As ebooks become increasingly popular, inevitably there’s more discussion of ebook piracy. A recent Reddit thread titled Ebook pirates, how do you justify what you do? asked people to explain how they justify piracy, and some of the answers are pretty illuminating.
A lot of people seem to see ebooks as an ‘add-on’ to the traditional book-buying experience. For example, a number of respondents to the thread say that they own a physical copy that they’ve paid for, and they merely want a convenient digital copy. Since they’ve already bought the book once, they don’t see why they should have to do so again.
Others are more open when it comes to admitting that they’ve pirated ebooks for which they’ve not paid a penny. They generally say that they wouldn’t have bought the ebook otherwise, in which case the writer isn’t out of pocket. The idea seems to be that because taking a digital copy doesn’t reduce the seller’s stock in any way, it’s less bad to pirate an ebook than it is to steal a physical book.
Most people responding to the thread seem to acknowledge that pirating ebooks is wrong, but then they add a qualifier. As well as discussing piracy, the thread has a number of interesting tangents, such as a long debate over the decline of libraries.
It’s easy to justify when you’ve never created anything that others can steal (and enjoy with impunity) rather than pay you for your efforts.
Posted by Christine Keleny | July 29, 2012, 5:35 pmI would like ebooks to be not so near to the same price as a printed copy. A digital copy does not require the resources/money/material as printed books so why is the price so inflated? If I knew that 98% of ebook purchase money was going to the author I would feel more comfortable paying for ebooks. I get that there are several people involved in the creation of the ebook and all of them need to be paid, but the same can be said about printed books, and like I pointed out, electronic books don’t require the physical resource (or the shipping!). It can be copied countless times without any impact on the environment. This is good, IMHO. However, again – the prices aren’t so different and that seems like a rip off to me.
I personally think that the price of a product should reflect several things: the work/skill put in, the number of people involved in making the magic happen, product manufacturing, shipping. But not straight out greed.
Posted by kams13 | August 23, 2012, 5:49 am