Hackers steal ebooks?

Hi and welcome to AW.

You are talking about ebook piracy. If you run a search on the site it will bring up multiple threads on the subject. Opinions differ on how damaging it is to sales and the legality of it. It has been going for for as long as ebooks have been produced and it hasn't stopped people producing them.

I went to O'Reilly's TOC con a year or two ago, and they noticed that even though they could find pirated copies of Twilight and Stephen King novels on the bittorrent sites, they still weren't being widely distributed.

It seems that people just aren't that interested in pirating ebooks, and when they do, it seems to work as free advertising for the author. Those that are interested in paying will pay, those that are pirating were never going to pay anyway.

I wouldn't worry about it, and I certainly wouldn't stop writing because of it!

Learning Fast said:

Hi and Oops...I posted this on the wrong board - the memoir board cuz i
didn't look to see what board it was. So here's my newbie question....

A friend told me that ebooks can get stolen/downloaded by hackers within
a few hrs of being put on site, and then sold or passed around the net for
free. Is this true? How true is it? What's the percentage of ebooks being
stolen? How commom is this?

I have a NON fiction that reads LIKE a fiction - sorta bazaar. Got 40,000 wds. Just needs to be typed up more. Am halfway thro, but if i can't do an ebook I might as well stop writing. It would sorta be in the occult
category, but not exactly.

Oh, and i've been reading here about Amanda Hocking. I think it's real
inspiring to read about her and what she accomplished. Gives us hope
cuz you never know one of us could be the next one. You just never
know. Marie

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Just another urban legend. I'm guessing that your "friend" isn't very tech savvy?

TMarchini said:

I went to O'Reilly's TOC con a year or two ago, and they noticed that even though they could find pirated copies of Twilight and Stephen King novels on the bittorrent sites, they still weren't being widely distributed.

It seems that people just aren't that interested in pirating ebooks, and when they do, it seems to work as free advertising for the author. Those that are interested in paying will pay, those that are pirating were never going to pay anyway.

I wouldn't worry about it, and I certainly wouldn't stop writing because of it!

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Nah, pirate ebooks are all over the place and have wide circulation. You could well miss it if you were focused on bittorrent; BT is not really the most appropriate method to share them. It is like using a 747 for your paper round.

But opinions do differ as to the effect of ebook sharing on sales.

You don't need to worry about 'hackers' breaking into websites to steal them though. All that happens is that someone buys a copy, cracks or bypasses the DRM copy protection, and then distributes it by any one of a number of methods.

Because I personally covet audio books in the way some covet music tracks, I'd only worry about CD torrents if I had work to publish.

Ebook piracy is very, very real. There's whole threads about it all over the Net, not just here. Yes, once you release your ebook, all it takes is the wrong person to download it, and once they crack any existing encryption or copy-protection (and they will, trust me--nothing is truly secure) it can, and will, be distributed all over the world. Usually this all happens within the same day. How common is it? Very. The people most hurt by it are the high-profile author, as they have tons of readers; but the little guy also loses serious ground. After all, who wants to buy a book when it was given to them for free? That's the pirate mentality.

Phil_Hall said:

but the little guy also loses serious ground. After all, who wants to buy a book when it was given to them for free? That's the pirate mentality.

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I strongly disagree with this. I can sort of understand the argument that someone like Stephen King or JK Rowling are harmed a little bit by piracy (though, honestly, I don't shed too many tears for them) since they have very little to gain in the way of promotion. But for most authors, anyone who pirates your book is exceedingly unlikely to have bought it anyway, and piracy, at the very least, serves as free advertising. People who have an emotional response to piracy usually frame the argument as "A paid reader OR an unpaid reader," when the real argument, most of the time, is probably "A paid reader OR no reader." If I have to choose between Joe Blow reading my book for free, or not reading it at all, I'll take the former, especially if he tells his less-deadbeat friends how fantastic it is.

Also, there are several people I can think of selling copies of books (and games, and music) through convenient outlets like amazon, even though free copies are available through legitimate websites. JA Konrath, the poster boy for e-publishing, sells short stories on Amazon that he offers for free on his website, and still sees fantastic sales. So the idea that "if there is a free copy, no one will ever pay for it," is demonstrably untrue.

Anyway, the argument is moot. There is nothing you can do about piracy regardless of whether or not you are e-published or paper published. The best thing you can do is not to worry about it, and take it as a compliment.

My first book took about 18 hours to be pirated. I haven't found my second anywhere yet.

But No, they don't generally hack to get it and yes, it can be pirated very quickly upon release. Actually I've seen some make it onto pirate sites before release. Many epubs won't send out author copies until after the release because of that.

LaceWing said:

Because I personally covet audio books in the way some covet music tracks, I'd only worry about CD torrents if I had work to publish.

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I might worry about audio books being pirated if I were a publisher, mainly because audio books are insanely overpriced, so there's a huge incentive not to purchase.

