File Sharing

[JessieBlackwood]

Okay, I might make myself some enemies over this but I want to say this anyway and I hope the mods will please put this into a more appropriate place if they feel the need. I am not venting, just making a statement and a plea I guess. Since we have been talking about books here, I wanted to say something to encourage support for writers who have books in print, writers we may very well end up discussing on this forum. After all, Mark Gatiss is a writer himself and although he's way more mainstream than I am, this kind of thing can hurt him as well as every other author out there.

 

As an author, when I see someone ask if there's anywhere you can get a book for free on-line I cringe. Okay, if a book is on public domain, there's no issue. If a book is in print, there's a problem. I'm not about to have a go at anyone personally, we've all copied videos and DVDs and lent people books and such. For personal use, right? Right. This encourages us to go buy them ourselves if we like them, because we have to give them back. That makes sense and is, in essence, advertising for the author. However, a download site offering the whole book, for nothing, doesn't encourage people to buy our books, because they have no need to. They have the whole file, free, and they don't have to give it back. It's not like a library, where even ebooks these days have a liimited borrowing life.

 

So I would like to point out that if a book is in print, if it is available ANYWHERE on the internet FOR FREE, then pound to a penny it is from an illegal download site. Unless the author is offering it, on their website or as a give-away, that's different. It is their choice. If it is in print it is in copyright. So please, please don't use these sites. Please use Google books, Amazon or any other ebook site that offers an exerpt to see if you like it. Then support us and buy it. Most of us are not rich people. We do not see any royalties from our books that are shared by these free sites. We don't see much in the way of royalties anyway. There are precious few JK Rowlings out there. I have two books and make less than $500 a year on both of them but then I choose to write in a niche genre, m/m romance whic is growing but still small in its distribution. I would love to become a writer who has enough out there to support me full time but it is a pipe dream still. A few fellow m/m authors are full time; they have a dozen books out, bringing in the money. They're the lucky ones.

 

All I will say is, this is a request that you check before you download. If you want free books, try Project Guttenberg, you can get the original Sherlock Holmes stories there, completely free in a number of formats including MOBI format for Kindles. If you want something in print, please, please buy it, or check the author's blogs or websites for promos and give aways.

 

I would be more than interested to hear everybodies views on this. Do you agree? Disagree? Have you a burning reason why you disagree. Please share. This is only my opinion after all.

Thank you.

[Undead Medic]

This is an issue we wholeheartedly support on Sherlock Forum, please only download from legitimate sources.

[Vatican Cameos]

I totally agree with you.

It's the same as in the film business. I don't download movies, because I want to be an actress someday. Downloading movies destroys the industry in which I'd like to work later. AND I think the feeling of the material book/film is much nicer and the quality is much better

[aSnowyEvening]

I have this weird thing where I prefer to obtain a physical copy of any media that I wish to keep. I say "weird" because it seems to be a view shared less and less in the technological age. My sister has a Kobo (I think it's a Kobo?), and I've toyed with it, held it in my hands and know how it works, but honestly to me I can't get over the idea of reading a published work on a screen without feeling the pages between my fingertips.

 

This doesn't apply to books, and I'm sure this will open a can of worms, but for my own personal use I feel that if there is something I want to obtain that is not available in my country (i.e. as-of-yet unlicensed anime, or more pertinently, BBC's Sherlock), then I'll admit to obtaining the media in a less-than-legal manner. Am I proud of it? No, I can't say I am. However I have a rule that, if I like it, I buy it when it becomes available in my country, and to stop watching what I've downloaded once I hear that it has been licensed. And I do my regular research to figure out when this happens. I'm no angel, and by no means do I claim to be one. However, by buying a legal version of it once it becomes available in my country I feel like I'm doing my part to support both the creators and the industry that produces the stuff that I like. Hopefully my moral compass points mostly north...?

[JessieBlackwood]

Nobody is an angel. At least you buy when you can. And I agree totally about the physical hardcopy of the material you want. I love books, their feel, weight and scent. However, I also love my Kindle. I like the portable quality to it, the fact that I can carry a library in one small slim place. It hasn't taken away my love of books but it has allowed me to store more.

[m0r1arty]

Whilst I don't pirate or condone piracy I do think that free distribution can be worthwhile for an artist at the beginning of their game. I also think that 'Intellectual property' is a bad thing when allowed to be 'legally' protected for any longer that is decent and vehemently suggest that Steamboat Willy, Cliff Richard and others with works which are considered intrinsic to common knowledge boil their heads in a decent molar brew of their favourite acid.

 

Artist create and should get paid if their creations are liked. They should also know that once their creation is published or 'put out' they have sacrificed their ownership of it and that fair use sampling of their materials will, and should, occur. I can cite any book in existence using the Harvard referencing method but can't use video or audio samples under the same conditions - no go I'm afraid.

 

With every creation having either tropes, clichés or direct stealing of material as 'inspiration' it gets very murky to determine what is allowed to be used and what is illegal and breaching copyright.

 

When artists die poor and are celebrated after their deaths as geniuses, is that stealing?

 

When a family, or estate, holds onto popular material one hundred years after the author has died, is that stealing?

 

I think if we brought down who can use what and for how long things are 'protected' we would have a world bustling with new and inventive concepts which showed something original, or at least unusual, floating to the surface of explorative humanities - as is it's a lawyers game and there's nothing much worth perusing.

 

-m0r

[Banshee]

I have to say I agree with you. I design knitting patterns and it is often the same story: someone gets a copy and passes it around, and the designer gets nothing. Writers, designers, musicians, and everybody in a creative line of works put a lot of effort in their work, and should get their dues...

[Lirael]

I won't lie: I do download books for free sometimes. Depending on how much I like it I'll: A- not buy it or read it again B- buy on my Kindle or C- buy physical copy (only if I love it cause i have to pay shipping costs to my country and find a space for it somewhere in my crowded room). I do something similar for movies and music. Hell, watched a movie 3 times in 3 D after seeing it for free.

 

Now, when it comes to things that are not available my views change: if something is only available to you by illegally downloading it beforehand, then the creater isn't losing money is he? I mean, take the series Sherlock for example: It doesn't air in Brazil, I would never have bought the Dvds if i hadn't watched it for free first. Merlin, sadly, doesn't even have Dvds to buy here so download it is...

Edited March 28, 2012 by Lirael

[aSnowyEvening]

Now, when it comes to things that are not available my views change: if something is only available to you by illegally downloading it beforehand, then the creater isn't losing money is he? I mean, take the series Sherlock for example: It doesn't air in Brazil, I would never have bought the Dvds if i hadn't watched it for free first. Merlin, sadly, doesn't even have Dvds to buy here so download it is...

 

Yeah, this is why I (well, used to at least) stream anime series that I hear about, either because it never will become licensed in North America, or because at the time it is so new that it just hasn't been licensed yet. It changed when sites like FUNimation and Crunchyroll made deals with the Japanese companies to legally stream their own dubs of the shows simultaneously or very closely after Japanese air time, but if it's otherwise not available to me, they wouldn't be loosing profit as there would not be a legal way to gain profit from me in the first place.

 

The digital realm being combined with Intellectual Property Copyright Laws make the whole thing be a big gray area with varying shades. It was the one thing that I wish I got a much better grasp on during my one and only Ethics course.