Today I got five emails from authors all alerting me to a website that had 32 of our books and an equal number of other publishers’ books on it, scanned in and uploaded as PDFs for anyone to freely download. If it sounds like harmless sharing to you, please read this post and educate yourself on pirating.
First, the background: people loves to steal our books. Libraries and bookstores have claimed for years that some of their most frequently stolen stock are the religious books – anything from the Bible to those on witchcraft and magic. Whether this comes from a belief that all sacred knowledge should be free, a desire to hold onto a book containing so much wisdom (or so many exercises that can’t all be gotten through in the three-week lending period!), or, in the case of witchcraft books, concern that others in their small community might find out that the reader has an interest in these topics, and thus be “outed,” it’s always seemed a little strange anyway. If you’re specifically looking for a book on spirituality, doesn’t that imply that you’re trying to make yourself a better person? In that case, why start off on the wrong foot by stealing a book?
With this pattern having been in place for years, it should shock no one that in the digital age this would quickly translate over to stealing spirituality ebooks in any form. The music industry has wrestled with illegal downloads for years – we all know there are file sharing programs and sites that easily circumvent established means of distribution.
This is what a copyright notice looks like, stupid pirater.
The website I was sent multiple times today is a repeat offender. I won’t post a link here because I don’t want to drive traffic to her site. Let’s just say that she has a nifty little disclaimer about how she got all these PDFs of ebooks off the internet (presumably absolving herself of responsibility, having not scanned them in herself) and that as far as she knows they are not violating anyone’s copyright. And if she is in error, to please let her know. (I guess there was something about the COPYRIGHT PAGE of each of our books that she failed to understand.)
Llewellyn, Red Wheel/Weiser, and other publishers have notified this person, by writing to the email address listed on the website, several times. And yet that notice is still up, and our books are still there for illegal downloading. So today (after the very first email I received) we sent a DCMA takedown notice to her ISP, and hopefully those pages of her website will be removed soon. [Update: it looks like it’s working. I’ll check again from home, and again tomorrow.]
But since I kept hearing about it all day, regardless of our invisible-to-the-outside-world actions (which are things we deal with every day, incidentally), I wanted to post a few thoughts for you all to consider and hopefully discuss.
MYTHS ABOUT PIRATED BOOKS
“It doesn’t cost them anything to make an ebook, so why should I pay for it?”
This one I’ve also heard for legal, paid downloads, except in that case it goes “It doesn’t cost them anything to make an ebook, so why should I pay a normal book price for it? It should cost only $1.99/[insert your own price here]. I mean, I even had to buy a device to read it in the first place.”
Here’s the thing. First of all, an author wrote that book. They spent hundreds of hours researching, writing, editing, proofing, revising, communicating with their publisher, and in many cases, teaching, lecturing, writing a blog, marketing, etc. in order to have their good name in the field, in order for their manuscript to be desirable for publication. So that’s one person that should be paid for their effort.
Secondly, multiple people are involved in publishing a good book:
- the editor who carefully selects, acquires, contracts and develops it (that’s me, in this case),
- the editors who copy edit and proof it (the production editor, layout designer, and proofreader),
- the marketing team that writes the back cover copy, web copy, catalog copy, and so on,
- the cover designer who created a cover,
- the publicity team that sends out a press release, galley, or review copy to your favorite Pagan podcaster,
- the accounting staff who send out the royalty checks and pay our bills,
- the IT department that converts our book files to ePub formats and keeps our websites and servers running.
These are all fixed costs, whether the book comes out in print or digital (unless the author is self-published, in which case he or she can have more control over the pricing of the book and also gets to keep more of the profit). If you add a print release (not digital-only) then you can add the sales staff, customer service, and the warehouse crew. Basically the only thing you’re taking out of the entire equation by downloading an ebook is the cost of paper, printing, and distribution (trucking, shipping, etc.), and the people who make sure the physical copies get sent to the customers, whether those are bookstores or people. So are you still so convinced that your ebook should only cost a dollar? Or nothing?
