Not only does it assume that everyone who downloaded a copy would have gone out and bought a copy otherwise, it also assumes that no one who downloaded a copy then went out and bought one in hardcopy. Or, for that matter, that none of the downloaders already owned the book, and downloaded a copy so as to have an DRM-free electronic version.

I skimmed through the actual report that the article linked to, and this bit from the executive summary really struck me: On average, nearly 10,000 copies of every book published are downloaded for free. I know they're definitely not an unbiased source, but this figure just seems ridiculously high when they're only measuring 913 books. Did they include translations in other languages, I wonder? What about files that were either typo'd or given misleading filenames to try to fool the anti-piracy groups? How many of the people downloading those books had already bought a legal copy and just wanted a backup copy in case something happened?

The only times I'm tempted to turn to piracy is when there is actually no legal way to get what I'm looking for. That includes things like out-of-print books, especially in my field (South Asian Studies; it's not as common as a lot of other area studies in the US, and things seem to go out of print or out of stock pretty quickly) and TV shows or movies that I would happily buy legally if they were released on DVD. I don't follow through on those urges, but it's incredibly frustrating to not have access to those things.

You'd think the anti-piracy people would've figured out by now that trying to claim every illegally copied unit as a lost sale just makes them look like idiots. It doesn't work when the music people do it, it doesn't work when the computer game people do it, and it doesn't work when the e-book people do it. They're devaluing anti-piracy efforts in general, and it's frustrating. It's one of those "Please stop being on my side" kinds of situations.

I'm at least as much against piracy as you are, and possibly moreso. All my published work is currently available in electronic format and only electronic format, so the speculative arguments about how many of the pirates will download an illegal e-book and then go out and buy the hardcopy don't apply at all to me and my fellow e-pubbed authors. At the same time, though, I still know that not every copy downloaded from a torrent site is a lost sale, and I'm not going to try to claim them all as lost revenue.

I'm against DRM too, for the reasons mrs_norris_mous gives. DRM has never stopped or even inconvenienced a single pirate; its sole function is to annoy and frustrate the honest customers who've handed a vendor money, because those are the only people whose copies have DRM on them. [sigh]

Angie

Edited at 2010-01-14 05:30 pm (UTC)

1. For that matter, if I did rely on libraries or used bookstores, it's also a loss to the publisher, since the same book is being used by multiple people. So, for example, if I pirate 'Goblin Street Blues', decide I like it, and then go out and buy a used copy or get a copy from a book-trading website, the publisher is still not getting my money*. Even if I check it out of the library, they might have one copy for many readers, which gives less money to the publisher than if everyone who wanted to read it bought a new copy.

I think I'd want data about things like how many readers on average did buy a book before/after downloading an illegal copy.

* Though it assumes that the print run was large enough that used copies exist -- there are a couple of comics that I can't find used (or new -- darn out of print books), unless I want to learn Japanese/French/German, or buy a 27-volume set of graphic novels when I need two.

i'm curious what level of dick you think those of us are who a. don't have the option of libraries etc. and b. buy what they end up liking.

Here is an open question for the crowd:

What do people think of the idea, as popularized Cory Doctorow, et al., that a certain degree of piracy actually helps book sales in the long run?

Me, I'm skeptical of this assertion for a slew of reasons.

1. The mileage will vary widely depending on what kind of readership you have. Cory's readers are largely tech-savvy, like-minded geeks who are that much more conscious of the long-term costs of not compensating someone for their work. I'd gamble that Cory believes it benefits him because of his specific audience

2. Because piracy is next to impossible to quantify, it's also not possible to directly attribute how much you gain OR lose to piracy. It's a black box.

3. Most people tend to pay for, rather than steal, product for which they fee close affinity with the creator. One of the reasons I get out to the cons and push my stuff face-to-face is to build precisely this kind of relationship. When the author himself is right there, signing your book, shaking your hand, chatting you up -- you're less likely to feel inclined to rip him off in any form. To that end, I'm of the opinion that piracy is at least partly due to disconnection, or sheer distance, between the consumer and the creator.

4. From what I've seen, the most widely-pirated books are not fiction but technical texts -- partly because they command such absurd prices, far out of proportion with the costs involved in compensating their creators. But I suspect this will lead to an entirely different rant so I'll stop there.

Instead of piracy, can we talk about restrictive electronic formats? Apple and Amazon are two big offenders with iPods and Kindles, and I'd be more charitably inclined toward both if they weren't so Microsoft-ish about the way they handle music and books.

