Ebooks, Ebook Piracy, File Sharing and Authorial Hypocrisy
You can’t throw a virtual stone in the digital world without hitting a post that talks about pirates. No, not the swashbuckling kind. The kind that infringe on people’s copyrights. Nearly every single post I have read by authors on the publishing industry and ebooks has some discussion of piracy in it. The fact is that many authors either don’t understand the basics of copyright law, don’t understand the spirit in which copyright law was originally written, or don’t respect anyone’s copyright outside of their circle of influence.
[ETA: The person below now understands what she did was wrong. However, I am leaving this intact as an educational post to prove my point.]
Take this person, for instance. This author rants about the scourge of ebook piracy and then proceeds to lift an entire article off of CNN and reposts it, without permission, in her blog, IN THE VERY SAME POST. Really, people? Really?
I’ve saved a screencap of the post and my response to her in a screencap. (No, it is not further copyright infringement for me to repost her blog post, by the way, because I am doing so for the edification of the public and for the purposes of critique.) The author in question did not critique Matt Frisch’s article or quote from it; she COPIED it, WORD-FOR-WORD, and PASTED it into her entry. The fact that she attributed it to the author changes nothing. CNN and Mr. Frisch aren’t making a dime off of her blog post. She is now a pirate. She is now a “thief.”
I put the word “thief” in Scare Quotes because some authors bandy it about whenever they talk about piracy — of print books, of ebooks, of films, of music, of software. The problem with this conflation of copyright infringement with theft is that we’re using a moral judgment to talk about a legal concept in the same discussion and failing to differentiate between a loss of profit due to non-profit infringement and a loss of profit due to a loss of physical property, not to mention a loss of profit due to for-profit/commercial piracy ventures.
By its very definition, theft describes a loss in physical property by an owner. Physical property and intellectual property are not the same. Period. It astounds me how many times people have to point this out before blogging authors ‘get it.’
It is so difficult for me to respect fellow authors when they don’t know the difference between a format for software, counter-culture, creative license alternatives to copyright, and copyright infringement, like Alexie Sherman. I’m sad now, because I cannot support one of the few Native American writers of literature. How can I give this man my money when he thinks the Internet is a harbinger of doom?
The man could take a few pointers from Paul Coelho, for one. As well as a heavy dose of reality.
This is kind of the way I feel about Shiloh Walker (only she’s not representing any oppressed group that I’m not already a part of obviously). I enjoy the genres in which she writes. I think writers who look to the future and believe in actively engaging with their readers are to be lauded. However, I can NOT, in good conscience, give my money to someone who thinks that cutting off someone’s lifeline (the Internet) is a proportional response to copyright infringement. I’ll buy her books used or rent them from a library or not read them.
The logic of the “three strikes” law is absurd. Given the amount of activities in our daily lives that rely on the internet for everything from telephone directories to maps to movie times to reviews to sources of income to cheap methods of communication, I would argue that having an Internet connection is more important than having a car in many cases, especially if you live in a metropolitan area. I know I rely on the web for my livelihood, as does Mrs. Walker for at least part of hers. I use it to order my medicines, check the weather, blog, write, communicate, and coordinate travel plans. Such is our burden: the limiting factor of our existence becomes an indispensable one.
Some thoughts to consider:
· We don’t take shoplifters’ driver’s licenses away when they steal comic books. Or TVs (such is the common comparison, despite the innacurate comparison of physical theft to IP infringement).
· Most people share an ISP and an IP address with other family members or roommates. Punishing innocent people, including the disabled, the mobility-impaired, and the innocent along with the guilty is not the best way to win supporters for your cause.
· Wi-fi signals that consumers set up can leave them open to roving attacks and parasitic activity by neighbors and crackers (the hackers without ethics kind, not the back-country white people kind).
Let me be clear: I have had people plagiarize my work. I have had people infringe on my copyrights by taking my work without permission. I have had people take my work and try to make money off of it (commercial piracy). Guess which one of the three pissed me off the least?
When I was plagiarized, it hurt like hell. When someone pirated my work to make a few cents, I was steamed. The person who just downloaded my stuff without paying for it? Who says they would have paid for it in the first place?
