Is it ethically wrong to pirate books that you own?

[Dreadnaught]

We're talking about if you already own a book.

Explanation with a personal example. Last year we went on holiday, I took quite a few books but they made our cases quite heavy when travelling. Amanda got me for Christmas a Kindle as that way we don't need to carry all the books. Not knowing she was getting me that, a few weeks before Christmas I bought all the GRR Martin books I didn't own yet. About to go on holiday which is the perfect time for me to read, want to take the books I've bought - but not have it heavy by using the Kindle Amanda got me. If I packed the whole series of books it'd be very heavy again, which is the job of the Kindle. Is it ethically reasonable then to download the books that I already own?

I don't understand why it would be unethical. You already own IP on the book, and the library is not losing at all by your breaking the copy protection.

Illegal, definitely, under the DMCA. But unethical?

The thing (with me, at least) is I ethically struggle to see ownership of a paper book as carte blanche to take possession of that book in any format it could come in. In many ways, I think buying a digital book is paying for the specific service of digitization. And I don't think upgrades or services should be free unless they are made free by the person performing those services.

When we're talking about digital services, I think it becomes too easy to dismiss the value of that service because it's so easy to replicate. But if we were talking about more physical objects, people would have much more of a problem.

To throw out an admittedly-problematic hypothetical: I own a yellow 2012 Honda Civic with a manual gearbox. My wife wants to borrow the car but can't drive stickshift. It would not be ethical for me to go to a Honda sales lot and drive away with a yellow 2012 Honda Civic whose only difference is an automatic gearbox.

Even if I could easily create some kind of magic key to unlock this automatic Honda and drive away with it, most people would reasonably consider that theft.

So why do people not think of it as theft when we're talking about a digital good like an ebook?

[Ominous Gamer]

specific service of digitization.

In this day and age, the extra service comes into play when you buy the physical copy. The original copy is digital, and turning it into a physical copy is the "specific service". A vast majority of physical independent books Amazon sells are printed on demand, from a digital file.

Which is why no one is suggesting that its ethical to claim ownership over a physical copy if you purchased the digital version.

[RandBlade]

The thing (with me, at least) is I ethically struggle to see ownership of a paper book as carte blanche to take possession of that book in any format it could come in. In many ways, I think buying a digital book is paying for the specific service of digitization. And I don't think upgrades or services should be free unless they are made free by the person performing those services.

When we're talking about digital services, I think it becomes too easy to dismiss the value of that service because it's so easy to replicate. But if we were talking about more physical objects, people would have much more of a problem.

To throw out an admittedly-problematic hypothetical: I own a yellow 2012 Honda Civic with a manual gearbox. My wife wants to borrow the car but can't drive stickshift. It would not be ethical for me to go to a Honda sales lot and drive away with a yellow 2012 Honda Civic whose only difference is an automatic gearbox.

Even if I could easily create some kind of magic key to unlock this automatic Honda and drive away with it, most people would reasonably consider that theft.

So why do people not think of it as theft when we're talking about a digital good like an ebook?

It's a physical product, there's a difference.

I have Brandon Sanderson on Facebook. He regularly posts random stuff about his books/WoT but recently sparked an interesting discussion. He said he'd like to be able have A Memory Of Light book purchasers be able to get a free download of the ebook, and that Tor are open to the idea, just the problem is there's no workable way to do it, so could any fans suggest a way to make it work. Any suggestions have flaws/extra costs. But neither he nor the publishers like the current arrangement whereby people have to pay twice.

Spoiler:

Turns out all 5 GRR Martin books combined come in at less than 12MB. Took about 60 seconds if that to download, took longer to find the Torrent. Not sure reuploading in that 60 seconds is that major.

[Ominous Gamer]

Tor recently announced they were moving to DRM free, so as long as he and Tor keep their current attitude, torrents will take care of the rest. Tor knows this, thats why the ebook is landing 3 months after the physical book.

