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Book Piracy as Peer Preservation

computationalculture.net

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Re: Book Piracy as Peer Preservation

#11

Post by ravenstine »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #8
y7 wrote: post #2

Article from 2014, which looks at people engaging in digital book piracy not as thieves but as modern-day librarians or collectors, who are focused more on preservation than providing easy access to the materials. Mainly, the authors write about various online libraries and how they're organized, with a small amount of technical details. I found it a somewhat interesting article, but I'd hoped they'd go a little more…

The biggest thing I'd like to see, is fine, DRM everything you want, but file an unencrypted digital master with something long-lasting like the Library of Congress, along with a firm public release date. So much software, media, and books today are not readily available anymore, without a lot of good reason for it. And if it's temporary while copyrights run out, I guess I have to understand that. But my biggest fear…

It's definitely even worse for games, as copyright law and the nature of the industry can mean that a game might not be legally obtained again for over a century. Nintendo, for example, goes out of its way to punish people for distributing games that they no longer publish or license, even despite their abandonware status.

Re: Book Piracy as Peer Preservation

#12

Post by segmondy »

tdsamardzhiev wrote: post #5

There's a huge amount of books/music/movies/games that I have no means of obtaining legally. There's also tons of stuff I don't have convenient way to buy (e.g. no way I'm paying full HBO NOW subscription for watching a single TV show). We are 16 years into 21st century now, it's about time for big-name producers to stop calling people "thieves" and offer them an acceptable service instead.

Listen, you have no right to someone's else own work. If you don't want to pay HBO NOW to watch a single TV show. No problem. If you do however pirate their show, then that's stealing and the owner has a right to call you a thief. If HBO decides to charge $1,000 per episode, that would be very outrageous, but that still doesn't give anyone the right to steal their show. BTW, I know the pain, I really want to watch Showtime's "Billions" but I'm not willing to pay $12.95 for one month to watch it. I pay for Netflix and all my shows is restricted to Netflix, youtube and what's on TV.

Re: Book Piracy as Peer Preservation

#13

Post by ideonexus »

I think the most fascinating aspect of this article is the conflict between preservation and curation. The world of books is no different than the world of content online: it's mostly low-quality and not worth the reader's time. The authors' observe that for book preservation, building a curated library of high-quality texts demands a certain amount of exclusivity in who's doing the curation. At the same time, this exclusivity increases the centralization of the repository and makes it more prone to being taken down if hosting copyrighted content. Whereas a distributed library reduces the exclusivity, but also reduces the overall quality of the library because anyone can contribute to it.

They cite Wikipedia as an example of these competing qualities, where user-contributions declined as stricter quality controls were put in place. I've watched this debate over what qualifies as "notable" for Wikipedia rage for years now, as the community tries to strike a balance between hosting an expansive encyclopedia with one that hosts relevant content that isn't watered-down with too much trivia.

I'm curious what others think about this conflict? Will algorithms and machine learning one day curate out the literary gems for us?

Re: Book Piracy as Peer Preservation

#14

Post by imgabe »

6d6b73 wrote: post #10
tdsamardzhiev wrote: post #5

There's a huge amount of books/music/movies/games that I have no means of obtaining legally. There's also tons of stuff I don't have convenient way to buy (e.g. no way I'm paying full HBO NOW subscription for watching a single TV show). We are 16 years into 21st century now, it's about time for big-name producers to stop calling people "thieves" and offer them an acceptable service instead.

It is theft whether you like it or not. They don't have to provide you with the service if they don't think you're not the right customer or if you can't afford it. You are in no way entitled to watching that single TV show if you don't have the subscription.

Theft deprives the owner of something. Making a copy leaves the original intact. Technically HBO would not be providing them with the service. HBO provided the service to someone who paid for it. That person then made a digital copy and gave it to someone else. HBO is not involved in the second transaction. After I purchase something, am I not entitled to do what I wish with it, including giving it away?

Re: Book Piracy as Peer Preservation

#16

Post by guelo »

6d6b73 wrote: post #10
tdsamardzhiev wrote: post #5

There's a huge amount of books/music/movies/games that I have no means of obtaining legally. There's also tons of stuff I don't have convenient way to buy (e.g. no way I'm paying full HBO NOW subscription for watching a single TV show). We are 16 years into 21st century now, it's about time for big-name producers to stop calling people "thieves" and offer them an acceptable service instead.

