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Source: (consider it) Thread: Media access or piracy?
no prophet's flag is set so...

Proceed to see sea
# 15560

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I recently heard about "popcorntime" a defunct program which used bittorrent to download and stream movies for free. -- I should state that I only use open-source software and operating systems, and don't watch TV, videos or movies much at all. More of an over-the-airwaves radio listener and a book reader, but I do think the idea of open, easy and low-cost or free access is rather important to our media and information future. I'd like to know what shipmates think about this.

quote:
The webpage of this former program, http://getpopcornti.me/ states:
Piracy is not a people problem. It’s a service problem. A problem created by an industry that portrays innovation as a threat to their antique recipe to collect value. It seems to everyone that they just don’t care.

But people do.

We've shown that people will risk fines, lawsuits and whatever consequences that may come just to be able to watch a recent movie in slippers. Just to get the kind of experience they deserve.

And maybe, that asking nicely for a few bucks a month to watch whichever movie you want is a bit better than that.

I thought this was an interesting perspective. Do we have a problem with "antique" media companies? What should free and easy access look like? Are the services available for media access like iTunes, youtube, Netflix, others good enough? What's wrong with them? Are the rules and regulations about media access a problem these days?

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\_(ツ)_/

Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010  |  IP: Logged
fletcher christian

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I really don't understand why the film distributors keep insisting on staggered releases around the globe. It surely can't be that difficult to have the same global release date or very close to it. I honestly do think that this is a huge factor in online piracy and streaming. Add to that the massively long wait until it becomes available for purchase and those networks that refuse to allow distribution of their programming to other paid online services. They all keep shouting about piracy and streaming, but there does seem to me at least to be an easy way to remove some of what are likely the main reasons why it happens, yet they choose not to do anything. I find it really odd.

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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan

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Leorning Cniht
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# 17564

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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I thought this was an interesting perspective. Do we have a problem with "antique" media companies?

I am bugged by region coding on DVDs. It's not a significant impediment at home - I have multiple DVD players, one configured to play region 1 DVDs, and one region 2 - but I don't have a region 2 player in my laptop.

Lots of classic British comedy isn't released in region 1, so my DVD collection is a mix of regions 1 and 2.

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Marvin the Martian

Interplanetary
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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
What should free and easy access look like?

It shouldn't exist, at least not in those terms. If movies/TV shows/music/etc. are completely free for the end users, then there's no income coming in as a result of selling them. No income means no money to spend on producing the movies/shows/music/etc. in the first place, which means nobody (or very few people) will be able to make them in the first place.

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Hail Gallaxhar

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Alex Cockell

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quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
What should free and easy access look like?

It shouldn't exist, at least not in those terms. If movies/TV shows/music/etc. are completely free for the end users, then there's no income coming in as a result of selling them. No income means no money to spend on producing the movies/shows/music/etc. in the first place, which means nobody (or very few people) will be able to make them in the first place.
I think "free and easy access" is more "release everything everywhere permanently, make available for a reasonable price". If a system similar to the Public Lending Rights royalty system was set up to return revenue, int he same way as the PRS are paid for streaming - would mean you nail it completely. If there was a proper digital rights wholesale market - that would leave the retail side to concentrate on the customer. Basically a digital rental market...

Basically - everything playable everywhere on everything without vendor lockin.

[ 26. September 2014, 13:00: Message edited by: Alex Cockell ]

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Fineline
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Are we talking about services like Netflix, and the new Kindle Unlimited (which has caused some controversy among authors)?
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Gwai
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Marvin, there's free and there's free. For instance, I make great use of my public library, but that's not really free to me. I pay taxes. And yet it's an incredibly good use of my taxes, I think, and I would pay twice as much library-tax, if I needed to support my library. One can definitely say that sort of free (at point-of-use) is something we need much more of.

--------------------
A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.


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no prophet's flag is set so...

Proceed to see sea
# 15560

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Alex and Gwai, these are very helpful comments.

I would like to know more about this " Public Lending Rights royalty system". I know in Canada that we pay a fee on media, like blank CDs and DVDs, and also on MP3 players which is supposed to siphon back to an agency which gives money back to artists or companies, and that universities have to buy the rights to photocopied published things and do so generally with a one time yearly fee here. I expect the royalty system referred to is parallel. But does it work properly to compensate artists and creators?

Gwai, do you know how the authors of material get compensated for things borrowed from a library?

Is Netflix sort of like a library? Except if my local library doesn't have the media (book, CD, DVD, ebook etc) I want, I may request this, and it will come from another library in usually just 2 or 3 days.


Here's what got me going on this topic:

My daughter (visiting just now from UK) recommended that I try the 10+ year old TV series Firefly, but I found the only access to it online was a bitorrent, which is either not legal at all or questionable in legality (I'm not sure on the legality, but I don't think it is ethical to get it for nothing). So didn't do it.

It seems my options are to find someone who has it and watch an episode on loan, or to buy the whole series in a box in the hopes I will want to see it all. The Netflix other family members use doesn't carry it, and the library system apparently doesn't have it any more. There are no more DVD-lending stores here. It would seem the best option is the sketchy bitorrent or read a wikipedia article about each episode.
[Roll Eyes]

--------------------
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\_(ツ)_/

Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010  |  IP: Logged
seekingsister
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# 17707

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Piggybacking on fletcher christian and Leorning Cniht - the lack of global availability is the source of a huge amount of internet piracy. When I moved from the US I was shocked at how much of a delay there can be in film and television releases. Some things air more than a year later than on American television. At that point anyone with the internet may well be spoiled on it - for example the lead actor being announced as joining another show is a good clue they got killed off of the previous one.