[Dreadnaught]

It's a physical product, there's a difference.

I have Brandon Sanderson on Facebook. He regularly posts random stuff about his books/WoT but recently sparked an interesting discussion. He said he'd like to be able have A Memory Of Light book purchasers be able to get a free download of the ebook, and that Tor are open to the idea, just the problem is there's no workable way to do it, so could any fans suggest a way to make it work. Any suggestions have flaws/extra costs. But neither he nor the publishers like the current arrangement whereby people have to pay twice.

Spoiler:

Turns out all 5 GRR Martin books combined come in at less than 12MB. Took about 60 seconds if that to download, took longer to find the Torrent. Not sure reuploading in that 60 seconds is that major.

Exactly, but why does the transition to a digital product make us ethically less inclined to see it as stealing?

Brandon Sanderson may want to offer his book for free to print book publishers, but he's probably in the minority. On the other end of the spectrum, JK Rawling's books have also not been available on ebook platforms except on a limited basis. eBooks can often deliver more royalties to authors. And, well, almost every other out there is looking for more money.

But I think the larger point is what gets me. We see a clear ethical problem with the physical, but nothing with the digital. Even though the digital product is different in some pretty fundamental ways. If it was the same, we wouldn't want it.

[wiggin]

The thing (with me, at least) is I ethically struggle to see ownership of a paper book as carte blanche to take possession of that book in any format it could come in. In many ways, I think buying a digital book is paying for the specific service of digitization. And I don't think upgrades or services should be free unless they are made free by the person performing those services.

What is the cost of this service? What is the value added? The marginal cost is just the electronic delivery - there's currently no useful meta-data associated with ebooks. I would imagine that the tiny cost of delivery is nonzero but negligible. That cost can be circumvented by having it delivered in a legal manner (e.g. a library ebook) and then cracking it.

The reverse doesn't work, because the costs of printing and delivering a physical book are non-negligible. That's the distinction you're ignoring.

When we're talking about digital services, I think it becomes too easy to dismiss the value of that service because it's so easy to replicate. But if we were talking about more physical objects, people would have much more of a problem.

To throw out an admittedly-problematic hypothetical: I own a yellow 2012 Honda Civic with a manual gearbox. My wife wants to borrow the car but can't drive stickshift. It would not be ethical for me to go to a Honda sales lot and drive away with a yellow 2012 Honda Civic whose only difference is an automatic gearbox.

No? Because the actual car you're driving off with is worth thousands of dollars of steel, plastic, etc.? IP is different from physical products.

There are two thefts that happen when you steal a book - first, theft from the publisher/distributor/retailer/etc. for the service they give you in bringing the book to you. Second, the theft from the writer for their IP. In the case of owning a physical book, you have already compensated the owner of the IP, so you only have to worry about the first cost in the case of using an ebook. If you can get the ebook without incurring any additional costs to the delivery side, there's no reason you need to compensate them - they haven't provided you a service, so why should you pay them?

[Ominous Gamer]

JK Rawling's books have also not been available on ebook platforms except on a limited basis.

Rowlings books are arguably more open than almost all the other publishers and authors. Hell, she had amazon forwarding traffic to her instead of allowing them to sell the book directly with their drm.

The delay in going to Ebook was more about pottermore than royalities.

[Dreadnaught]

What is the cost of this service? What is the value added? The marginal cost is just the electronic delivery - there's currently no useful meta-data associated with ebooks. I would imagine that the tiny cost of delivery is nonzero but negligible. That cost can be circumvented by having it delivered in a legal manner (e.g. a library ebook) and then cracking it.

The reverse doesn't work, because the costs of printing and delivering a physical book are non-negligible. That's the distinction you're ignoring.


No? Because the actual car you're driving off with is worth thousands of dollars of steel, plastic, etc.? IP is different from physical products.

