11 ms·

A Story About Piracy

106 points by cwyers 8y ago

luqven 8y ago
Could t agree more, save for one point; include the kindle/ereader version with the print copy. It’s the only reason I would ever consider downloading a PDF of a book. I buy it and love it, only I can’t take it with me on top of the 1000 other things in my bag. So now I’m looking for a pdf..
computator 8y ago
I say with sadness that the Internet has nearly killed the prospect of making a living as an author, and no amount of passionate speech is going to change that fact. No one should go into any of the following professions with any expectation of making money: 1) Writing of any kind (fiction, non-fiction, technical articles, journalism -- forget about it) 2) Digital art of any kind (see DeviantArt for millions of super-talented creations that haven't earned a cent) 3) Photography of any kind (see Shutterfly for millions of photos better than anything you ever took and yet no one will ever pay for) 4) Composing music or lyrics It rather surprises me that software, a creative and digital medium like the above, is not futile and that you can still make a good living at it.
- draugadrotten 8y ago
  You are confusing "art" for the purpose of "art" with work done for the purpose of something to be done. In particular, you believe it is possible to make a living writing software. Yes, indeed can be, as long as you write exactly the bespoke software your customer demands. If you would expect to be paid by someone to create software in general, there is no way. The internet is full of free software which can be compared to stock photos for photographers.
  - zzzcpan 8y ago
    Yeah, making a living writing software in a creative sense was never even possible, since software was free to begin with. It was always an equivalent of being hired to write pr articles, make banners, logos, take wedding photos, etc.
- prepend 8y ago
  Photography is alive and well as a service rather than a thing. The days of buying a print are gone (or will be soon) but tons of people make a living doing portraits, weddings, events, headshots, etc. It’s a different model, but I suspect more money is made because taking pictures is hard. The pictures are free (ie, included) but it costs a lot to hire a photographer. That’s how software lives as a profession.
  - samastur 8y ago
    It is alive, but certainly not well. There are fewer making a living doing it and among those who are, most earn far less than they used to. Source: my wife is a photographer and consequently I follow photographers more than I'd otherwise.
    - prepend 8y ago
      Funny my wife is a photographer too and I follow lots of photogs and see growth over the past year. BLS [0] is forecasting -6% drop from 2016 to 2016, but 12% growth in self employed photographers. So yeah, it’s not doing so well in general. But it’s gangbusters in her segment (all digital experience photography) [0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/mobile/photographers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/mobile/photo...
- bitwize 8y ago
  That's because there's still a huge market for bespoke software that serves a particular need. There's a nontrivial market for bespoke art and music too, so if artists and musicians need a steady income, they have those options. You're right, though, the scene sucks. Computers and the internet have destroyed the incentive for creativity. Absent a total Butlerian jihad scale ban on computers, the best solution I can think of is standardized, strong DRM at the hardware level implemented by a consortium of OEMs and backed up with force of law DMCA style.
- robjan 8y ago
  There have always been many writers, artists, composers who make little or no money doing what they do. The internet has just made it more apparent that these people exist. If anything, it has given these people more opportunities to get discovered and eventually be able to make a living. As an anecdote I have a few friends (used to work in the fashion industry) whose photography got picked by big brands and now make quite a tidy sum in advertising. They would probably never have been discovered if it wasn't for the internet because they were just doing it as a hobby.
- edouard-harris 8y ago
  Software used to be rife with piracy too, until the problem was solved by SaaS.
- mirimir 8y ago
  It's true that "the Internet has nearly killed the prospect of making a living as an author". But maybe there are other ways to reward authors. My first career was doing academic science. As a grad student and postdoc, grants paid my salary. As a professor, universities mostly did. I never earned anything from stuff that I published. Indeed, I had to pay to have it published. But of course, it was publications that kept me employed. And got me grants. I don't know what that would look like for authors. But without an alternative, the publishing industry will demand police-state level DRM, and that would be horrible.
- SolaceQuantum 8y ago
  I can't say I agree with the first two. You can make money, good money in fact, as a romance self-published author. You can also make excellent money as a digital artist drawing for niche audiences (furries are well known for dropping a ton of money on 'fursona' stuff). Patreon remains alive and well, also.
- njepa 8y ago
  > I say with sadness that the Internet has nearly killed the prospect of making a living as an author, and no amount of passionate speech is going to change that fact. As far as I know not only are there more authors than ever, but more authors making a living than ever. What the Internet killed isn't being an author, but the exclusivity of being an author, which is a good thing for the majority of people. The problem is that the egalitarian nature of the Internet (at least in the sense of barrier to entry) doesn't extend to society. When you might spend a significant part of your working life paying for housing, most other things are relatively unimportant for ones prospect of doing other things. > It rather surprises me that software, a creative and digital medium like the above, is not futile and that you can still make a good living at it. It is to some extent. But there is enough people entering the field for it to not be that noticeable.
- module0000 8y ago
  >> It rather surprises me that software, a creative and digital medium like the above, is not futile and that you can still make a good living at it. Anyone can write a story, create a drawing, or take a picture. It may be a bad story, a crude drawing, or a poor picture, but they can be done. However...software cannot be made by an novice. You can't wing it, have beginners luck, or stumble through it. No amount of "can do attitude" will make your code compile. Hence, you can still make a good living at it. If writing software was easy, everyone would be doing it.
  - deadbunny 8y ago