What's worse is that this isn't something that is built into a global media market. I have relatives who live in Africa and the Middle East and they routinely get TV programs from the US earlier than in the UK. Something is off about the way media buyers in the UK operate.

DVD regions are ridiculous, but with more people streaming this is becoming less important. And anyone who knows how to set up a VPN is able to pay for UK Netflix but also access the US catalog, or to watch things like Hulu (and vice-versa - I know Americans who found ways to watch Downton Abbey on ITV Player 6 months before it aired in the US).

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Honest Ron Bacardi
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# 38

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no prophet wrote
quote:
My daughter (visiting just now from UK) recommended that I try the 10+ year old TV series Firefly, but I found the only access to it online was a bitorrent, which is either not legal at all or questionable in legality (I'm not sure on the legality, but I don't think it is ethical to get it for nothing). So didn't do it.

It seems my options are to find someone who has it and watch an episode on loan, or to buy the whole series in a box in the hopes I will want to see it all. The Netflix other family members use doesn't carry it, and the library system apparently doesn't have it any more. There are no more DVD-lending stores here. It would seem the best option is the sketchy bitorrent or read a wikipedia article about each episode.
[Roll Eyes]

Could you not just buy the DVDs? I see the series is available new on eBay for less than £10 delivered in the UK, so I imagine it wouldn't cost a lot more (maybe less) in Canada. If you don't want to keep it you can always resell it.

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Anglo-Cthulhic

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Leorning Cniht
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# 17564

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quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:

DVD regions are ridiculous, but with more people streaming this is becoming less important.

At home, where I have adequate bandwidth to stream whatever video I want, I also have a DVD player for each region that I want to play. I don't have the bandwidth to stream video in the car, or in some random hotel room, and that's where I also lack multiple DVD players.
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chris stiles
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# 12641

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quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:

DVD regions are ridiculous, but with more people streaming this is becoming less important.

The labels like region based media because it allows them to price differentiate to maximise profit (with the economic rationale being that this would enable them to spend more on production, thus enabling things would have otherwise been economically unviable - in reality this rarely applies to any particular work).

They would have extended this to audio recordings too - but those plans were scuppered by the rise of the internet.

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seekingsister
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# 17707

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quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:

DVD regions are ridiculous, but with more people streaming this is becoming less important.

At home, where I have adequate bandwidth to stream whatever video I want, I also have a DVD player for each region that I want to play. I don't have the bandwidth to stream video in the car, or in some random hotel room, and that's where I also lack multiple DVD players.
I worded it badly - you're right, there will always be a need for non-streaming media, namely in places where one can't stream. But via the internet there are ways to get around DVD release dates and region coding.
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seekingsister
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# 17707

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quote:
Originally posted by Alex Cockell:
I think "free and easy access" is more "release everything everywhere permanently, make available for a reasonable price".

That's the thing - people WILL pay. The problem is we currently have no means to.

For example I've seen people who buy iTunes gift cards from the US and set up accounts against those, so that they have access to the US store for music and movies. Granted that the US prices are slightly cheaper than the UK ones, but it's mostly so that they can get content that is delayed coming across the pond. They are actually paying for the stuff - why make it so complicated?

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Gwai
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# 11076

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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
Gwai, do you know how the authors of material get compensated for things borrowed from a library?

Is Netflix sort of like a library? Except if my local library doesn't have the media (book, CD, DVD, ebook etc) I want, I may request this, and it will come from another library in usually just 2 or 3 days.

Libraries pay a lot more for material than regular citizens do, so I'd say the authors are being compensated that way, and that seems fair enough to me.

Right, my local library cares what I want. If I request a genre book, even though I live in a large city, my local branch is always happy to get it in. Otherwise, they just order the general favorites in each genre off of a large list. So a personal request for a book is pretty much guaranteed to get listened to. Not so much on Netflix!

I hear that Amazon is trying to sell a similar service re books, and if their deal was really a library, I'd be all over it. But I gather they often don't' include new releases, and dont' include material from any publisher they want to make give them lower prices, etc. Forget that.

--------------------
A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.


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Fineline
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# 12143

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The Kindle Unlimited thing isn't very appealing to me. It's advertising it as 'freedom to explore' - the idea that you can try all kinds of books you wouldn't otherwise have tried - but you've always been able to do that anyway for free. You can buy an ebook from Amazon and if you don't want to keep it you can return it within 7 days and get your money back. And you can do that with any Kindle book - not just the selected ones.
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no prophet's flag is set so...

Proceed to see sea
# 15560

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quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
no prophet wrote
quote:
My daughter (visiting just now from UK) recommended that I try the 10+ year old TV series Firefly, but I found the only access to it online was a bitorrent, which is either not legal at all or questionable in legality (I'm not sure on the legality, but I don't think it is ethical to get it for nothing). So didn't do it.

