'Elitist': angry book pirates hit back after author campaign sinks website

[RJM Corbet]

And oddly now, the pirating of eBooks seems not to be done to redistribute them for profit, but for free?

 

[Vertigo]

And oddly now, the pirating of eBooks seems not to be done to redistribute them for profit, but for free?

Yes, I've never heard of anyone knowingly paying for a pirated book. I think the original book prices are generally too low to make that economic. That's actually one of the strange aspects of it as someone must first pay for the ebook, then strip the DRM, then make it available normally, as you say, for free, which is a strangely altruistic thing to do when actually ripping off the author. I struggle to wrap my mind around it.

 

[RJM Corbet]

Yes, I've never heard of anyone knowingly paying for a pirated book. I think the original book prices are generally too low to make that economic. That's actually one of the strange aspects of it as someone must first pay for the ebook, then strip the DRM, then make it available normally, as you say, for free, which is a strangely altruistic thing to do when actually ripping off the author. I struggle to wrap my mind around it.

I think it may be aimed more at Amazon and big business -- rebellion against monopoly/authority, by spotty-faced hackers proving they can do it -- with collateral damage to authors?

Interesting discussion

 

[Vertigo]

I think it may be aimed more at Amazon and big business -- rebellion against monopoly/authority, by spotty-faced hackers proving they can do it -- with collateral damage to authors?

Interesting discussion

Yeah, you're probably right there!

 

[Parson]

In regard to the enforcement of copyright conversation I am somewhat familiar with copyright and church music copies. To my knowledge no single person has been pursued in this regard, but single churches certainly have. The cases I know of the church was not brought to court, but given the option of destroying all of their copies to avoid prosecution; which they did.

 

[The Big Peat]

Bottom line it's all a bit of a mess. And goes to show that any enforcement other than education is unlikely to be effective.

What education would you give them?

I imagine the majority of those involved don't care about the tight margins of authors and publishers. They'll look at their own tight margins - or their ideological belief about freedom of information - or the lack of options near them - and shrug.

Right now, I just got a recommendation for a bunch of books by Michael Shea about a character called Nifft the Lean. Judging from Amazon, they're no longer in print and as such, if I was up to date on where to go and had the right software to hand, I'd be pretty tempted to go see whether I could download it. Why not? There's seemingly no way I could get the money to the right people. And people charging a tenner for a used paperback can do one.

Of course, once I'd done so, it would be bloody tempting to go and get a bunch of other stuff. But it would all start with a very innocent impulse.

What education do you use me to make me not consider it in that case? Because I don't think there is one.

The best option the publishers have is to stop being leagues behind pirates as book distributors.

 

[Vertigo]

What education would you give them?

I imagine the majority of those involved don't care about the tight margins of authors and publishers. They'll look at their own tight margins - or their ideological belief about freedom of information - or the lack of options near them - and shrug.

Right now, I just got a recommendation for a bunch of books by Michael Shea about a character called Nifft the Lean. Judging from Amazon, they're no longer in print and as such, if I was up to date on where to go and had the right software to hand, I'd be pretty tempted to go see whether I could download it. Why not? There's seemingly no way I could get the money to the right people. And people charging a tenner for a used paperback can do one.

Of course, once I'd done so, it would be bloody tempting to go and get a bunch of other stuff. But it would all start with a very innocent impulse.

What education do you use me to make me not consider it in that case? Because I don't think there is one.

The best option the publishers have is to stop being leagues behind pirates as book distributors.

The other bottom line is that I don't think I have an answer!

But a little less flippant would be to say that a sense of honesty was instilled into me as a child. And I believe that is what still continues to make me averse to any kind of dishonesty. Those sort of values seem less prevalent today. Now I'm sounding like a grumpy old git and to some extent such an accusation would be justified. As a child our house door was never... NEVER locked. Just recently I received an order of plants I'd bought on the internet and there was one too many plants in the order so I rang up the company to let them know; I spoke to the owner of the company (they're only small) and he was totally astonished that I had called and yet I would never have considered doing anything else. I'm no saint, far from it, but I do think baseline values have changed and I think this pirating and, importantly, the internal self-justifying of it is just one symptom of that change. And I know of no way to change that sort of attitude other than education.

