Re: Ebooks - what do you think?

Here's my response...

"Larisa" <purple_bovine@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1135133646.163711.276440@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Tony Burton wrote:
>> "Larisa" <purple_bovine@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>
>> > So was slavery once upon a time; that didn't make it right.
>> > Intellectual property is a murky issue and there are things that need
>> > to be ironed out - but at present the law is designed in such a way as
>> > to screw the consumer. I've been screwed. I shelled out $50 or so for
>> > nothing.
>>
>> It's amazing what laws are considered right and moral by one set of
>> people
>> and considered evil and immoral by another. The person who poured his
>> heart
>> and energy into writing a song or a book, and ends up seeing hundreds of
>> copies of it spread all over the Internet without receiving anything in
>> return would consider copyright infringement to be evil. But I agree you
>> were burned. I don't agree that the law is designed to screw the
>> consumer.
>> The companies that produce work often manipulate the law so the consumer
>> gets screwed, though.
>
> Well, but that's precisely what I meant. The companies have the power
> to rewrite the law so that they wring the maximum amount of money out
> of me. I do not have the power to rewrite the law so that they can't
> wring that money out of me. They have all the power, and they write
> all the rules.
>
> Remember the Sony rootkit scandal? Just in case some of the RAMmers
> were unaware of it - if you play a Sony music CD on your computer, it
> will infect your hard drive with a virus-type thing called a rootkit
> that opens up a security hole in your Windows OS (assuming you are
> running Windows). It does that in order to prevent you from copying
> that CD. Question for discussion - if I did this to someone else's
> computer, *for any reason*, what penalties would apply to me? Are
> those the same penalties as are applied to Sony?

I remember the problem. THey had to stop producing the CDs with the rootkit
and recalled the ones on the market. And lots of software has proprietary
stuff that invades your operating system to protect itself from being copied
or distributed - and it was even more prevalent in the heyday of the Apple
and Commodore computers. As long as Sony can prove that they did what they
did in "good faith" trying to protect their materials, I doubt the court
will do anything to them, or to you and me in the same situation. But you
are arguing an old argument here - FOR ALL TIME the rich and powerful have
been able to swing courts their way because they can afford lawyers. That
is not confined to copyright, that is universal.

> The other question is this - that person who wrote a good book and is
> seeing thousands of copies distributed for free over the Internet - why
> isn't *he* cashing in on that? Presumably, those same fans who are
> devoted enough to the author to scan and OCR his book (and that must be
> quite a job) would gladly pay a reasonable amount if the opportunity
> were available. If they can't do that without running afoul of the law
> (and what will you say? Hello, I've illegally downloaded your ebook -
> here is some $$$?), they will just avoid the issue altogether.

We were talking about ebooks, remember? I'm talking about those people who
give away illegal copies of songs on the internet or illegal copies of
ebooks. That's not devotion - that's theft.

>
> One of the reasons I love ebooks is the opportunity to have my very
> favorite books always with me. I have quite a few (legally
> downloaded - don't worry) classics that I'm glad to always have in my
> pocket. But there are some authors whose work is not available as
> textfiles (and knowing what I know now, I will not buy DRMed ebooks).
> I'd be happy to pay the author for such a textfile - but there isn't
> one. The works of Douglas Adams, for example, are only available in
> DRM form. I'd gladly pay the Adams estate, his publisher, or any
> copyright owner for a good textfile - but I can't.

And you are voting with your wallet, which is a good thing, and the way the
free enterprise system works. You should look for those works that are
*not* DRM, that are your favorites, and purchase those instead. This will
be an incentive for those same people/publishers/authors to publish more of
their works in that format.

>> > And this is what is going to kill ebooks - not technical issues, but
>> > legal ones. I certainly won't be buying any more ebooks after this.
>> > Neither will many other people, for similar reasons - and the ebook
>> > market will wither away, and the publishing companies will say "See?
>> > People don't want ebooks after all!" The idea that people might want
>> > ebooks that they can actually use doesn't cross their minds.
>> >
>> Not all ebooks are protected. Not all ebooks are encrypted.
>
> Where are the non-encrypted ones that are not public domain? I know
> about Project Gutenberg - but where can I buy an ebook that is a simple
> textfile?