It seems my options are to find someone who has it and watch an episode on loan, or to buy the whole series in a box in the hopes I will want to see it all. The Netflix other family members use doesn't carry it, and the library system apparently doesn't have it any more. There are no more DVD-lending stores here. It would seem the best option is the sketchy bitorrent or read a wikipedia article about each episode.
[Roll Eyes]

Could you not just buy the DVDs? I see the series is available new on eBay for less than £10 delivered in the UK, so I imagine it wouldn't cost a lot more (maybe less) in Canada. If you don't want to keep it you can always resell it.
You are correct, but I'm not likely to do it. I'm lazy. But reselling, having to buy it? Really? I doubt I'd ever resell, never sold anything on the internet, not motivated. Why can't I pay say $4 (just more than £2) and just watch an episode (or even part of an episode and quit) right now, without a mail order over the internet?

--------------------
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/

Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010  |  IP: Logged
Gwai
Shipmate
# 11076

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quote:
Originally posted by Fineline:
The Kindle Unlimited thing isn't very appealing to me. It's advertising it as 'freedom to explore' - the idea that you can try all kinds of books you wouldn't otherwise have tried - but you've always been able to do that anyway for free. You can buy an ebook from Amazon and if you don't want to keep it you can return it within 7 days and get your money back. And you can do that with any Kindle book - not just the selected ones.

If I were unethical that would mean I could read most fiction for free and then just return it since it rarely takes me more than a week to read fiction unless I want it to.

--------------------
A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.


Posts: 11914 | From: Chicago | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged
Fineline
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# 12143

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quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
If I were unethical that would mean I could read most fiction for free and then just return it since it rarely takes me more than a week to read fiction unless I want it to.

Well, it's an option Amazon provides. I'm not sure if it's unethical or not - you're not keeping the book. You're reading it and deciding whether you like it enough to keep it or whether you want to return it. You can do that in a bookshop too. Plenty of bookshops have sofas where you can sit down and read a book.
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Enoch
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Although I don't do this myself, I think there is a strong argument that where the providers of media tie things up irrationally for morally indefensible reasons, you may be breaking the law, but you are not being unethical if you can find some way of breaking their restrictions and getting away with it.

Thus, for example, there is no moral justification for area coding of DVDs. Companies do it because they can, and can make an extra turn on it. It's no more than a variety of unjust enrichment. So I can see no moral iniquity involved if one can find a way of subverting it.

The publishers of a printed book can't find a way of stopping you from reading it if you cross a frontier. There is no moral reason why the position with DVDs should be entitled to be different.

The providers may call that piracy, but it's their own fault that they've set up a a situation in which people can't see something unless they do that.

Likewise, if they don't or won't provide something at all in your market, I can't see that it's ethically wrong to get it from somewhere else, or for that matter to copy something that is out of production.

[ 26. September 2014, 20:29: Message edited by: Enoch ]

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Gwai
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# 11076

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quote:
Originally posted by Fineline:
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
If I were unethical that would mean I could read most fiction for free and then just return it since it rarely takes me more than a week to read fiction unless I want it to.

Well, it's an option Amazon provides. I'm not sure if it's unethical or not - you're not keeping the book. You're reading it and deciding whether you like it enough to keep it or whether you want to return it. You can do that in a bookshop too. Plenty of bookshops have sofas where you can sit down and read a book.
But few bookstores would welcome me if I made a habit or treating them like a library by reading many entire books but never buying a thing. I know that some bookstores do throw people out for that though I am sure many don't bother.

--------------------
A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.


Posts: 11914 | From: Chicago | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged
Paul.
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# 37

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quote:
Originally posted by Fineline:
The Kindle Unlimited thing isn't very appealing to me. It's advertising it as 'freedom to explore' - the idea that you can try all kinds of books you wouldn't otherwise have tried - but you've always been able to do that anyway for free. You can buy an ebook from Amazon and if you don't want to keep it you can return it within 7 days and get your money back. And you can do that with any Kindle book - not just the selected ones.

Yes but if you do it too often then Amazon may suspend your account.
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Anyuta
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# 14692

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Im a cord cutter. That means all my tv viewing is via internet, using a Roku player. I pay for an amazon prime account, and for Netflix. But that doesnt give me everything i would be able to watch FOR FREE on regulat broadcast tv. I wouldnt mind payinf a little bit to watc this studpff without commercials. Id be willing to deal with co ercials if it meant i could watch the shows for free. What i am not willing to do is pay a cable company top dollat to watch something with commercials. Broadcast tv is not available to me via tne airwaves for various reasons. I can watch current shows (usually 24 hr delay, which is just fine) online, but not via the Roku (on my nice, big tv). So yeah, i occasionally usr torrent to dowload shows that i have tried to watch through other means and failed. I dont feel overly guilty about it, since they have not lost ANYTHING by my doing this. They lost out by not making the show available to me for a reasonable price, or even with advertisement. Eventually they will figure out how to deal with the new model. But for now they seem to want to force viewers into their old model, which isnt working.
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Fineline
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# 12143

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quote:
Originally posted by Late Paul:
quote:
Originally posted by Fineline:
The Kindle Unlimited thing isn't very appealing to me. It's advertising it as 'freedom to explore' - the idea that you can try all kinds of books you wouldn't otherwise have tried - but you've always been able to do that anyway for free. You can buy an ebook from Amazon and if you don't want to keep it you can return it within 7 days and get your money back. And you can do that with any Kindle book - not just the selected ones.