With regard to the distributors. They have a huge technological problem. The whole thing about encryption is that is should easy for the correct recipient to decrypt but difficult for anyone else. The recipient must have a key. In the case of ebooks that 'key' is stored in the device/software (Kindle, Kobo, Kindle for PC etc.) that will do the decryption and that device/software is in the hands of the recipient. It is therefore available to the recipient if they choose to access it, which is what these DRM removal hacks do by using your authority as the user. All of which would be fine; other people would not be able to decrypt an ebook intended for my devices/software in a thousand years, but the user can easily do it and in this case it is that user who then makes if available for illegal download. To come up with a form of encryption that would allow the legal user to decrypt without any key being available would, I suspect, be moving into the realms of magic.

This is why all such forms of encryption - music, video, games - always get hacked. Even a subscription model where you don't download the media but only access it live online as you read/view/listen/play wouldn't solve the problem as anyone so inclined could just effectively screen shot it as they go along and then build a file that they can release illegally. So I'm not convinced the publishers can do anything much more.

 

[RJM Corbet]

But WhatsApp encryptment can't be hacked, I think? It's secure. How do they manage that? Is it down to cost? Is it a stupid question?

 

[Vertigo]

But WhatsApp encryptment can't be hacked, I think? It's secure. How do they manage that? Is it down to cost? Is it a stupid question?

I'm not that knowledgeable but once again the one place that has a key will be the app on your phone otherwise you wouldn't be able to read the messages meant for you. So just as with the ebooks and DRM the only place it can be decrypted is locally on the correct recipient's device.

So you are quite correct it can't be decrypted by others, but to continue the analogy of ebooks there's nothing stopping that legal recipient publicly publishing the entire conversation.

Maybe someone with better cryptography knowledge might be able to clarify my points?

 

[RJM Corbet]

So ... the obvious solution seems to be for the tech guys here at Chrons to devise and patent a system that works, and then licence it out to Amazon for billions? Beer and pizza all round, lol ...

 

[The Big Peat]

With regard to the distributors. They have a huge technological problem. The whole thing about encryption is that is should easy for the correct recipient to decrypt but difficult for anyone else. The recipient must have a key. In the case of ebooks that 'key' is stored in the device/software (Kindle, Kobo, Kindle for PC etc.) that will do the decryption and that device/software is in the hands of the recipient. It is therefore available to the recipient if they choose to access it, which is what these DRM removal hacks do by using your authority as the user. All of which would be fine; other people would not be able to decrypt an ebook intended for my devices/software in a thousand years, but the user can easily do it and in this case it is that user who then makes if available for illegal download. To come up with a form of encryption that would allow the legal user to decrypt without any key being available would, I suspect, be moving into the realms of magic.

This is why all such forms of encryption - music, video, games - always get hacked. Even a subscription model where you don't download the media but only access it live online as you read/view/listen/play wouldn't solve the problem as anyone so inclined could just effectively screen shot it as they go along and then build a file that they can release illegally. So I'm not convinced the publishers can do anything much more.

Whether you can defeat piracy or not is irrelevant to whether you can create a better model that mitigates the effects. I agree that it can't be defeated with the technology we know about (and that if they do, someone will create the counter). But you can still use technology to create something that competes better with it. Or to put it another way - you mightn't be able to cure the disease, but you can still treat the symptoms to give as good a quality of life as possible.

Take music. If I was inclined to go pirate everything, music would be the last thing I'd go with, because I can get everything from YouTube. It doesn't provide much to the artists, but its better than nothing. And yes, people can rip stuff from YouTube (and I don't really see a problem with rare versions you can't get anywhere else).

Ditto TV. The pay for streaming services are good enough that if you want streaming TV and don't mind paying a little for it, you can get what you want.

Reading? E-libraries are suffering from absurd publisher prices. I just looked at Kindle Unlimited and unless I'm missing something, it doesn't have the big mainstream books (some of which have absurd kindle prices too).

Why not give readers the chance to read everything from a certain publisher for a set fee? Or club together to let people read their old classics, like Marvel does?

I get that publishers are money strapped. But if they don't innovate, that won't change.

 

[Cathbad]

I get that publishers are money strapped.

Stop believing that. I've yet to know of a company - or a millionaire - which/who does not make this claim. I don't believe it in the publishing industry, either.

