Kindle piracy?

There's plenty of DRM-removal software on the internet. DRM has been proved not to prevent piracy because removal is trivially easy for anyone with the computer skills. It just annoys otherwise honest people who (like me) have a good reason not to want their content locked to a specific device - because hardware breaks, becomes obsolete, fashions in file formats change...

The creator of the software is probably not a pirate.

The whole piracy issue is something game developers have fought with for a good decade longer than publishing industries (both music and literary). Every time a new means of protecting data appears, a new means of breaking that protection uncloaks. Often within days.

It's annoying and aggravating and just plain illegal, but there really are only a couple of means of fighting it, and neither involve inventing new tech.

1 - Make the price right. $17 for an ebook just feels wrong, whether it costs that much in hardback or not. I'm of the mind that I'll just wait for the price to come down, or buy it on sale, or whatever, but then I'm not a pirate.

2 - Don't stress it. As writers there is practically nothing we can do to stop it. You can cruise the pirate sites and ask them to remove the work, or put up false editions with every other page removed, or any of a half dozen other things that are simply time-consuming to you and amusing to the rats. My advice is to just not sweat it. If they're stealing it, they probably wouldn't have paid for it anyway. And who knows? Maybe they'll like it enough that they actually DO buy it. Total longshot, but if it helps you de-stress, then so much the better.

It won't matter how much the price comes down, those who want something for free are going to get it. Pricing at 99cents has not stopped the pirates, or the downloads of those who want a pirated edition.

You cannot stop copying, it never worked, and never will. But you can get those customers who rather download an illegal copy than pay 20$ but are willing to pay 5$ if you get the price right. The first rule of sales is to make it easy for people to give you money, and all anti-piracy DRM bullshit is a step in exactly the wrong direction.

And it's BTW not about piracy at all. By putting DRM on kindle ebooks, amazon prevents paying customers from ever getting, for example, a sony e-reader instead of a kindle because their ebooks won't work on that one. It's intended to tie customers to one company with the intention of monopolizing the market.
People who download illegal copies don't even need the software in the OP, those copies don't have DRM anymore (or they couldn't download them). It's the same as with games and movies. Only paying customers get the see the "every time you download god kills a kitten" spots on their movie DVDs, and only paying customers have to deal with copy-protection that stops their games from working if the DVD is slightly scratched. (though at least with games it's been improving the last few years)

Julie Worth said:

I came across the following website this morning, which advertises a Kindle-to-PDF converter. They say, "Kindle PC Converter is an easy-to-use application that can help you convert your Kindle ebooks to PDF documents. A user can view PDF ebook on other computer or device, also can print Kindle ebooks without limitation."

Without limitation? Good god!

Other software this pirate has developed allows you to "quickly and easily remove DRM from Digital Editions ebook."

Click to expand...

Why would anyone want to print an ebook? Doesn't that defeat the purpose? Again, why worry about a largely imaginary problem?

Lhun said:

You cannot stop copying, it never worked, and never will. But you can get those customers who rather download an illegal copy than pay 20$ but are willing to pay 5$ if you get the price right. The first rule of sales is to make it easy for people to give you money, and all anti-piracy DRM bullshit is a step in exactly the wrong direction.

And it's BTW not about piracy at all. By putting DRM on kindle ebooks, amazon prevents paying customers from ever getting, for example, a sony e-reader instead of a kindle because their ebooks won't work on that one. It's intended to tie customers to one company with the intention of monopolizing the market.
People who download illegal copies don't even need the software in the OP, those copies don't have DRM anymore (or they couldn't download them).

Click to expand...

This.

There's increasing pressure on Google not to spider torrent sites, because links to illegal downloads tend to turn up in ordinary searches for ebooks, effectively advertising these sites to people who would never have gone looking for them on their own initiative.