Yes but if you do it too often then Amazon may suspend your account.
Even if you're keeping some books that you buy? Surely they wouldn't want to lose you as a customer. Or do you mean if someone never keeps anything, and always returns the whole lot? Do they have a specific written policy on this?

I've returned lots of books and kept a few that I really like, and I've never been suspended. I just get to try a wider variety of books than I would be able to afford if I had to pay for them all, and then I can discover new books and authors I might not have before. It seems a good system to me, and worth it for both seller and buyer. I don't like the sample thing - it's not the equivalent of being in a real bookshop where you have access to the whole book.

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Fineline
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# 12143

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quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
But few bookstores would welcome me if I made a habit or treating them like a library by reading many entire books but never buying a thing. I know that some bookstores do throw people out for that though I am sure many don't bother.

True, but surely the idea is that most people find that there are some books they like so much they want to keep so that they can reread them - and so they buy those ones. Rather than buying a whole lot of books not knowing which they will like - that's a bit of a risk, and also not possible if you're on a very limited budget.
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orfeo

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Australia is reputedly one of the worst countries for piracy in the world.

Many people link this directly to the fact that we have, for a Western country, poor access to product and higher prices.

It's slowly getting better: more and more often, TV networks are airing shows here within a few days of their overseas broadcast. Sometimes it's less than 24 hours. With Doctor Who it's simultaneous - if you really want to watch it at 5am on a Sunday morning, you can.

We still have, though, Foxtel as the sole pay TV provider (or at least the sole meaningful one) desperately trying to hold onto its increasingly outdated business model of making people subscribe to 50 channels of rubbish to get the 1 or 2 shows they really want. Game of Thrones became a poster-child for this in recent times, not only because it was already the most pirated show but because Foxtel sewed up an exclusive deal for the most recent season such that you could no longer buy the episodes on iTunes as they came out. People who were perfectly willing to pay a little bit of money per episode for a show they loved were not willing to take an entire subscription package of crap for the same product.

And Foxtel knows perfectly well what it's doing. When I looked at subscribing some years ago for access to certain things, I discovered that none of the most interesting things were in the basic package. They were all add-ons for extra money. Sport being the most glaring example. They know perfectly well that sport is one of the few things that people still really want to watch live. I believe they've only recently put some of the sports channels into the basic package in an attempt to drum up business.

Australia does not yet have Netflix. We do have a service called Quickflix which is similar in idea, but it hasn't yet taken off (even though I've just read reviews saying it's pretty comparable in quality). There is a feeling, though, that if Netflix does come here, with it's high brand recognition, Foxtel could be in trouble. As it is a lot of Australians are using workaround to become Netflix customers.

One factor is our relatively poor download speeds, which make streaming a less attractive proposition.

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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.

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Paul.
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# 37

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quote:
Originally posted by Fineline:
quote:
Originally posted by Late Paul:
quote:
Originally posted by Fineline:
The Kindle Unlimited thing isn't very appealing to me. It's advertising it as 'freedom to explore' - the idea that you can try all kinds of books you wouldn't otherwise have tried - but you've always been able to do that anyway for free. You can buy an ebook from Amazon and if you don't want to keep it you can return it within 7 days and get your money back. And you can do that with any Kindle book - not just the selected ones.

Yes but if you do it too often then Amazon may suspend your account.
Even if you're keeping some books that you buy? Surely they wouldn't want to lose you as a customer.
They may not but they are a retailer selling books published by others*. Since there is no physical product with an ebook What we're really talking about is licenses to use the content. Those licenses ultimately derive from the copyright owner. If Amazon never did anything about people who buy, read and return books then the copyright owners might justifiably get annoyed by this and refuse to sell through them.

So the terms Amazon offer you the customer have to be agreeable to the publisher/copyright owner. It does occur to me that I'm not sure who eats the cost of the refund - whether it's Amazon, the Publisher or both. I suspect the later since the Big 5 operate under an agency model.

quote:
Or do you mean if someone never keeps anything, and always returns the whole lot? Do they have a specific written policy on this?
I've not see a written policy on it but I am it aware of cases where it's happened. This is mostly through being on ebook sites where it's discussed from time to time. See e.g. here and here.

It does seem as though you have to have a very high return rate to trigger the alarms. Though from that second link you can see that it's lower than 100%.

quote:

I've returned lots of books and kept a few that I really like, and I've never been suspended. I just get to try a wider variety of books than I would be able to afford if I had to pay for them all, and then I can discover new books and authors I might not have before. It seems a good system to me, and worth it for both seller and buyer. I don't like the sample thing - it's not the equivalent of being in a real bookshop where you have access to the whole book.

But then being allowed to return a book no questions asked is not the case with a real bookshop either.

My feeling is that Amazon built its reputation partly on the no-quibble returns policy. I recall when they were starting out and a lot of people were still very nervous about shopping online. The idea you might be stuck with something that you didn't want or wasn't how it appeared on the webpage was strong and Amazon succeeded in overcoming that (where many others didn't) in part by the returns policy.

When they started selling ebooks they extended the returns policy to that but I think it's there for the same reason - to allow you to correct a mistaken purchase - not to sample books. And indeed if they, Amazon, considered it as a sort of lending library with an option to buy they wouldn't have set up Kindle Unlimited as it would be redundant - which is sort of where we came in.


