Re: Ebooks - what do you think?


Tony Burton wrote:

> > We recently had a concert here; a fairly well-known ragtime musician
> > came to play. He played brilliantly, and since he also had his CDs
> > available for sale after the concert, we bought some. My parents
> > wanted to arrange it with the local JCC to invite him to play there, so
> > they copied his CD to give to the local JCC official, so he could hear
> > for himself. Was it piracy? Sure it was. It was most definitely
> > illegal - we didn't get his permission before doing it (as it turned
> > out, he left quite a lot of promotional CDs, and we could have just
> > used one of those - and he was entirely OK with our making a copy).
> > Will it get him a performance? Perhaps it will - and if it does, he'll
> > make a whole lot more money.
>
> And you are comparing apples to coconuts. You made one "illegal" copy of a
> CD.

Not "illegal" - illegal. No quotation marks. Had he chosen to react
as you do to the "theft" of intellectual property, we would have been
in serious trouble.

> You didn't spread it around. You didn't leave post his CD on a website
> where everyone could download it for free. (He might not have been as happy
> with that, even though he did leave some promo CDs.) A single copy is very
> much a different thing here. The primary difference is that you made a
> CONCRETE object. An ebook is not a concrete object - it is a collection of
> electrons, organized in a special and particular way, and stored in an
> electronic medium. It is instantly transmittable, instantly copyable, and
> instantly piratable. Even if you left your pirated CD out on a park bench,
> it would be a time consuming thing for someone to spread that CD around
> amongst their friends. But a piece of work posted on the Internet as an
> electronic file can be instantaneously available to hundreds, thousands,
> millions of people, all of whom could make copies. Your comparison holds
> absolutely no water.

Umm, a CD may be a concrete thing, but it holds digital files that are
instantly transmittable, instantly copyable, and instantly piratable.
It took me exactly 30 seconds to make MP3s out of that CD so I could
play them on my MP3 player (and make a copied CD for the JCC official).
After that, I could have posted them on the Internet, I guess - but
since I am honest (you know, one of those people you refuse to believe
exists), I do not want to steal another's work. I'm not sure I'm
entirely alone - I think there are many more honest people than you
believe.

And you still didn't answer my question - would you rather have 100
people buy your book, all of whom are honest, or 500 buyers and 500
thieves?

> > What I see some ebook creators as doing is not just having a "loss
> > prevention associate" looking through everyone's bag, but also doing a
> > strip search and sending someone to go break into the customer's house.
> > At some point, such behavior turns off potential customers, and you
> > lose more money than you would have lost through theft.
>
> Perhaps those who are using the faulty form of DRM that is in place now have
> such problems. But if this is what you see by having an ebook simply
> require a password to activate it, or by having to pay for the ebook before
> being able to read it in its entirety then you are having hallucinations,
> and should see a psychiatrist, because you are delusional.

I will stop the discussion right here, since I do not think that
personal insults are a good way to conduct debate.

> By the way, I posted information about the lawsuit that the state of Texas
> is bringing against Sony for their rootkit debacle, and it got ignored. No
> comment?

What am I supposed to say? Good for them. I'm glad someone is suing
them. Still doesn't help the individual consumer who has to spend
hours getting rid of that rootkit.

But I will not be responding to any more of your postings.

LM

.

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