Digital vs Traditional Print: This time it's personal.

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Yeah, you'll notice I refused to purchase the new copies because of the copious amounts of changes. Therefore it's not the original work, therefore not a valid counter-argument. Thanks for trying though.
No see, i was also including this:

I wasn't making a comparison to quality, I was making a comparison to repurchasing something you already own in a different medium.
Well if there's nothing new and no quality increase then what is the point of buying it again?
 
Not sure where the confusion comes from, DVD/Bluray are superior formats to the VHS in terms of quality.

A digital book is not an enhancement of quality so therefore I don't see the point in repurchasing.
 

fade

Staff member
Yeah, grandpa :) , newsgroups got popular again a while ago. Mostly for pirating, but that's nothing new.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
As opposed to the people posting books that had DRM?!
More like as opposed to people who cracked DRM, or sourced the material from DRM-protected files. To be sourced from a company that makes part of its image to be "trusting" the users and going DRM-free is a kick in the teeth, and a detriment to the natural progress of media because it reinforces Big Media's assertion that DRM is necessary. It's like that torrent that has gog.com's entire inventory, custom gog.com installers and all. Really, man? 5 bucks is too much for an old game you already know you love, so you gotta pirate EVERY game from this DRM-free site? Way to prove Sony/et al right.
 
S

Soliloquy

Yeah, doing that kind of thing pretty much destroys any claims to the moral high ground that pirates have, and just makes it a basic case of "I don't want to pay you for your stuff."
 
Necro time!

It's interesting to come back and revisit this topic, 5 months later.

My step-father called me up the other day and said "You must have 'made it'...they're pirating your book on the newsgroups." I cracked a smile and instantly thought of this old thread. For you youngsters to the Internet, newsgroups are an old message-board like system that have fallen out of mainstream use--but they still exist, and people evidently still use them to pirate stuff. I'd forgotten all about them until my step-dad mentioned them.

It kind of sucks that someone is taking advantage of Smashwords to pirate books--the book is a Smashwords edition, and Smashwords books come with no copy protection. But I don't really mind my book being out there. The kind of folks that trawl the binaries newsgroups looking for 'warez' (as pirated stuff was known back in the day) aren't the kind of folks I could expect to buy my book anyway. But hopefully, some of them will like it and tell their friends about it.
I mentioned in a rant thread that someone's pirating mine--which DOES have DRM protection. Bleh. It seems not to matter; people just want stuff.

Maybe I'll try no DRM for the next one and see if I get more sales (sneak preview: I doubt it).
 
I don't read the rants thread that much these days. I don't think there's any getting away from getting pirated.
I'm guessing most didn't see; I was just mentioning so I didn't sound like a broken record.

And you're right; it's just one of those things that will happen these days. It can be exposure though, as you said. Unfortunately, there's no way to track that either.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
The sad thing is, if the pirates want it, they'll figure a way to get it.
That's the reality of the situation - nontangible goods (IE, media that can be digitized) are impossible to really own and sell in the same manner as tangible goods - like, say, sporting equipment or automobiles. The times, they change... and business has to change with it.
 
I'm reminded (and I may have said this before; possibly in this thread) of when the Xbox 360 was first announced. I'm going purely on memory here, so don't quote me. I recall how someone at Microsoft proclaimed that the 360 was un-hackable. I had to snicker because you knew, you just knew, that there were guys out there who, immediately upon hearing that, began rubbing their hands in anticipation. They wanted to crack that bitch and prove the guy wrong.
 
More like as opposed to people who cracked DRM, or sourced the material from DRM-protected files. To be sourced from a company that makes part of its image to be "trusting" the users and going DRM-free is a kick in the teeth, and a detriment to the natural progress of media because it reinforces Big Media's assertion that DRM is necessary. It's like that torrent that has gog.com's entire inventory, custom gog.com installers and all. Really, man? 5 bucks is too much for an old game you already know you love, so you gotta pirate EVERY game from this DRM-free site? Way to prove Sony/et al right.
So Sony is right in using DRM that doesn't actually work because people pirate everything?


Yeah, doing that kind of thing pretty much destroys any claims to the moral high ground that pirates have, and just makes it a basic case of "I don't want to pay you for your stuff."
By moral high ground you mean something like "sticking it to the man" i take it...
 
Back on-topic, because now I own a Kindle and have read a book on it, so I can contribute:

I actually do like reading on it, but some kinks need to be worked out. Not on the Kindle itself exactly, but on who formats eBooks. There was a part in the book I just read that had some extra formatting due to a song being sung. For the rest of the chapter, the font size was messed up. I know you can easily change that, but it was annoying to switch, then switch back, and it wasn't exactly the same size as earlier. Then I got to another book, same series, and the font size changed again. Couldn't get it exactly right either, so I just had to get used to it.

It does feel better closing and finishing a book, but since my Kindle cover is open-flap like a book, I just close that.

It's nice being able to carry hundreds of pages of folklore reference around in a tiny little tablet.

I still love my books, but I can see it getting difficult to jump back and forth, aside from with comics. Definitely sticking with paper on those.
 
S

Soliloquy

So Sony is right in using DRM that doesn't actually work because people pirate everything?
The funny thing is, Sony doesn't actually have to be right. They just have to be able to seem right in the average person's eyes -- and a company that big can afford a lot of PR representatives who will latch onto things like the rampant piracy of DRM-free stuff to justify the inclusion of DRM in their games, even if it doesn't actually stop anything.

So long as they can seem right, they'll be able to do whatever they want without many repercussions.

By moral high ground you mean something like "sticking it to the man" i take it...
Well, that's the justification I see all the time, at least.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
So Sony is right in using DRM that doesn't actually work because people pirate everything?
No, but the piracy of DRM-free material seems at first glance to support such an assertion, which is dangerous because someone like, say, a FEDERAL JUDGE, might not go deeper than first glance.
 
Well, that's the justification I see all the time, at least.
But going by that the use of DRM or not wouldn't really matter, as The Man would be bad anyway for the reasons that make it The Man...

And you're also assuming that it's the same people that use that justification instead of the guys that are philosophically pirates (information should be free etc.)

No, but the piracy of DRM-free material seems at first glance to support such an assertion, which is dangerous because someone like, say, a FEDERAL JUDGE, might not go deeper than first glance.
I for one would expect a Judge to be able to tell that whether or not a work had DRM in no way influences the infringement of copyright... if he/she can't then, well, the broken justice system is more of a concern imo.
 
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