There are two thefts that happen when you steal a book - first, theft from the publisher/distributor/retailer/etc. for the service they give you in bringing the book to you. Second, the theft from the writer for their IP. In the case of owning a physical book, you have already compensated the owner of the IP, so you only have to worry about the first cost in the case of using an ebook. If you can get the ebook without incurring any additional costs to the delivery side, there's no reason you need to compensate them - they haven't provided you a service, so why should you pay them?

We've certainly seen that the value of IP can be quite enormous (see: tech patent wars). The service is making the ebook digitally available and sync-able onto multiple devices. It's the 21st century; just because something isn't made of steel and plastic doesn't mean its value instantly disappears.

My concern is that we're so used to consuming content without direct monetary costs, that we are unable/unwilling to pay for certain types of content that do charge. It sounds a lot like you're saying that you don't agree with the price point for e-books, so you think it's okay to pirate them.

[wiggin]

I personally don't buy ebooks for reasons that have nothing to do with their price or business model. But as far as I can tell a pirated ebook won't be syncable across devices (anyone want to correct me on this?) because it won't be in the Amazon 'ecosystem'. As such, you're essentially taking a fancy PDF of something you already own. If the format means you can read it both on your computer and on your Kindle, that 'infrastructure' is something you paid to access by buying your Kindle and your computer - the ebook itself had nothing to do with that.

[Ominous Gamer]

The kindle format is very much closed. Its so strict that you can sometimes end up with books that only work on kindle hardware and not kindle apps. The publisher Penguin also requires that if you "check out" one of their titles instead of buying it, you are forced to transfer it using a USB.

Pirated books are DRM free books, a trend that the industry is finally moving towards. DRM free books are handled in the same manner you would handle mp3s you ripped from your personal CDs.

[wiggin]

OG, there is a small distinction between ripping a CD and having a DRM free ebook of your paid for print book. The significant difference is that you can rip a CD on your own, but most people are not going to OCR their entire paper book.

[Dreadnaught]

I personally don't buy ebooks for reasons that have nothing to do with their price or business model. But as far as I can tell a pirated ebook won't be syncable across devices (anyone want to correct me on this?) because it won't be in the Amazon 'ecosystem'. As such, you're essentially taking a fancy PDF of something you already own. If the format means you can read it both on your computer and on your Kindle, that 'infrastructure' is something you paid to access by buying your Kindle and your computer - the ebook itself had nothing to do with that.

What is the reason you don't buy them? Arguably, that infrastructure is only part of the service being provided. The digitization does matter. It's the core of what's being provided, even if it's relatively trivial. Assuming e-books are DRM free*, I still feel like it's (ethically) a separate product from a print book.


* Which is probably the direction they will move in, just like with music-- coincidentally, something Amazon has used as a big selling point.

[wiggin]

What is the reason you don't buy them? Arguably, that infrastructure is only part of the service being provided. The digitization does matter. It's the core of what's being provided, even if it's relatively trivial. Assuming e-books are DRM free*, I still feel like it's (ethically) a separate product from a print book.

What's the value added? The book is provided to them in electronic format, they just slap on copy protections and pay for the bandwidth. Take out the bandwidth concern, and there's literally no cost to them.

If books start having meta-data associated with them, that's a different story entirely. But so far they're exactly the same as print books, except they don't bother to actually print it out from the format they already have it in.


(I don't buy ebooks for esoteric personal reasons that are largely irrelevant to this discussion - suffice it to say that when I do most of my reading, I am unable to use an ebook reader. Ancillary reasons are a bit more prosaic - I enjoy physical books, I don't want to tie my entire library (and a significant investment) to the fortunes of Amazon, I am opposed to DRM in principle, paperbacks are cheaper than ebooks, I can lend physical books to people as much as I want, I can buy used physical books at a significant discount, I don't like reading off of most screens for too long, I don't want my library to be tied to buying a reader every few years as the battery/etc. dies, there's better selection and less of a wait at libraries for physical books, etc. To me, physical books are far more flexible in their uses, and I don't mind lugging one around. If I want compact reading, I'll just bring along my Economist of the week.

