Steve Simmons <scs at di.org> writes: > Matthew Hunter writes: > > > While this is in fact a problem, it's not a serious one. Sure, > > everyone in the industry yells about it. The RIAA and MPAA > > complain loudly about piracy cannabalizing their sales and scheme > > up new and interesting ways to try to prevent unauthorized > > copying, while to date print media has continued in the long > > tradition of ... no protections whatsoever. > > > Why? > > > Because the law is sufficient when the people wish to do the > > right thing. > > What I'm about to say will look like I'm intending to offend Matthew, > and I'm not. Matthew, please accept my advance apologies for this, > and know that it's not intended at you personally but at the sentiment > quoted above. You're not the first to say it, and you won't be the > last. > > But it's dead wrong, and in fact, both naive about what people really > do and ignorant of history. > > Historically, publishers have stolen at every opportunity. Charles > Dickens toured the US on his own nickel, because US publishers had taken > his works and published them without him getting a dime. This was > legal in the US at the time, and the US took full advantage of it. The > situation did not change until US authors became popular overseas and > started getting the same treatment from the Europeans. At that point, > the US signed on to the nascent international copyright laws and those > whose works had been pirated could sue in the appropriate venue. But, as you say, that was *legal* at the time. This isn't a counter-example to Matthew's claim; in fact it's an example of what he says in action. > The copyright laws worked because it was difficult to print and distribute > books. Only an established firm could afford it, and they were easy to > track down and sue. > > Music piracy worked the same way until recently. But now anybody can > cut a CD, and it's rife. Add on Napster and its descendents, and you > have a huge subculture that's (IMHO) ripping off artists right and left. > I quiz my son and his napsterizing peers, and not a one of them has ever > made a serious attempt to pay an artist for tunes downloaded. Yes, in > most cases it's probably not possible -- but they've never even tried. But Napster has been essentially shut down; and any centralized pirating operation is likely to be in the future. Only individual, person-to-person, piracy is hard to stop, and it's also small-scale. > Nope, the only thing that keeps current books from being pirated is the > high cost of duplication. Paper is expensive, scanners and character > recognition are unreliable, and typing is too much work. But once > someone gets an electronic copy, it spreads far and wide. To date, > I've never seen one distributed with even a hint of how to pay the author. Two hours to OCR and check Yendi. That's not theory, that's from looking at my watch when I started and when I finished. And my scanner is fairly slow. (Yendi is also a fairly short book by today's standards). So it's a fairly low barrier. And in fact there are a lot of pirated e-texts around. They aren't organized into large, well-indexed, repositories, however. So you can't easily go find them. For some reason, places that try to be such repositories get shut down. I see no reason why this won't continue to happen. Meanwhile, Baen books is making money selling ebooks, and even giving away ebooks (the Baen Free Library). > As soon as books are available in electronic format, they're going to be > traded with the same cavalier attitude as you see in MP3s. So show me this happening with the Baen electronic books, then. -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net / http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/ John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net Dragaera mailing lists, see http://dragaera.info