Linux Format forums

Re: e-Book piracy

wyliecoyoteuk — Thu Apr 21, 2011 5:11 pm

Author: wyliecoyoteuk

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 5:11 pm

In referring to the "Kindle mechanism" I meant the way that your content can be remotely deleted by Amazon, and the narrow access tunnel offered by it.

Re: e-Book piracy

AndyBaxman — Wed Apr 20, 2011 9:49 am

Author: AndyBaxman

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 9:49 am

wyliecoyoteuk wrote:

I personally object to the Kindle mechanism, and I refuse to pay extra for a digital copy.
I never read books more than once, unless they are reference books or manuals.
I see no point in carrying around every book I've ever read, as I will probably never read them again.
I no longer buy DVDs, I rent them, watch them once and return them.
And no, I don't copy them or rip them to disc.
I realised that I had a hundred or so DVDs that I had watched once, and felt no desire to watch ever again.

The "Kindle mechanism" isn't the problem. Its the agency model used by certain publishers. It is, in effect, like the old Net Book Agreement which was ruled illegal in 1997. The OFT is looking into this "price fixing" on eBooks.

The upshot of this price fixing is that an eBook, from certain publishers, that has its price fixed in this way will be the same price irrespective of who you buy it from, or which reader you use.

I do like to read books again. Not all books. Some I read once, some I read two or three times, and some I come back to time and again. Some, I find, need reading more than once to fully appreciate them.

Same goes for DVDs. Just re-watched the Abrams Star Trek again and notice several things I missed the first and second time around, the comment from Scotty about Admiral Archer's prize beagle amongst them.

Still hate the Budweiser engineering section, however. Just makes my engineers brain go NO, NO, NO, Wrong!

Re: e-Book piracy

Ram — Wed Apr 20, 2011 9:45 am

Author: Ram

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 9:45 am

nelz wrote:

wyliecoyoteuk wrote:

I personally object to the Kindle mechanism, and I refuse to pay extra for a digital copy.
I never read books more than once, unless they are reference books or manuals.

That probably explains why half the content of my Kindle came from O'Reilly. They do have reasonable prices for e-books, even more so if you already have the print edition.

Agreed.

Re: e-Book piracy

nelz — Wed Apr 20, 2011 12:06 am

Author: nelz

Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 12:06 am

wyliecoyoteuk wrote:

I personally object to the Kindle mechanism, and I refuse to pay extra for a digital copy.
I never read books more than once, unless they are reference books or manuals.

That probably explains why half the content of my Kindle came from O'Reilly. They do have reasonable prices for e-books, even more so if you already have the print edition.

Re: e-Book piracy

wyliecoyoteuk — Tue Apr 19, 2011 10:35 pm

Author: wyliecoyoteuk

Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 10:35 pm

I personally object to the Kindle mechanism, and I refuse to pay extra for a digital copy.
I never read books more than once, unless they are reference books or manuals.
I see no point in carrying around every book I've ever read, as I will probably never read them again.
I no longer buy DVDs, I rent them, watch them once and return them.
And no, I don't copy them or rip them to disc.
I realised that I had a hundred or so DVDs that I had watched once, and felt no desire to watch ever again.

Re: e-Book piracy

heiowge — Tue Apr 19, 2011 9:41 pm

Author: heiowge

Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 9:41 pm

My wife has a hanvon one we got from ebuyer. She thought it was great. Until we charged it first time. Now we're getting a replacement after the screen refused to change.

Re: e-Book piracy

Rhakios — Tue Apr 19, 2011 8:32 pm

Author: Rhakios

Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 8:32 pm

Kindle is not the only ereader. Come to that, it isn't the only one with ridiculously over-priced books, or specious reasoning being used to "excuse" the fact.
I wasn't attempting to justify high prices by pointing out the problems inherent in electronic publishing, I was merely mentioning them.
As has already been observed, the greatest encouragement to piracy is the current high price level of ebooks.
I wonder how long it will be until a "Kindle Jon" makes it possible to read any Kindle book anywhere?