    That's some peak HN nonsense right there. Anyone can write code that compiles and does what they want with a bit of "can do attitude". Not everyone can write decent code that is maintainable.
    - tonyarkles 8y ago
      This has always been the promise of e.g. PHP. There's been a ton of people who were complete novices, whose first lines of code were a .php file that they uploaded over FTP to some shared hosting. What I will grant is that a novice is going to be completely lost if they try to start with a "modern" app. There's way too many moving parts. When webpack (implicitly included in e.g. create-react-app) fails to build because something's wrong in an implicit dependency, a novice is going to be totally screwed.
      - dstola 8y ago
        I think that is more of a fault with "modern" apps than it is with web developing in general, ie, dependency hell with arcane libraries doing god knows what for god knows what reason. If you simplify, then anyone and their grandma can write a basic html page with some tutorials and google-fu.
- 0815test 8y ago
  > I say with sadness that the Internet has nearly killed the prospect of making a living as an author, and no amount of passionate speech is going to change that fact. ... You know that crowdfunding is a thing, right? If you're good at what you do, and choose a business model that's actually in line with the work you're doing, you don't NEED to care about piracy. You can fully monetize your work in a very consumer-friendly way, whwre the more people pirate it, the better! The one creative medium that probably won't work well with crowdfunding models is live-action movies and AAA games. But that has more to do with just how incredibly costly these are to produce in the first place - it's really no surprise that people would balk at funding that kind of money, even in a distributed, "grassroots" way!
- carnagii 8y ago
  there is far more money being made off of all of the forms of art you mention than ever before in history. there are more books being published, more photos taken, etc, etc. it was never easy to make money off of writing before. it still isn't. given than many more people are doing it the proportion of failures to successes is higher and the earnings are more widely dispersed. people don't usually make money off of software directly but usually by using software to enable some sort of process that they can charge for. software engineers make money the same way ghost writers, or script writers, or other real writing professionals make money. they get a spec and they implement it. the difference between professionals and artists is that professionals get paid up front.
- mrighele 8y ago
  Internet may have killed the prospect of making a living as an author "the traditional way", but it allows other ways. Many artists makes a living out of Patreon. According to them [1], there are people that made $150k+ in a year authoring videos or podcasts. You can find people making a living writing fiction [2], producing music or photography. [1] https://blog.patreon.com/top-earners-2016 https://blog.patreon.com/top-earners-2016 [2] https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators
- exolymph 8y ago
  Not at all true and easily falsifiable by looking at top YouTubers, Instagrammers, Patreons, self-published authors, etc. It's a power law thing — a small number of creators can make a living, a slightly larger number can make _some_ money but will still need a day job, and then there's a huge long tail of people who make nothing from their art.
- johnisgood 8y ago
  I am not sure... browsing Patreon, I see that many artists earn a lot of money for say, digital art.
zaarn 8y ago
I think this is more a story about the publisher; it wasn't piracy that decided to cut the print, it was the publisher. However, the problem with "piracy doesn't hurt sales" is that it is only true when you provide a service just as good as the pirates. If buying your book on amazon is a hassle, moreso than downloading a PDF on a forum, then people will pirate it. Amazon requires you to search the book, put it in your basket, go to checkout, pay, then download it on your kindle and read. The forum download requires you to download it and put it on your kindle. Maybe it is time for a Netflix for Books, especially with more digital books being sold. That my assertion holds water is I think proven by piracy being on the rise again, now that streaming services have more exclusives, making it harder and more expensive to get the shows legitimately.
- Tomte 8y ago
  Downloading to Kindle is automatic. Amazon's Netflix is Kindle Unlimited.
  - zaarn 8y ago
    Then Kindle Unlimited might not be hassle free enough or priced too high for the selection if piracy continues to be a problem. The competition operates with zero cost to the consumer, works 24/7 to bring the newest content to the end user as fast as possible and has more employees. Amazon doesn't compete with that.
  - alpaca128 8y ago
    > Downloading to Kindle is automatic. Except when it isn't. The last time I was on vacation I learned the hard way that sometimes the Kindle will create an entry for a new book but only download it when you try to read it... So I'd recommend opening all newly purchased and "downloaded" books beforehand to make sure the books were really downloaded.
- jasonkester 8y ago
  I have no idea how to get a random PDF onto my kindle. Getting a book there is easy though. You can find and buy one on the device itself, or find and buy one on Amazon and it'll magically show up on the device. It literally is just clicking a single button. I can't even imagine a way you could remove any steps from the process if you were designing it from scratch.
mirimir 8y ago
> Before you continue, an update from us > Tumblr is now part of the Oath family. Please review Tumblr’s updated Terms of Service and European Privacy Policy. Due to EU data protection laws, we (Oath), our vendors and our partners need your consent to set cookies on your device to use your search, location and browsing data to understand your interests and personalise and measure ads on our products. Oath will also provide personalised ads to you on our partners’ products. Scroll down to review some privacy updates and set your preferences. > Tip: Log in to your account to avoid repeating this across your devices. Damn. Oath are unmitigated evil. And that BS does not satisfy GDPR. Needing to track for personalized ads is not a valid business purpose. Anyone have a reachable link? Edit: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:L4D4ANYBLNgJ:maggie-stiefvater.tumblr.com/post/166952028861/ive-decided-to-tell-you-guys-a-story-about+&cd=6&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:L4D4AN...
- llampx 8y ago
  Right click -> Open in private window
  - mirimir 8y ago
    Thanks, but that doesn't work for me. And anyway, I always use private windows. I'm pretty sure that it's just my German IP address that's triggering it.
- deadbunny 8y ago
