Why Your e-Books Are No Longer Yours 295
Predictions Market sends us to Gizmodo for an interesting take on the question: when you "buy" "content" for Amazon's Kindle or the Sony Reader, are you buying a crippled license to intellectual property when you download, or are you buying a book? If the latter, then the first sale doctrine, which lets you hawk your old Harry Potter hardcovers on eBay, would apply. Some law students at Columbia took a swing at the question and Gizmodo reprints the "surprisingly readable" legal summary. Short answer: those restrictive licenses may very well be legal, and even if you had rights under the first sale doctrine, you might only be able to resell or give away your Kindle — not a copy of the work.
Re:I got a better lawyer (Score:3, Interesting)
The Madness Continues (Score:5, Interesting)
What's happened since is that the creators sold out to corporations and the corporations have been throwing their weight around with our lawmakers. The term of copyright has been extended and re-extended to the point where virtually nothing is entering the public domain anymore. They've even filed (and received) copyrights on things that were previously in the public domain.
Not satisfied with their greedy taking of the public domain, they decided to move on to getting paid multiple times for the same thing. Enter "digital rights management" and such travesties as the DMCA. That effectively puts an end to the first sale doctrine and completes the process of locking up all "intellectual property" (interesting phrase, isn't it?) and completely eliminates any possibility of anything entering the public domain.
The deal was that we'd give them a exclusive right over the works for a limited time in exchange for them releasing the works to the public domain. Our corporate government has eliminated the need for the rights holders to release their works to the public domain, so the deal is broken. They don't deserve their exclusive right over the work either; the deal is broken, remember?
This will all work out in the long term, our corporate masters will do their utmost to spin this into something that's supposedly good for us. But we're not fooled, are we?
Re:The Madness Continues (Score:5, Interesting)
not only that but make it law that they can declare what ever value they like for their IP, BUT anyone can purchase it from them for that price.
so they can give a true value for their IP, get all the protections of regular property in exchange for paying tax on it.
the current setup is a total free fucking ride for so called IP companys.
reduced rights for reduced price (Score:5, Interesting)
With the VHS tape, we are not so lucky. Though VHS was relatively easy to copy, people want to put you in jail for ripping a DVD. Madness. Waste of police enforcement resources. But people are happy because frankly, in inflation adjusted terms, movies are comparatively cheap now, unless you pay the early adopter fee. In addition, studios add original content to DVDs so it not just the same old stale product.
What I can't understand is how they expect to move towards downloaded movies, that cost more than a DVD and has less content, or ebooks that have nothing but restrictions. It is not that first sale doctrine should necessarily apply. We are not buying a physical product, at least not in most cases. But If I the lowly consumer must give up some flexibility, then so should the publisher
And herein, I believe is the problem. We see overall that publishers are not making equal sacrifices. We here that studios are still charging packaging and return product percentages when there are not packaging or physical product. Likewise newspaper prices have been going up, allegedly, because of the increasing price of paper, ink, and transportation, yet many publishers refuse to leave those expensive relics behind. Evidently those items are not so expensive when compared to the loss of physical ad revenue. The NYT Times want $15 a month for the electronic edition.
So here is the issue we are going to see with E-Books. Cost of a paperback, $8. Cost of an E-Book, $10. Fine, there is a connivence fee, but if I can't resell it, if I can't put it on whatever device I want to use a the moment, I can;t return it the next day, then why the hell am I a paying the same amount for a book? To maintain the luxury corporate offices in New York, Paris, and London. I don't think so. Just like iTMS, Just like the DVD, if you are going to restrict use, give me something in return. For books the logical thing is price. No paper costs, no overstock costs, no shipping costs. I know the publishers are saying, well, a hardback is $30, so we are giving you a 60% discount. But you are not. I could wait a month or two and buy that hardback second hand for $10. Now I can't. The publisher will be getting all the money for every sales. So compromise and don't be the greedy bastards that never learn and put this country on the brink of financial crisis every 40 years of so. Sell the ebooks for $5-8 and I bet that all this will go away. If you are going to create a market where you control everything, be a compassionate fascist and give your peasants a break.
Garage Sales (Score:4, Interesting)
I have at least a years backlog built up to read.
If people turn their backs on the cash grab, then the folks trying to grab cash will painfully learn the lesson.
Hypothetically... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Fine idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
the **AA always use that point, but everybody knows that theyare the only one who are going to lose in the new system (or in this case, the publishers are).
They only sell a centralised organisation to distribute content. And there is nothing they could invent to preserve the same insane margins that they had in the old system (well, publishers may not do as much money as Universal, but still).
On the contray, authors can find inventive new ways to reach the public and leverage the increased audiance and ease of use to get as much or more revenues.
Maybe some authors won't do as much money anymore; maybe some won't even make a living and will have to find an other job. But I don't think that there will be that many of them; and by definition, they won't be missed very much.
And if you don't beleive that the new system can reward authors, look at blogs: millions of authors getting advertising money, which is based directly on their success, and will either make them some extra cash or push them to make blogging their day job.
