Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

The most puzzling aspect of the various arguments about piracy are the completely unfounded assumptions people on both sides of the argument make.

The ‘We Lost $27 trillion to Piracy’ Argument

Publishers Weekly talks about a report by Attributor -

Publishers could be losing out on as much as $3 billion to online book piracy, a new report released today by Attributor estimates.

From the four sites that make digital download data available–4shared.com, scribd.com, wattpad.com, and docstoc.com–Attributor found 3 million illegal downloads in the final quarter of 2009 of the 913 books followed.

Before Publishers jump to the assumption that they are losing $3 billion a year to piracy they should consider these points -

1. Attributor sells anti-piracy products.  
2. The analysis includes assumptions like this one – DocStoc, Scribd, Wattpad, and 4shared comprise one-third of piracy.  
3. A lot, if not most, of those people would not have bought a book if it weren’t free.
4. A significant portion of the ones who did buy the book would buy a used one. 
5. Piracy can not be stopped completely – There are some people who will never pay for books.
6. Not everyone is a pirate. However, everyone could start believing books are worth nothing down the line and pirating.
7. The take-down notice method is not a good way of addressing piracy.

While Publishers are under the delusion that all their problems would be solved by killing piracy users are under several delusions of their own.

The ‘No one who pirates would actually buy the book’ argument

Let’s look at it from a slightly different perspective -

1. Let’s say that anyone who downloads a pirated copy of a book and then actually reads it gets some value.

If pirated books magically disappeared you would get (for the people who get value from pirated books) -

1. A portion who are not willing to pay anything and don’t buy the book. 
2. A portion who think it’s not a fair price and don’t buy.  
3. The remaining portion buy the book as they do want to read the book enough to pay.

There are two things here -

1. The third category might be just 10% or they might be 25% – whatever it is, its solid revenue.
2. The first and second category are getting value without paying anything in return – That’s trivializing the work and the value of authors and publishers.

The argument that Piraters would not buy is wrong because some portion would.

The ‘I can pirate if I don’t agree to the terms’ argument

People who do not agree to the terms the creator sets and don’t pay are not entitled to reading the book.

That’s an exceedingly simple concept.

Say you’re a plumber – You go fix someone’s sink and then they say your quote is too high and don’t pay you. Then they berate you for charging too much and expect you to come back and work for them again, for free.  

If you want to read a book you have to agree to the purchase contract and the purchase price.

If you don’t then you don’t pay and you don’t read the book. There isn’t really any justification for piracy – no matter how unreasonable Publishers or Authors are.

If unreasonable prices were justification for piracy -

• It would be legal to go into a store that sells items outside your budget or items that you thought were unreasonably priced and steal them.

The ‘Piracy can be solved’ argument

There are a portion of people who will NEVER pay and there are people who will always figure out ways to pirate.

1. Some people believe information should be free. 
2. A few just want to get things for free.
3. There are hackers who want to break piracy checks just to prove it can be done. 
4. A few Individuals and Companies will always be jealous of any successful author or Publisher and attack them via piracy.

Piracy is not a solvable problem – even closed systems like Kindle and iPhone get hacked and bypassed.

This point is crucial to understand because there is a certain point at which the cost of preventing piracy becomes higher that the cost of piracy.

• Perhaps once you’ve ensured that piracy is less than 10% the further returns are not worth the costs.

The ‘We can create a perfect world’ argument

Idealistic people like to believe that we could reach a perfect situation – Publishers remove DRM and make things very easy for customers and customers respond by always paying for what they read.

It’s never going to happen.

We live in a world with wars, murder, civil wars, burglaries, assaults, and so many examples of non-perfection.

Do we really think 100% of people are going to do the right thing and pay for a digital book?

The ‘piracy is hurting us so we need to raise prices’ argument

With ebooks Publishers get a lot -

1. Removing the used book market. 
2. Reducing sharing to between family members and very close friends.
3. More sales – if the ‘Kindle owners buy 2.7 times the books they used’ behavior can be replicated across all ebooks.
4. Lower costs. 
5. Better and quicker information on sales and customer behavior.
6. If they play it right a larger cut – Apple is already offering Publishers 70%.
7. Kindle Store etc. as a grounds for finding new talent. Much less work and less risk.
8. Closed systems that severely reduce piracy.

At this point if Publishers try to claim they need to raise prices because of piracy, they’re pushing their luck.

Publishers alternate between

• Excessive fear – which leads to arcane DRM and unreasonable restrictions.
• Excessive greed – which leads to attempts to sell ebooks (that have no used book market and little sharing) at hardcover prices.

It’s time for them to be realistic and reasonable.

Closing Thought – The Non Ideal Reality

Publishers are trying to take readers for a ride and readers are trying to take Publishers for a ride.

In between you have companies and middle-men who are trying to take everyone for a ride. 

There are very few people and even fewer companies that are being reasonable -

1. Apple’s 30% cut is very reasonable.
2. Amazon’s platform model is very good – especially for indie authors who are getting book deals and a shot.
3. People who are happily paying $10 and sticking to the agreement (whether DRM or DRM free) are being reasonable.

Almost everyone else is trying to set-up a win-loss system.

Content creators, content curators, platforms, and readers are all part of the eco-system and all make valid contributions. It’s about time we accepted it and stopped deluding ourselves that all of books revolves around one (our) element.

Filed under: publishing Tagged: | ebook piracy, necessity of drm