And you wonder why there is piracy
Jul. 18th, 2009 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
megwritesAmazon.com takes back e-Books that customers paid for because Amazon.com screwed the copyright pooch. Or: why I am never, ever buying a Kindle and am going to start thinking about getting books online from another source.
What's even sadder? Amazon.com took back a book that's available for free online in several sources. I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the state of eBooks and eBook readers.
Let XKCD.com do some explaining for you on how being heavy handed about copyrights only strengthens and enhances piracy. Because like the strip says: Remember, if you pirate something, it's yours for life. You can take it anywhere and it will always work.
Or in this case if you'd downloaded a free or pirated copy, you'd still have it.
So, I say again to you folks who are authors, editors, or otherwise working in the publishing industry, if you want to stop book piracy, don't go after the pirates. Go after the publishing companies (and their conglomerate owners), the eBook reader companies, sellers, and all the other supposed businesspeople who are making piracy easier than just legally and easily paying a fair price to download a book. Demand that they get their acts together, because it's the authors, editors, and other folks on the ground that feel the hit when it comes to piracy.
I can promise you if someone took this eBook stuff by the scruff of the neck and came out with an affordable reader that can read a wide variety of formats and deals reasonably with copyrights and makes finding and downloading books easy and fairly priced, you'd see piracy take a nosedive and you'd see authors benefitting as well.
What's even sadder? Amazon.com took back a book that's available for free online in several sources. I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the state of eBooks and eBook readers.
Let XKCD.com do some explaining for you on how being heavy handed about copyrights only strengthens and enhances piracy. Because like the strip says: Remember, if you pirate something, it's yours for life. You can take it anywhere and it will always work.
Or in this case if you'd downloaded a free or pirated copy, you'd still have it.
So, I say again to you folks who are authors, editors, or otherwise working in the publishing industry, if you want to stop book piracy, don't go after the pirates. Go after the publishing companies (and their conglomerate owners), the eBook reader companies, sellers, and all the other supposed businesspeople who are making piracy easier than just legally and easily paying a fair price to download a book. Demand that they get their acts together, because it's the authors, editors, and other folks on the ground that feel the hit when it comes to piracy.
I can promise you if someone took this eBook stuff by the scruff of the neck and came out with an affordable reader that can read a wide variety of formats and deals reasonably with copyrights and makes finding and downloading books easy and fairly priced, you'd see piracy take a nosedive and you'd see authors benefitting as well.