Re: e-Book piracy

AndyBaxman — Tue Apr 19, 2011 8:31 am

Author: AndyBaxman

Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 8:31 am

Rhakios wrote:

The point of difference between the old type of lending of books, CDs and such like compared to passing around digital copies is that I can lend my one copy of a book to one person at a time, then they have to give it back if I want to lend it to someone else, if they want their own copy, they are probably going to buy one, as it's easier that photocopying and binding the copies themselves. If I distribute digital copies, then I can do so to as many people as I can get the bandwidth to upload them, and with bittorrent that's very little problem, and then each person has his/her own copy as good as the original.

You can't lend, sell, give (or copy) a Kindle edition of a book. Its tied to your Amazon account, and that's that (though, obviously, there are ways and means). This restriction makes the high price of certain Kindle editions (compared to the paper editions) even more obscene. If I buy a hardback (for less then the Kindle edition in the case of Surface Detail), once I have read it I can sell it on, lend it or give it away. I can do none of those things with the Kindle edition.

IIRC, the OFT is investigating the e-Book pricing cartel operated by certain publishers. Lets hope they slap them down. Hard. I would imagine that eBook distributors (like Amazon) will want this situation resolved as well as it can only be bad for their business.

Kindle editions can be leant to another Kindle user in the US, but not in the UK (again, the publishers throwing their weight around) and a Kindle lending library operates in the US for a number of titles (again, not in the UK, again because of the publishers).

Re: e-Book piracy

heiowge — Tue Apr 19, 2011 8:13 am

Author: heiowge

Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 8:13 am

Ram wrote:

... low and behold it as a pdf of the book, on the accompanying CD.

Any chance of upping a copy to The Pirate Bay

Re: e-Book piracy

Ram — Mon Apr 18, 2011 11:27 pm

Author: Ram

Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 11:27 pm

AndyBaxman wrote:

Here's another one:-

Surface Detail

Kindle �8.99
Hardback �8.83
Paperback �6.02

I was going to get the eBook of MS Visual C# 2008, blah blah, but at only �2 more @ �17.45 I decided on the real thing, low and behold it as a pdf of the book, on the accompanying CD.

Re: e-Book piracy

Rhakios — Mon Apr 18, 2011 10:11 pm

Author: Rhakios

Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 10:11 pm

heiowge wrote:

What's weird is they think that sharing books is wrong. Does that mean every library across the country is destined to close due to sharing of copyrighted media?

Library lending is supposed to result in authors getting a modest financial return.

Quote:

If I read a book and like it, I share it. I lend it to my mum or my mate. When I've finished with it, I may give it to a charity shop.

I can't do this sort of thing nowadays with music (ok, maybe giving a cd away) as it's not legal to share.

Re: e-Book piracy

Rhakios — Mon Apr 18, 2011 10:06 pm

Author: Rhakios

Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 10:06 pm

pastychomper wrote:

I wonder how long it will be before some large publisher tries to buy up and shut down Project Gutenberg...

Wouldn't matter if they did. The books on Gutenburg are public domain in most countries, so anyone could republish them. Google were the big threat to the publishing industry as they were trying to put books which are not in the public domain on-line.

Re: e-Book piracy

heiowge — Mon Apr 18, 2011 5:19 pm

Author: heiowge

Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 5:19 pm

What's weird is they think that sharing books is wrong. Does that mean every library across the country is destined to close due to sharing of copyrighted media?

If I read a book and like it, I share it. I lend it to my mum or my mate. When I've finished with it, I may give it to a charity shop.

I can't do this sort of thing nowadays with music (ok, maybe giving a cd away) as it's not legal to share.

Re: e-Book piracy

AndyBaxman — Mon Apr 18, 2011 2:51 pm

Author: AndyBaxman

Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 2:51 pm

Here's another one:-

Surface Detail

Kindle �8.99
Hardback �8.83
Paperback �6.02

Here's a comment posted under the Metro article (online)

Quote:

you are absolutely spot on regarding publishers and the costing of ebooks. As a publisher who produces some of our catalog as kindle editions we naturally have access to our own set files, artwork, blurb and ISBNs. This makes creating Kindle versions so easy as to factor in our own time making them would be a dishonest act. Hence we price our kindle edition at around 70p which is ten times cheaper than their printed counterparts.

Which, if this person is for real, shows the scale of the profiteering racket run by some publishers.

Re: e-Book piracy

pastychomper — Mon Apr 18, 2011 1:47 pm

Author: pastychomper

Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 1:47 pm

I wonder how long it will be before some large publisher tries to buy up and shut down Project Gutenberg...