Would you do these things to reduce piracy?
- Thread starter Marian Perera
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How do you quantify "a hell of a lot"?
No one has been able to verify any actual financial damages from ebook piracy, and it's not for lack of trying.
I've thought about this and IMHO the smartest way to recoup the losses from piracy is to upload your own work on a "pirate" website behind an advert. Everyone who clicks through gets you some money. You can't stop these people stealing your books but you can sure as hell make SOME money from them
Unfortunately I'm sure there are all sorts of legal issues involved with this so it's probably not very practical... but it's a thought xD
There are all sorts of technical issues as well. I'm not quite sure how you envision this working.
I've thought about this and IMHO the smartest way to recoup the losses from piracy is to upload your own work on a "pirate" website behind an advert. Everyone who clicks through gets you some money. You can't stop these people stealing your books but you can sure as hell make SOME money from them
Unfortunately I'm sure there are all sorts of legal issues involved with this so it's probably not very practical... but it's a thought xD
Alternatively, you could completely legally decide to give your book away for free from the get-go and distribute it with ads in it.
I think that's a horrible idea, but whatever.
My book has apparently been downloaded for free thousands of times. I doubt most of that is human traffic, or the type of human traffic that would *ever* pay me. I don't worry about it beyond sending takedown notices to the worst offenders when I bother looking for them.
I come from the commercial art/home decor world. Piracy, overt or not, is rife there. The only thing a craftsman or artisan can do is keep reinventing themselves, and play on quality - because the knockoffs can't.
I come from the commercial art/home decor world. Piracy, overt or not, is rife there. The only thing a craftsman or artisan can do is keep reinventing themselves, and play on quality - because the knockoffs can't.
Malware is of course software that's destructive in one way or another (even a keylogger violates the trust that what someone types only goes where the computer says it's going), so causing or allowing it to get on someone else's computer is unethical.
The problem with feeding malware to pirates is that two wrongs don't make a right.
Malware is distributed most any way that can be thought of. There's enough malware "out there" that the FBI can't stop or investigate everything. A lot of these things are on servers that are out of reach of US laws or of many international agreements.
Known malware sites can be blocked, but it's like playing whack-a-mole, new sites can be brought up in no time. In short, fighting malware of any kind is complicated, and I only know a very little about it.
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Yes, I would think distributing malware of any kind would be an ethically black thing to do. There may be some small number of humans downloading for "legitimate" reasons (they already own the book) but that a very significant number of that traffic is probably not coming from personal networks and that malware could fuck up a lot of innocent people's computers. Someone stole a bomb so you're going to detonate it remotely and you don't care if it takes down the entire neighborhood. That's, yeah, that's pretty evil.
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I suppose it depends on how popular your book is, but I don't believe for a second that there aren't some losses -- or at least non-gains -- being incurred by a whole lot of authors, especially the popular ones, on any given day.
Authors at least know that there's some money they're not getting that they rightfully should, given that their work is being consumed unlawfully, so it makes sense to try to bridge that imaginary gap in rightful earnings.
True, but then you'd lose out on the majority of your revenue (from people who buy your book legally) xD
The idea of giving pirates your work (behind something like adfly adverts) is to get some money from their pirating habits. The buyers buy your books and the non-buyers do what they were going to do anyway, only now they still "contribute" while consuming your efforts, even if they had no intention of doing so.
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Eh, I guess you could. For me, though, it's not just a practicality thing. If I felt my work was honestly worth more than the industry standard, I would probably charge a little more. But I really don't think that. I'm actually thinking about putting out an ebook for a little less than 2.99 because even though a lot of erotica shorts seem to sell well at that price, that just feels a little high to me for this particular story. I try to think about what I am willing to pay as a reader, and what I expect for the amount of money I pay. If I would feel like a price is too much, then I don't feel like it's ethical for me to expect other people to pay it.
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