“It’s the same as borrowing a book from a library, or from a friend.”
Um, except for the fact that the library bought a copy of the book, or your friend bought a copy of the book. (Even libraries that now do digital lending.) And that they have a finite number of copies (physical or digital) that they are able to lend out at any given time – not a file that can be downloaded over and over again in the blink of an eye by complete strangers all over the world.
Let me put it this way – surely you would lend $10 to a friend in need. But would you put up your PayPal account details on the internet for the world to see with a note that says “hey, feel free to borrow ten bucks”? If you did, I’m guessing you’d go broke immediately, unless you have some very deep pockets.
“But publishers have very deep pockets.”
Maybe some do – but I’ve never worked for a publisher that does. We’re talking about Pagan books here. It’s a niche. We hope to sell 5,000 copies if the book is to be successful. (And, not to shake your confidence in the system or anything, but some of our books only sell hundreds of copies and we don’t make a dime.) We are not selling Harry Potter here! We are not flying our authors around on world tours or taking them out for three-martini lunches! Being an independent, midsized publisher in a small field is not a license to print money.
Here is a great quote to illustrate the situation, written by Colin Robinson, who formerly worked for a large New York publisher:
Books have always been a low-profit item and in recent years margins have been shrinking even further. Publishers now regularly give bookshops a 50 per cent or even a 55 per cent discount on the retail price. The distributor that warehouses and delivers the book will typically take 10 per cent of what remains, or more if you are a small publisher; 15 per cent goes on production (printing, paper, typesetting). Add another 10 per cent for the author’s royalties and the publisher is left with 10 per cent to cover promotion costs, rent and office expenses, wages – and profit. No wonder it’s called the gentleman’s profession.
“But authors have deep pockets.”
While you wait for me to stop laughing, did you notice the author’s royalty in the quote above? It’s not much, and it can actually be even less depending on the genre, the format of publishing, and a variety of other factors. Authors don’t have deep pockets either – they cannot afford to give you their book for free. If they could, they would! (And some actually have, just as many musicians are now releasing their music and letting their fans decide what to pay for it.)
Most authors support themselves with full-time jobs in addition to writing and enriching their communities. The very few who don’t work a “day job” have to tour and teach constantly to make a salary to live off of. Some even sell potions, spells, or courses on the internet to add a little income. And yet they still provide plenty of free content on their websites, blogs, facebook pages and other media. They are more than willing to share – up to a point. If they approach a publisher to publish their book, it means, by default, that they want to get paid for it. It has value. So do them a favor and buy their book if you appreciate their work and want to make sure that they continue to write for, communicate with, and teach the community in the future.
“But it’s all over the internet anyway…”
Go ahead and read all the free blog posts you want. Learn about Wicca by putting together information from ten different websites. Go ahead and search for that certain spell you need on Google. Not sure what to do for next month’s full moon? Just type it into the search box. Go onto the Internet Sacred Text Archive or Patheos and learn about the world’s religions. These are all perfectly valid ways to get information. There are TONS of free resources on the internet – ones that are given freely by their creators. (Perhaps because they have ad revenue they can rely on. Perhaps they just do it out of the goodness of their heart.) So why do people even feel the need to download whole books in the first place? By wanting to download a book more than you want to read a website or blog (etc.), you are admitting that it has a certain value that is greater than what you can browse for free. The sum is greater than its parts. So please, pay for it.
“But I’m poor, I can’t afford to buy these books myself…”
See the above list of free resources. And visit your local library.
“But I wasn’t even sure I would like it, so why pay money on it?”
In today’s book-buying world, that is no longer an excuse. You can get previews of just about any books online, either at Amazon, GoogleBooks, or the publisher’s own website. You can browse reviews from other readers on GoodReads or other retailers’ websites. You can visit the author’s website or blog and see if you like their writing style or agree with their ideas. You can ask your facebook friends if they ever read the book and would recommend it.
