognize it when we see others do it, but when it comes to things we want we don't see it in ourselves.

Eliminating DRM and offering a good product at a reasonable price will do nothing to stop pirates. But it will stop the otherwise honest kid from going off and doing something stupid.


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## Sporadic (May 1, 2009)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> I agree. DRM is a separate issue. Though in some ways, DRM may increase the probability of piracy by creating accidental pirates.
> 
> One of the reasons I voice my opinion so strongly against pirates is that silence equals endorsement. We tend to glamourize pirates as heros of the little guy...Robin Hoods liberating media for the people. They aren't. They are simply selfish individuals taking what they want for themselves, but our current culture loves to justify bad ethics. They bring up straw man arguements (like library lending) that ignore the intention of a pirate, which is to get something they are not entitled to for free and with no compensation to the owner.
> 
> ...


Yeah, the way you look at things is extremely warped. In this day and age, there are very few cases of "accidental" piracy.

Also



Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> They bring up straw man arguements (like library lending) that ignore the intention of a pirate, which is to get something they are not entitled to for free and with no compensation to the owner.


How is that a strawman? If I check a book out of the library, the creator isn't getting any compensation from me for my use of it and I'm getting it for free. You can argue that the library purchased that copy of that book I checked out with tax money but it is still the same (only real difference is that there is a time limit on the stuff from the library and that each library has to purchase a copy [or trade with another])


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Sporadic said:


> Yeah, the way you look at things is extremely warped. In this day and age, there are very few cases of "accidental" piracy.


That seems needlessly harsh.

I was harsh with her for a reason; I wanted to establish a couple debating rules. I was not calling names or character flaws . . . now you are guilty of Ad hominem and that just weakens your position.

I myself didn't think her example of "accidental piracy" was likely as described because there is a bit of a procedure to pirating . . . it's not just clicking on a link. Her ignorance of how to pirate does not make her warped, just misinformed.

I don't agree with everything in her last post, but this is a discussion board, lets discuss. Why was her last post so offensive to you?

If folks would just debate properly then there would be less flame-wars and the conversations would be more productive.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Sporadic said:


> How is that a straw man? If I check a book out of the library, the creator isn't getting any compensation from me for my use of it and I'm getting it for free. You can argue that the library purchased that copy of that book I checked out with tax money but it is still the same (only real difference is that there is a time limit on the stuff from the library and that each library has to purchase a copy [or trade with another])


My understanding is this:
It's a straw man because as an argument the stated premise fails to support the proposed conclusion.
*1.	A library use of books is legal.
2.	Pirating is not legal.
3.	Therefore libraries are not pirates. *

This is basic logic.

And as I and others have stated, maybe a hundred people will borrow the more popular books from a library in the books life time. Pirating allows thousands or millions of copies. In this sense it is really not a comparison.

It's another debate all together if the pirating leads to significant loss in revenue, I have yet to see a study to determine this.

I used the library argument recently in one of these threads . . . maybe this one and the kind folks here have shown me that I was wrong to equate the loss of revenue in itself to piracy.


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## Sporadic (May 1, 2009)

auge_28 said:


> That seems needlessly harsh.
> 
> I was harsh with her for a reason; I wanted to establish a couple debating rules. I was not calling names or character flaws . . . now you are guilty of Ad hominem and that just weakens your position.
> 
> ...


Yeah, you are taking this much too seriously. There was nothing attacking about that last post.

Here's the (extended) reason why her last post doesn't work. Her hypothetical is extremely flawed and breaks down like this.

Pirates are jerks and people are dumb. There is this entitled teenager who buys something but it doesn't work on whatever it is he wants to use it on. He punches "*name of book* ipad free" into Google and stumbles onto a site that has free files on it. This kid is naive enough to think that it is legal and downloads a bunch.....and some how DRM stops that?

First off, that kid isn't going to be looking to get out of whatever walled garden he is in. He'll go on iTunes (or whatever store), buy his stuff and use it on all of his Apple (or whatever company) stuff he owns. 
Second, nobody (especially kids) thinks that everything on the internet is legit or legal. There has been a ton of advertising (or propaganda depending on how you look at it) thrown at them telling them that it is not. 
Third, DRM would only prevent the kid from uploading stuff he already owns, not downloading things from others. The pirates already break all of that DRM (eliminating any barrier between them -> others like our naive hypothetical kid) and if the kid is such an entitled jerk, he isn't buying anything, let alone, uploading his own stuff. Why would he? He got what he came for and there is no benefit for him to help out.