(*yes they are also a publisher but that doesn't change the argument so let's leave that to one side)

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Enoch
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Orfeo, your description of the Australian market leaves me saying that if piracy is widespread there, the media interests deserve what they have got.

If the outlets stitch up the public, it's hard not to say the public is entitled to seize every opportunity to get its own back.

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Fineline
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# 12143

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quote:
Originally posted by Late Paul:
But then being allowed to return a book no questions asked is not the case with a real bookshop either.

True. I was thinking more that you can see the whole book in the bookshop before you buy it, whereas you can't with a Kindle book - you have to buy it first and then return it if you don't want it. They're not really comparable, I guess.

Anyway, that's good to know about the 'serial returners'. I don't know what my percentages are. I've had an Amazon account for over ten years, long before having a Kindle. I buy other things from Amazon as well as books and ebooks. I have lots of ebooks that I bought and kept and lots that I returned, for various reasons. Sometimes there are quality issues, such as lots of typos, or bad formatting. Other times, I don't like the book enough to keep it. I don't see a problem with my returning books for these reasons, although if Amazon don't like it, they should stop making it an option, or put something in their terms and conditions about it.

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Fineline
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# 12143

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quote:
Originally posted by Late Paul:
When they started selling ebooks they extended the returns policy to that but I think it's there for the same reason - to allow you to correct a mistaken purchase - not to sample books.

There is a variety of choices you can select as to why you're returning the book. Mistaken purchase is just one of them. You can return also for quality issues, or an unwanted purchase, and various other things. I have never had to lie about why I'm returning a book.
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no prophet's flag is set so...

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# 15560

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It is sort of piracy to buy a book, read it and return it? Mainly because the author would get nothing for it. But then, what about used books? My brain can't sort this out.

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Alex Cockell

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They eventually sorted it out - mostly with people forcing the music industry to eventually sell everything as unadorned MP3s, free of DRM.

The analogous situation re rental would come from music streaming services, where Deezer, Spotify etc get stuff released to them by the studios and a per-stream charge is returned through the PRS or similar collections agencies. google pay similar fees to the PRS for streaming music.

In libraries, libraries buy books and return something like 6% of the value of the book to the author when it's lent out - through the Public Lending Rights body. This is the royalty take.

Similarly - most of the film and video streaming services (Blinkbox, Netflix, Amazon Instant etc) have PRS and PPL licences to allow them to stream - and they pay massive rights fees to the studios - and often or used to often have exclusive deals with studios for content. Instead - why not have...

Digital rights wholesalers - and the studios can set up exclusive deals with these middlemen etc..

The retail entities can then set up deals with the wholesalers...

A "public streaming royalty return" entity set up like the libraries' royalty-collections agency so that a percentage cost gets returned per stream. This way, there's less need to front-load the rights fees - and everything can be made available - popular or unpopular.


Minimise the DRM and other complexity for the downstream customer. Maybe even strip it and watermark it for purchases - the average customer simply wants to play their purchases and rentals on whatever device they have without hassle.

The existence of the pirates is a marketing failure. Just like with home video - they were the ones who shook the money tree and showed Big Media where their next cash cow was.

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Alex Cockell

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With ebooks, Amazon offer a lending library as part of Amazon Prime - as do the RNIB or Audible.

There - you "borrow" books just like you do with the library - you download up to a certain number - then check them back in when you're done.

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Fineline
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# 12143

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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
It is sort of piracy to buy a book, read it and return it? Mainly because the author would get nothing for it. But then, what about used books? My brain can't sort this out.

Well, yes, there are plenty of opportunities to read books without the author profiting. You buy them if you want to keep them. But you can borrow a friend's book, or read a book in a bookshop, or participate in a book swap, or take part in BookCrossing, or all sorts of things. The majority of books I've read haven't belonged to me. Realistically, an author isn't going to get money for every person who reads a copy of their book. I don't see any of these things as piracy.
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740

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Yes, I have a company who collect various kinds of income on books I've written, as Alex has outlined. There are a lot of different kinds now, library loans, photocopying by institutions, online reproduction. It's far too complicated for an individual to deal with, so you have to pay a company to do it, and of course, they take their percentage.

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Fineline
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# 12143

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quote:
Originally posted by Alex Cockell:
With ebooks, Amazon offer a lending library as part of Amazon Prime - as do the RNIB or Audible.

Amazon is now doing a different version of this - Kindle Unlimited lets you borrow both ebooks and Audible books. And as many as you want (from their selected books) - whereas with Prime you can only borrow one book a month. You pay £7.99 per month for Kindle Unlimited.
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Leorning Cniht
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# 17564

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quote:
Originally posted by Alex Cockell:

The existence of the pirates is a marketing failure.

Not entirely. Some piracy is people obtaining things that they simply cannot obtain through legal channels.

Other piracy is the equivalent of the bloke down the pub selling "tax-free" cigarettes. It's people who want such and such a DVD, don't want to pay 25 quid for it, but will buy it at three for a fiver from some guy with a big holdall, and not care that the box doesn't look entirely authentic.

From a point of view, that's market failure. Given that the marginal cost of copying the bits is very small, a content producer should want to sell me his content for almost any price.