For the record, my wife has a Kindle and absolutely loves it. She gets around a lot of my issues because of different reading habits, and she shares an account with her mother and sister, so it drops costs quite a bit since they have similar reading tastes. She still finds the limitations of ebooks to be occasionally frustrating, though.)

[RandBlade]

What is the reason you don't buy them? Arguably, that infrastructure is only part of the service being provided. The digitization does matter. It's the core of what's being provided, even if it's relatively trivial. Assuming e-books are DRM free*, I still feel like it's (ethically) a separate product from a print book.


* Which is probably the direction they will move in, just like with music-- coincidentally, something Amazon has used as a big selling point.

No, the core of what is being provided is the content. That is why on a legal and ethical way it is perfectly OK to convert CDs to MP3s. It is only the infeasability of OCRing books yourself that make this a problem. If the content was different/superior (EG VHS->DVD->Blu-Ray) is one thing, but that's not what we're talking about.

One of my big worries about DRM electronic products is what happens if the company goes under. My parents/grandparents have books in good condition from decades ago long before Amazon was founded and companies go out of business all the time. What happens if Amazon goes bust? You may scoff, but the probability is Amazon won't exist in 100 years time. If Amazon suddenly went under and you lost your entire library and got another eReader (say a Kobo or whatever alternatives would be by then) then would you have any moral qualms with pirating in order to re-download that which you'd already legally bought from Amazon? Or would you think ou'd have to re-pay for your entire library? That is like this, the product has already been paid for.

My concern is that we're so used to consuming content without direct monetary costs, that we are unable/unwilling to pay for certain types of content that do charge. It sounds a lot like you're saying that you don't agree with the price point for e-books, so you think it's okay to pirate them.

No that's an argument often used for pirating mp3s (which clearly had never legally been bought), but not discussing that. Discussing where you already genuinely have bought a copy.

[Dreadnaught]

What's the value added? The book is provided to them in electronic format, they just slap on copy protections and pay for the bandwidth. Take out the bandwidth concern, and there's literally no cost to them.

If books start having meta-data associated with them, that's a different story entirely. But so far they're exactly the same as print books, except they don't bother to actually print it out from the format they already have it in.

No, the core of what is being provided is the content. That is why on a legal and ethical way it is perfectly OK to convert CDs to MP3s. It is only the infeasability of OCRing books yourself that make this a problem. If the content was different/superior (EG VHS->DVD->Blu-Ray) is one thing, but that's not what we're talking about.

To me, these issues still raise a significant question: we can't do the digital conversion ourselves (like we can with CDs to MP3s). Someone has to actually get the book in a different format, hack that file format and then disseminate it. This seems like a substantial difference that only further highlights the fact that a digital book is not the same as an ebook.

And it still takes effort to OCR a book. So why do we value that OCR process as nil? There are other services that have effectively zero marginal costs and yet we don't consider just taking them to be theft.

One of my big worries about DRM electronic products is what happens if the company goes under. My parents/grandparents have books in good condition from decades ago long before Amazon was founded and companies go out of business all the time. What happens if Amazon goes bust? You may scoff, but the probability is Amazon won't exist in 100 years time. If Amazon suddenly went under and you lost your entire library and got another eReader (say a Kobo or whatever alternatives would be by then) then would you have any moral qualms with pirating in order to re-download that which you'd already legally bought from Amazon? Or would you think ou'd have to re-pay for your entire library? That is like this, the product has already been paid for.
No that's an argument often used for pirating mp3s (which clearly had never legally been bought), but not discussing that. Discussing where you already genuinely have bought a copy.