“Information should be free!”
I totally agree, to a point. Information is what permeates the very fabric of the universe; information is as basic and integral to life itself as light, and so far no one is charging for light. Information is heady and exciting. Hermes/Mercury, the god of communication, is also the god of tricksters and thieves, so it’s not unreasonable to expect he’d be encouraging illegal downloads.
However, he is also god of merchants – trading, bartering, and yes, paying for goods and services. If you step back and look at the big picture, information is just a type of energy. And energy is never static, it must be exchanged. Money is also a form of energy – it’s how our minutes and hours of toiling away at something we might not always like get converted into poker chips we can trade in for things we like better. Therefore, it’s not only acceptable to use the energy of money in exchange for the energy of information – it’s divine. Like the universe itself, you are keeping energy in balance, in motion, in an unbroken chain, just as it likes.
Thanks for listening to my rant today. Please, feel free to discuss in the comments… I’m curious to hear your opinions and thoughts on this matter.
This is without a doubt the best, most well-thought out post I have ever seen on this subject. There is not one word I don’t agree with.
Thanks for the update!
As both a publisher and advocate for Pagan authors, it really hacks me off to find sites like this.
As an author published by a relatively small company I can only praise you for this article. Only authors like Dan Brown and Stephen King can realistically hope to get rich on royalties, and even they started out small. Independent and small publishing companies also have to worry about staying in business, as in this economy far more people are getting their books at the local library than buying them, and the current generation is more likely to watch TV than read.
An extremely well written and researched post that I heartily endorse.
As translator and individual distributor I can only completely agree with this. People tend to put all in the same bag. The benefits of one of the books I am selling, for example, haven’t even covered the expenses for my translation work with it. Why? Because it’s SO difficult to sell pagan books. As it’s said on the article, it’s a very small niche.
The best excuse I think that is:
I’d buy it if it were an ebook….
No, they wouldn’t, they’d just “lend” it over and over, uploading it to some sites…
So, pagans of the world, if you want authors to keep publishings and editor to keep reprinting the books, buy them. Or, I am afraid, your children want be able to get a copy of any of them.
As an author and publisher I have been battling this issue for some years now. I actually crunched the numbers once and figured if I had just a dollar for every illegal download I would be a millionaire. Yet I struggle to pay the bills like anyone else…and there is something that just doesn’t seem right about that. Thank you for this well thought out post.
I’m thinking this woman has never actually been hauled into court on theft charges. If she had been, I bet she wouldn’t be depending on some little disclaimer to protect her against copyright theft.
Thank you for such an eloquent response. I also saw the notice up on facebook with the link to the site, which shall remain nameless. The whole thing is ironic, because they have a page that states their beliefs and values, and the rule of three(What you put out comes back to you three-fold, good and bad, by the way). They supposedly hold a high value in creating a safe place for people. How hypocritical! You steal from your elders and your teachers. You encourage newbies to do the same. The excuse that it isn’t stealing because you “found them on the internet” is the equivalent of “Well, the back door was open, so I just went in and took what they had laying around. Since the door was open, they meant to share it, it wasn’t stealing.” I hope the ISP shuts ’em down. I hope they get exactly what their belief system calls for 3×3 back ‘atcha.
As a person who writes for Llewellyn who routinely finds my work all OVER the Internet, sometimes credited, sometimes not, and usually far before the time copyright reverts to my ownership, thank you for speaking up about this. I really would like to see a paradigm shift where people opt to read these books and use it to create new, fresh materials and perspectives of their own that they can share online. The majority of my written work is online and was released with the intent of free sharing with accreditation.
Information should be free. When you pay for it, you are paying for someone’s efforts -or a team of someone’s efforts – in assembling that information into a coherent package. This is not easy work, and as evidenced by the common practice of just reposting such works in their entirety, it is at times a thankless job.