The "failure" lies in the impossibility of segmenting the market sufficiently finely. He should want to get 50 quid out of people who really want the DVD, 20 quid out of people who want it, and a couple of quid out of people who aren't that interested, but are prepared to give it a go on an empty afternoon. The only device the seller has available to identify these populations is time - people who really really want X will buy it at the high price when it first comes out. A bit later, he can produce a cheap version without the commemorative poster for the 20 quid crowd, but it's hard to access the few quid lot without persuading too many of the 20 quidders to wait for the even cheaper version. Therefore it's in his net best interest to ignore the cheapskates.

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Fineline
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Another thought - since 'Read an eBook Day' on 18th September, libraries in the UK seem to have really been focusing on expanding their ebook libraries, and many were tweeting about it on that day. My local library hadn't had ebooks before, but now it's started to offer them to borrow, and is currently adding more and more ebooks to the collection. Audiobooks too, I believe. All free of charge. I'm imagining there will be less demand for Kindle Unlimited as libraries develop their ebook loan resources.
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Paul.
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# 37

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quote:
Originally posted by Fineline:
quote:
Originally posted by Late Paul:
But then being allowed to return a book no questions asked is not the case with a real bookshop either.

True. I was thinking more that you can see the whole book in the bookshop before you buy it, whereas you can't with a Kindle book - you have to buy it first and then return it if you don't want it. They're not really comparable, I guess.
Well you can "see" the whole book (flick through it perhaps) but whether or not you can read it depends on the tolerance of the shop owner.

quote:
Originally posted by Fineline:
quote:
Originally posted by Late Paul:
When they started selling ebooks they extended the returns policy to that but I think it's there for the same reason - to allow you to correct a mistaken purchase - not to sample books.

There is a variety of choices you can select as to why you're returning the book. Mistaken purchase is just one of them. You can return also for quality issues, or an unwanted purchase, and various other things. I have never had to lie about why I'm returning a book.
Fair enough. I've never actually returned an ebook so I wouldn't know. I was really just pointing out that it does happen that accounts get suspended. I don't think most people are in danger. What you do with your ebooks is between you, your conscience and Amazon [Biased]

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
It is sort of piracy to buy a book, read it and return it? Mainly because the author would get nothing for it. But then, what about used books? My brain can't sort this out.

The test of piracy is not whether the author fails to make money - as has been pointed out there are libraries and second hand books - it's whether the copyright has been violated.

As long as the license under which the ebook is sold to you allows it - then you can buy, read and return it and it's not piracy. Which is the case here. However Amazon - who are licensing it to you on behalf of the copyright owner - reserve the right to cut you off if they deem you're abusing the system. Strictly this isn't part of the copyright on the book but of the terms and conditions of using Amazon's services.

It's worth pointing out that Amazon said in response to one of those stories I linked to that whilst they removed people's ability to return books they didn't remove access to existing books. Ever since the infamous 1984 incident Amazon have been very wary of appearing to remove books from people's devices even where they technically have the right to do so.

On the wider question of this thread I take a pragmatic approach. I respect copyright - my job depends on it - and try to pay for content. I've even bought cheap paperback copies of books that I've acquired "unofficial" ebook copies of to satisfy my conscience. I also think that if I pay for something that I have a reasonable expectation to be able to use it so I will break DRM on things in order to back up and use on different devices but I won't then "share" copies.

I'm also frustrated that the kind of thing that Netflix et al nod toward isn't quite there yet. Netflix is great, except when it doesn't carry that one movie I happen to want to watch. There's things I can watch via iTunes but not Google Play - which is fine but iTunes means watching it on my laptop as opposed to my TV. Now I'm not saying that justifies pirating it - but the fact is whilst I am willing to pay for something I could get for free (via piracy) I'm not willing to do so for an inferior viewing experience. ISTM that whichever service/device you buy into there are still gaps and either you have more than one, or you pirate, or you do without.

The other thing is that I'm drowning in content. My DVR is nearly full, I've got a bookcase full of DVDs, another full of books, a computer with videos and ebooks. That's why I'll be cancelling Kindle Unlimited after the 30-day free trial - because of the 400+ unread books in my calibre library.


[Ultra confused]

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lilBuddha
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# 14333

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quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by Alex Cockell:

The existence of the pirates is a marketing failure.

Not entirely. Some piracy is people obtaining things that they simply cannot obtain through legal channels.
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
And many because it is easy, low consequence theft.
Piracy is theft, regardless of the rationale.
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
[QB]
Given that the marginal cost of copying the bits is very small, a content producer should want to sell me his content for almost any price.

Producing the content is not very small cost. Distributing the content can also be very expensive. Distribution is more than sending encoded bits of plastic. It is the marketing as well. For movies, the distribution can cost as much as the production of the bloody thing in the first.

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Fineline
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# 12143

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quote:
Originally posted by Late Paul:
Ever since the infamous 1984 incident Amazon have been very wary of appearing to remove books from people's devices even where they technically have the right to do so.

I'm curious - how do they have the right to remove books that customers have paid for? They don't have the right to come to my house and take paper books I've bought, so how do they have the right to take ebooks that I've bought?

quote:
Originally posted by Late Paul:
That's why I'll be cancelling Kindle Unlimited after the 30-day free trial - because of the 400+ unread books in my calibre library.