I have this same concern. As you all may recall, back in 2004 I was buying music on iTunes and we were discussing music piracy. Some pointed out that I was buying into a locked format. I said I was willing to pay for it now knowing I may regret it. A few years later, I was indeed beginning to regret it and switched to DRM-free Amazon MP3s. It's my loss for those files bought earlier in the decade and that's just capitalism, I went into it fully aware of what might happen.

But I have been thinking about that issue, and I'm not sure where I ethically stand. It seems there is a narrower difference between iTunes AAC files and DRM-free MP3 files, compared to the difference between a print book and an ebook. To date I haven't done anything with my iTunes collection.

[Ominous Gamer]

OG, there is a small distinction between ripping a CD and having a DRM free ebook of your paid for print book. The significant difference is that you can rip a CD on your own, but most people are not going to OCR their entire paper book.

I was referring to your question about syncing. In that pirated books don't have that built in. You don't just add a pirated book to Amazon whispernet, just like you don't add a ripped mp3 to your itunes account.

[Ominous Gamer]

One of my big worries about DRM electronic products is what happens if the company goes under. My parents/grandparents have books in good condition from decades ago long before Amazon was founded and companies go out of business all the time. What happens if Amazon goes bust? You may scoff, but the probability is Amazon won't exist in 100 years time. If Amazon suddenly went under and you lost your entire library and got another eReader (say a Kobo or whatever alternatives would be by then) then would you have any moral qualms with pirating in order to re-download that which you'd already legally bought from Amazon? Or would you think ou'd have to re-pay for your entire library? That is like this, the product has already been paid for.

Its worse than that, yeah DRM will lock you out once the company goes under, or as has happened several times (MLB, Direct2Drive/GameFly) when the company simply decides to stop supporting the service. ebooks are licenses to read, not actual products, and they are nontransferable. Nothing new for now, but we will see the problem get larger a couple of decades down the road when parents start to die and the companies start revoking access to a lifetime of purchases.

To me, these issues still raise a significant question: we can't do the digital conversion ourselves (like we can with CDs to MP3s). Someone has to actually get the book in a different format, hack that file format and then disseminate it. This seems like a substantial difference that only further highlights the fact that a digital book is not the same as an ebook.

And it still takes effort to OCR a book. So why do we value that OCR process as nil? There are other services that have effectively zero marginal costs and yet we don't consider just taking them to be theft.

You seem stuck on books that were printed first, made digital second. How about any book written during the age of computers? Where the production effort exists in creating a physical copy instead of the OCR?

[wiggin]

To me, these issues still raise a significant question: we can't do the digital conversion ourselves (like we can with CDs to MP3s). Someone has to actually get the book in a different format, hack that file format and then disseminate it. This seems like a substantial difference that only further highlights the fact that a digital book is not the same as an ebook.

And it still takes effort to OCR a book. So why do we value that OCR process as nil? There are other services that have effectively zero marginal costs and yet we don't consider just taking them to be theft.

You only have to OCR if you're not getting an ebook directly. Ebooks were never OCRed. They were never print in the first place. If you strip out the cost of marketing/delivery, there is literally no value added. The publisher and author had a final electronic draft that they sent to Amazon (or whoever), who then merely ported it to their DRMed format and delivered it to you.

Also - what's the difference between a digital book and an ebook? I've been using them interchangeably.

[Aimless]

I think he means something along the lines of "digital book = ebook + lots of hassle related to breaking drm etc" but I can't be sure.


Re. CD:s and our powers, wasn't there a brief period of time during which some companies made it incredibly difficult and possibly dangerous for people to rip their CD:s?

[Ominous Gamer]

Digital books are ebooks

Re. CD:s and our powers, wasn't there a brief period of time during which some companies made it incredibly difficult and possibly dangerous for people to rip their CD:s?

Yeah, there were a lot of attempts to make it so that computers couldn't rip CDs, most of that ended when Sony got busted with their root kits, but you can still find these "enhanced" cds

[Steely Glint]

And it still takes effort to OCR a book.