It is a big issue public torrent sites have. People wander in, download what they want and stop the torrent as soon as they are done instead of seeding it.



auge_28 said:


> My understanding is this:
> It's a straw man because as an argument the stated premise fails to support the proposed conclusion.
> *1.	A library use of books is legal.
> 2.	Pirating is not legal.
> ...


That isn't basic logic. Just because something is doesn't automatically mean that it ought to be.

If it was, we would never make any process as a society or a species.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Sporadic said:


> Yeah, you are taking this much too seriously. There was nothing attacking about that last post.
> 
> Here's the (extended) reason why her last post doesn't work. Her hypothetical is extremely flawed and breaks down like this.
> 
> ...


This post leads to better discussion, and I agree with it in part.
It's not up to the government to raise our children by protecting them from themselves that's yours and my job.
Laws should not be made for the many to insure that the few or the ignorant is protected . . . otherwise credit cards should be illegal.
And just possibly if the majority supports us the pirates (as she seems to posit) than maybe we shouldn't be as vilified.



Sporadic said:


> That isn't basic logic. Just because something is doesn't automatically mean that it ought to be.
> If it was, we would never make any process as a society or a species.


I was simply showing why the library argument is in fact a straw man.


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## evrose (Jan 7, 2011)

This turning in to Zombie Thread. You can stab it, cut it, shoot it, burn it, nuke it with small tactical weapons, feed it to 200 ton prehistoric megalodon sharks, and

IT...

JUST...

WON'T...

DIE!!!


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## Sporadic (May 1, 2009)

auge_28 said:


> I was simply showing why the library argument is in fact a straw man.


Except it is not. If she was saying that piracy is illegal therefore wrong and I replied with the library argument, that could be a strawman (depending on how it is phrased) but she is not. She is arguing that pirates are (bad) people who feel entitled to free stuff and don't compensate the creator. If I download Alien and delete it after I watch, how is that any different if I went to my local library and checked it out (besides the fact that people from way before my time deemed one ok and other people, who barely comprehend technology, said one isn't)?

[That Alien example is one pulled right out of my own life. No place online, legal or illegal, had the theatrical cut of Alien so I went to my local library. They didn't have it in but requested it from another library and I watched it a week later when it came in. No money out of my pocket and the local branch of my library didn't buy it. I didn't like it so I will never buy it and if I do get the urge to watch it again, I can just recheck it out. The creators got nothing out of me watching their product.]


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## Book_Worm (Feb 25, 2011)

Sporadic said:


> How is that a strawman? If I check a book out of the library, the creator isn't getting any compensation from me for my use of it and I'm getting it for free. You can argue that the library purchased that copy of that book I checked out with tax money but it is still the same (only real difference is that there is a time limit on the stuff from the library and that each library has to purchase a copy [or trade with another])


Yes, but in the case of the library, the publisher has agreed to license this (for a fee, overdrive isn't a free service, libraries have to pay for it). In exchange for that license, the library has paid for the content, and the content has certain usage restrictions on it, such as a 21 day window of use.

Correct, the publisher and author are not getting any money from YOU directly, but if nobody checks out the book, then the library will stop licensing the material and the publisher will stop making money (and thus passing it on to the authors, backoffice people, etc.

The problem is, both sides are partially wrong here with regards to piracy. The publisher is charging too much money oftentimes, and making it too hard to use the digital media as if you owned it (as you do in physical media). But, the people who participate in pirating are wrong in thinking that things don't cost money. We love our media, but we don't expect that the people behind it have mouths to feed. Many of the publishers are way too big, yes, but hurting their bottom line will only result in less chances being taken. Piracy has caused the music industry to take less chances on lower popularity items because they can no longer afford NOT to have a guaranteed hit, and this will happen in book publishing too. If you don't like the big publishers and their pricing models, piracy isn't the answer. Support the independent authors, and small publishers. If enough do, the industry will change. But, if you don't pay for your books, there's a big chance you'll wake up some day and have nothing left to read.