There's also the issue of electronic rights sales, either in specific regions or worldwide. None of the Harry Potter books are available as ebooks (yet), so of course they are heavily pirated. And it's highly frustrating to want to buy an ebook, only to discover that you can't unless your credit card is attached to a US address, because the author's agent hasn't yet negotiated world electronic rights. I can buy a paperback from Amazon.com and have it shipped across the Atlantic, so why not the ebook version??? (Yes, I know why this situation exists on the publisher's side, but from the customer's point of view, it's total nonsense.)

Fortunately the situation is changing, and technology-savvy publishers like Angry Robot are issuing DRM-free, region-free ebooks at sensible prices (in addition to the DRM'd Kindle editions). Publishers (and agents) who don't get their act together and do likewise are going to get left behind...

AmericaMadeMe said:

Why would anyone want to print an ebook? Doesn't that defeat the purpose? Again, why worry about a largely imaginary problem?

Click to expand...

Oh, I completely understand the worry. In fact, worry is the wrong word. It's annoying! Utterly, ridiculously, annoying. And that makes the problem real. Not imaginary. Real.

I spend four, six, nine, twelve months working on my novel, right? It's beautiful. It's entertaining. It evokes emotion in the reader. In the best cases, it begins a chain of self-analysis and discovery that leads people closer to realizing their dreams.

And some jackass who doesn't know where his goddam shift key is has lol'd his way into a free copy when all I was asking for was $7.99. Yes, I'd call that annoying.

The disrespect for art is annoying. The flippancy towards my personal well-being is annoying. The contempt shown towards 'The System' or 'The Man' or whatever that's all supposed to mean is annoying, because it's foolish at its core.

I'm not asking for much. My publisher isn't asking for much (arguments about e-pricing totally aside, even $20 isn't going to break someone that can afford a computer and internet connection). Pay my asking price and you can read and re-read the words forever. At no extra cost. But they'd rather skip that tiny drop in the well to get their entertainment for free. Completely annoying.

That said, I'm just the writer. There's nothing I can do about this. In that regard, I agree. It is NOT worth my worry. But piracy is a problem that we should continue to discuss. We may eventually discover ways around it. There will never be a foolproof system (as DRM has demonstrated quite conclusively), but that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it.

That's where I disagree with you, Thothguard51. I acknowledge your point that .99 doesn't stop the downloads for people that REALLY want to pay nothing, but most people, a LARGE majority of people, that can get the work legally for very cheap would much rather do so than illegally pirate it. Lhun has it nailed with the ease of transaction. A lower price for something that costs almost nothing to deliver makes sense. If it's right there for free illegally or right there for a few dollars, most people will spend the cash.

For the record, on the DRM issue, I'll never put DRM on anything I publish if the choice is mine. From a writer's standpoint that actually hurts me since consumers will change devices and platforms over the course of their life. Each time they do so, they have to re-purchase my books if they want them on the new device. From a consumer standpoint, DRM is plain dumb, and the Kindle-to-PDF converters of the world will always exist.

efkelley said:

I'm not asking for much. My publisher isn't asking for much (arguments about e-pricing totally aside, even $20 isn't going to break someone that can afford a computer and internet connection).

Click to expand...

It's doesn't really work out like that. People don't put the money they save because they pirate in the bank. (just ask Citigroup ) People see "free stuff" and get what they can. More than they would've paid for, more than they could've paid for, often more than they can even use. And the easier it is to get it, the more people get.

Unfortunately, as writers we're on the bottom of the totem pole, since books are really really easy to copy. They're extremely small and extremely easy to copy, it just takes a few seconds to download half a MB, and there's not crack to apply or DVD to burn. Games are on the other end, they're the largest files, and often require cracks to get them to run, which can be annoying as anyone can tell who uses cracks on their purchased games to avoid the (even more annoying) copy protection. That means books will get downloaded in the largest quantities and by the most people. It also means that since game publisher have tried for years and never managed to make the slightest dent in piracy, authors, agents and publishers don't have a snowflakes chance in hell to influence ebook piracy (which, as mentioned, is actually older than ebooks).