 

[Vertigo]

Yes I agree that some sort of usage model that makes piracy effectively redundant would do the job and I would also predict that whoever comes up with a truly effective one will probably make a killing.

I wonder if we're still in a transitory phase. Connectivity to the web is not everywhere and it's not universally fast. Eventually I'm sure everyone will be connected permanently (without coverage holes) and it will probably take very low orbit satellite networks to finally achieve that goal.

Currently many suppliers assume, incorrectly, that everyone is always going to be connected all the time. When that assumption finally becomes valid (who knows implants maybe...) then new models of access to media that simply no longer require local copies of data will become the norm and that in turn might finally put the kibosh on piracy.

 

[RJM Corbet]

So the internet giants like Amazon who started out as Robin Hoods trying to provide free, or very cheap and unlimited access to all, have now become the Sherrifs of Nottingham, tormented and humiliated by hackers who steal from them and give it away free.

They are such huge companies with such outrageous earnings, they're seen as fair game?

 

[RJM Corbet]

Nor do they get much sympathy from the places where they dodge tax and put conventional physical shops and businesses against the wall.

But it's the 21st Century and complaining can't help anyone.

 

[The Big Peat]

So the internet giants like Amazon who started out as Robin Hoods trying to provide free, or very cheap and unlimited access to all, have now become the Sherrifs of Nottingham, tormented and humiliated by hackers who steal from them and give it away free.

They are such huge companies with such outrageous earnings, they're seen as fair game?

They were never Robin Hoods - see how they pay their own workers, or how they treat publishers, or probably a million other things - and given said outrageous earnings, I really doubt they're particularly tormented.

 

[RJM Corbet]

They were never Robin Hoods - see how they pay their own workers, or how they treat publishers, or probably a million other things - and given said outrageous earnings, I really doubt they're particularly tormented.

So do you think it's down to cost -- that Amazon can't be bothered to research effective technology against litetary piracy? It would seem to be in their interest to do it, even if the benefit to authors is not the main objective?

This thread is educational, for people like me who are not really much involved in this tech stuff.

EDIT: How bad is the piracy really? How badly does it affect Amazon book sales? There seems to be no profit for the pirates, it's even costing them -- more like a sort of game?

 

[RJM Corbet]

Amazon has their Kindle DRM lock, which probably the majority of Kindle users do not try to remove, so on the whole perhaps a bit of leakage on the margin of their ebook distribution business, isn't worth them spending big bucks to crush it? They probably do not even see it as 'piracy'. It's the authors who suffer -- but where else is there to go.

EDIT: A John Grisham Hodder paperback is probably passed down free or re-sold at charity prices several times before the pages can't be sticky-taped together any more?

Magazines quote a readership figure to their advertisers several times higher than the sales figure: on the basis that magazines are passed-on and re-read in dentist waiting rooms, etc. It's the publishing game ...

 

[Dave]

EDIT: A John Grisham Hodder paperback is probably passed down free or re-sold at charity prices 10 times before the pages can't be sticky-taped together any more?

I don't see that as the same thing. It would be if it were photocopied and sold several times. I also don't see making a copy of the Kindle book in another format for your own personal use as a problem either and I used to copy my LP vinyl records to tape for my own personal use in the car. I used to buy second hand vinyl records, and I buy second hand CDs. (I can't afford the price of vinyl anymore - have you seen how much second hand vinyl records are? I own some, in better condition, that I saw for £30 and £45. Some singles for £75!) The second hand trade is a different thing. I don't think it is depriving anyone of a sale of something new. That is just my personal ethics though, not the legal status (which doesn't appear to be clear at all.)

 

[RJM Corbet]

I don't see that as the same thing. It would be if it were photocopied and sold several times. I also don't see making a copy of the Kindle book in another format for your own personal use as a problem either and I used to copy my LP vinyl records to tape for my own personal use in the car. I used to buy second hand vinyl records, and I buy second hand CDs. (I can't afford the price of vinyl anymore - have you seen how much second hand vinyl records are? I own some, in better condition, that I saw for £30 and £45. Some singles for £75!) The second hand trade is a different thing. I don't think it is depriving anyone of a sale of something new. That is just my personal ethics though, not the legal status (which doesn't appear to be clear at all.)

Ok. But (paper) books are passed-on, resold, lent-out (usually not returned), etc. No author expects that every individual who reads his paper book has paid the full-price for it?