Thank you, Jane! You and a colleague here at Llewellyn have also just reminded me of yet ANOTHER reason not to pirate – it not only hurts the author and the publisher, but our independent bookstores as well! Not only do stores provide an important place for the community to get together, they also offer expertise, candles, herbs, crystals, statuary, and much much more! And for people who would rather buy ebooks, they can still support their independent metaphysical stores by buying those ebooks through their favorite stores, which is a service of course Eye of Horus provides, among others. : )
So everybody, think twice – protect your community and the people you love in it! Resist the urge to listen only to your wallet by downloading illegal books! We’re all hurting financially, and it’s the race to the bottom that ripples back through every layer which is making it worse, and harder to get out of our collective economic slump.
Thank you for writing about this very important issue. Now can we also address the issue of publishers such as Llewellyn routinely offering on their websites in-print books directly to the customer for the same discounted rate that bookstores must pay wholesale to their distributors for the same books?
It seems to me that this is another aspect on the same continuum of this article.
Thanks,
A Concerned Bricks and Mortar Bookseller.
As a Llewellyn author, I thank you on behalf of all authors for sharing your spot-on thoughts regarding this matter!
Blessed Be!
Blake Octavian Blair
Well said!
As an avid reader, and hopefully one day future author I agree with this article. My only problem is that ebooks should be cheaper than the hard back copy of a new book. I’m ok with paying more for a digital download of an Ebook than say a song or a TV episode but its ridiculous to expect me to pay the same or more for an ebook than a hard copy. (An example of this would be Jim Butchers ghost story)
That being said, for those who can’t afford a book, I am working on starting a pagan Netflix book library.
Thanks for this great post! I think you should give it a copyleft so that anyone can republish it as long as it is complete, credits you, and gives a link to the original post.
I’d just like to chime in on your last point, that information should be free. I agree with this, 100%. Information should be free. However information is NOT a specific set of words. Authors often agonize for days or weeks in order to use words that share information in exactly the way they want it to appear. I hope people see what I’m saying: words are NOT information. Words are a way to transmit information.
So pirates, don’t copy my words or the words of other writers and authors. Instead, quit being so freakin’ lazy and write out the information in your own words. In my opinion one of the best ways for people to understand information is to read it in numerous ways; to get your approach and my approach and the approach of others. That can’t happen if all you do is copy the words of others. If anything, it freezes ideas and prevents the free interchange of information by locking it into one set of words.
Help set information free by writing the information in your own words. Show your originality and creativity.
Oh, how many times have I been flamed on pagan sites for saying the same thing? Thank you for a well thought article, whose link I shall be sharing with your permission and proper credit given.
Elysia, this is one of the best posts that I have seen this week on any topic, and certainly one of the best on this topic. I believe very few people really know the rigors of creating books! Consider this shared!
I was just listening to a radio program about copyright this afternoon where some young man emailed the host about how ideas should be free. Yes, ideas are free, but the hard work that it takes to turn an idea into something real should not be free, unless that is the decision of the worker.
One of my late husband’s books is on that site, and I hope you are successful in getting it taken down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for a beautifully clear post about book piracy!! Besides letting people know what the myths are, it also points out the fallacious thinking that many people employ in all sorts of areas of their lives. They do need the books — and paying for them would be a great start in turning their karma around!!
The woman behind this cite claims to be Wiccan/ Pagan. The rede clearly states, “and it harm none, do what you will” THEFT hurts the authors. So it’s a no-go. Epic fail on her part.
-S
I deeply sympathize. But I would also like to have a way to have digital copies of paper books that I *did* buy and *do* legitimately own. It’s a quandry of this age.
I think your Paypal analogy is spot-on. Well-said, all around! And thank you for the response to the concerns as well.
I don’t think most people realize it takes 1000’s of dollars to get a book published and on the store shelves and into Amazon and Barnes/Noble.
I really wish some lucky editor would like MY book well enough to publish it. Comments from Pagans and non-Pagans such as “I coudln’t put it down once I started reading it” or “tears kept rolling down my face with the turn of every page” are commmon among those who have reviewed it.
