
Digital Domain - Will Piracy Become a Problem for E-Books?  - newacc
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/business/04digi.html?_r=1&ref=technology
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dmm
I think the publishing industry is in a much better place to encourage
licensed use of their work than the music industry was. Look at the kindle and
how simple and easy it is to grab a book. Imagine if an ipod could do that in
1999.

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stse
The publishing industry and the music industry is very very different. But if
the publishing industry does not lead (or at least keep up) with the evolution
of the market they will become marginalized. Just like the "little plastic
disc" industry is today. They really need to make the e-book "market" mature
before e-books become more popular than psychical books.

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chaosprophet
Will it become a problem??? It already is:

[http://www.google.co.in/search?q=the%20lost%20symbol%20rapid...](http://www.google.co.in/search?q=the%20lost%20symbol%20rapidshare.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-
US:official&client=firefox-a)

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nopassrecover
Yes. Books are "barely" pirated now because it is impossible to find most
books from pirate sources. Hell, it's hard to find most books from legitimate
sources online.

Books have an advantage on other media in that they are traditionally physical
and their quality (when they are presented in a quality form) will still help
sell them.

Having said that, the day someone manages to release a way (iphone app?) of
letting you scan books easily (for book authors but lets not pretend it won't
get used both ways) will be pretty awesome.

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thras
You'd be surprised. The pirating scene on IRC has a far greater selection than
Amazon.

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Gibbon
Yeah, it's easy enough to find pretty much any book if you know what to search
for. It's been that way for years.

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nopassrecover
Really? Heh traditional torrent/p2p sources (say everything but usenet) tend
to have a lot of trouble finding particular books.

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cracki
try ed2k/kad. torrents are not for old or rare stuff.

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nopassrecover
Cool. What I'd really love is to be able to go to Amazon (or something) and
pay to have a PDF download. I'd even pay retail if it meant I get the PDF now
and the physical in the mail (though living in AU I don't think Amazon sell us
books physically but you get the idea).

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munctional
This system is exactly how pragprog.com works.

You can even purchase a PDF/book combo before the book is completed and have
access to a (constantly updated) beta version of the PDF. When the book is
completed, the PDF is finalised and the book itself is mailed to you.

~~~
nopassrecover
Awesome. Can't wait to see this model expand.

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arnorhs
Piracy isn't a problem, it's a result - the question is so uninteresting...
The more interesting question is the question of how can we make a better
business model for publishers/authors

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4ensic
I notice that they didn't compare ebooks to movies. I'm sure the MPAA would
have issued the same scary stats, but the film industry is rolling in cash
despite entire criminal industries dedicated to stealing content.

That would have for a pretty boring article, though.

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buugs
I don't pirate/buy e-books because I can't read books on a screen, it is okay
for small articles and coding and whatnot but feeling the paper and guiding
your eyes is so much better with paper. (I haven't tried e-ink or the kindle
so I don't know how that compares.)

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twopoint718
What about a system where you can download an e-book for free, read it for a
month or so with the option of rolling-over that term for another month -- as
long as someone else hasn't requested it? In short, where are libraries going
to be in this?

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mjgoins
What you're describing is not like a library. Libraries deal in scarce
resources (physical copies of books). The point of a (public) library is to
provide free information.

If you apply that principal to e-books, which cost almost nothing to copy, and
therefore don't reasonably need to be checked out or returned, you have to
remove all DRM, thus destroying the e-book business model.

Unfortunately, librarians have bought into the DRM mindset, and are putting
into place (or planning to put into place) systems like the one you describe.

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twopoint718
That's exactly my point (which was not meant to be a technical suggestion for
implementation, I'm aware of the problems involved). My question is basically,
"where do e-books and DRM leave the public library?"

In my opinion, if a business model requires there to be no public libraries or
a substantially reduced public library, then so much the worse for the
business model. There needs to be an analogue between the world where books
are things made of paper and the world where books are made of bits.

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jacquesm
It already is. E-books are pirated within minutes of staring their major
distribution.

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bjelkeman-again
The difference so far though seems to be that I don't know anyone who reads
pirated e-books, but I know lots of people who listen to pirated music. There
is no suitable mp3 player equivalent for books yet.

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nopassrecover
Which is what the article is about I think.

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arnorhs
The only problem I can imagine is that we won't have enough of piracy of
e-books :)