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## Book_Worm (Feb 25, 2011)

Sporadic said:


> Except it is not. If she was saying that piracy is illegal therefore wrong and I replied with the library argument, that could be a strawman (depending on how it is phrased) but she is not. She is arguing that pirates are (bad) people who feel entitled to free stuff and don't compensate the creator. If I download Alien and delete it after I watch, how is that any different if I went to my local library and checked it out (besides the fact that people from way before my time deemed one ok and other people, who barely comprehend technology, said one isn't)?


In the first example, someone got paid. In your second example, nobody got paid. If I buy a movie, and then loan it to you, it's still OK because I paid for the movie. There is a limitation to how many times I loan out my movie, and eventually it will wear out or get damaged if I loan it out too many times, and I am also more likely to only loan that copy out to people I know. This is built into the pricing model.

But, in your example of downloading something, even assuming one person paid for it and is "sharing it" now, it can go to MILLIONS of people in a matter of hours. In this example, the first person still has the movie and can watch it whenever they want, and so do the millions of people who "borrowed" it. It never breaks, never loses quality, and the people who made the movie have now lost millions, perhaps even billions, of dollars. If enough people do this, then eventually the studio simply either stops making movies, or makes movies that are so mass appeal that they can still make money on it.


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## Book_Worm (Feb 25, 2011)

Sorry for the multiple posts, but I just thought of another real-life example of the cause-effect of piracy.  Computer games.  Many publishers no longer publish computer games (sticking instead to console games) because piracy has changed the business model in such a way that it is no longer profitable to release a title on PC.  Some publishers continue to release games, but months to years after they have been released on consoles.


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## Sporadic (May 1, 2009)

Book_Worm said:


> Sorry for the multiple posts, but I just thought of another real-life example of the cause-effect of piracy. Computer games. Many publishers no longer publish computer games (sticking instead to console games) because piracy has changed the business model in such a way that it is no longer profitable to release a title on PC. Some publishers continue to release games, but months to years after they have been released on consoles.


lol You fell for their fake excuse. There is plenty of money to be made from computer games. Minecraft and The Witcher are great examples of that. Only issue is it isn't as profitable, for the big boys, as consoles since a console is a fixed platform. It is much easy to support three systems than all the configurations a PC could be. So they use the piracy excuse to bail out of the market while sticking with causal or browser games where they hit up a bigger market of people with micropayments type additions over the course of years.

[quote author=Book_Worm]We love our media, but we don't expect that the people behind it have mouths to feed. Many of the publishers are way too big, yes, but hurting their bottom line will only result in less chances being taken. Piracy has caused the music industry to take less chances on lower popularity items because they can no longer afford NOT to have a guaranteed hit, and this will happen in book publishing too. If you don't like the big publishers and their pricing models, piracy isn't the answer. Support the independent authors, and small publishers. If enough do, the industry will change. But, if you don't pay for your books, there's a big chance you'll wake up some day and have nothing left to read.

--------

In the first example, someone got paid. In your second example, nobody got paid. If I buy a movie, and then loan it to you, it's still OK because I paid for the movie. There is a limitation to how many times I loan out my movie, and eventually it will wear out or get damaged if I loan it out too many times, and I am also more likely to only loan that copy out to people I know. This is built into the pricing model.

But, in your example of downloading something, even assuming one person paid for it and is "sharing it" now, it can go to MILLIONS of people in a matter of hours. In this example, the first person still has the movie and can watch it whenever they want, and so do the millions of people who "borrowed" it. It never breaks, never loses quality, and the people who made the movie have now lost millions, perhaps even billions, of dollars. If enough people do this, then eventually the studio simply either stops making movies, or makes movies that are so mass appeal that they can still make money on it.
[/quote]

In the second example, someone got paid (unless the original source was stolen from the production line but that is a whole nother issue). I agree with the argument that it can never get damaged and can be duplicated infinitely but that comes with the territory of being digital. They have to take the good with the bad.

I think it is wrong to think that if the publishers went down, that all of entertainment will go down with it. No matter what happens, the industry will move on. It has and always will because the creators are creating because it is a compulsion for them. The good ones aren't doing it for the money. Although, I do agree with you that if you love something, you should go out of your way to support it. (Which I do.)