Brightest Blessings.
Thanks. Needed to be said… for the umpteenth time and again and again. And very WELL said, too.
Excellent, excellent, excellent. You’ve really hit the nail on the head here. I can see this argument from all different angles: as a copy editor, as a book seller at both a corporate chain AND an independent store, as a tarot reader hoping to one day write a book, and as someone who is friends with a number of published authors. I learned a long time ago that most of the time, just because someone is published doesn’t mean they’re raking in the dough. And even if they are, that doesn’t give another person justification to cheat the system.
Stealing is stealing. Period!
Yes, this. As an author (of pagan and non-pagan material) and an editor (for a small, non-pagan ebook company), I have run across this from both sides — piracy of things I wrote and things I edited. People who would do this are no different from people who try walking out of Suncoast Video with a DVD stuck under their coat. I blame the entitlement mentality that’s so very prevalent everywhere today: “I want it, so I deserve to have it. Without payment, and without effort.”
I am so glad you’re doing this.
Gotta say something on the last point: Information wants to be free. I just got my Master’s in Information and Library Science, so this is an idea near and dear to my heart. But I don’t take free to be synonymous with no money. Free is about availability. Which, as you point out, can be done through libraries (and if your local library does not have a title, ask about interlibrary loan… and if you do it a lot, make a nice donation to your library, since ILL does cost) and sharing with friends. Or look for it in a used bookshop.
Thanks Chris – I totally agree, however that’s a question for our Marketing department! As I see it, Llewellyn (and other publishers) offers sales periodically, around special occasions (holidays, end of financial year) and not FULL TIME – which is the problem with Amazon, which is perpetually undercutting all of us, and pirating, which is perpetually stealing from all of us! So….good question, it’s one I wish I could address better.
Hi Adrian, unfortunately I really don’t agree. I don’t think they should be cheaper, or if they are, it should only be by the production cost i.e. 15%. NOT 50% cheaper or more, as some etailers are pricing them. It’s the same amount of work for us and the author, and if in the end we don’t break even and go bankrupt, then there will be less books for everyone to pirate. 🙂
Phaedra – I saw that book and I wish we could get it taken down! However, it’s not a Llewellyn book and the DCMA takedown notice MUST come from the copyright owner. I don’t know, in that particular case, if that’s you or the publisher. Find out and follow the instructions in the DCMA takedown link I posted! Good luck!
Kris – I totally empathize! To quote two of my facebook remarks in other threads on this situation:
“Your question depends on how you want to use it. Are you just upgrading? I would be perfectly happy with letting all book buyers also have a copy on their computer/Kindle/Nook/whatever, so that they could s…earch, highlight, take it with them, etc. Why not? But, the functionality would have to be decreased so that you couldn’t upload it to a website and share with friends. Maybe one share at a time – Kindle has a loaning feature for friends, I believe – but not more than that. I’d want some kind of assurance that you are only using it as a backup or duplicate of your paper version. (However, is that fair to people who only bought the ebook version – they can’t just walk into a store and take a paperback, just because they own the ebook version, can they?)”
And
“I wish there were ONE ebook format so we wouldn’t have to repeat the whole: cassette – LP – CD – MP3 thing, or the whole betamax (or whatever!) – VCR – DVD – BluRay experience. I hate buying the same thing over and over again! That said, that is the risk that “early adopters” of every technology face. BUT… the reason people “rebuy” things in new formats is that they see some boost in quality – of the picture, the sound, or whatever. Is there an equivalent boost in buying ebooks? Perhaps for portability, but I really can’t think of any other reason an ebook would be better (in many ways I can think of how they’d be worse, at least in this moment in time). That’s up for the consumer to decide, no one is forcing you to convert. For VCRs, yes, there will be a point in our future where they will break down and no one will bother repairing them anymore, and you’ll have to buy new media. But the same is not true of books – they will be good forever. Just heavy when it comes to moving them around. : )”
Jim – keep trying! I’m sure you’ve heard of how many times J.K. Rowling tried to get Harry Potter published… it’s all a matter of good luck and timing. 😉
Thanks, Soli! I’d love to hear more about the freedom/availability of information, rather than the “costlessness” of it. 🙂
The Internet is intended to be a medium for the free dissemination of information. Somehow, people seem to have misunderstood the definition of free in that sense. Free as in freely disseminated, not free as in no cost. These are likely the same people who tell me that I shouldn’t charge for psychic readings, Reiki, classes on various spiritual practices (when not taught to members of my own church/coven/grove), and other things like that. Try to remember that kharma is still at play for them. Please still issue cease and desist letters and have pirating websites taken down by their ISPs, but don’t think that they’re getting away without consequences. Love and Peace!