That’s not where I want to focus my time and energy. The people who resell books on eBay make me steamed. I want them fined and kicked out. Those are the true ebook “pirates.”
Illegal file-sharing is not the same as commercial piracy. THIS is commercial piracy. They are not the same. Just saying. Shame on eBay for letting sellers continue to break the law with impunity.
I have such mixed feelings about file sharing. On the one hand, it's going to happen and as far as I can tell it doesn't necessarily kill sales. I mean I have KEPT free in a lot of venues in PDF, but sell it on the Kindle for a buck. I still am selling now a little over 500 copies a month. Despite it being free like everywhere AND file shared on torrent sites and such on top of that.
I have such mixed feelings about file sharing. On the one hand, it's going to happen and as far as I can tell it doesn't necessarily kill sales. I mean I have KEPT free in a lot of venues in PDF, but sell it on the Kindle for a buck. I still am selling now a little over 500 copies a month. Despite it being free like everywhere AND file shared on torrent sites and such on top of that.
I'm not sure if it's a big threat to sales right now because like you say, not all of those people would have bought anyway. And I get that intellectual property and physical property are different, but the problem comes in when a whole generation is raised to believe if it's digital they can steal it off the internet and it's okay.
When this becomes the overwhelming mentality then it will significantly financially hurt authors. And authors already don't make enough money to have to deal with it. We're talking about stealing someone's livelihood and turning them into a slave class where they basically work for free because people feel entitled to "take."
I've seen a lot of Shiloh's posts on this subject and I do think they get a little "emotionally loud." But then I get really emotionally loud about topics that I'm passionate about as well, so I have no room to judge.
As for the internet suspension thing, I'm not sure. I can see a million ways that it could become a bigger problem than a help but it DOES on some level make some kind of logistical sense. Maybe a year is too long though. What about three months. If you REALLY need the internet then you can use an internet cafe.
What we're talking about is INCONVENIENCING someone who stole and distributed someone else's work. And actually I think it shouldn't necessarily be the person who downloads because in the grand scheme it's not individual downloaders that are causing the issue. The punishment doesn't fit the crime when someone who downloads something loses their internet for a long time. And even though it's unlikely, there are cases where people think if something is on the internet for free they can have it and it's okay.
No, the people I would support this type of punishment for are the people who UPLOAD other people's free content to be downloaded thousands of times. Without people uploading free content that didn't belong to them, there would be no issue because people who wanted stuff for free wouldn't have anywhere to go get it.
And no one can argue that someone uploading content that isn't theirs to just give away to people doesn't know what they're doing is wrong. They know and they don't care. They aren't just sharing something they love with a few friends, they're redistributing it to thousands of people and helping to make stealing that much easier.
So yeah… sure it's draconian, but all someone has to do is not distribute other people's shit. I think losing internet for awhile for people who consistently use the internet to break the law and steal from people, is fair.
I'm coming in late to this discussion, but I must applaud you for one of the most rational takes on file sharing and it's issues that I have read from any author. I have added dozens of authors to my Do Not Read list because of their ridiculous rants about pirating – not that they don't have the right to be upset, I understand that completely, but the ones who try to convince people that 1) every download is a lost sale, 2) no one who pirates ever turns around and buys the ebook if they liked it, 3) copyright infringement is equal to physical theft and 4) infringers (and, as you said, the innocent people that share their computers) deserve to lose their internet service, are way too extreme in their positions and don't warrant my time or money.
You, on the other hand, are clearly brilliant and I will definitely look into buying something of yours soon. Thanks for the does of pragmatism in an otherwise frequently nonsensical debate.
Thanks, Stacey. When I publish something under this name (I currently publish non-fiction under a different name), I will be sure to let you know!
Sorry this is such a delayed reply, Zoe! I figured I owed you a response, and since you've just posted twice about this topic on your own blog…feel free not to reply and all that, because in principle, my view isn't that immutable or in dire opposition here.
I want the laws to change. Until they do, I think the punishment should fit the crime. But what does that actually mean?