But that doesn't mean it's much to worry about either. This is a very interesting Article which discusses games, not ebooks, but is nonetheless relevant. It tries to get a better estimate for actual lost sales due to piracy than the usual figures the industry puts out, which are made out of undiluted bullshit as they themselves have to admit.
The author of the article uses the iPhone for the estimate because it's very handy that only jailbroken iphones can use pirated software.
So he compares the numbers; iPhone game companies report that about 80% of their games in circulation are pirated copies, and yet at mot 10% of iPhones are jailbroken. That means that those who do pirate, have about 80 times more games than those who don't. It's extremely unlikely that they'd even have the money to buy all those games if they couldn't pirate them, definitly impossible on average. So, clearly not every pirated copy is a lost sale. But let's assume that pirates don't buy any games at all, but that they'd buy the same as other customers if they couldn't pirate. So, instead of having 80 times as many games as the average customer and not paying anything, the (no longer) pirates would have the same number of games as the average customer and pay full price.

Mathematically, that'd mean an increase in total sales by 11,1%, or that only one of 36 pirated copies (2,7%) is an actually lost sale.
While there are plenty of argument for adjusting the numbers up or down, this is the nearest approach to getting a realistic estimate of lost sales i've ever seen. And in that light, it doesn't sound like a problem worth worrying about to me.

As an aside i also think the moral side deserves debate. Because there is no qualitative difference between people downloading a book for free, or getting a used one as a gift from someone who's already read it. In both cases people read the book and the author gets nothing. The internet only makes a quantitative difference, and i'm not at all a fan of the idea that a quantitative difference in an act should have an effect on its perceived morality.
(The people who make illegal copies and sell them however are without question lower than pond scum)

That was a good article. And I enjoyed this quote:

"However, it's easier for these developers to point their fingers at pirates than to face the real problem: that their games are not fun on PC."

I wonder how often publishers look at their books and say 'Wow we just spent a few million promoting an utter piece of garbage.' I've always asserted that good work will sell and poor work will not. Remember Metallica screaming about Napster in the 90's? They claimed that their album 'Load' had lost vast sales to pirates, when in truth it was just a bad album. I think the same logic can be applied to books.

efkelley said:

They claimed that their album 'Load' had lost vast sales to pirates, when in truth it was just a bad album. I think the same logic can be applied to books.

Click to expand...

Of course. And for a little peace of mind for writers, i think the proportion of lost sales to piracy is much lower than for games even. Because books are so much smaller (and thus easier to download) there'll be much more downloaded books. So a person that'd download three games, might download three hundred books. But he still has the same money to spend, so there's no more lost sales. (well, measured in money not items, since books are cheaper than games)

My personal prediction about the biggest effect piracy will have is that we'll see much more polarization between good and bad products. People still spend the same money on entertainment, but because they can pirate everything for free, they'll much more rarely buy something and regret it later. Because if they're in doubt whether a given game, movie or book is actually worth buying, they can download and try it, or try it at some friend's house who already did. That's not to say that all pirates only download games to try them, but i predict that most buyers will increasingly have already played, read or seen at least part of the product before they're going to buy it. So we'll see bad and mediocre products lose in sales (even though many more people use them) and good products increase in sales.

I met Lloyd Kauffman from Troma movies a few years ago and his viewpoint was that people pirating his movies brought in a lot more fans who bought them; for example, his movies were apparently quite widely pirated in Russia before he started distributing them there, and that meant they had an immediate audience to sell to.

Piracy is really only a big issue to the people at the top of the market, because everyone's heard of them and they stand to lose millions if people pirate rather than pay. Personally I'm thinking of putting a few stories up on e-publishing sites and I'd rather have a million people pirate a story and sell ten thousand copies than have no-one pirate it and sell a thousand copies.

I'd also add that punitive DRM is the reason why I've bought few new computer games in the last few years and most of the games I have bought are DRM-free from www.gog.com, who make deals with game publishers to take their old games, remove any DRM and sell them online. They seem to do pretty well at making money from selling games that anyone could download for free from pirate sites because they were all cracked years ago.