Being on the current mixed path I seem to be on, I can totally say that your article was well written and so true. I am a singer/songwriter/producer and engineer in one life. In my real life though I work in the Trade Show Industry. That is sort of like show business as you meet a ton of well known stars and htey might be fine, but independents are just that, you are on your own. The reality is, if you want an art such as music, writing, acting, painting or dance then you have to realize that no big or sometimes even any money comes your way.
Instead of going on about how I can relate to your incredible article I will say this. Those that are willing to pirate anything should really examine what they are after. This path we are all trying to become better people.
Peace, blessings,
Peter.
Thank you, Elysia. It is hard to get people to understand that their monthly Internet access fee does not mean they “paid” for whatever they find on said Internet sometimes. Piracy is with us, but that doesn’t mean we have to support it, or sit silent when it happens. As an author and an editor I fully support encouraging people to help the publishing process continue by not giving away our hard work.
I was directed to the website in question (I’m sure, though it was not named it’s the same). I quickly alerted my author friends that I was connected with on FB. I think it’s very sad that a “coven” would do this. We as Pagan’s usually, usually, understand that for these authors, it was at one point, a risk to have “our” types of books published. These authors, even some of the ones that are very published, still do not make a lot of money and to have this done is SHAME! I would not wish to be in that “coven” when karma comes to knock!
I appreciate this article, but as an author I want to offer a different perspective on this. I don’t see pirating electronic copies as stealing. I know this flies in the face of all conventional logic, and I may even be betraying a myriad of writer friends, but this is my opinion. One cannot compare electronic duplicates of a product to physical copies because they aren’t the same thing. I know not all people are pirating my books for free, and it may or may not be proportionate to the number of people who are likely to borrow it from someone else who did read it. Or they will go to the bookstore and read it while sitting there without having to pay for it.
Somebody paid for it. And that somebody can share it with whoever they want. I don’t feel ripped off. How many people here have made mixed tapes? Or used to rent movies from the video store and make their own VHS? I don’t care if people pirate my stuff. I’d rather have a thousand people read my work than a hundred people pay for it.
But still. Great article here.
I agree, Dan. But as I pointed out in the article – there are lots of other ways of doing business. You could give it away for free on your website with a donate button. You could do it as a kickstart project. You could self-publish. But once you get a publisher involved, you are signaling that you actually *don’t* want to give it away for free – at least, not entirely! And once you sign with a publisher, they are beholden to protecting your copyright. Just so you get that clear. I understand the need for fame, respect, spreading your ideas, but in that case there are better ways to do it than pubbing a book. I’d love to hear your further thoughts on this!
PLEASE ALERT http://www.hellenion.org if “Old Stones, New Temples” by Drew Campbell is on that site. That organization was GIVEN the copyright by Drew. Lately there has been at least one incident that the organization knows about where the .pdf of the book was illegally posted and I know that the President of the organization would like to take action if it has happened again.
Being a writer has changed my view on piracy a lot. I used to think some of the same things you noted above. I never did it, but I never stopped my friends from doing it. Now I tell folks, to think about what it would mean to me if folks were pirating my books. It’s hard hacking out a living as a writer, and folks don’t realize how little we make, they think every published author out there makes the same kind of living that people like Stephen King and Ann Rice make, not bothering to think about us midlist folks who have to worry about every little thing, and to whom every sale counts.