The problem is that with torrents, EVERYONE is an uploader and EVERYONE is a downloader. The first and main use of torrents was to legally distribute transformative performance art, in this case, podcasts and radioplays, for my production company. That was how we advertised and how our shows became really popular. There are seeders (people who have the complete file and are only "uploading" to other users) and leechers (people only downloading from other people and not sharing at all). Unless you are a leecher, you are an uploader, and most users ban leechers from sharing with them fairly quickly, so it's very difficult to download large file collections without also uploading. With file locker type sites, the issue of uploaders vs. downloaders is more clear-cut.
So no, I don't think that all uploaders are created equal, especially when it's difficult to find the original seeder who is probably safely ensconced behind several proxies and outside of U.S. jurisdiction. Nor do I think making an example out of people like Jammie Thomas by fining them hundreds of thousands of dollars per song and bankrupting them for life is either useful, fair, or just. But copyright enforcers and their lawyers will try to sue for the maximum amounts under the law, so supporting laws that fine people and letting those decisions pass without legal challenges means that the RIAA and the MPAA are, in the end, creating policies by setting precedents that will be enforced in future cases in the same ways.
I wish there were some way to seize digital property without a massive invasion of privacy, like scanning software or something that could narrow down information to potentially infringing files for a human to sort through, thereby allowing seizure of illegal goods without having a technician pawing through your legal porn collection or love letters or trade secrets or something. I would only support that in the event of multiple violations in excess of a large amount of money and after several prior warnings.
I just now saw your reply. I think people shouldn't be stealing shit. I mean maybe that's simplistic and I'm sure "some" legal stuff gets passed around on torrent sites, but I can't get that worked up about the idea of people losing internet privileges temporarily for doing internet crime. You say people shouldn't lose their driver's license for shoplifting (in your original post). But they DO lose it for DUI.
Since file sharing happens on the Internet as an abuse of their Internet privilege AND in direct violation of the TOS of their ISP, then yes, they should lose their Internet. Maybe in incremental amounts… like 2 weeks for first violation, a month, 6 weeks, 6 months, etc. Until it gets into their thick head that if they want to use the internet with the other civilized people, they need to stop stealing shit.
People feeling they have a right to steal from me just cause they can makes me SO angry, I can't even talk about it without pissing people off. But why shouldn't I be angry?
Intellectual property is different than physical property, but it's still mine. It's still stealing hard work I did without compensating me for it. And honestly I think I'd be a lot more upset if everybody was stealing my writing and not paying for it than if they stole my TV. Because my writing is personal. It's a part of me. A TV is an impersonal inanimate object.
The whole thing makes me feel pretty violated, not to mention the fact that some day in the future I could lose a livelihood I'm just now starting to see potential for because of shitheads who think it's cool to steal… er… "file share". I just feel that my rights should be upheld and that of every other artist. Whatever punishment will lessen the behavior, whether it's fines or loss of Internet, I don't care. I just want to be compensated for my work.
I work too hard and charge too little anyway to have people pirating me.
I don't believe every download is a lost sale, but I do fail to see why someone feels they have the right to read something then decide if they "want to" pay for it or not. This is not a tipping system. I'm not a waitress. I create a product expecting to be compensated for it.
I think if you were an author you'd feel differently. The reason authors get so crazy about it is because we feel completely helpless over the issue. There is nothing in place actively enforcing the law on the matter and meanwhile people are just running around stealing and distributing more of our work.
It's like spitting on me.
And pirates don't care. They don't give a crap. They just want to be entertained for free. No one who steals from me is my fan.
I don't think there's any sense to pirating you or anyone else, especially not with samples on the Kindle and iBooks now. (Although I was furious the other day when I wanted a book that had no e-version. AUGH. Thank God for libraries.)
Still, I was a lot more angry when I was plagiarized than when my non-fiction was pirated. Sure, part of it was the ease of consequences to the plagiarizer versus the pirater(s). Subconsciously, I don't like feeling powerless, and that probably had a lot to do with my different reactions. I feel like I can win against a plagiarizer.
With pirates, I know that the more I yell and scream about something I don't have control over, the more people I'm alienating.
I don't know the term limit for HADOPI or the Australian three strikes law. I do think that the punishment should fit the crime. Comparing content theft/copyright infringement/piracy with drunk driving is disingenuous — these people certainly aren't risking people's lives or their own, no matter how shitty it makes artists feel.
