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How dare you read my book! (If you haven't paid for it, that is)
Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. ... That tension will not go away.
- Stewart Brand
The first time I witnessed a book being pirated was in 1994.
I had an RPG gamebook, the first printing of which was notorious for a poor binding that caused every single copy to eventually self-destruct. A fellow I met at a gaming convention in Calgary offered to have it rebound for me, for free. Under one condition: I let him and his mate at the quick-copy place make their own copies.
And so it was that along with the laminated cover and comb binding of my new and improved (and still in one piece) rulebook, two close copies also came into existence. Samizdat.
Of course, the only meaningful piracy today is the easiest kind--digital. It'd be tough to print a thousand copies of that RPG book; convert it to a digital format, though, and upload it where other people can get it, and the number of potential copies is effectively limitless.
How much, though, could be said to have been "stolen" from the publisher? Legendary game designer Warren Spector has said, "anybody who worries about piracy is full of shit. ... Anybody's who's going to pirate the game wasn't going to buy it anyway." This mostly carries over to any other digital medium, such as books or music.
By all means, take whatever security measures are necessary to restrict access to a file. But don't trap the genie of Digital Rights Management (DRM) in the file itself. In games, DVDs, CDs, video cassettes, and digital book formats, DRM has never stopped pirates, and serves only to piss off legitimate customers.
A final thought about dissuading digital book "thieves": price ebooks more modestly than "real" physical artifacts. It's the iTunes model; honestly, I can't be arsed to try to pirate something that costs less than a buck.
I only hope I remain sanguine and philosophical about this when a book of mine is "stolen" and reproduced.
- Stewart Brand
The first time I witnessed a book being pirated was in 1994.
I had an RPG gamebook, the first printing of which was notorious for a poor binding that caused every single copy to eventually self-destruct. A fellow I met at a gaming convention in Calgary offered to have it rebound for me, for free. Under one condition: I let him and his mate at the quick-copy place make their own copies.
And so it was that along with the laminated cover and comb binding of my new and improved (and still in one piece) rulebook, two close copies also came into existence. Samizdat.
Of course, the only meaningful piracy today is the easiest kind--digital. It'd be tough to print a thousand copies of that RPG book; convert it to a digital format, though, and upload it where other people can get it, and the number of potential copies is effectively limitless.
How much, though, could be said to have been "stolen" from the publisher? Legendary game designer Warren Spector has said, "anybody who worries about piracy is full of shit. ... Anybody's who's going to pirate the game wasn't going to buy it anyway." This mostly carries over to any other digital medium, such as books or music.
By all means, take whatever security measures are necessary to restrict access to a file. But don't trap the genie of Digital Rights Management (DRM) in the file itself. In games, DVDs, CDs, video cassettes, and digital book formats, DRM has never stopped pirates, and serves only to piss off legitimate customers.
A final thought about dissuading digital book "thieves": price ebooks more modestly than "real" physical artifacts. It's the iTunes model; honestly, I can't be arsed to try to pirate something that costs less than a buck.
I only hope I remain sanguine and philosophical about this when a book of mine is "stolen" and reproduced.