  If you don't care about cookies then this[1] works great. It nuked that popover for me. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-about-cookies/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a...
jumbopapa 8y ago
All I ask is that an ebook be included with the physical copy. I don't want to haul the physical copy around, but I do want to support authors. I've been using the library lately anyways. I'm so far behind on books that I've wanted to read that there's no real reason to follow new releases, so the library typically has what I want.
gnomewascool 8y ago
Archive.today link to avoid tumblr's "consent" page, which blocks NoScript and is generally annoying: http://archive.fo/0T6Nb http://archive.fo/0T6Nb More on topic, please do pay for creative (and technical!) work that you get for free (legally or otherwise), if you enjoy it.
- sempron64 8y ago
  Funnily I found that the article reads perfectly fine on Firefox Mobile with NoScript -- I didn't even notice that it was on Tumblr until reading the comments.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    That's probably because you're not in the EU.
- Kerrick 8y ago
  There is terrific irony in this comment, encouraging people to read an article about the dangers of piracy... which has itself been pirated on an "archive" site.
  - exolymph 8y ago
    Eh, that's not pirating. It's not like she was charging people to look at the Tumblr post.
drewg123 8y ago
I wonder how much of this is due to greedy publishers overpricing ebooks? I just looked up one of her books ("The Raven King"). Amazon has the paperback for $9.45 and the e-book for $11.99. In what world does it make any sense for an ebook to cost more than a physical book? The physical book needs to be printed, warehoused and delivered. The ebook just just bits in the cloud that cost cents to store and transmit to customers. I do not personally think that this justifies piracy, but it might explain why some people feel justified in pirating books.
- latortuga 8y ago
  This is a cost-centric view of the price, when a value-centric view may be more useful. The ebook can be downloaded and taken everywhere without having to lug and lose an extra item in your bag. The ebook can be read on multiple devices seamlessly. The ebook can be retrieved from the seller in the event you lose it. And the content is the same, you're paying for the same work. So you are paying $2 more for a ton of increased convenience. You can rent physical DVDs from the library for free. Yet you pay for Netflix. Such a greedy publisher, enabling us to do things more easily.
  - drewg123 8y ago
    To turn that around, one could argue the ebook has a lower value since it is easily pirated. It is competing with a version of itself that costs $0.00 and a few minutes of web searching.
    - dagw 8y ago
      Exactly. I can buy the ebook for $12 or for $10 I can buy the physical book, convince myself I've done right by the author, and download the ebook for free if I need it.
    - mirimir 8y ago
      Given a choice between $0 and ~$12, it seems that many will choose $0. Even though that's illegal, hurts the author, and reduces the chances of future work from them. The experiment described in TFA is pretty clearcut. She saturated the torrents with fakes, and more people bought authorized copies. But another experiment would be more interesting. Cut the price of the ebook substantially, and look at aggregate sales. After all, the marginal cost of ebooks is ~$0. And downloading torrents is more hassle (and more risky) than buying from Amazon or whatever. Maybe there's a price point that would minimize piracy and maximize sales.
anhner 8y ago
What the author didn't (and couldn't) include in their calculations is how many of those that bought the fourth book were hooked in the series BECAUSE they pirated the book(s). How many sales would she have had if there were absolutely no copies available online for free for any of the books? I admit, I pirated when I was young because I didn't have any money and many books weren't available in my country (or would only become available after some years). Now that I have money and I'm into reading, I spend a lot more on books than I would have if reading wasn't available to me.
- llampx 8y ago
  If someone pirated book one and/or book two, what is the likelihood that they'll go out and buy book three? Keeping in mind that some % of people will have a conscience twinge or be earning much more than previously so will feel like they can afford the book rather than just go on over to their favorite site and download it.
  - deogeo 8y ago
    A study was done on this question, and it found the effect of piracy on sales is negligible/immeasurably small: https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-infringement-study/ https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-infringement-s... The study was done with public funds, but since publishers didn't like its findings, it was buried. So publishers are misusing public money to try and mislead people into supporting more restrictive copyright laws, and they're using lobbying and legalized bribes to get elected officials to pass those laws. They use lies, deception, and bribery in a hostile attempt to reduce our freedom so they can increase their profits. So why the hell should we respect their IP, when every cent they earn will be used against us?
AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
It's impressive that people will suffer the agony of trying to read a book in PDF form for the sake of getting it for free. After discovering the EPUB/MOBI formats and the joy of having text dynamically scale on my phone/tablet, it's very difficult to go back trying to read an extensive document in PDF. On anything but a PC it just feels archaic.
- fvjft 8y ago
  She calls it PDF but maybe she just means any ebook format. Also PDF can be text (instead of scanned pictures, etc) and can easily be converted to any other text format, from EPUB to TXT.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
  EPUB/MOBI is good for prose. On the other hand, as of today, technical documents, scientific articles, anything with nontrivial illustrations/typesetting has to be displayed in PDF to avoid unexpected results. Maybe we'll see changes in this regard, facilitated by the emerging interactive jupyter-like document formats, but PDF is here to stay for a while.
  - alpaca128 8y ago
    Sure, but if you've got an ebook reader(which usually means 6-7 inch screen size) you don't want to use PDF unless it's absolutely necessary.
jasonkester 8y ago
Authors need to frame the conversation better: It's a contract. You don't get to read my book unless you pay me money. It doesn't matter that the author still has a copy or whether you think you're "stealing". None of that matters. You can do whatever you like, so long as you give money to the author before you consume their thing. That's the deal, take it or leave it. Frame the transaction that way, and at least you won't get so many people who think they haven't done anything wrong.