Some pirates just love the process, the "I'm gaming the system" rush. My three Rovers books are available for free but include advertising in the side margins to suggest to the reader they should support the author and the publisher. I've had folks who copied those files, removed all the advertising and then uploaded the books on pirate sites. What was the point, people? The books were free in the first place. Somehow they felt they were thumbing their noses at us by removing the advertising. Ignorant. I'm good if folks want to take a test drive with some sample chapters. After that ya gotta buy the car to take it off the lot.

I don't disagree that half of the problem comes from the source of the statistics, and I'd like to add that you're right about the extremism. About ten years ago, I was researching E-book piracy (getting a call from Harlan Ellison asking me to poke around on Usenet a bit leads to all sorts of interesting observations), and I noticed one major factor that nobody else was considering. Back then, and even today, the vast majority of pirated E-books were of two types: science fiction/fantasy novels and technical and operation manuals for commonly pirated software.

Now, you could argue that this is the inherent bias of the Interwebs, where these are pirated because of the availability to the tech contingent of plenty of sources. That's a valid point, but remembering years and years of pre-Internet fandom that practically encouraged similar piracy of copyrighted materials, I suspect that a lot of it comes down to the superiority complexes often seen in fandom and in the tech community. Because of that, variations on the old Comcast "Stealing cable is a crime" notices not only won't work, but it'll turn off the people who'd otherwise listen to rational arguments.

(Back when I was still involved in fandom, I remember one jerk who took umbrage at anime videos being sold at local conventions, so he spent his time "educating the masses" on why he'd be glad to make free videos of the same shows that the dealers were selling. Not only did he not see the issues involved in his own actions, but then he took to berating these dealers for doing so...in public. Invariably, he was always kicked out of the conventions, where his strategy was then to call the police and claim that the convention rep who'd kicked him out had tried to molest him. By the time he was done with a particular show, he'd not only done nothing to stop the bootlegs, but he made sure that a lot of otherwise neutral individuals bought something from those dealers just to spite the little Cat Piss Man.)

The best option? What writers have been doing already: merely pointing out that "information wants to be free" doesn't pay creators' bills, and definitely doesn't give them added incentive to create more. (And to the dolts who argue "At least you're getting exposure," that works really well with the fresh new interns persuaded to work for free for months or years for the local weekly newspaper. You'll also note that almost all of those interns catch on after a few weeks or months and get jobs that can actually cover rent, and the only ones remaining are those sufficiently deluded to think that they wouldn't get a better deal anywhere else. After a while, the Law of Diminishing Returns kicks in, and those venues and individual who figure their content and their entertainment should always be free get exactly what they pay for.)

I did note that if you actually read the PDF available from attibutor on the site that in the fine print they say

"This study does not attempt to address teh issue of determining to what degree pirated books represent financial loss to the industry as it does not estimate how many free downloads might have otherwise resulted in a sale. .... Previous studies assume a one-to-one substitution, meaning all pirated material would have been purchased and thus the market value of pirates books is equal to the actual loss, though Attributor fees this is and overly optimistic assumption. This will be addressed in a future research phase."

So they are basically saying that all of their numbers are based on the market value of pirated goods. Still not a good representation but at least they own up to the discrepancy.

Three billion? Wow. Maybe I can go to City Hall today, bill them for the three billion dollars in lost time I've suffered due to red light placement.

Whether or not piracy is legal or illegal, practical or impractical, it's still immoral, and therefore wrong. (This does not excuse excessive publisher/label greed via DRM and deliberately shoddy bindings and so forth.) Still, claiming that the Magical Money Fairies would have clapped their hands and produced three billion dollars if not for those nasty pirates definitely does not lend credibility to the study.

-JM

I note that at the front of every DVD I get from Netflix is a warning that I am looking at a $250K fine and up to five years in jail for ripping off said content. Apparently the movie industry has a stronger lobbying presence in Washington than do we mere authors. Not that we need to send such idiots to prison, but there has to be some downside for ripping off a person's livelihood.

I look at this study, and the methodology, and I'm a bit bothered by what's going on, just in the study. I'm not as concerned about the source of the study; these guys are experts at what they do, but as anything else, consider the source. They've got a bias, and a reason to bias things up rather than down. But then again, that's the way it goes with statistics. Any researcher has to take the source into account, and no matter how hard they try, no source is unbiased.

It's the statistics that bother me, to be honest. This study doesn't break things down enough for me to consider it reliable enough to accept their findings. It gives gross (as in huge, not disgusting) categories without any kind of break-down of what kinds of books are in those categories. Science? Are they talking textbooks? Science journals? Books for people within the field, or for a more general audience? How many of each of those book types are being downloaded? That kind of information is critical to the next phase of the problem, as in stopping at least some of the problem. If the major downloaders are college students getting their textbooks for free, that's one issue. If it's high level professionals ripping each other off, that's a completely different problem. If it's textbooks, did the authors of the study pro-rate things accurately to reflect that many textbooks sold are used? Did they check to see if the major downloads were the current or previous editions?

