Digital Domain - Will Piracy Become a Problem for E-Books? - NYTimes.com - 11 views
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But e-books won’t stay on the periphery of book publishing much longer. E-book hardware is on the verge of going mainstream. More dedicated e-readers are coming, with ever larger screens. So, too, are computer tablets that can serve as giant e-readers, and hardware that will not be very hard at all: a thin display flexible enough to roll up into a tube.
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With the new devices in hand, will book buyers avert their eyes from the free copies only a few clicks away that have been uploaded without the copyright holder’s permission? Mindful of what happened to the music industry at a similar transitional juncture, book publishers are about to discover whether their industry is different enough to be spared a similarly dismal fate.
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This is what has been predicted for a time now by visionaries like Kevin Kelly and others. The publishers will have to come up with a new business model. Of course authors and publishers have to make money! But they can no longer do it by keeping knowledge and thoughts away from the public. The internet is democratizing all knowledge. The model of charging someone for information will have to change.
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Total e-book sales, though up considerably this year, remained small, at $81.5 million, or 1.6 percent of total book sales through July.
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We do know that people have been helping themselves to digital music without paying. When the music industry was “Napsterized” by free file-sharing, it suffered a blow from which it hasn’t recovered.
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Publishers and authors are about the only groups that go unmentioned. Ms. Scheid, of RapidShare, has advice for them if they are unhappy that her company’s users are distributing e-books without paying the copyright holders: Learn from the band Nine Inch Nails. It marketed itself “by giving away most of their content for free.”
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After verifying that each file claiming to be the book actually was, Attributor reported that 166 copies of the e-book were available on 11 sites. RapidShare accounted for 102.
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My book reappeared on RapidShare a few days after it was taken down
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A report earlier this year by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, based on multiple studies in 16 countries covering three years, estimated that 95 percent of music downloads “are unauthorized, with no payment to artists and producers.”
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The new age is coming. New business models have to be formulated. Copyright laws have become the enemy of progress and human advancement.
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Check this amazon listing, http://www.amazon.com/Against-Intellectual-Monopoly-Michele-Boldrin/dp/0521879280/ref=pd_sim_b_1.
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as soon as authors can pack arenas full and pirated e-books can serve as concert fliers.