AmericaMadeMe said:

Just another urban legend. I'm guessing that your "friend" isn't very tech savvy?

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A tech savvy person might have written basically the same thing, except would have used the word crackers instead of hackers.

benbradley said:

A tech savvy person might have written basically the same thing, except would have used the word crackers instead of hackers.

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Meh; they're not even crackers; they're running scripts with a GUI.

They're ordinary users, mostly. And mostly, they aren't uploading, and mostly, the ones downloading aren't even reading the books.

I really do think good data pushes out bad, and that DRM is part of the problem, and not part of the solution.

I'm trying to talk my publisher into going DRMless. Wish me luck.

Medievalist said:

I'm trying to talk my publisher into going DRMless. Wish me luck.

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A big good luck with that. I really hope it works out.

DRM is of the devil. As an example (that has nothing to do with books, but everything to do with DRM) I was trying to play some Dragon Age the other day. I loaded up a recent save (that had worked fine the previous day) only to find that my DLC wasn't authorized, and the game wouldn't let me play. Odd. I checked around on the FAQ, tried their various quick solutions, failed, spent an hour or so downloading and re-installing everything, failed, contacted their customer service, and was told 'this is a recent problem the developers are aware of, so please be patient.' I searched for the cracked copies of the DLC I'd purchased, and strongly considered just installing those. I didn't since I'm not as tech savvy as I once was, and I don't want those installing anything nasty on my machine, but the fact was I could have gotten right around the DRM with a simple Google search.

Ebooks are even easier, as there's no actual installation. It's just a file to be read, not an executable. Any malicious code shows up as gobbledegook in the text. And who wants to hack a Kindle anyway?

DRM only annoys legitimate users. It is ZERO obstacle for pirates.

/soapbox

efkelley said:

DRM only annoys legitimate users. It is ZERO obstacle for pirates.

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This a thousand times! Companies working with DRM simply do not realize, that a) you cannot stop piracy. Period. b) you annoy about 99,9% of your customer base for trying to prevent the 0.1% of black sheep out there from stealing your stuff. Which you can't.

What is even more annoying is the constant ads about piracy in front of movies. I paid money to see this movie, why on earth do you feel the need to remind me that piracy is not ok?

Piracy is not the problem. DRM is!

TheBigEasy said:

Piracy is not the problem. DRM is!

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You might not consider piracy a problem from the reader's point of view, but from a writer's stance it can be very damaging: if books don't sell well enough, then subsequent books don't get signed up. I've know of several writers who were dropped by their publishers because of this, whose books were very heavily pirated. If only a small fraction of the pirated copies had been paid for instead (I've seen suggestions that between five and ten per cent would be enough but I haven't been able to verify those claims), those authors would have been offered contracts for their new books.

Old Hack said:

You might not consider piracy a problem from the reader's point of view, but from a writer's stance it can be very damaging: if books don't sell well enough, then subsequent books don't get signed up. I've know of several writers who were dropped by their publishers because of this, whose books were very heavily pirated. If only a small fraction of the pirated copies had been paid for instead (I've seen suggestions that between five and ten per cent would be enough but I haven't been able to verify those claims), those authors would have been offered contracts for their new books.

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I have seen number suggested that 1% of pirated copies can be count as lost sales ... unfortunately I can't find the study or site where I read that.

There are also numerous examples where pirated books (or even movies) made the creator more sales. Cory Doctorow is giving his books away for free as ebooks, Neil Gaiman has on occasion too ... and for them it meant they sold more books. I know of a movie (The Man from Earth), where the creator even thanked the pirates for putting his movie out there, because that lead to really good DVD sales.

But the most important factor regarding your examples ... DRM or heavier DRM wouldn't have prevented those books from being pirated. All it takes is 1 person to crack that DRM and put out a DRM free. And you can never, ever prevent that 1 person from cracking the file.

DRM only annoys your customers and even worse, makes them feel treated like criminals. And in this regard the publishing industry is in danger of going down the same path as the movie and music industries. Years of crying that piracy is the devil and is responsible for their lost sales ... when it was mostly their reluctance to adapt their business model and them annoying and criminalising their customers.

And now I better get off my soapbox .

There is an ad shown at the start of all DVDs released on Ireland to try and raise awareness about piracy, comparing it to theft of other items. Last time I was home, when I stuck on a movie, the ad started as usual "You wouldn't steal a car...", and my friend said, "I would if I could download it."

Piracy is a fact. We will never eradicate it, or at least, the kind of society that could eradicate it is not one I want to live in (loss of privacy, loss of internet freedoms). And, as has been said above, anti-piracy measures such as DRM don't stop the pirates, they only annoy regular users.

Old Hack said:

If only a small fraction of the pirated copies had been paid for instead (I've seen suggestions that between five and ten per cent would be enough but I haven't been able to verify those claims), those authors would have been offered contracts for their new books.