Heh - taking advantage of a free trial to read books without paying for them, with no intention of continuing the membership, is surely no different from taking advantage of the ability to return books within seven days, with no intention of keeping the books! [Razz] In both cases, Amazon is hoping to get custom from you. In both cases, the books are being read while no profit goes to the authors.
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Alex Cockell

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Classic example of Big Media shooting themselves in the foot is re Game of Thrones piracy. Due to byzantine blocks re streaming, where ppl wanted to pay HBO directly but couldn't, torrents stepped in. Oatmeal strip covered this. Same with any film.
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Leorning Cniht
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# 17564

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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

Given that the marginal cost of copying the bits is very small, a content producer should want to sell me his content for almost any price.

Producing the content is not very small cost. Distributing the content can also be very expensive. Distribution is more than sending encoded bits of plastic. It is the marketing as well. For movies, the distribution can cost as much as the production of the bloody thing in the first.
Producing the content is indeed expensive. Marketing is expensive. But those are fixed costs, not marginal ones. The marginal cost of producing extra copies is tiny. If the content producers could find a way to sell their content for a few bucks to those who are currently consumers of pirated copies, without diverting any of the people who currently pay full price to the cheap option, they would do it, and make more money.

They don't do it, because any such scheme is likely to divert too many of the current full-price customers.

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Palimpsest
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# 16772

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quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
The marginal cost of producing extra copies is tiny. If the content producers could find a way to sell their content for a few bucks to those who are currently consumers of pirated copies, without diverting any of the people who currently pay full price to the cheap option, they would do it, and make more money.

They don't do it, because any such scheme is likely to divert too many of the current full-price customers.

Agreed. The intention of the regional DVD codes was to allow selling marginal copies at a lower cost in regions where the original full price is too expensive to sell many copies. I don't think it was very successful in many regions. Piracy is too engrained in the culture.
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orfeo

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Avoiding region coding is completely legal in Australia.

With the result that many DVD players are now region-free anyway. Why bother spending that extra time at the factory telling the player that it's a "region 4" player, when the highest court in the land has said it's perfectly okay for people to turn it back into a global player (which is how it was in the factory anyway)?

One of the best decisions the High Court ever made. It was actually with Sony Playstations, not DVD players, but the effect was to tell Sony that they couldn't get away with stopping people from using perfectly legal software they'd bought overseas.

And in general the whole attempt to divide up the global market drives me nuts. I've said it before, but I'll say it again: when it's easy for me to buy a CD from America or the UK, but often completely impossible for me to buy downloads from digital stores in those countries, something is seriously screwy with the approach being taken to digital media.

[ 28. September 2014, 06:48: Message edited by: orfeo ]

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Alex Cockell

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quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by Alex Cockell:

The existence of the pirates is a marketing failure.

Not entirely. Some piracy is people obtaining things that they simply cannot obtain through legal channels.


Quite. A marketing failure. More often than not potential customers have tried to offer money and sign up - but can't. Happened initially after the Diamond Rio was released in the early 90s.

The legit experience is slowly getting there- but for a long time, the pirates offered the better *retail experience*. Anything, playable anywhere rather than having to buy a specific device to play the sodding thing out on.

Same happened with music - and also with ebooks in the early days.

[ 28. September 2014, 09:48: Message edited by: Alex Cockell ]

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chris stiles
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# 12641

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quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
[If the content producers could find a way to sell their content for a few bucks to those who are currently consumers of pirated copies, without diverting any of the people who currently pay full price to the cheap option, they would do it, and make more money.

They don't do it, because any such scheme is likely to divert too many of the current full-price customers.

Well - the example of the intention behind region encodings is pointed out above.

There was also the flap a few years ago when it was found that Amazon were experimenting with differential pricing (offering particular people different prices based on their past history).

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Paul.
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quote:
Originally posted by Fineline:
quote:
Originally posted by Late Paul:
Ever since the infamous 1984 incident Amazon have been very wary of appearing to remove books from people's devices even where they technically have the right to do so.

I'm curious - how do they have the right to remove books that customers have paid for?
Well the point in that case was they didn't have the right to sell it in the first place. The right to remove it from your device, well I think that was buried somewhere in the terms of use, although they promised not to do that again - mostly because of the bad PR - so I can't find it in the current version.

quote:
They don't have the right to come to my house and take paper books I've bought, so how do they have the right to take ebooks that I've bought?

Well this is where analogies with paper books breaks down because a physical paper book is a different kind of thing to a license to use copyrighted material (which is what an ebook really is). I guess making an analogy with receiving stolen goods would be closer but then the store that sold it wouldn't be the one to recover it, it would be the police.

quote:
quote:
Originally posted by Late Paul:
That's why I'll be cancelling Kindle Unlimited after the 30-day free trial - because of the 400+ unread books in my calibre library.