- lambda_lover 8y ago
  So if I go to my local library and check out a copy of the book (that my taxes paid for, presumably) I'm stealing from the author? I pirate most of my ebooks because they're typically poorly made ports of the physical books. When I truly enjoy reading a book, I order a physical copy and add it to my shelf, so the physical copy becomes a) a conversation piece in my home 2) a decoration 3) available for my next read. But because I do most of my reading on the subway or while travelling, I still lean toward using my Kindle most of the time.
- exolymph 8y ago
  Nah, that won't make a difference. People who pirate media know that they're accessing the content illicitly, they just rationalize it because it's convenient. For example, if a movie costs more than $5 to rent on Amazon Prime, I'm probably gonna pirate it. Not because I think I "deserve" to do so, but 1) it's possible and 2) minor hassle < $5.
thraway-burnout 8y ago
There's no such thing as piracy. If your business model doesn't work in a post-physical-scarcity world, you need to change your business model.
- thraway-burnout 8y ago
  Peeps, downvoting is easy. Anyone has counter-arguments?
  - zzzcpan 8y ago
    Piracy related downvotes are political. But I think your comment makes some sense: fighting piracy is fighting against freedom, for censorship and authoritarinism, a world where you might not even have a freedom to write a book to begin with.
  - andrewflnr 8y ago
    > There's no such thing as piracy. There's no counter-argument because you have no argument at all, just a brazenly re-defined term. A rational discussion requires shared language. You've thrown that out the door right at the start.
- carnagii 8y ago
  in a post physical scarcity world ideas are the only things with any value.
Lt_Riza_Hawkeye 8y ago
I find it hilarious that they have https working properly, but visiting this URL with https redirects back to http
aaron695 8y ago
People seem to be missing the fact the book was ONLY available as a pirate copy, this leaves fans with hard options. This seems like step one of issues to solve, don't pre-release ebooks.
- RandomBacon 8y ago
  Agreed. If you have fans, they will do whatever they can to read it as soon as possible. Example: people lining up at book stores for midnight releases of Harry Potter novels. I imagine if the e-arc was leaked after the release date (after the vast majority of people bought an ebook copy), then the e-arc would have had a negligable affect on sales.
forgetmyname 8y ago
I hold nothing agains the author other than using a post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy to support her narrative. Success will be possible through accepting the existing paradigm rather than spending time railing against it.
godelski 8y ago
Are there studies about how piracy affects different industries? I would imagine that books are different than movies or music. My reasoning: Books take a lot of effort to get through. If you are going to read a book you're really going to invest time into it. (assumption: everyone that would actually purchase the book intends to read it) Movies are just an hour or two. Not much time investment. Many times people will sit down to watch a movie they don't care much about just to kill time, or put it on in the background. Like someone might pirate a movie because they 1) can't find it playing in theaters around them (more common than you think) 2) friends told you not to waste your money 3) you're bored of the shit on Netflix and need some other background noise while you browse the internet. Music is often used as background noise too, and I imagine this changes the psychological impact of piracy. Also, I think I lot of people feel like the movie studios, record labels, and publishers are just over charging them. It's not hard to see, especially with the first two. A $20 movie (before popcorn) for an hour and a half of "ehh" and the studio made tens of millions of dollars in box office. Or knowing an artist gets chump per album sold (or worse when streaming). I would suspect people take this same notion to books. Especially when they see that an ebook is more expensive than the physical one. Most people interpret this as "well that's messed up". But I'd also imagine that book sales are hit harder than music and movies (at least to the artists).
- larkeith 8y ago
  It would also be interesting to see the impact of distribution platforms and media formats - one would imagine that more fragmented markets (e.g. HBO exclusive shows) have higher incidents of piracy, as consumers can then find all their interests in one centralized location, rather than a dozen different subscription services. DRM also presumably provides some increase - while it's (thankfully) dead for music, it seems alive and well for TV.
johnny313 8y ago
This is a great experiment, and shows the value of getting solid data to back up a theory.
licebmi__at__ 8y ago
This seems to me like a story about viral marketing rather than about piracy. For my experience from the time where I spent more time on leisure sites and fandom sites, it's pretty likely we would organize a scavenger hunt and had a lot of discussions if we encounter a fake ebook with the characteristics described. That certainly would look like a viral marketing campaing.
content-maker 8y ago
Disclaimer: I made some passive money selling software and I've been damaged by piracy (so much that I had to stop selling). I was lucky enough to be my own publisher, though. I still think that piracy should be legal, while breaking a contract and redistributing should be punished. This shouldn't happen automatically (like the copyright infringement letters in Germany) or handled by taxes (like the hard disk tax in some European countries), it needs to be handled in court, as a breach of contract. The fact that this is not the default and that your government/ISP is selling your data so easily, really points out how this is just lobbying from the media corporations and the umpteenth case of corruption of the government. What if justice is too slow? Complain about your inefficient public courts and push for a private, faster system. If you look at this from a wider perspective, people able to make money passively work once and gains for months or years to come. It depends on the type of good you're producing - but it can be wildly profitable or put you on a diet. Given you're profiting from selling one thing to many, it should be your problem enforcing and/or suing people sharing your work. You have one-to-many benefits, you get one-to-many costs. Will piracy kill some content and push the market in a different direction? Most likely, but that's what people want. You can see it in software with SaaS, in movies with Netflix, in music with Spotify. I know it sucks to be in the spot of penniless painters, but it's how society evolved. You need to evolve yourself.