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I would love to see the figures on this, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Are you saying that there was 10-20 times more illegal downloads of these authors books than actual sales?

And I am skeptical in general about whether you can count any piracy as "lost sales". Would those who downloaded illegaly have made the purchase anyway? I'm doubtful.

Joe Konrath did an experiment last summer to see if piracy affects sales. He put one of his e-books online for free, encouraged pirates to download it and spread it on the various file sharing sites.

His sales went up. Not only for that book, but for all his books.

He makes a convincing argument here and here that the only way to combat piracy is with convenience and a low price.

Dave

Old Hack said:

You might not consider piracy a problem from the reader's point of view, but from a writer's stance it can be very damaging: if books don't sell well enough, then subsequent books don't get signed up. I've know of several writers who were dropped by their publishers because of this, whose books were very heavily pirated. If only a small fraction of the pirated copies had been paid for instead (I've seen suggestions that between five and ten per cent would be enough but I haven't been able to verify those claims), those authors would have been offered contracts for their new books.

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But let's assume that's true (again, I don't think that it is, at all). What can you do about it? Nothing. If a book is readable, it's copy-able. Book piracy was going on well before the whole ebook craze, from people just gutting the book and scanning it. If you have access to an office printer/scanner, it takes all of ten minutes.

So we can freak out about piracy, but to me, there's no reason to bother. I mean, I'm going to die some day, and I take reasonable precautions to try to push that day off, but I can't prevent it, so I'm not going to let that fact affect me living my life.

zegota said:

But let's assume that's true (again, I don't think that it is, at all). What can you do about it? Nothing. If a book is readable, it's copy-able. Book piracy was going on well before the whole ebook craze, from people just gutting the book and scanning it. If you have access to an office printer/scanner, it takes all of ten minutes.

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This is a very good point. When I went to India I was blown away by the amount of people selling knock-offs of international bestsellers (some even before they had been officially released). What made piracy viable there, and less of a moral issue for the reader, was the relative expense of international books in a poor country.

Again, the best way to combat piracy is with price and convenience. Pricing e-books at $13.99 and holding back their release until well after the hardback is asking for trouble, IMHO.

There's also a culture associated with pirating. It's an ornery, contrary culture. The more you try to outwit the pirates with heavy DRM, the more "value" your pirated copies of whatever have in the culture. Release without DRM and you'll have less value on the piracy market because your books are easy to get and present no challenge.

You'll always get the people who have to have something if it's free. They were never your readers anyway, and sooner or later when "Hoarders: The Internet" shows up, these people's hard drives will show up on the tube interspersed between tearful pleas from family members who just want to help them with their taxes but can't find the files in all the mess of free and illegal downloads of piles and piles of crap that they swear they "might read one day."

You can't stop them. All you can do is make people aware (without being a dbag about it, because like DRM, that too is punishing the legit customers) that you'd like them to purchase a legit copy of your book, and that you're doing what you can as an author to make that option as attractive as possible to them.

This is interesting. I would honestly have expected more folks to be in favour of DRM.

There really are two camps on this debate. Piracy is a legitimate problem and does cut into a content creator's profit. However, with ebooks, it's less of an issue becuase it isn't so prevalent, probably because books are "disposible" (people don't often reread books as you relisten to songs or rewatch movies), and reading is highly subjective. Also, prices are low enough (in general; some exceptions) to keep the risk of participating in copyright infringement from being inconsequential.

Brand building, even through piracy, always has benefits. It's a trade-off. I, for one, would be happy to see some buzz being generated about my books through piracy. I wouldn't be happy if my books were broadly distributed primarily or exclusively through illicit channels, though.

shaldna said:

This is interesting. I would honestly have expected more folks to be in favour of DRM.

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Why, though? I have never seen DRM be effective for more than a few hours before the media is cracked and disseminated, so it does absolutely nothing to combat piracy, and just annoys legitimate users. If this were an argument about some magical form of DRM that really did cut down on piracy, I think there could be a fair discussion. But until that day comes, I see absolutely no benefit to it.

shaldna said:

This is interesting. I would honestly have expected more folks to be in favour of DRM.

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DRM doesn't work, and it frustrates the honest people who buy the books.

And I don't feel like I've lost sales any more than I mourn for the stripped covers of printed books that are "returns" as lost sales.

But if I provide, via my publisher, a reasonably priced well-made ebook w/o DRM and with if at all possible something extra, my good data will help push out the bad data of a cracked copy.

Especially if I seed the torrent channels and UseNet with a sample.

shaldna said:

This is interesting. I would honestly have expected more folks to be in favour of DRM.

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I went to the Futurebook Digital conference at the end of last year and at the end there was a Q&A session that included author and commentator Nick Harkaway. At one point he asked for a show of hands: does anyone have any confidence in DRM? Not one of the hundreds of publishers and digerati in the room put their hands up.

We're kind of all belatedly getting the message now that DRM doesn't achieve anything worth doing.