I think it's easy to get emotional about someone messing around with our expressions, our art. Part of my promise to myself when discussing creative property and infringement/piracy is to remove my emotions from the equation. I think appeals to morality and compassion work with politics, not with technology and the law. (I didn't say this in Konrath's blog, but the rape analogy was offensive. I'm a rape survivor, and content theft hits a completely different part of my mind than rape does, and they didn't feel at all similar to me. I think extreme analogies just don't work in these arguments.)
Part of the problem with current law is that we are talking about intangible property. People in general simply do not see it as having the same value, and they don't think of it as depriving the seller of the property — even though they do deprive them of profit.
We're just going to have to agree to disagree about three strikes. I cannot support such draconian measures, especially if the punishment costs far more monetarily to the perpetrator than the crime does to the victim. I've never agreed with the extensive fines the courts have awarded the RIAA for song downloads either, as they haven't deterred the offenses they intended them to stop. In short, I don't believe in harsh punishments for property crimes unless the courts can prove immense harm or loss, and I don't think they have in terms of digital infringement.
Without file-sharing, my voice-acting career would not have existed beyond a few friends listening to our podcasts. I never once found unauthorized downloads of our original shows, even though they weren't on torrents, because we offered higher quality versions on CDs and lower quality versions for free. Yet the website still made plenty of money for years and still does well. It would be incredibly unfair to ban or filter a type of technology because some people misuse it. I don't appreciate being punished for what other people do.
You have every right to be angry! It's of course your right to pursue pirates of your work, and I hope you're successful in stopping them. For me, I chose a while ago to spend my time on things that make me less stressed out.
I agree that we should agree to disagree, but one last point I'll make… There is more than one way to put someone's life in danger. I'm talking about the risk of losing a potential livelihood. I have an anxiety disorder. I can't keep normal jobs. All I have is my writing. If piracy gets completely out of control and the government doesn't step in and do SOMETHING, then yes, it puts my life at risk just like a drunk driver, because we live in a society where money is not a luxury, but a necessity for survival. If something happened to my husband, and I was making decent money from writing, but it eroded further and further away and I couldn't afford health insurance and something happened and I couldn't pay for the kind of care that would give me a chance, I could die.
That's the world we live in. So it's not just a little thing to me. Taking someone's internet away for stealing to discourage the behavior, is something I'm 100% behind. You can also lose your license if you get too many speeding tickets. Even if you aren't endangering a single life, but just drive about 10 miles over the speed limit and get caught a lot.
I'm sorry you were raped and were offended, but I've been raped too. Maybe I process emotion differently than you, but both things felt like a personal violation to me. Piracy is a much smaller one, but it's like Chinese water torture. Drip Drip Drip. The rape was ONE day. And ONE experience. It happened, and it was awful, and it took months to be able to start to heal, but then it was over and I could. I don't call myself a rape survivor though because I refuse to label myself for life as a victim. (And I'm not saying that to be offensive, but the term "rape survivor" defines someone FOR LIFE by that experience and I refuse to be a part of that social mentality.)
But if I was given a choice to go back and experience that one awful day again and the emotional aftermath, or end up destitute someday when piracy got out of control and I couldn't feed myself, I would choose to go back and redo that day. Because it would be done and over and I wouldn't have to live in fear of losing everything some day because of selfish assholes who think stealing from me is cool.
Survival is the first rule. Rape is awful. But so is starving in a ditch. So is living in poverty. So are a lot of things. I would never try to diminish someone else's experience, but I won't let that one experience define me.
Either way though, the analogy was never meant to say they were "exactly the same" but merely to explain WHY some artists are so upset by it from the point of view of personal violation. Again, not everybody processes things the same way emotionally. Clearly it was too emotional a point to make. And no one could listen to the analogy without it hitting some personal hot button for them.
I'm sure a lot of the offense from those who were offended was because they were raped or someone they knew was raped and they felt that I couldn't possibly have had that experience or I would never use such an example. Well, they were wrong. I know what sexual violation feels like.
And I don't waste time chasing down pirates because it is POINTLESS. The second a torrent is stopped, another one begins. I'm sorry but unless the technology can actually be regulated, there HAS to be some kind of punishment for perpetrators of the crime that will actually put some kind of threat behind the idea of stealing other people's work. Nothing hits home like loss of Internet.