106 points by cwyers 8y ago

Could t agree more, save for one point; include the kindle/ereader version with the print copy. It’s the only reason I would ever consider downloading a PDF of a book. I buy it and love it, only I can’t take it with me on top of the 1000 other things in my bag. So now I’m looking for a pdf..

computator 8y ago

I say with sadness that the Internet has nearly killed the prospect of making a living as an author, and no amount of passionate speech is going to change that fact. No one should go into any of the following professions with any expectation of making money: 1) Writing of any kind (fiction, non-fiction, technical articles, journalism -- forget about it) 2) Digital art of any kind (see DeviantArt for millions of super-talented creations that haven't earned a cent) 3) Photography of any kind (see Shutterfly for millions of photos better than anything you ever took and yet no one will ever pay for) 4) Composing music or lyrics It rather surprises me that software, a creative and digital medium like the above, is not futile and that you can still make a good living at it.

draugadrotten 8y ago
You are confusing "art" for the purpose of "art" with work done for the purpose of something to be done. In particular, you believe it is possible to make a living writing software. Yes, indeed can be, as long as you write exactly the bespoke software your customer demands. If you would expect to be paid by someone to create software in general, there is no way. The internet is full of free software which can be compared to stock photos for photographers.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  Yeah, making a living writing software in a creative sense was never even possible, since software was free to begin with. It was always an equivalent of being hired to write pr articles, make banners, logos, take wedding photos, etc.
prepend 8y ago
Photography is alive and well as a service rather than a thing. The days of buying a print are gone (or will be soon) but tons of people make a living doing portraits, weddings, events, headshots, etc. It’s a different model, but I suspect more money is made because taking pictures is hard. The pictures are free (ie, included) but it costs a lot to hire a photographer. That’s how software lives as a profession.
- samastur 8y ago
  It is alive, but certainly not well. There are fewer making a living doing it and among those who are, most earn far less than they used to. Source: my wife is a photographer and consequently I follow photographers more than I'd otherwise.
  - prepend 8y ago
    Funny my wife is a photographer too and I follow lots of photogs and see growth over the past year. BLS [0] is forecasting -6% drop from 2016 to 2016, but 12% growth in self employed photographers. So yeah, it’s not doing so well in general. But it’s gangbusters in her segment (all digital experience photography) [0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/mobile/photographers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/mobile/photo...
bitwize 8y ago
That's because there's still a huge market for bespoke software that serves a particular need. There's a nontrivial market for bespoke art and music too, so if artists and musicians need a steady income, they have those options. You're right, though, the scene sucks. Computers and the internet have destroyed the incentive for creativity. Absent a total Butlerian jihad scale ban on computers, the best solution I can think of is standardized, strong DRM at the hardware level implemented by a consortium of OEMs and backed up with force of law DMCA style.
robjan 8y ago
There have always been many writers, artists, composers who make little or no money doing what they do. The internet has just made it more apparent that these people exist. If anything, it has given these people more opportunities to get discovered and eventually be able to make a living. As an anecdote I have a few friends (used to work in the fashion industry) whose photography got picked by big brands and now make quite a tidy sum in advertising. They would probably never have been discovered if it wasn't for the internet because they were just doing it as a hobby.
edouard-harris 8y ago
Software used to be rife with piracy too, until the problem was solved by SaaS.
mirimir 8y ago
It's true that "the Internet has nearly killed the prospect of making a living as an author". But maybe there are other ways to reward authors. My first career was doing academic science. As a grad student and postdoc, grants paid my salary. As a professor, universities mostly did. I never earned anything from stuff that I published. Indeed, I had to pay to have it published. But of course, it was publications that kept me employed. And got me grants. I don't know what that would look like for authors. But without an alternative, the publishing industry will demand police-state level DRM, and that would be horrible.
SolaceQuantum 8y ago
I can't say I agree with the first two. You can make money, good money in fact, as a romance self-published author. You can also make excellent money as a digital artist drawing for niche audiences (furries are well known for dropping a ton of money on 'fursona' stuff). Patreon remains alive and well, also.
njepa 8y ago
> I say with sadness that the Internet has nearly killed the prospect of making a living as an author, and no amount of passionate speech is going to change that fact. As far as I know not only are there more authors than ever, but more authors making a living than ever. What the Internet killed isn't being an author, but the exclusivity of being an author, which is a good thing for the majority of people. The problem is that the egalitarian nature of the Internet (at least in the sense of barrier to entry) doesn't extend to society. When you might spend a significant part of your working life paying for housing, most other things are relatively unimportant for ones prospect of doing other things. > It rather surprises me that software, a creative and digital medium like the above, is not futile and that you can still make a good living at it. It is to some extent. But there is enough people entering the field for it to not be that noticeable.
module0000 8y ago
>> It rather surprises me that software, a creative and digital medium like the above, is not futile and that you can still make a good living at it. Anyone can write a story, create a drawing, or take a picture. It may be a bad story, a crude drawing, or a poor picture, but they can be done. However...software cannot be made by an novice. You can't wing it, have beginners luck, or stumble through it. No amount of "can do attitude" will make your code compile. Hence, you can still make a good living at it. If writing software was easy, everyone would be doing it.
- deadbunny 8y ago
  That's some peak HN nonsense right there. Anyone can write code that compiles and does what they want with a bit of "can do attitude". Not everyone can write decent code that is maintainable.
  - tonyarkles 8y ago
    This has always been the promise of e.g. PHP. There's been a ton of people who were complete novices, whose first lines of code were a .php file that they uploaded over FTP to some shared hosting. What I will grant is that a novice is going to be completely lost if they try to start with a "modern" app. There's way too many moving parts. When webpack (implicitly included in e.g. create-react-app) fails to build because something's wrong in an implicit dependency, a novice is going to be totally screwed.
    - dstola 8y ago
      I think that is more of a fault with "modern" apps than it is with web developing in general, ie, dependency hell with arcane libraries doing god knows what for god knows what reason. If you simplify, then anyone and their grandma can write a basic html page with some tutorials and google-fu.
0815test 8y ago
> I say with sadness that the Internet has nearly killed the prospect of making a living as an author, and no amount of passionate speech is going to change that fact. ... You know that crowdfunding is a thing, right? If you're good at what you do, and choose a business model that's actually in line with the work you're doing, you don't NEED to care about piracy. You can fully monetize your work in a very consumer-friendly way, whwre the more people pirate it, the better! The one creative medium that probably won't work well with crowdfunding models is live-action movies and AAA games. But that has more to do with just how incredibly costly these are to produce in the first place - it's really no surprise that people would balk at funding that kind of money, even in a distributed, "grassroots" way!
carnagii 8y ago
there is far more money being made off of all of the forms of art you mention than ever before in history. there are more books being published, more photos taken, etc, etc. it was never easy to make money off of writing before. it still isn't. given than many more people are doing it the proportion of failures to successes is higher and the earnings are more widely dispersed. people don't usually make money off of software directly but usually by using software to enable some sort of process that they can charge for. software engineers make money the same way ghost writers, or script writers, or other real writing professionals make money. they get a spec and they implement it. the difference between professionals and artists is that professionals get paid up front.
mrighele 8y ago
Internet may have killed the prospect of making a living as an author "the traditional way", but it allows other ways. Many artists makes a living out of Patreon. According to them [1], there are people that made $150k+ in a year authoring videos or podcasts. You can find people making a living writing fiction [2], producing music or photography. [1] https://blog.patreon.com/top-earners-2016 https://blog.patreon.com/top-earners-2016 [2] https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators
exolymph 8y ago
Not at all true and easily falsifiable by looking at top YouTubers, Instagrammers, Patreons, self-published authors, etc. It's a power law thing — a small number of creators can make a living, a slightly larger number can make _some_ money but will still need a day job, and then there's a huge long tail of people who make nothing from their art.
johnisgood 8y ago
I am not sure... browsing Patreon, I see that many artists earn a lot of money for say, digital art.