Hardly anyone uses a simple textfile because of it's limitations. There are
PDF ebooks that are not protected (and the PDF reader is downwardly
compatible and FREE). There are PRC and LIT books that are not encrypted.
You may have to search for them, but they are there. Try
http://www.lulu.com

>> Greed may
>> certainly play a part in the demise of ebooks - the greed of people who
>> want
>> to charge too much for their work, and the greed of those who think,
>> "Hey,
>> I'm not getting a physical object here, so I shouldn't have to pay for
>> it!"
>
> And the greed of those who rewrite the laws to put more money into
> their pockets.
>
>> A lot of other people are going to look at the information available and
>> say
>> they will NOT buy DRM ebooks, and that's OK with me. I don't publish
>> through DRM, anyway.
>
> How do you publish, and what format are your ebooks? And where can one
> get them?
>
>> But there has to be some give-and-take on the issue,
>> too. Ebooks should be protected from being freely given away, by law at
>> least, just as software is protected. (In other words, if you give it
>> away,
>> you should not keep any copies for yourself.)
>
> But the only way to rigidly enforce that is to spy on everyone's
> computer (or just infect it with a virus, like Sony does). Otherwise,
> how will you know I haven't kept any copies for myself?

I only have one ebook at present, and it's a cozy mystery. I offer it in
three different formats, and I think one of them is encrypted, but the other
two are not. The encryption was part of the production process, and it only
keeps it from being printed - which is not supposed to be done anyway.

My ebook is available on http://www.wolfmntn.com And if you look there, I
have a statement on the bottom of the main page that says I value honor a
lot, and that I hope that the persons who purchase my ebook(s) will have
enough honor not to spread them around illegally or pirate them.

You are right about RIGID enforcement. There is very little rigid
enforcement of such things, even in the software industry. A lot of it
relies upon the honesty and goodwill of people, because it is so danged easy
to make illegal copies of software (and ebooks). It's so much work to scan
or photocopy a hardcopy book that it was not such an issue. But now that I
can make a copy of Stephen King's "The Stand" that is just as good as the
original in less than five minutes, the temptation to do so is much greater
for many people.