Do you think ebooks are made by taking a physical copy of the book and scanning it?

[Dreadnaught]

You only have to OCR if you're not getting an ebook directly. Ebooks were never OCRed. They were never print in the first place. If you strip out the cost of marketing/delivery, there is literally no value added. The publisher and author had a final electronic draft that they sent to Amazon (or whoever), who then merely ported it to their DRMed format and delivered it to you.

Also - what's the difference between a digital book and an ebook? I've been using them interchangeably.

I think he means something along the lines of "digital book = ebook + lots of hassle related to breaking drm etc" but I can't be sure.


Re. CD:s and our powers, wasn't there a brief period of time during which some companies made it incredibly difficult and possibly dangerous for people to rip their CD:s?

Do you think ebooks are made by taking a physical copy of the book and scanning it?

OCR was a stupid way for me to phrase what I was trying to say. But what I'm trying to say is surprisingly hard to convey, as it's clear many of us have a pretty dramatically different ethical view on this. Let me try again.

I don't think the ease of digital replication makes it any more ethical to procure a copy of a book in a different format. Translating a book into a digital format is still a service that renders a book in a substantially different reading format than a print book.

We all agree that buying a car doesn't entitle us to a free copy of that car with slightly different features. I don't think buying a print book entitles us to a free copy of that book with slightly different features. The ease of creating a digital book is ethically meaningless to me, it's still a different product than the original print book.

If, in this digital era, I spend money on a print book, I think it's tough shit if I change my mind and decide I want a digital copy.

[Aimless]

We all agree that buying a car doesn't entitle us to a free copy of that car with slightly different features.

And for what reasons do you think we can agree on that?

[RandBlade]

If, in this digital era, I spend money on a print book, I think it's tough shit if I change my mind and decide I want a digital copy.

Do you say the same about CD->MP3 conversion? What about VCRs and DVRs?

[Dreadnaught]

And for what reasons do you think we can agree on that?

Well played.

Do you say the same about CD->MP3 conversion? What about VCRs and DVRs?

I think it's a tougher call, because we're talking about digital music format to digital music format. I was under the impression that you chose books --> ebooks as an ethical dilemma for the very reason that they are different.

But my view is generally the same. I never owned a substantial CD or VHS collection, so I never had that particular dilemma.

[RandBlade]

I was under the impression that you chose books --> ebooks as an ethical dilemma for the very reason that they are different.

I chose them because one is difficult and one is easy to convert, but are they substantially different?

Is there a substantive difference between CD->MP3 and Book->eBook? I'm not as sure as you are.

[Flixy]

I think the main difference between Dread and me is that he considers something unethical if it benefits you without paying, while I consider it unethical if it harms the seller without paying. For example, I think downloading a cd you don't already have, or stealing a car you already have, is unethical because in the first case you did not buy the album from the seller, so you deprive him of income he should have for his IP, and in the second case because you deprive him of a physical product which has intrinsic value.

If you already have the book, you have already paid for the IP, the only thing you would pay for is the service of conversion. Dread thinks it is wrong because you get a service for free, I think it's not wrong because you don't cost the seller anything - it is already converted so it doesn't cost him extra if you download it, you don't deprive him of anything with intrinsic value (like the car, which is why it's a horrible analogy), you don't even cost him bandwidth. So: nobody loses, and you win.

I'd like to point out that at least Dutch law allows this. And I did not feel like I was doing anything wrong when I downloaded films I had on DVD because my DVD player was broken.

[Ominous Gamer]

Translating a book into a digital format

You are still getting this shit backwards. I'm assuming on purpose at this point.

[RandBlade]

You are still getting this shit backwards. I'm assuming on purpose at this point.

To be fair to Dread there probably is a difference between the format they use to print it, and the format they sell it for eReaders. That is I assume what he's referring to.

[Ominous Gamer]

they are both digital formats, so there is no "translating into". You might as well compare the complications between converting between rtf and txt