zaarn 8y ago

I think this is more a story about the publisher; it wasn't piracy that decided to cut the print, it was the publisher. However, the problem with "piracy doesn't hurt sales" is that it is only true when you provide a service just as good as the pirates. If buying your book on amazon is a hassle, moreso than downloading a PDF on a forum, then people will pirate it. Amazon requires you to search the book, put it in your basket, go to checkout, pay, then download it on your kindle and read. The forum download requires you to download it and put it on your kindle. Maybe it is time for a Netflix for Books, especially with more digital books being sold. That my assertion holds water is I think proven by piracy being on the rise again, now that streaming services have more exclusives, making it harder and more expensive to get the shows legitimately.

Tomte 8y ago
Downloading to Kindle is automatic. Amazon's Netflix is Kindle Unlimited.
- zaarn 8y ago
  Then Kindle Unlimited might not be hassle free enough or priced too high for the selection if piracy continues to be a problem. The competition operates with zero cost to the consumer, works 24/7 to bring the newest content to the end user as fast as possible and has more employees. Amazon doesn't compete with that.
- alpaca128 8y ago
  > Downloading to Kindle is automatic. Except when it isn't. The last time I was on vacation I learned the hard way that sometimes the Kindle will create an entry for a new book but only download it when you try to read it... So I'd recommend opening all newly purchased and "downloaded" books beforehand to make sure the books were really downloaded.
jasonkester 8y ago
I have no idea how to get a random PDF onto my kindle. Getting a book there is easy though. You can find and buy one on the device itself, or find and buy one on Amazon and it'll magically show up on the device. It literally is just clicking a single button. I can't even imagine a way you could remove any steps from the process if you were designing it from scratch.

mirimir 8y ago

> Before you continue, an update from us > Tumblr is now part of the Oath family. Please review Tumblr’s updated Terms of Service and European Privacy Policy. Due to EU data protection laws, we (Oath), our vendors and our partners need your consent to set cookies on your device to use your search, location and browsing data to understand your interests and personalise and measure ads on our products. Oath will also provide personalised ads to you on our partners’ products. Scroll down to review some privacy updates and set your preferences. > Tip: Log in to your account to avoid repeating this across your devices. Damn. Oath are unmitigated evil. And that BS does not satisfy GDPR. Needing to track for personalized ads is not a valid business purpose. Anyone have a reachable link? Edit: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:L4D4ANYBLNgJ:maggie-stiefvater.tumblr.com/post/166952028861/ive-decided-to-tell-you-guys-a-story-about+&cd=6&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:L4D4AN...

llampx 8y ago
Right click -> Open in private window
- mirimir 8y ago
  Thanks, but that doesn't work for me. And anyway, I always use private windows. I'm pretty sure that it's just my German IP address that's triggering it.
deadbunny 8y ago
If you don't care about cookies then this[1] works great. It nuked that popover for me. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-about-cookies/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a...

