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Piracy, or just sharing a file...worried
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Randy
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Nov 30, 2011 07:25PM
I just realized that it is easy to download a ebook file, from smashwords, for example, and just email that file to a friend. It's one thing to buy a $20 book and then give it or lend to someone else, but a 99 cent ebook? That would be a real cheat to the author. Anybody have any experience with the problem. I don't have any evidence personally, but it does cause a worry.
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I've decided not to worry. If people cheat, the more people read the book and some people have felt it good enough to sent do to others.
Randy wrote: "I've decided not to worry. If people cheat, the more people read the book and some people have felt it good enough to sent do to others."Agreed. If we're going to worry about people reading the book and not paying, we'd have to close all the libraries.
Doc
It's sharing, not stealing. If they sell a copy of it, then it's stealing.
Alexis wrote: "It's sharing, not stealing. If they sell a copy of it, then it's stealing."It they send it to one or two people, that is sharing. If they make it available on peer to peer networks, or distribute it on the internet, that becomes piracy. The hard part is determining where the line is between promotion and theft.
The new measure of damages for piracy is how much the owner of the property has lost in potential sales, not how much the accused has gained. This makes sharing a product iffier from a legal sense. This is easier when dealing with physical books, as the expectation is for the book to return to the purchaser. With digital copies there is the potential for both parties to retain copies indefinitely, and to continue to redistribute.
This is a big concern for the music, movie, and publishing industries. But as an independent, you really don't have the resources to worry over it and try to track it down.
Doc
I actually thought JA Konrath made a good point about piracy. The type of person who would download a book in this manner probably wouldn't have bought your book to begin with. So no lost sales.
But like Randy mentioned at the beginning, at least it gets your name out there. Maybe a friend or family member of the person who downloads them for free would be willing to pay for their own copy, and possibly future books.
Not sure how accurate this is, but it helps me sleep at night. :)