And that is a good point. Instead of focusing on trying to stop sharing or turning this into a us vs them argument, they should be encouraging the idea that we are all in this together and that paying is the way to show your love/support (although for that to really work, they would have to cut most of their overhead and include something extra)


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## Guest (Feb 26, 2011)

auge_28 said:


> I myself didn't think her example of "accidental piracy" was likely as described because there is a bit of a procedure to pirating . . . it's not just clicking on a link. Her ignorance of how to pirate does not make her warped, just misinformed.


Contrary to popular opinion, I am not clueless in regards to piracy. Just because I am not part of the hard core pirate "community" does not mean I don't have contact with people who have downloaded illegally. And truely, most of the people I have met who have told me they downloaded something illegally didn't actually realize what they were doing was illegal. I'm well aware that there is a difference between the casual pirate and the hardcore community. Just like there is a difference between a kid that smokes pot on the weekends and a Columbia drug dealer.

I once found one of my RPG books on a bit torrent site, and the site admin did the normal song and dance about "I don't host the files so I am not doing anything illegal" yada yada. And we're talking there were hundreds of downloads of the book. So I just created an account on the site and posted a message saying "thank you for your interest in our campaign world. If you would like to make sure we can afford to continue to pay our authors and artist and bring you more supplements, please buy a legal copy."

And the next day there was a boatload of sales. I actually got emails from people that said they didn't realize the copy on the site wasn't authorized. It never occured to them.

I have had people come up to me at conventions and ask how I can afford to give away stuff for free, and when I query further they tell me they found the book on "some site" that gives away free books. They just assume if it is there it must be OK.


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## MrPLD (Sep 23, 2010)

Personally I think it's truly amazing how convoulted the discussion has become when it essentially stems from one basic premise;

"Do you have a *right* to something that's not yours". (Not wants, whims, wishes or desires... bona fida *rights*).

Still it's great reading in itself watching pro-pirating people justify and detail their logic. Someone should package it up and sell it as the great mind-twister of the decade.


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## akpak (Mar 5, 2009)

Not much to add to the discussion (except that I don't believe piracy is always evil and wrong)

However, you might be interested to read this post by Neil Gaiman, in which he talks about how piracy helped him sell MORE books:
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2011/02/death-and-free-revisited.html


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## Guest (Feb 26, 2011)

akpak said:


> Not much to add to the discussion (except that I don't believe piracy is always evil and wrong)
> 
> However, you might be interested to read this post by Neil Gaiman, in which he talks about how piracy helped him sell MORE books:
> http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2011/02/death-and-free-revisited.html


Except Gaiman's book wasn't pirated. He made a decision, with his publisher, to make it available for free. There is a world of difference between the copyright holder making a decision to make a book available for free and someone taking that decision away from him.

It is also easy for someone like Gaiman to make his claims when he has a publisher that pays him hefty advances. He gets his money no matter what. Sort of like some CEO just looking at a homeless person and saying "just get a job."


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## akpak (Mar 5, 2009)

That's true, but the experience made him re-think his position on piracy. He no longer really gets upset when he discovers his books being pirated.

And yes, he gets advances, but that doesnt mean he doesn't need his royalties either.


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## MrPLD (Sep 23, 2010)

akpak said:


> Not much to add to the discussion (except that I don't believe piracy is always evil and wrong)


I'm more.... "I believe piracy is wrong on the pretence that it's not your content to decide (until you buy it), but the _result_ of piracy is not all bad". The latter portion however doesn't justify the act - it's just a consolation for the content creators.


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## RobertK (Aug 2, 2010)

MrPLD said:


> Personally I think it's truly amazing how convoulted the discussion has become when it essentially stems from one basic premise;
> 
> "Do you have a *right* to something that's not yours". (Not wants, whims, wishes or desires... bona fida *rights*).
> 
> Still it's great reading in itself watching pro-pirating people justify and detail their logic. Someone should package it up and sell it as the great mind-twister of the decade.


This. It's almost not worth having the discussion on forums, imo. Thieves will say and do anything to justify what they're doing.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Book_Worm said:


> Piracy has caused the music industry to take less chances on lower popularity items because they can no longer afford NOT to have a guaranteed hit, and this will happen in book publishing too.


I don't know if this is true. Indy pop and indie rock seems to be taking a huge market share.
This is correlative, as I have not read anything that supports it.
Have you any articles that support your point?