Thanks for the great post and hopefully more people will think twice before empowering the pirates.
Elysia,
I am not saying that ebooks should not be priced profitably, but it should not be more expensive to buy the ebook version than the paperback version or the same as hard back price.
I think a 15% -20 percent reduction or paper back ( and this is just guess work) pricing is a fair step down from the hardback price. Does it cost the same to produce and Ebook as a Paperback?
My general rule when it comes to books is fairly simple.
I am a traveller in the digital age. I can’t afford the space required to buy ink and pulp books. Buying bulky books just isn’t an option.
If the publisher makes the book available as a digital edition themselves, I’ll pay for it. If it’s not available for digital purchase, I’ll even send a message to the author or publisher and ask if they intend to release it as such anytime soon.
But if some poor sap has to go and scan in every single page and upload the file to a website in order to make something I can actually read, I’m going to pirate. If authors and publishers want to get paid in the digital age, they have to evolve.
Hi Adrian! Obviously I’m not an ebook buyer (yet) but I am unaware of any situations where the ebook would be more expensive than the paperback! At least, not substantively. We had a situation here where Apple needed all their prices to end in .99, and so our Flux (young adult) books went from $9.95 to $9.99. But I don’t think that’s a cause for outrage. I really don’t think any Llewellyn books (or most occult books, for that matter) have been priced higher in e-format than printed. Can you show me an example? No pressure, just saying.
I mentioned in this blog post the costs of printed vs. ebook, and while I haven’t seen our internal numbers (I’m an acquisitions editor, not a sales manager), overall it should only be about 15% less, which is what we’d pay on paper and printing. All the other costs (editing, cover, production, marketing, publicity) are fixed.
Thanks, Bex! I can assure you, WE have evolved. I can’t speak for the other publishers, though. And that’s the bottom line – people are pirating books that ARE available in digital format for downloading. To me that’s the same as stealing a printed book, since that format is also available for sale. The authors are the bottom line – if they wanted you to have it for free, they would make it available for free via any means in this digital age.
A small note. The phrase “Information should be free” has nothing to do with the price of books, and those who use it as a pretext for intellectual property theft are horrid for that. It does not speak to free as in price, but free as in access. A book on the shelf available for sale meets the standards for the phrase, originally coined by Stewart Brand in the 1960’s. Richard Stallman put it best in his book “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” when he said “I believe that all generally useful information should be free. By ‘free’ I am not referring to price, but rather to the freedom to copy the information and to adapt it to one’s own uses… When information is generally useful, redistributing it makes humanity wealthier no matter who is distributing and no matter who is receiving.”
statement was censored first time: “Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author’s work under a four-factor balancing test. The term fair use originated in the United States. A similar principle, fair dealing, exists in some other common law jurisdictions. Civil law jurisdictions have other limitations and exceptions to copyright.”
its not stealing to access any media for these reasons you people need to grow up and read the laws
Youcensoredme – I deleted your comment the first time because it added nothing to the conversation. This post is NOT about fair use. Fair use is quoting less than 150 words from a source, with citation, without permission – NOT posting entire copyrighted books. So I think you are the one that needs to grow up and read the original post. Get over yourself, plagiarism and pirating is NOT fair use.
I certainly hope that this article is not an attempt to justify support for the draconian and un-American internet censorship bill that would put us in the same leagues with China and Iran! SPOA is a dangerous piece of legislation that could affect the whole world and lead to million dollar lawsuits against potentially innocent people. It’s a little known FACT that it was Verizon and CBS, amog MANY other parent companies that came up with and distributed this file-sharing software and, after encouraging us to use it to violate others’ Copyrights are their Lobbyists pressing DC hard-core to pass this law. One must, then, ask why? How does it serve them?
Wade – ummm, no? I certainly hope that your comment is not just spam, since it has nothing to do with my blog post.