>
> And I'm not sure ebooks need to be protected from being freely given
> away. There are authors who place their entire oeuvre online, in an
> effort to build publicity, to build sales, to find new readers. Boris
> Akunin, a phenomenally popular Russian mystery author (who is finally
> being translated to English, so I can heartily recommend his books to
> the RAMmers) has all his novels available online (www.akunin.ru, if you
> read Russian). It doesn't seem to hurt his sales any. Daria Dontsova,
> another phenomenally popular Russian mystery author, also has all her
> books available online (www.dontsova.net - also if you read Russian).
> Most other Russian authors have at least some of their books online -
> and their sales don't suffer. I own some books by Daria Dontsova - I
> bought them and paid for them after finding them for free online.
>
> There is one American author who subscribes to the "open-source" idea,
> and has all his novels available online in many different format - Cory
> Doctorow, who writes weird sci-fi stuff. Here is his FAQ on why he is
> licensing his work the way he is:
>
> http://craphound.com/someone/000362.html
>
> I quote:
>
> * * *
> Are you making money by giving away books?
> Hell ya. My writing income has doubled year on year for some five years
> now. Giving away books displaces some sales -- that is, some people who
> get the book for free in etext don't buy it -- but it generates more
> sales. My books sell well. Here's how to buy this one (link). Now, I'm
> the first to admit that this isn't science. I can't go back in time and
> re-release my books without Creative Commons licenses and compare
> sales. But they're selling better than my publishers expect them to,
> and better than my colleagues' books are selling, and that's good
> enough for me.
> * * *
>
> So there's at least one author who is not suffering from giving his
> work away. I downloaded his book myself; not quite my cup of tea, but
> fun to read.
>
>> > The only way to make it truly, honestly upwardly compatible is to use a
>> > universal format - .txt is such a format, as is HTML.
>>
>> But there are so many problems with those formats. They work fine for
>> general text with no special formatting or graphics, but you can't use
>> special formatting in a .txt file, or graphics. HTML is, unfortunately,
>> not
>> always read the same way. An HTML document may look great on one
>> browser,
>> but look totally different or just unreadable on another browser, because
>> the standards are not as good as they should be - at least among browsers
>> on
>> PDAs and smart-phones.
>
> I guess I was talking more about fiction, for which plain .txt should
> be plenty. There are some people working on a universal "OpenReader"
> format for ebooks - might want to look into that.
>
>> > It's a good way to introduce ebooks to the general public. At present,
>> > what companies should be doing (as Amazon is) is trying like crazy to
>> > attract consumers to ebooks - not scare them away with restrictive DRM
>> > and silly software issues. "Selling" people ebooks that disappear
>> > after 60 days is not a good way to build a potential market. Most
>> > people don't know a thing about ebooks - if their first impression is
>> > "expensive, complicated, and unprintable" - well, they will say a few
>> > unprintable words and never buy another one.
>>
>> I agree that a lot of ebooks issues have to be ironed out. But to think
>> that the average author can afford to sell a book, even a short story,
>> for
>> only 49 cents a pop is ludicrous. People have a mindset, all too often,
>> that a thing is worth what you pay for it. And I have seen it happen, so
>> paradoxically - when someone downloads a cheap song from a service, say
>> for
>> 99 cents, they don't feel guilty about sending out a hundred copies of it
>> to
>> their friends because, "Hey, it's only 99 cents they're losing, right??"
>
> I don't do that. I'm not sure how many people do that. When I
> download an iTunes song, I keep it on my own computer.
>
> The problem, however, is when people become so frustrated with the
> "legal" ways to download content, and so frustrated with the
> limitations of said content, that they turn to illegal ways because
> they are easier. It's like speeding on the freeways - set the speed
> limit ridiculously low, make following the law very very inconvenient,
> and suddenly everyone is a criminal.
>
>> I honestly think you have an axe to grind with Sony, and with good
>> reason.
>
> They put rootkit viruses on people's computers and sell "content" that
> disappears after 60 days - what more reason does anyone need?
>
>> But you are painting with a very broad and sticky brush when you say all
>> ebooks are bad things. That's like saying all Russians are lousy people
>> because Nikita Krushchev was a putz.
>
> I'm not saying all ebooks are bad things - quite the contrary. I think
> ebooks are wonderful things. As soon as a good ebook reader is
> available that doesn't hurt my eyes, I'm buying one - and then I'll get
> even more ebooks. I love carrying 100 books in my pocket, I love
> downloading a book whenever I want to rather than whenever the
> bookstore is open, I love having the world's classics at my fingertips
> for free - I love ebooks. I'd convert my entire library to ebooks if I
> could.
>
> What I don't love, however, is the DRM and the legal issues that make
> ebooks all but unusable. Who is hurt by my printing out that Andrew
> Vachss ebook I downloaded and can't read because my eyes are bothering
> me? Certainly not Vachss. I paid him - I bought the ebook. Not the
> publishing company, either. I've paid them too. The copyright holder
> is certainly getting as fair a compensation as they are entitled to.
> Why are they selling me something that has such a ridiculous
> restriction on it? Admittedly, at least they're not selling me
> something that disappears after 60 days, but still - why can't I
> convert that file to RSVP format to read on my cellphone? Why can't I
> convert it to Word .doc format, change the font, and print out my
> favorite part? Why can't I read it on a Sony Librie (which doesn't use
> PalmReader, but does have a .txt converter) or on the iRex (which reads
> .txt files but doesn't have PalmReader either)? In what way is it
> helping the author?
>
> LM

Probably not helping the author at all, and in my opinion those authors who
ONLY subscribe to such nonsense as DRM control are hurting themselves and
the industry, as well as the consumer. That's why I don't do it. I have
the option, but instead I sell my one book (three more on the way at this
time) in three different ebook formats, that I produce myself through my own
small publishing company (Wolfmont Publishing) and for what I consider to be
a relatively affordable price.

Tony Burton


.

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