6 ms·

Unless you think there were no people at all who downloaded for free rather than paying, then it cost authors royalty payments.

cygx 6y ago
It probably did, but note that the scope was limited: Books released too recently were excluded (if I remember correctly, the cut-off was 5 years?), and they are still DRM protected and have to be returned at the end of the 3 month period, when the waitlist will kick in again. Also note that the publishers' problem is not just the 3 months of waitlist suspension (supposed to offset the closure of physical libraries during the pandemic), but the practice of controlled digital lending of books scanned from physical copies (ie handing out a digital copy for each physical copy you've got sitting on your shelf) without additional royalty payments.
- Mindwipe 6y ago
  Publishers will also be able to trivially show that the Piracy subreddit found the DRM and geofiltering to be below industry standard and how there were literally thousands of posts there about people downloading books for permanent retention because they could.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    If I lend you my book and you make a persistent copy, am I the copyright violator?
    - drawfloat 6y ago
      If you've been warned that what you're doing is enabling others to violate copyright and continue to do so, then in a lot of jurisdictions yes. Same reason torrent trackers keep getting closed down.
basilgohar 6y ago
By exactly this same line of reasoning, don't libraries present a loss of revenue for publishers because people can borrow a book that they otherwise would have to pay for and purchase? One book may be borrowed hundreds, if not thousands of times.
- cygx 6y ago
  Hence the existence of Public Lending Right programs[1] in some countries. In Germany for example, libaries do need to pay a fee per loan (3-4 cent according to Wikipedia). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Lending_Right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Lending_Right
  - macawfish 6y ago
    That's a lot different than 250k per loan!
- watwut 6y ago
  Yes they do. I am going to library regularly with one of goals being saving money on childrens books.
- sct202 6y ago
  In the US, library ebooks have a lot of restrictions like the digital ebooks cost more for the library than physical copies and expire after a certain number of downloads.
- matwood 6y ago
  > One book may be borrowed hundreds, if not thousands of times. Except requiring the physical book (or single book digital equivalent) controls the pace. If a standard checkout is 2 weeks, and if the book is always checked out, it will still take 4 years to hit 100 lends. And a thousand lends? Close to 40 years.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    That's a difference in scale, but it doesn't make libraries right at the spot they sit. Do libraries pay 100x price for their books? Be careful to avoid reasoning from an axiom that the way things worked when you grew up was the correct way. It's a pernicious psychological bias we all suffer from.
BlackFly 6y ago
This doesn't follow, because you need to also assume there are no people who downloaded for free and then went out and bought the book or convinced others to buy the book. Neil Gaiman has pointed out this happening with the Sandman series. The actual issue is much more complicated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84M55-TL5go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84M55-TL5go
dh-g 6y ago
untrue, you would also have to think that noone went out after reading what they received for free and bought supplemental material from the author. Also it would a balance of what was free / what was purchased that would determine the net impact.
- bart_spoon 6y ago
  There's a whole list of assumptions you are making though that likely don't apply. 1. There actually is other material available from the author to buy. If there isn't, it's simply a loss. 2. If there is other material by the author, you have to assume the reader was not going to read any of the author's material without having access to the free book first. 2. If additional material exists, and the person would have never engaged with the authors work without a free "trial" of their work, less than 100% of people who access the free material will go on to buy additional material. Some because they are uninterested, some because they don't want to or can't purchase it for the same reason they couldn't purchase the original. In the former case, thats a net loss. In the latter, its a wash. 3. Even if there is additional material to buy, and even if the reader only becomes interested in the author's work through the free book, and even if the reader is inspired to go out and buy it after reading it, it only offsets the original lost revenue of the first, free book (assuming they are priced similarly). So its only if a reader is inspired to go out and buy at least 2 more works by the author that they would actually become a net positive for the publisher/author. Clearly the number of people accessing the free material who would actually be a net positive for the author/publisher is quite small, and the free book in general would almost certainly be a net negative. You can do all the mental gymnastics you want, but at the end of the day, its still theft. People will argue that publishers are all rich and so we shouldn't care, but thats a different argument, and doesn't apply to the majority of authors who don't actually make that much money.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    No, not 'clearly'. Get some evidence.
mimi89999 6y ago
I think that this reasoning is quite naive. The most basic counterexample I can give is a person who downloaded the content, but wasn't able to afford it. If that content was not accessible on IA, that person wouldn't be able to access is. The publisher would still not earn anything.
- bart_spoon 6y ago
  I think it is your reasoning that is naive. Of course there are people using IA to access a book that, were it not free, would not buy the book. These people are neither plus nor minus in terms of revenue. But for your point to hold, everyone who downloaded the content would have to fall into this category. Almost certainly a large number of users would be those who might potentially buy the book but will simply download it if its free. These people would be lost revenue. You can argue about the size of this group, but the counter argument would be that there is a valid fear that if it is normalized and allowed to continue, this group will grow larger and larger over time. You can argue by trying to compare this to libraries, but libraries still buy their copies of the book, and checking a book out from a library comes with restrictions that don't exist here. There really isn't a way to spin this where it doesn't result in some amount of lost royalties for the author.
  - kerkeslager 6y ago
    We can go back and forth with thinking each others' reasoning is naive, but reasoning isn't how we discover the truth. Frankly, to both sides of this argument, real-world evidence or GTFO. There's plenty of totally reasonable hypotheses for why giving away content can be profitable OR unprofitable, and plenty of real-life examples of both as well. The fact is, with regards to this situation, we don't know, and this conversation shouldn't center around a problem that some people have only hypothesized exists.

cygx 6y ago

It probably did, but note that the scope was limited: Books released too recently were excluded (if I remember correctly, the cut-off was 5 years?), and they are still DRM protected and have to be returned at the end of the 3 month period, when the waitlist will kick in again. Also note that the publishers' problem is not just the 3 months of waitlist suspension (supposed to offset the closure of physical libraries during the pandemic), but the practice of controlled digital lending of books scanned from physical copies (ie handing out a digital copy for each physical copy you've got sitting on your shelf) without additional royalty payments.

