Comments on: Digital Piracy: Redux

By: Darren

Darren — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:32:47 +0000

Too true: if you can’t make it a better product than what’s available for free, you simply cannot compete. People want to vote with their dollars, but not at the expense of being inconvenienced or – worse – feeling like criminals when they’re the ones buying the media.
DRM has never stopped pirates, only frustrated consumers.

By: Comfort Reads on the 21st Century | Booksquare

Comfort Reads on the 21st Century | Booksquare — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:24:41 +0000

[…] indicator, though it falls into the unscientific category. A few weeks ago, the New York Times did an article on digital piracy, opening with the fact that author Ursula LeGuin had discovered that a book of hers, published in […]

By: Digital Piracy vs the Left Hand of Darkness « Books on the Radio

Digital Piracy vs the Left Hand of Darkness « Books on the Radio — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:47:00 +0000

[…] Kroszer lends her sensibility to the argument with this post on the issue at her Booksquare blog. She notes while Ursula Le Guin and her publisher are dismayed to find digital versions of her […]

By: #bcto09: Kindle, Shmindle notes - im addicted

#bcto09: Kindle, Shmindle notes - im addicted — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:27:37 +0000

[…] Digital Piracy: Redux (booksquare.com) […]

By: Brad’s Reader » Blog Archive » Friday Link Love 5/15

Brad’s Reader » Blog Archive » Friday Link Love 5/15 — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:52:22 +0000

[…] Digital piracy: Redux […]

By: Frau

Frau — Sat, 16 May 2009 17:23:47 +0000

Amen. The party line with most publishers on the piracy issue is downright shooting-yourself-in-the-foot retarded.

Being temporarily stranded in a country where English paperbacks are a rare commodity, I figured, Hey! E-books should be a done deal by now. After all, this is the book industry – surely they must be more insightful than the media conglomerates, surely they must have learned something from the mistakes of the music industry?

Oh, no joy. I didn’t want to wait 3 weeks for a book to ship and me to already have gone home, and so spent $5 extra on a digital copy of one of the few books I wanted that I COULD find to purchase legally.

Turns out the reader software is downright hostile to your eyesight, amazingly enough being crappier than reading a simple .txt file. Like, jesus, are you INTENTIONALLY screwing this up? The text was riddled with strange mishaps, being illegible in places. It was like zero thought had gone into translating the product into a digital format.

I gave up. I scouted the Internet for an illegal but readable copy. Sue me. Or, even better since I’m one of those freaks that spend up to $200 a week on buying your books: shape up.

The technology for allowing more people to purchase even more books is already THERE. The only problem of the publishing industry is, why isn’t it being harnessed by YOU?

Instead of putting all that money you now spend on suing readers, trawling websites, or tightening your DRM – why not spend a teeeensy tiny part of your budget developing the easiest, fastest, and most high-quality access-point for digital books?

Do it NOW. Grip and shape the market. Make getting a book about an impulsive thought, a one-click on my computer, and a done deal without me leaving the couch.

By: Punk Librarian

Punk Librarian — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:49:56 +0000

EDIT: “If the posting and accessing of books on pirate sites (Scribd is not a pirate site, though people misuse the service) tells us anything, it’s that there is consumer demand for books that are free.”

By: Peter Jurmu

Peter Jurmu — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:30:06 +0000

I suppose one-liners from irritated authors in the article do make for better copy than useful information. This comes at an interesting time: at some point over the past 36 hours, someone appears to have indexed one of the RIAA's/MPAA's copyright bloodhounds' entire server on Google.

By: J L Wilson

J L Wilson — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:20:28 +0000

From an author’s perspective, I was so relieved when one of my publishers went to simultaneous print/digital releases. Staggered releases was a true P.I.T.A. for me since it meant doing promo twice for the same book. This means I could really offend readers by seeming to continually shout out about the same book all the time.

And don’t get me started on formats, why publishers should offer what kinds of formats, etc. It’s total frustration for authors as well as readers….

By: Anysia (Booklorn on Twitter)

Anysia (Booklorn on Twitter) — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:54:28 +0000

As long as they charge print book prices or higher for an ebook that will be unusable in a year or two because of technological drift, legitimate ebooks will have difficulty gaining traction.

I bought ebooks 5 years ago which are now unreadable electrons. Now I stick to free (NOT pirated) ebooks. If I can’t read them in a few years then at least I’m not out any money.