It is theft whether you like it or not. They don't have to provide you with the service if they don't think you're not the right customer or if you can't afford it. You are in no way entitled to watching that single TV show if you don't have the subscription.

I mostly agree with your sentiment but copyright infringement is not "theft".

Re: Book Piracy as Peer Preservation

#17

Post by [deleted] »

segmondy wrote: post #12
tdsamardzhiev wrote: post #5

There's a huge amount of books/music/movies/games that I have no means of obtaining legally. There's also tons of stuff I don't have convenient way to buy (e.g. no way I'm paying full HBO NOW subscription for watching a single TV show). We are 16 years into 21st century now, it's about time for big-name producers to stop calling people "thieves" and offer them an acceptable service instead.

Listen, you have no right to someone's else own work. If you don't want to pay HBO NOW to watch a single TV show. No problem. If you do however pirate their show, then that's stealing and the owner has a right to call you a thief. If HBO decides to charge $1,000 per episode, that would be very outrageous, but that still doesn't give anyone the right to steal their show. BTW, I know the pain, I really want to watch Sh…

[deleted]

Re: Book Piracy as Peer Preservation

#18

Post by seren »

imgabe wrote: post #14
6d6b73 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is theft whether you like it or not. They don't have to provide you with the service if they don't think you're not the right customer or if you can't afford it. You are in no way entitled to watching that single TV show if you don't have the subscription.

Theft deprives the owner of something. Making a copy leaves the original intact. Technically HBO would not be providing them with the service. HBO provided the service to someone who paid for it. That person then made a digital copy and gave it to someone else. HBO is not involved in the second transaction. After I purchase something, am I not entitled to do what I wish with it, including giving it away?

What about identity theft ?

Re: Book Piracy as Peer Preservation

#19

Post by mrmondo »

This is a really big problem in Australia and not just for written media but also digital content such as TV/Film/eBooks/Audiobooks

I WANT to obtain ebooks / to series etc... in a way where the authors get paid but they're either inflated in price due to the USD, not available outside of the USA, not available without some sort of awful DRM that prevents me from using a device or my choosing to read / play them on or are low quality.

IMO Amazon are the worst offenders for this, they make ebooks far more expensive then physical books and yet still plaster them with their restrictive DRM on top. A lot of their library is unavailable outside the USA or if it is - comes at a great cost. On top of this, while their ebooks readers are great I've found I really need the higher end models with the high DPI screens which are /really/ expensive outside the USA and reading on a LCD screen is just too hard.

HBO go isn't available in Australia so that's our.

I currently pay for and subscribe to:

- Audible (highly overpriced, limited content available in Australia, about to cancel)

- Netflix (well priced, good quality, poor interface and limited content available in Australia)

- Apple Music (well priced, good quality, poor interface although the latest betas on iOS 10 and iTunes are much, much better)

- Spotify (Overpriced, medium quality, good playlists / sharing features)

The cost of all these services plus the devices to use them with and the connections for them really adds up. I wish someone / the govt could just act as an international media aggregate and you pay a subscription based on what kinds / levels of content you want and they provide it from various upstream sources in standard formats (never going to happen I know).

In the past I've tried:

- Safari books online - cancelled due to extremely high costs and very restrictive DRM

- Paktpub subscription (Can't remember the name) - overpriced and quality varied greatly

- Scribd - overpriced and very hard to get what you want in Australia

- Stan - overpriced, poor interface, no 4K support

- Quickflicks - overpriced, poor interface, no 4K support

... and many others

After all this, just like with licenses software, it would actually be easier for me just to torrent (or whatever) the thing I wanted, but as I said I want to give money to the people that create and maintain the content.

The only media provider that does his well in my opinion is Bandcamp, ok they have no subscription model because that's not their thing, but I have spent more money on bandcamp than I ever did on CDs or Vinyl, and the artists get more of a cut.

Re: Book Piracy as Peer Preservation

#20

Post by imgabe »

seren wrote: post #18
imgabe wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theft deprives the owner of something. Making a copy leaves the original intact. Technically HBO would not be providing them with the service. HBO provided the service to someone who paid for it. That person then made a digital copy and gave it to someone else. HBO is not involved in the second transaction. After I purchase something, am I not entitled to do what I wish with it, including giving it away?

What about identity theft ?

The victim of identity theft is deprived of their credit rating, reputation, etc. Credit is a resource that gets used up as you use more of it or take out loans and don't pay them back. Making a copy of a digital file has no similar effect on the original owner of the file.
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