Quote:
Originally Posted by Luvian
Again I have to ask if you read the link. I count 115 books up there on that website. That's without counting the books they published for free on dvds archives, or the books that might have been cycled out over time.
And here again I refer to you to the answer of the company with the 115 exceptions and counting. They have been offering free books for nine years and they're making more money out of it. Seems to me like they know what they're doing.
I do too. I agree fully that the authorities are in the right in prosecuting criminals.
Yes. It is a good thing the law protects intellectual property.
What we are discussing here isn't that theft should be legalized. It isn't that art shouldn't be protected. What we're saying here is that Video Game companies are being assholes. Nothing you say can or will ever change our opinion on this. You're not even having the same discussion as us, really. Piracy is bad. This isn't what this is about.
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Ok granted 115 is more than 1 book. My apologies.
I did go to the website, and immediately found 3 things
1. He's wrong about the couple of dollars issue, as per proved by the Donut story in Freakonomics, and Olorin's firsthand account.
2. He's riding a wave of publicity because he's one of the first authors to do something like this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Flint
While he may be able to make a living doing things this way, how will things look in 50 years if every author does this? There will be no notability from giving away work, so less publicity from doing so. How much of his publicity from the quality of the actual books themselves and how much from his method of distribution?
Certainly I only visited his site because he came up in a debate about piracy. And I read science fiction and buy books and frequent bookstores. I'd never heard of him.
3. People aren't actually getting the book for free, they're getting a download.
This is not the same thing, as he said, he's relying on the idea that people prefer to read a book, a paper, bound book, than read onscreeen, or printout the work (which has ink and paper costs of it's own).
With an mp3 the experience is the exact same whether you buy it on itunes, or get it from P2P. You hear it out of the same speakers whether legal or stolen. Same with a hacked game. Same computer screen, same mouse... the feel is the same.
So my question still begs "who would pay for something they already have for free?" for in his case, they are paying for something they don't already have - the printed book.