Re:I got a better lawyer (Score:3, Interesting)
So, only books count as content in your world? I see many a ways to make content that builds upon others, expanding all. Cooperation is almost always better than competition, except in cases that all sides gain from ones work. Consider it, if you will, a challenge of ideologies: a Vi vs Emacs, or KDE vs Gnome, or KOffice vs OppenOffice.. Advancements in one lead to advancements in all, at the detriment of none.
And, I guess we can't count on creators to make content freely available, can we? Something about Trent Reznor rings a bell.. or that sci-fi publisher that gives books out online.. or a multitude of short story writers that freely write because they enjoy telling a story... These people most assuredly do not exist.
True, we do enjoy eating, but people who have that need to create will do so, monetarily or not. It is our best interest that they continue to do so, without the parasites that live upon them currently.
Re:This is 100% consistent with current copyright (Score:1, Interesting)
Since the deleting part is not verifiable and violates human nature, the courts give the copyright owner the benefit of the doubt at the expense of the buyer's first sale rights.
DRM could be used to verify that the deletion happened, but the copyright owners have no incentive to set up such a system.
Perhaps the courts will eventually figure this out and shift the benefit of the doubt in the consumer's favor.
If the copyright owner is not willing to set up a civilized DRM system, then the buyer should be trusted to perform the deletion.
Re:Fine idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
As for how you make money, why do authors deserve a perpetual income from a one-time creation?
Write a book, get lifelong monopoly rights. Write a song, get lifetime royalties but no control. Build a chair, sell it once. Design a neat house, watch everyone design their own with your neat idea while you get nothing. Do someone's accounting and have no rights to the figures. Spend time and resources compiling a factual text and find all the facts duplicated on someone's website.
It's a little arbitrary what's blessed.
Why do you, by virtue of the specific way you make marks on paper, deserve society footing the bill for your copyright protection?
Without chair-builder's monopoly rights, do carpenters stop making chairs? Without control over similar designs, do architects stop designing houses? Without protection for facts, do news agencies quit reporting?
Some profit motives (like writing games) goes away, but others remain (sponsoring a game to sell console hardware). id Software wouldn't have the incentive to write Quake, but what if Sony had them write it for the Playstation, to encourage gamers to use their product? Sony payed a lot for temporary exclusivity of Grand Theft Auto (not technologically enforced - simply because only the playstation port was released).
Re:Mod Parent Up and REJECT BOOK ADVERTIZING!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
What is so bad about having, for example, a mention in the acknowledgments or preface "this book sponsored by so-and-so"?
Just because web advertisers overdo advertising to the point that we're all pretty much "ad-blind" doesn't mean that, properly done, an ebook won't be effective.
Most books don't even earn thair advance money - which is typically less than $5,000 http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2005/10/05/author-advance-survey-version-20/ [tobiasbuckell.com] - note the comments about self-selection that would tend to bias the reported amount upward.
So, rather than having a seriously limited run, why not make it so that it's free for people to pass around, etc? The books that are little more than ad-paks will be displaced by the higher-quality books with only one or two ads, since people are more likely to find the latter more useful and more likely to pass a copy or 5 along to friends and coworkers.
"Free is good" - free as in cost, free as in the right to make copies and pass them along, free as in the author can choose who and how the sponsor is presented in his or her work.
Re:I got a better lawyer^Widea (Score:3, Interesting)
Which would you rather have?
Having a business act as your books' sponsor doesn't mean turning it into the eBook equivalent of an ad-jammed web page. That would be counter-productive. A notice that "this book is sponsored by xyz corp" on the front page, and an ad on one the inside cover pages for the same sponsor, with no other advertising by the sponsor or anyone else (so as not to dilute the ads' value) should be sufficient if the eBook is any good.
Now which of the two above options appeals more to advertisers? An eBook that has only limited distribution rights, and that they can't give away ... or one that, if it's any good, will be passed around all over the place? And which of the two will they be more likely to promote?
Free (as in freedom) wins every time, if done right.
Re:Fine idea. (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fine idea. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Mod Parent Up and REJECT BOOK ADVERTIZING!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
I want to answer your question with one of my own. What is so bad about having legislators or judges in the government who are sponsored by so-and-so? I admit that the comparison between entertainment and politics is extreme, but hopefully you agree that ensuring a stream of money to finance future projects is as important for writers as it is for politicians. A writer who takes money from Exxon might be tempted or persuaded to change minor points in his or her plotline to be more oil-friendly.
I agree. In my original post I mentioned giving readers a "read now, pay later" option. This would benefit the economy by ensuring that only authors with good stories will develop readerships. And *those* readers with tell their friends. And a fraction of the satisfied readers will click on the appropriate "Donate now" links on the novel's website and the author will get a very clear idea whether people are "buying" his (or her) work or not. In theory, writers who sell well will get the coveted opportunity to quit their day jobs and write full-time.
I even encourage giving interested parties the freedom to develop derivative works, but only on stories which have produced a certain level of revenue to satisfy the needs of the author (i.e. to prevent Hollywood from producing a film and profit from it without paying a dime for the rights). You can read more about that theory here [2076book.com].