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Contrary to popular opinion, I am not clueless in regards to piracy. Just because I am not part of the hard core pirate "community" does not mean I don't have contact with people who have downloaded illegally. And truely, most of the people I have met who have told me they downloaded something illegally didn't actually realize what they were doing was illegal. I'm well aware that there is a difference between the casual pirate and the hardcore community. Just like there is a difference between a kid that smokes pot on the weekends and a Columbia drug dealer.
> 
> I once found one of my RPG books on a bit torrent site, and the site admin did the normal song and dance about "I don't host the files so I am not doing anything illegal" yada yada. And we're talking there were hundreds of downloads of the book. So I just created an account on the site and posted a message saying "thank you for your interest in our campaign world. If you would like to make sure we can afford to continue to pay our authors and artist and bring you more supplements, please buy a legal copy."
> 
> ...


Are you saying there are sites that post a direct link to products or are you talking about torrenting?


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## Book_Worm (Feb 25, 2011)

auge_28 said:


> I don't know if this is true. Indy pop and indie rock seems to be taking a huge market share.
> This is correlative, as I have not read anything that supports it.
> Have you any articles that support your point?


Unfortunately, no I don't. And that is true that I forgot the indie rock and pop angle. I was more talking about my personal experiences. I'm a giant fan of Electronic Dance Music, which has a huge piracy problem. After watching the industry for 10 years, I've seen many of the smaller labels go out of business because of it.

But that's fair to call me on that. If you want to invalidate my post for it, that's fine. One other difference I do see with eBooks is the amount of small publishers and independent authors that finally have a voice. Where as it might take a lot of technical skill (aside from the artistic side) and tons of equipment to produce an album, all one needs to do to write a book is have an idea, a computer, and to hire a decent editor. I understand this grossly undervalues what major publishers do, but ebooks don't need the marketing budget, book tours, cover artists, etc that regular books require. And honestly, I see the smaller publishers winning as the bigger ones adopt agency pricing models that may not support demand.

My point still stands though. For authors, many make their living on making books. If piracy causes it to no longer be profitable to write a book, many will stop. Right now it may not seem like a big deal because many hard-copy books are still being sold, but in the next decade that may change.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Book_Worm said:


> Unfortunately, no I don't. And that is true that I forgot the indie rock and pop angle. I was more talking about my personal experiences. I'm a giant fan of Electronic Dance Music, which has a huge piracy problem. After watching the industry for 10 years, I've seen many of the smaller labels go out of business because of it.


Electronic Dance Music rules the world, my favs are Psytrance, psybiant, breaks, drag and glitch.



Book_Worm said:


> But that's fair to call me on that. If you want to invalidate my post for it, that's fine.


   Simmer down there; I'm not invalidating your post . . . just asking if you have support, I don't have support for what I said about indie pop/rock. I just thought it would be interesting reading.  



Book_Worm said:


> My point still stands though. For authors, many make their living on making books. If piracy causes it to no longer be profitable to write a book, many will stop.


It's been my experience that most writers don't get published and the ones that do enjoy sells cannot make anywhere near a living doing it, professional writers are a rare breed.


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## Book_Worm (Feb 25, 2011)

auge_28 said:


> Simmer down there; I'm not invalidating your post . . . just asking if you have support, I don't have support for what I said about indie pop/rock. I just thought it would be interesting reading.


Sorry if I stated that wrong. I wasn't hot and bothered about it, just letting you know you had a valid point. 

I certainly get bothered when people state something as fact and have nothing to back it up, so I'm glad someone else called me on it as well. And yes, EDM rules the world (unless your in the USA, in which case it thinks it rules the world but is usually shoved aside for top 40 remixes).


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Book_Worm said:


> And yes, EDM rules the world (unless you're in the USA, in which case it thinks it rules the world but is usually shoved aside for top 40 remixes).


I am in the USA, but don't hold that against me, I don't mind House for short bursts, my wife loves it . . . but I lean more experimental with my tastes. I much prefer stuff out of Israel and parts of South America, Africa enjoyed a short but exciting term as a source for dark-psytrance.

House and club-trance (Tiësto, Armin van Buuren, . . . etc) is way too popular here, but there's good stuff, you just need to search.


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## Sporadic (May 1, 2009)

Now this is an off-topic derail I can get on board with  

Teflon Tel Aviv, Squarepusher, The Flashbulb, The Glitch Mob, iTAL tEK, Bartel, Jega, Ulrich Schnauss, Spor. So many amazing Electronic artists out there over so many different subgenres.