Mindwipe 6y ago
Publishers will also be able to trivially show that the Piracy subreddit found the DRM and geofiltering to be below industry standard and how there were literally thousands of posts there about people downloading books for permanent retention because they could.
- sukilot 6y ago
  If I lend you my book and you make a persistent copy, am I the copyright violator?
  - drawfloat 6y ago
    If you've been warned that what you're doing is enabling others to violate copyright and continue to do so, then in a lot of jurisdictions yes. Same reason torrent trackers keep getting closed down.

basilgohar 6y ago

By exactly this same line of reasoning, don't libraries present a loss of revenue for publishers because people can borrow a book that they otherwise would have to pay for and purchase? One book may be borrowed hundreds, if not thousands of times.

cygx 6y ago
Hence the existence of Public Lending Right programs[1] in some countries. In Germany for example, libaries do need to pay a fee per loan (3-4 cent according to Wikipedia). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Lending_Right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Lending_Right
- macawfish 6y ago
  That's a lot different than 250k per loan!
watwut 6y ago
Yes they do. I am going to library regularly with one of goals being saving money on childrens books.
sct202 6y ago
In the US, library ebooks have a lot of restrictions like the digital ebooks cost more for the library than physical copies and expire after a certain number of downloads.
matwood 6y ago
> One book may be borrowed hundreds, if not thousands of times. Except requiring the physical book (or single book digital equivalent) controls the pace. If a standard checkout is 2 weeks, and if the book is always checked out, it will still take 4 years to hit 100 lends. And a thousand lends? Close to 40 years.
- sukilot 6y ago
  That's a difference in scale, but it doesn't make libraries right at the spot they sit. Do libraries pay 100x price for their books? Be careful to avoid reasoning from an axiom that the way things worked when you grew up was the correct way. It's a pernicious psychological bias we all suffer from.

BlackFly 6y ago

This doesn't follow, because you need to also assume there are no people who downloaded for free and then went out and bought the book or convinced others to buy the book. Neil Gaiman has pointed out this happening with the Sandman series. The actual issue is much more complicated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84M55-TL5go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84M55-TL5go

dh-g 6y ago

untrue, you would also have to think that noone went out after reading what they received for free and bought supplemental material from the author. Also it would a balance of what was free / what was purchased that would determine the net impact.

bart_spoon 6y ago
There's a whole list of assumptions you are making though that likely don't apply. 1. There actually is other material available from the author to buy. If there isn't, it's simply a loss. 2. If there is other material by the author, you have to assume the reader was not going to read any of the author's material without having access to the free book first. 2. If additional material exists, and the person would have never engaged with the authors work without a free "trial" of their work, less than 100% of people who access the free material will go on to buy additional material. Some because they are uninterested, some because they don't want to or can't purchase it for the same reason they couldn't purchase the original. In the former case, thats a net loss. In the latter, its a wash. 3. Even if there is additional material to buy, and even if the reader only becomes interested in the author's work through the free book, and even if the reader is inspired to go out and buy it after reading it, it only offsets the original lost revenue of the first, free book (assuming they are priced similarly). So its only if a reader is inspired to go out and buy at least 2 more works by the author that they would actually become a net positive for the publisher/author. Clearly the number of people accessing the free material who would actually be a net positive for the author/publisher is quite small, and the free book in general would almost certainly be a net negative. You can do all the mental gymnastics you want, but at the end of the day, its still theft. People will argue that publishers are all rich and so we shouldn't care, but thats a different argument, and doesn't apply to the majority of authors who don't actually make that much money.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  No, not 'clearly'. Get some evidence.

mimi89999 6y ago

I think that this reasoning is quite naive. The most basic counterexample I can give is a person who downloaded the content, but wasn't able to afford it. If that content was not accessible on IA, that person wouldn't be able to access is. The publisher would still not earn anything.

bart_spoon 6y ago
I think it is your reasoning that is naive. Of course there are people using IA to access a book that, were it not free, would not buy the book. These people are neither plus nor minus in terms of revenue. But for your point to hold, everyone who downloaded the content would have to fall into this category. Almost certainly a large number of users would be those who might potentially buy the book but will simply download it if its free. These people would be lost revenue. You can argue about the size of this group, but the counter argument would be that there is a valid fear that if it is normalized and allowed to continue, this group will grow larger and larger over time. You can argue by trying to compare this to libraries, but libraries still buy their copies of the book, and checking a book out from a library comes with restrictions that don't exist here. There really isn't a way to spin this where it doesn't result in some amount of lost royalties for the author.
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  We can go back and forth with thinking each others' reasoning is naive, but reasoning isn't how we discover the truth. Frankly, to both sides of this argument, real-world evidence or GTFO. There's plenty of totally reasonable hypotheses for why giving away content can be profitable OR unprofitable, and plenty of real-life examples of both as well. The fact is, with regards to this situation, we don't know, and this conversation shouldn't center around a problem that some people have only hypothesized exists.