Did the researchers break things down by age of book? Did they tally in books that are out-of-print? Did they tally in books that are beyond copyright? Do they see dramatic drop-offs of downloads for books that are 3, 5, 7, or 10 years older? Are there spikes for recently published books? Bestsellers? New software, hardware, discoveries, etc.?

If this study is just raw clickage, which it appears to be, then it's really not that useful of a study, at least from an academic pov, or even to make judgements about how much money is being lost. Their language is accurate: they're making PROJECTIONS and ESTIMATES, not giving hard numbers. This is a preliminary study; a lot more work needs to be done to check, double check, and expand on what they've done. If my students tried to quote this study as a primary foundation study for a paper about this topic, I'd be all over them about sources.

There's so many free public domain books anyway... people could just read them for free books. That's what I've been doing. It is actually really nice to read some old stuff.
I like to support the authors I enjoy reading. I don't mind buying books from them, even though I have little money... books aren't all that expensive. Heck I've bought my favorite books at least 3 times. (That is because I either lend them and they don't come back, or I read them until they fall apart.)

You have to fight piracy, if only to keep the "alternative source" more difficult to find than the legitimate sources.

Illegal downloading is like any other thievery: it is driven by convenience.

The vast majority of people value time and convenience over relatively small sums of money. If a person wants to download a book, they will go looking for it. If the easiest place to get it is a legitimate source that collects money, and the price isn't a budget-breaker, people will pay to download.

If a free-download source is forced to move around, or is unreliable (too many books removed, or messed-up copies deliberately planted), most people will stop using it. People don't want to be annoyed.

The people who will accept annoyance for cash-savings are few, and not likely to be paying customers to begin with.

I think at the end of the day, some people are just gits, and will give away someone else's work for free, just because they can.

I think you have the right attitude here. After all, piracy is stealing, and I wish it didn't happen, but there's not a great deal we can do about it. Just ask those nice folks at Google.

This is only slightly related, but I just wanted to mention that I think the whole "sharing some fiction for free" thing is an excellent idea for authors. All the books I've purchased recently have been after reading sample chapters online. It's a great way to get a feel for an author's style.

Wow, you are right, I hope that this is resolved at some point. Downloading illegally is soo wrong. :)

I've worked in video games for nearly a decade. (Oh my. Has it been so long? Getting old.)
On the development side, we pretty much despise DRM. All it does it hurt legal customers, and does absolutely nothing to pirates.
This is why I like steam so much, actually. No disks, no checks, just 'Is it on your list? Great. Have fun.'
Anyways, Publishers, on the other hand, are obsessed with DRM and anti-piracy measures. Why? Because the money they pour into it looks good on quarterly reports. Makes them look good to investers.
Books will benefit from the same things games have... what's needed is an easy to use delivery system that anyone, anywhere, can buy books from, and can be viewed on a multitude of products. (Laptops, psp, smartphones, ect.)
and divorced from platform, ie, works on Mac, PC, heck, no reason it couldn't go directly to a smartphone with a similar interface.
And don't start on itunes. It's actually a rather restrictive, authortatian, and locked system. The shear amount of family tech support that devil-spawned delivery system generates for me (Cause I'm 'That computer guy' in the family.) is enough for me to wish harm on Steve Jobs.

Oh, yes.
'Imnformation wants to be free'
No, no it doesn't.
What it wants is a more direct path from creator to consumer. And publishers are scared of this.

There are plenty of pirates who sell illegally copied ebooks, and their customers do pay for the bootlegged CDs and pdf files.

Just search for ebooks on EBay.
In particular, look for Vampires, or Romance, or Horror.

Pirates also sell ebooks on Wordpress sites, Facebook sites, Blogspot sites.

Some pirates ostensibly sell a box of physical books for $40 and throw in 100 or so "free" ebooks.

I am an early adopter of eBooks. I've owned the Sony PRS-500 for 4 years and the Sony 300 for half a year now.

In that time I have purchased a lot of ebooks and downloaded a ton from my library (Chicago and New York). However, when a publisher wants the same price for a paperback as an ebook, I have to admit to getting upset.

To make matters worse, with Penguin, the don't allow bookstores to offer coupons on their books. This week Kobo offered 20% off ALL BOOKS. Yet when I tried to purchase The Stepsisters Scheme, I was told the publisher doesn't allow discounts.

Now I have three options. Pay $6.99 to Kobo, go to Borders and see if they have it in stock (if they don't I will probably purchase something else (NOT from penguin because honestly I am pissed). Look at local usedbook stores. (My library doesn't carry it).