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## Book_Worm (Feb 25, 2011)

auge_28 said:


> I am in the USA, but don't hold that against me, I don't mind House for short bursts, my wife loves it . . . but I lean more experimental with my tastes. I much prefer stuff out of Israel and parts of South America, Africa enjoyed a short but exciting term as a source for dark-psytrance.
> 
> House and club-trance (Tiësto, Armin van Buuren, . . . etc) is way too popular here, but there's good stuff, you just need to search.


I'm actually in the US as well, and I definitely agree with you on house and club trance, very popular. But remember, popular is subjective, as it's only a small amount of people here who even know what the term EDM means.

But, it might be the derailment that finally kills this thread, which would be a good thing!


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Book_Worm said:


> I'm actually in the US as well, and I definitely agree with you on house and club trance, very popular. But remember, popular is subjective, as it's only a small amount of people here who even know what the term EDM means.
> 
> But, it might be the derailment that finally kills this thread, which would be a good thing!


Yes, this dead horse is sufficiently beaten.


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## Belle2Be (Aug 29, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> *1.	A library use of books is legal.
> 2.	Pirating is not legal.
> 3.	Therefore libraries are not pirates. *
> 
> This is basic logic.


Or it's YOUR logic. Mine could equally be
*1. Read a book from the Library for Free
2. Pirate a book from the internet for Free
3. Therefore, borrowing from Libraries is the same as Pirating a book. *

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Belle2Be said:


> Or it's YOUR logic. Mine could equally be
> *1. Read a book from the Library for Free
> 2. Pirate a book from the internet for Free
> 3. Therefore, borrowing from Libraries is the same as Pirating a book. *
> ...


HAH!!
I was going to get pissy and argue with you . . . but there is clearly no arguing with Monty Python.


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## Belle2Be (Aug 29, 2010)

auge_28 said:


> HAH!!
> I was going to get pissy and argue with you . . . but there is clearly no arguing with Monty Python.


Hehe that was my goal  My exact thought was, "aHah! Auge can't argue with Monty Python!!"


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## oddysseus (Mar 2, 2011)

Hi, guys! New here. Haven't read all this yet but can't help it. I'm beginning to regret buying a kindle. The average new ebook now costs MORE than a print book. Piracy? Well...


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## MartinC (Mar 2, 2011)

I've had an encounter with a "real" pirate - downloaded my book from my website and offered it for sale on Amazon. I did find that a bit annoying. It took about three weeks and several faxes to their legal department to get his account closed down. He'd done it to about 30 other people (that I could trace) - I expect that helped.


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## Book_Worm (Feb 25, 2011)

oddysseus said:


> Hi, guys! New here. Haven't read all this yet but can't help it. I'm beginning to regret buying a kindle. The average new ebook now costs MORE than a print book. Piracy? Well...


Yes, agency pricing sucks. I'm a new Kindle owner as well, and I don't like how it is either just as much as hardcover, or more than it. It's very frustrating. But, I've worked through this by buying more books from independent authors that I find on here, and by free books available here as well. I've yet to buy a book that wasn't at least a dollar cheaper than Mass Market Paperback, and I already have close to 40 books on my "to read" list, 99% of them either free or under $3.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Book_Worm said:


> Yes, agency pricing sucks. I'm a new Kindle owner as well, and I don't like how it is either just as much as hardcover, or more than it. It's very frustrating. But, I've worked through this by buying more books from independent authors that I find on here, and by free books available here as well. I've yet to buy a book that wasn't at least a dollar cheaper than Mass Market Paperback, and I already have close to 40 books on my "to read" list, 99% of them either free or under $3.


I hear this a lot on this forum. This is not a legitimate remedy, I want to go to the store and find the book *I AM LOOKING FOR* and get it at a reasonable price . . . not go trolling for something I never heard of in hopes of finding something worth reading for less.


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

Myself, I prefer to go trolling. This is how I've always gotten my books, whether I've purchased them from a store, or gotten them from a library.