jumbopapa 8y ago

All I ask is that an ebook be included with the physical copy. I don't want to haul the physical copy around, but I do want to support authors. I've been using the library lately anyways. I'm so far behind on books that I've wanted to read that there's no real reason to follow new releases, so the library typically has what I want.

gnomewascool 8y ago

Archive.today link to avoid tumblr's "consent" page, which blocks NoScript and is generally annoying: http://archive.fo/0T6Nb http://archive.fo/0T6Nb More on topic, please do pay for creative (and technical!) work that you get for free (legally or otherwise), if you enjoy it.

sempron64 8y ago
Funnily I found that the article reads perfectly fine on Firefox Mobile with NoScript -- I didn't even notice that it was on Tumblr until reading the comments.
- mirimir 8y ago
  That's probably because you're not in the EU.
Kerrick 8y ago
There is terrific irony in this comment, encouraging people to read an article about the dangers of piracy... which has itself been pirated on an "archive" site.
- exolymph 8y ago
  Eh, that's not pirating. It's not like she was charging people to look at the Tumblr post.

drewg123 8y ago

I wonder how much of this is due to greedy publishers overpricing ebooks? I just looked up one of her books ("The Raven King"). Amazon has the paperback for $9.45 and the e-book for $11.99. In what world does it make any sense for an ebook to cost more than a physical book? The physical book needs to be printed, warehoused and delivered. The ebook just just bits in the cloud that cost cents to store and transmit to customers. I do not personally think that this justifies piracy, but it might explain why some people feel justified in pirating books.

latortuga 8y ago
This is a cost-centric view of the price, when a value-centric view may be more useful. The ebook can be downloaded and taken everywhere without having to lug and lose an extra item in your bag. The ebook can be read on multiple devices seamlessly. The ebook can be retrieved from the seller in the event you lose it. And the content is the same, you're paying for the same work. So you are paying $2 more for a ton of increased convenience. You can rent physical DVDs from the library for free. Yet you pay for Netflix. Such a greedy publisher, enabling us to do things more easily.
- drewg123 8y ago
  To turn that around, one could argue the ebook has a lower value since it is easily pirated. It is competing with a version of itself that costs $0.00 and a few minutes of web searching.
  - dagw 8y ago
    Exactly. I can buy the ebook for $12 or for $10 I can buy the physical book, convince myself I've done right by the author, and download the ebook for free if I need it.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    Given a choice between $0 and ~$12, it seems that many will choose $0. Even though that's illegal, hurts the author, and reduces the chances of future work from them. The experiment described in TFA is pretty clearcut. She saturated the torrents with fakes, and more people bought authorized copies. But another experiment would be more interesting. Cut the price of the ebook substantially, and look at aggregate sales. After all, the marginal cost of ebooks is ~$0. And downloading torrents is more hassle (and more risky) than buying from Amazon or whatever. Maybe there's a price point that would minimize piracy and maximize sales.

anhner 8y ago

What the author didn't (and couldn't) include in their calculations is how many of those that bought the fourth book were hooked in the series BECAUSE they pirated the book(s). How many sales would she have had if there were absolutely no copies available online for free for any of the books? I admit, I pirated when I was young because I didn't have any money and many books weren't available in my country (or would only become available after some years). Now that I have money and I'm into reading, I spend a lot more on books than I would have if reading wasn't available to me.

llampx 8y ago
If someone pirated book one and/or book two, what is the likelihood that they'll go out and buy book three? Keeping in mind that some % of people will have a conscience twinge or be earning much more than previously so will feel like they can afford the book rather than just go on over to their favorite site and download it.
- deogeo 8y ago
  A study was done on this question, and it found the effect of piracy on sales is negligible/immeasurably small: https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-infringement-study/ https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/secret-copyright-infringement-s... The study was done with public funds, but since publishers didn't like its findings, it was buried. So publishers are misusing public money to try and mislead people into supporting more restrictive copyright laws, and they're using lobbying and legalized bribes to get elected officials to pass those laws. They use lies, deception, and bribery in a hostile attempt to reduce our freedom so they can increase their profits. So why the hell should we respect their IP, when every cent they earn will be used against us?

AdmiralAsshat 8y ago

It's impressive that people will suffer the agony of trying to read a book in PDF form for the sake of getting it for free. After discovering the EPUB/MOBI formats and the joy of having text dynamically scale on my phone/tablet, it's very difficult to go back trying to read an extensive document in PDF. On anything but a PC it just feels archaic.

fvjft 8y ago
She calls it PDF but maybe she just means any ebook format. Also PDF can be text (instead of scanned pictures, etc) and can easily be converted to any other text format, from EPUB to TXT.
aaaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
EPUB/MOBI is good for prose. On the other hand, as of today, technical documents, scientific articles, anything with nontrivial illustrations/typesetting has to be displayed in PDF to avoid unexpected results. Maybe we'll see changes in this regard, facilitated by the emerging interactive jupyter-like document formats, but PDF is here to stay for a while.
- alpaca128 8y ago
  Sure, but if you've got an ebook reader(which usually means 6-7 inch screen size) you don't want to use PDF unless it's absolutely necessary.

jasonkester 8y ago

Authors need to frame the conversation better: It's a contract. You don't get to read my book unless you pay me money. It doesn't matter that the author still has a copy or whether you think you're "stealing". None of that matters. You can do whatever you like, so long as you give money to the author before you consume their thing. That's the deal, take it or leave it. Frame the transaction that way, and at least you won't get so many people who think they haven't done anything wrong.