Heh - taking advantage of a free trial to read books without paying for them, with no intention of continuing the membership, is surely no different from taking advantage of the ability to return books within seven days, with no intention of keeping the books! [Razz]
I guess it's down to our interpretation of the intent of the offer. Also, for the same reason that I probably won't continue the service, I probably won't actually get much use out of it in 30days. I signed up more to have a look at what it was about and how it works.

quote:
In both cases, Amazon is hoping to get custom from you. In both cases, the books are being read while no profit goes to the authors.
True but then the author (or her proxy the publisher) has agreed to this. I suppose you'd say they also agreed to the returns deal as well, but I'm sure it wasn't presented to them as "...and users will be able to read it for free, but if they want to re-read they can buy it".
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Enoch
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quote:
Originally posted by Late Paul:
... Well the point in that case was they didn't have the right to sell it in the first place. The right to remove it from your device, well I think that was buried somewhere in the terms of use, although they promised not to do that again - mostly because of the bad PR - so I can't find it in the current version....

Well this is where analogies with paper books breaks down because a physical paper book is a different kind of thing to a license to use copyrighted material (which is what an ebook really is). I guess making an analogy with receiving stolen goods would be closer but then the store that sold it wouldn't be the one to recover it, it would be the police. ...

I know that's the theory, but is it really that true, or if it is, should it be?

The reason why an ebook, or any other digital 'object' is framed legally as a licence is because there isn't a physical object, as there is if you buy a book, a table or a tin of baked beans. Yet you have to have bought something.

Amazon, software houses et al would like to persuade us all that we have only bought a licence, and not a 'thing' because it gives them legal and philosophical arguments for saying they can control what we've bought after we've paid for it in a way that doesn't apply if we've bought a 'thing'.

The alternative view is that what you have bought should be treated as being as similar to buying a 'thing' as it is possible to make it. Any differences are only acceptable so far as they are necessary to ensure that when one buys something digital, one has bought something, rather than nothing at all.

I know that is not how the sellers see this, but as a buyer that is how I see it.

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Paul.
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# 37

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quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Late Paul:
... Well the point in that case was they didn't have the right to sell it in the first place. The right to remove it from your device, well I think that was buried somewhere in the terms of use, although they promised not to do that again - mostly because of the bad PR - so I can't find it in the current version....

Well this is where analogies with paper books breaks down because a physical paper book is a different kind of thing to a license to use copyrighted material (which is what an ebook really is). I guess making an analogy with receiving stolen goods would be closer but then the store that sold it wouldn't be the one to recover it, it would be the police. ...

I know that's the theory, but is it really that true, or if it is, should it be?
I believe it to be true. Should it be? Good question. One I wish more people should ask because then we might start looking at the kinds of changes in the law we're probably going to need eventually.

quote:
The reason why an ebook, or any other digital 'object' is framed legally as a licence is because there isn't a physical object, as there is if you buy a book, a table or a tin of baked beans. Yet you have to have bought something.
Do you? The problem is that even saying "bought" creates certain expectations.

quote:
Amazon, software houses et al would like to persuade us all that we have only bought a licence, and not a 'thing' because it gives them legal and philosophical arguments for saying they can control what we've bought after we've paid for it in a way that doesn't apply if we've bought a 'thing'.
That's true but you have to look at not only whether it's merely convenient for Amazon et al but also actually true. I believe it to be, given current law.

quote:
The alternative view is that what you have bought should be treated as being as similar to buying a 'thing' as it is possible to make it. Any differences are only acceptable so far as they are necessary to ensure that when one buys something digital, one has bought something, rather than nothing at all.

I know that is not how the sellers see this, but as a buyer that is how I see it.

You're describing how you would like things to be, and I know lots of people who would agree with you. The point is, is that the situation at the moment?

If you think of a paper book there are two things that could be owned. The first is the physical object. The second is the copyright rights. The first can be had for a few pounds, dollars, whatever. The second is worth much more than that, especially for a popular book. We understand the difference. We know we own a book when we've bought it, and that means we can keep it, lend it, sell it on, bequeath it or otherwise dispose with the physical object as we please.

We also know - most of us - that we don't have the right to make copies and dispose of those. Because we don't own the copyright or a license from the copyright owner to do so. We do have license that goes along with the paper book, usually printed inside the first page or so, but it doesn't allow us to do much with the contents of the book apart from the physical copy.

Now what's interesting is that we get a lot of "rights" with a paper book that aren't really rights but just side-effects of the physical form. We get the ability to lend, sell, give and so on. We're used to having these but we're not, I think, used to thinking about the fact that these come from the nature of the book as an object.

When we carry that over into ebooks it becomes interesting. People expect to have similar "rights" from their ebooks. They get annoyed that they can't lend them (or are restricted as to how), can't re-sell them, can't leave them to their heirs or give them away. "Why not?" they think, "after all I bought this book didn't I?"

But now that we're dealing with a digital thing, the utility that came from the physicality would have to come another way. To do any of the things I listed you'd need to make a copy. In some cases, e.g. re-selling, you'd need to destroy the original (and prove you've done so?). Not that this couldn't be arranged. But the party that has to allow it is the copyright owner.

They could write a license with a set of terms that allowed these things and grant you that license for a suitable fee. But there's nothing to compel them to. And there's reasons they wouldn't want to. Reasons they'd want to write licenses like the ones we tend to have instead.

So to sum up - you could have a situation where we could "buy" ebooks in a way more or less like what we do with physical books, but to do so would require legislation to compel copyright owners to give a standard set of terms in a license.

I can't see that happening unless people become more aware of the issues and lobby for change. And unless the vested interests lobbying against lose the argument. The other problem is that when people rub up against these issues they don't look to change the system, they work around it - via piracy.

Posts: 3689 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged



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