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## Bob Mayer (Feb 20, 2011)

I'm to the point where I'm thinking of turning off google alerts because there are always five or six pirate sites listed each time the alert comes up.  I like how they make you register even to lodge a complaint.  I guess my hope is most people who are readers will be willing to pay a few bucks for an ebook.  Hell, we've got two books at .99.  Wouldn't it be safer to pay that than take the chance on a download from an unknown source?
Kind of wish Anonymous would go after some of these sites.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

pidgeon92 said:


> Myself, I prefer to go trolling. This is how I've always gotten my books, whether I've purchased them from a store, or gotten them from a library.


This is just a matter of preference then, can't argue this . . .


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Bob_Mayer said:


> Hell, we've got two books at .99. Wouldn't it be safer to pay that than take the chance on a download from an unknown source?


Only if one of those two books is something I wanna read.


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## Book_Worm (Feb 25, 2011)

auge_28 said:


> I hear this a lot on this forum. This is not a legitimate remedy, I want to go to the store and find the book *I AM LOOKING FOR* and get it at a reasonable price . . . not go trolling for something I never heard of in hopes of finding something worth reading for less.


I understand completely where you are coming from. There are MANY books I want to read at high prices. If I want to read them bad enough, I'll pay the prices, I guess. But, I'm hoping that more and more people DO prefer independent authors to the mainstream stuff, because it can only help to drive down pricing. Unfortunately, the book executives may never see that higher prices lead to piracy, instead thinking that they NEED to charge more to account for piracy.

I wish there was a happy median that would allow reasonable prices (a few bucks off paperback pricing for ebooks would be a good start), but we are the victim of supply vs demand pricing. They control the supply, and we demand the content.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Book_Worm said:


> I understand completely where you are coming from. There are MANY books I want to read at high prices. If I want to read them bad enough, I'll pay the prices, I guess. But, I'm hoping that more and more people DO prefer independent authors to the mainstream stuff, because it can only help to drive down pricing. Unfortunately, the book executives may never see that higher prices lead to piracy, instead thinking that they NEED to charge more to account for piracy.
> 
> I wish there was a happy median that would allow reasonable prices (a few bucks off paperback pricing for ebooks would be a good start), but we are the victim of supply vs demand pricing. They control the supply, and we demand the content.


I still champion a subscription model.
When I had a Rhapsody account, I paid $15 a month and had unlimited access to millions of songs _(usable on 3 computers and 3 portable devices)_ with new albums weekly . . . and I did not pirate a single album in all that time as I thought I was getting a *GREAT* value for a tiny amount of money. I would do the same with books.
I would still do that with music but my family switched over to iPods and iTunes does not have a subscription service.


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## kevinpars (Nov 14, 2008)

I assume the comments about getting a book from a library being the same as piracy is a joke, but still wanted to point out that the more times a book is checked out at the library, the more copies of the author's next book are purchased by the library.  Lending statistics lead to more sales.


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## Pirate (Jul 5, 2009)

oddysseus said:


> Hi, guys! New here. Haven't read all this yet but can't help it. I'm beginning to regret buying a kindle. The average new ebook now costs MORE than a print book. Piracy? Well...


When I find an e-book that is priced at or above the paperback version, I either pass it by or if it is one I really want to read, I will buy a used paperback version.


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## oddysseus (Mar 2, 2011)

Good idea. Just have to go old school and SEARCH for the gold. It doesn't help that content is a little shallow as well. No Llosa OR Marquez for instance! Maybe should just start taking a chance on the indies.


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## auge_28 (Oct 3, 2010)

Ok, I was all for this thread dying a natural death but then I ran into an article that I found *very * interesting.

I hope you guys read it, it's not very long.
Please don't think that I am trying to use this as another argument or rationalization, I just think it is topical.

http://torrentfreak.com/indie-game-dev-embraces-pirates-instead-of-fighting-futile-war-100915/

Oh and here is a link to the wiki page that talks about the Pirate Party . . . if you are interested take a look.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pirate_Party


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## Sporadic (May 1, 2009)

auge_28 said:


> Ok, I was all for this thread dying a natural death but then I ran into an article that I found *very * interesting.
> 
> I hope you guys read it, it's not very long.
> Please don't think that I am trying to use this as another argument or rationalization, I just think it is topical.
> ...


Also worth mentioning, Minecraft just passed the one million mark two months ago.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/12/minecraft-enters-million-sellers-club/

- edit And you linked to an older article.

http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-is-theft-ridiculous-lost-sales-they-dont-exist-says-minecraft-creator-110303/


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