Obviously you are free to hold an alternate viewpoint.
The last line of my last post (rereading it the next day) sounds a little snarky. And I absolutely didn't mean to come off snarky. I was "trying" to acknowledge that it's okay for us to hold opposing viewpoints on this without one feeling the need to "change the other's mind" but I'm paranoid it didn't come off that way.
I'm also paranoid I might have hit some other nerve with the other part of my post that touched on the sensitive issue. But yeah. There is some stuff I don't know how to talk about because it's too raw for people. I forget that I had a time when it was too raw for me and just because I'm not still at that point doesn't mean other people aren't. What happened to me happened several years ago and there were mitigating circumstances which allowed me to get closure most women never get.
So if I was insensitive yet again, I apologize. That is not my intent. I'm just saying. I've been there too. I may process certain emotions differently. I don't know.
Hey, it’s okay. I knew what you were trying to say! I’m positive I know what you think now, since I read your blog and the same other blogs as well.
No need to apologize.
Thanks, Persephone!
I am sorry someone raped you and glad you are strong enough to move on. I wasn’t trying to play oppression olympics – I operate on the assumption that most women have either been assaulted or harassed or stalked or attacked, so I didn’t assume you used the metaphor without regard. You seemed to use it with a clear choice, just one I wouldn’t have made at the time. (JFYI – I use ‘rape survivor’ as a term in opposition to ‘victim.’ It really doesn’t define who I am. If it did, the adult rape and assaults would have triggered some kind of PTSD feedback loop from the childhood one, and then I would never leave my room, and that lets them win.)
The three strikes thing really bothers me both legally and morally. Not that I think the U.S. is going to go that far within the next year or so, but I share an IP address with family because I have a disability and can’t live on my own. I pretty much depend on it for work. I don’t think I’m responsible for my collegiate brother’s behavior (I assume he’s downloaded games). The second our ISP pulls our service because of some draconian law, I’ll have the ACLU on the phone. But yeah, YMMV.
LMAO @ "oppression olympics". And I understand your viewpoints. Everybody uses or doesn't use diff terminology for their own reasons. I think when I used the example I used it because I felt I had the "right" to use it as someone who has experienced that. However, when I used it I didn't take into consideration that most people don't KNOW that about me. So many would assume that I was talking out of my ass and didn't understand what I was talking about… thereby in some way lessening their experience.
And even if they did know that about me, that doesn't stop it from being an uncomfortable trigger for THEM. So, yeah. I'm not the only person with rights and when I'm at someone else's house or blog, I need to think before I type. I think it would have been a different matter if I'd made the example on my own blog. Because then people can just opt out of visiting my blog if they find me offensive. But it's not fair to put someone through that when they weren't coming to my blog and I was a guest on someone else's.
I appreciate Joe not going to terror level orange over it though. He could have if he'd wanted to. It's his blog.
I also agree with you with regard to not punishing someone for someone else's crime. I think it could work out if there was a protocol where if the person didn't share a computer with others, they would lose internet for awhile, and if they did, they would be fined heavily. I absolutely don't believe in everybody being punished for other people's wrongdoings. It just seemed to me (and still does) that the threat of loss of Internet might be a good deterrent. Especially if it was enforced often enough that people felt it was a real threat.
But many people share one ISP and that does become a significant issue. If only everybody had their own computers and ISPs. lol
I know! I want my own IP. Hell, I want my own ISP. Maybe someday when I have enough dough to foot the 10 grand a month bill. LOL.
I hope you enjoy your internet break. I taught myself to be able to disengage from the Internet for days at a time. People in university didn't understand how I could not answer their emails for days at a time. I replied, "It's easy if you remember that you survived childhood without a smartphone or a laptop." Though I suppose many people my brother's age were using computers by age 5, whereas the only reason I used one from the age of 4 was because Dad was one of the few people who own an IBM and a dot-matrix printer at the time. Oh, the days of Sopwith, Eggbert, and eventually Carmen Santiago in the U.S.A!
Thanks, Persephone! I'm going to do this every Thursday through Sunday.