lambda_lover 8y ago
So if I go to my local library and check out a copy of the book (that my taxes paid for, presumably) I'm stealing from the author? I pirate most of my ebooks because they're typically poorly made ports of the physical books. When I truly enjoy reading a book, I order a physical copy and add it to my shelf, so the physical copy becomes a) a conversation piece in my home 2) a decoration 3) available for my next read. But because I do most of my reading on the subway or while travelling, I still lean toward using my Kindle most of the time.
exolymph 8y ago
Nah, that won't make a difference. People who pirate media know that they're accessing the content illicitly, they just rationalize it because it's convenient. For example, if a movie costs more than $5 to rent on Amazon Prime, I'm probably gonna pirate it. Not because I think I "deserve" to do so, but 1) it's possible and 2) minor hassle < $5.

thraway-burnout 8y ago

There's no such thing as piracy. If your business model doesn't work in a post-physical-scarcity world, you need to change your business model.

thraway-burnout 8y ago
Peeps, downvoting is easy. Anyone has counter-arguments?
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  Piracy related downvotes are political. But I think your comment makes some sense: fighting piracy is fighting against freedom, for censorship and authoritarinism, a world where you might not even have a freedom to write a book to begin with.
- andrewflnr 8y ago
  > There's no such thing as piracy. There's no counter-argument because you have no argument at all, just a brazenly re-defined term. A rational discussion requires shared language. You've thrown that out the door right at the start.
carnagii 8y ago
in a post physical scarcity world ideas are the only things with any value.

Lt_Riza_Hawkeye 8y ago

I find it hilarious that they have https working properly, but visiting this URL with https redirects back to http

aaron695 8y ago

People seem to be missing the fact the book was ONLY available as a pirate copy, this leaves fans with hard options. This seems like step one of issues to solve, don't pre-release ebooks.

RandomBacon 8y ago
Agreed. If you have fans, they will do whatever they can to read it as soon as possible. Example: people lining up at book stores for midnight releases of Harry Potter novels. I imagine if the e-arc was leaked after the release date (after the vast majority of people bought an ebook copy), then the e-arc would have had a negligable affect on sales.

forgetmyname 8y ago

I hold nothing agains the author other than using a post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy to support her narrative. Success will be possible through accepting the existing paradigm rather than spending time railing against it.

godelski 8y ago

Are there studies about how piracy affects different industries? I would imagine that books are different than movies or music. My reasoning: Books take a lot of effort to get through. If you are going to read a book you're really going to invest time into it. (assumption: everyone that would actually purchase the book intends to read it) Movies are just an hour or two. Not much time investment. Many times people will sit down to watch a movie they don't care much about just to kill time, or put it on in the background. Like someone might pirate a movie because they 1) can't find it playing in theaters around them (more common than you think) 2) friends told you not to waste your money 3) you're bored of the shit on Netflix and need some other background noise while you browse the internet. Music is often used as background noise too, and I imagine this changes the psychological impact of piracy. Also, I think I lot of people feel like the movie studios, record labels, and publishers are just over charging them. It's not hard to see, especially with the first two. A $20 movie (before popcorn) for an hour and a half of "ehh" and the studio made tens of millions of dollars in box office. Or knowing an artist gets chump per album sold (or worse when streaming). I would suspect people take this same notion to books. Especially when they see that an ebook is more expensive than the physical one. Most people interpret this as "well that's messed up". But I'd also imagine that book sales are hit harder than music and movies (at least to the artists).

larkeith 8y ago
It would also be interesting to see the impact of distribution platforms and media formats - one would imagine that more fragmented markets (e.g. HBO exclusive shows) have higher incidents of piracy, as consumers can then find all their interests in one centralized location, rather than a dozen different subscription services. DRM also presumably provides some increase - while it's (thankfully) dead for music, it seems alive and well for TV.

johnny313 8y ago

This is a great experiment, and shows the value of getting solid data to back up a theory.

licebmi__at__ 8y ago

This seems to me like a story about viral marketing rather than about piracy. For my experience from the time where I spent more time on leisure sites and fandom sites, it's pretty likely we would organize a scavenger hunt and had a lot of discussions if we encounter a fake ebook with the characteristics described. That certainly would look like a viral marketing campaing.

content-maker 8y ago

Disclaimer: I made some passive money selling software and I've been damaged by piracy (so much that I had to stop selling). I was lucky enough to be my own publisher, though. I still think that piracy should be legal, while breaking a contract and redistributing should be punished. This shouldn't happen automatically (like the copyright infringement letters in Germany) or handled by taxes (like the hard disk tax in some European countries), it needs to be handled in court, as a breach of contract. The fact that this is not the default and that your government/ISP is selling your data so easily, really points out how this is just lobbying from the media corporations and the umpteenth case of corruption of the government. What if justice is too slow? Complain about your inefficient public courts and push for a private, faster system. If you look at this from a wider perspective, people able to make money passively work once and gains for months or years to come. It depends on the type of good you're producing - but it can be wildly profitable or put you on a diet. Given you're profiting from selling one thing to many, it should be your problem enforcing and/or suing people sharing your work. You have one-to-many benefits, you get one-to-many costs. Will piracy kill some content and push the market in a different direction? Most likely, but that's what people want. You can see it in software with SaaS, in movies with Netflix, in music with Spotify. I know it sucks to be in the spot of penniless painters, but it's how society evolved. You need to evolve yourself.