If a book is available in pdf format (and most are), it can be converted to ANY eBook format, including Kindle MOBI, using free software. I use a program for the Mac called Calibre. It's an amazing little program. The problem is, I'm also able to find a pdf for almost any published book in a matter of seconds by doing a quick Google search. Some websites make this VERY easy to do. As an author, it's very unsettling. I'm also a graphic artist interested in doing eBook design, so I'm in the process of testing the different formats. It's shocking how easy it is to find any book for free, and format it for any reader.

On another note, a case could be made for making the eBook available for free if a reader can prove they already own a printed version of the book. I don't have a problem with that. I recently purchased a YA book that did this. Similar to DVD sellers letting owners download a separate digital version for their iPods.

I just saw this the other day.

Neil Gaiman on the issue of piracy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qkyt1wXNlI

Nice. He's on the money with the lending vs buying.

Sorry, but the "it brings in the fans" argument doesn't wash with me, either. A lot of people wind up downloading things for free and if they continue to have a free source, why should they be buggered to pay for anything?

Difference between the $20 ebook argument and affording the internet and computer is I need the internet and computer for everyday life. I put them under the same bracket as utility bills, clothes and food shopping and mortgage. With books and music and games etc they are a pleasure activity not a necessity as my computer and internet connection is. $20 seems a lot to me only 'cause I live on so little a month.

I'm not advocating piracy at all just explaining the difference.

BenPanced said:

A lot of people wind up downloading things for free and if they continue to have a free source, why should they be buggered to pay for anything?

Click to expand...

I made my living in software for years. Software companies have been dealing with piracy for decades and we learned a few things in that time. Among them:

1. Most people will pay for something if they think it has more value to them than it costs. Everyone in the world is not out to rip you off.
2. Most people who won't pay for your product won't pay for your product; if you do somehow prevent them from getting it for free from some dubious pirate site, they'll go elsewhere rather than pay for it. Worrying about those people is pointless.
3. While some mild DRM may improve sales by changing behaviour at the margin, the harder you try to stop piracy with DRM, the more you push paying customers away. If it's restrictive enough to stop pirates then it's restrictive enough to annoy your customers and make them look for an alternative.
4. Piracy by people who won't pay for your product can lead to more sales to those who will. For example, people who used pirate software at home would encourage their employers to buy the same software to use at work.

Re #3, I still have fond memories of the day that the license server went down at the company where I worked and we spent hours twiddling our thumbs because we could no longer run our own software and we couldn't even rebuild it to remove the license checks because we used a third-party compiler which wouldn't run without its license. If it had taken any longer to fix we'd have had to go to one of the web sites explaining how to crack the license keys so we could run our own stuff.

Ultimately you have to accept that some people will buy your product and some people will pirate it, and try to maximise the former while not caring about the latter. DRM punishes customers more than pirates; the one place where it does seem to help is some computer games where most of the profit is made in the first few days when it's selling for $60 copy, so if they can prevent piracy for a short period then having it broken afterwards doesn't really matter. That's not the case when you're going to have an ebook up for sale for the next few decades and the DRM will be cracked long before that.

Would the people who download illegally buy your book for 7.99$? No, they wouldn't. So are you losing sales? Not really. At the same time, if your book gets downloaded illegally a lot, perhaps it's an interesting book? Perhaps, if the price is right, it wouldn't get downloaded illegally?

In short, you won't stop piracy. Ever. So don't bother with DRM. Just make sure that the value of your book isn't lower than the price you're asking and don't sell yourself out of the market.

BenPanced said:

Sorry, but the "it brings in the fans" argument doesn't wash with me, either. A lot of people wind up downloading things for free and if they continue to have a free source, why should they be buggered to pay for anything?

Click to expand...

I first played Half-Life on a cd I had borrowed from a friend, and used a keygen for. I've since bought the game three times. I've also bought the sequel, expansion packs, Counterstrike:Source, etc. I've probably spent $300 on a $39 game I pirated.


Why? Because it was a quality product and I wanted it.