"...the single most difficult aspect of getting his or her work to the reader: the physical production of the printed book."
Also, shelf space issues go away.
"So, perhaps Swift knows something I don't, but everything I read seems to indicate that eBooks are going to result in options for higher royalties, not lower. So I have to wonder where this fear comes from?"
Maybe he assumes, as many seem to, that once one electronic copy has been distributed, no more sales will happen. There will be one sale and then everybody will just copy it.
Of course, if you can ignore one bit of reality, you can ignore all of them.
I remember when AT&T ran virtually all the phones in the US, and IBM a.k.a. "Big Blue" dominated the computer industry. They're why even today the systems are ancestors of the IBM PC -- big business didn't take the personal computer seriously until IBM made one. Unfortunately it was a mediocre design at best. There were better machines available already, but none had the IBM name behind them. They were all swept away, with one exception that I can think of. But mediocre as it was, it was a standard that people could build to.
Of course there were scuffles over patents and copyrights and what constituted an IBM clone vs. what constituted IP violation. These days there's no way it would have happened. IBM would simply sue everybody in sight who tried to make a clone, the courts would back them up, and the market would continue to be fragmented for at least another decade.
Nobody at the time could imagine IBM losing dominance, they were so powerful. And yet... here we are.
By not paying for the roads, Ford Motor Company gets a free ride every time I drive my car.
By not paying for the wires, poles and meters, GE gets a free ride every time I turn on a light.
Eljer gets two free rides every time I flush the toilet. Bonus! Of course after trying to digest stuff like this it tends to get clogged. More free rides! Ace Hardware gets free rides too, they sold me the plunger.
How much you want to bet John Sununu and Harold Ford Jr. never have to flush?
IANAL but it seems to me that copyright means that I can't take her picture and duplicate it (with some exceptions that aren't relevant to my argument).
What it does not mean is that I can't take a picture like hers. I don't care if the composition is identical. I took the picture, not she.
Years ago (1990s) I passed along (to a chat room with mostly intelligent people) something I'd heard that if the long-distance companies stopped billing by minutes and billed a flat monthly rate, they'd save enough on the simplified billing that (assuming they passed on the savings) long distance service would cost a small fraction of what we'd been paying. $10/month? $5/month? Something ridiculously low.
(This was in the bad old days before cell phones were in common use. Just about everybody used landlines in those days. AT&T had recently been broken up, Sprint and MCI had barely become legitimate, and so on.)
I thought that was kind of cool, actually, and a few people agreed with me. But a number of people were outraged by the idea: what if somebody called his cousin in New Zealand and then left the phone off the hook for a week?
Of course, New Zealand would have been an international call, so the example was a bad one. But what would happen if enough people did something like that domestically? (Answer: probably raise the monthly bill by a few cents, and the phone company would probably add ways to automatically detect and disconnect unused connections, if they didn't have them already. Would it be widespread enough to jack up the rates? Doubt it.) And what about some lonely old grandma who only used 10 minutes of long distance every six months? (Dunno. Obviously there's no possible way to handle that, right? Because personally I can only think of three or four possible ways off the top of my head.)
This is what I call the "somebody might get away with something" syndrome. It doesn't matter how much money you'd save on long distance; if somebody else got ten times as much service than I did but we both paid the same amount, even if it was 1/100th of what we used to pay for the same service -- if somebody could get away with something, I didn't want it.
This is what I see happening with Ubisoft and a number of other companies (and people) regarding copyright violation. If one person gets something for free undeserved, it doesn't matter that the same availability causes 10 other people to buy it that wouldn't have -- it's more important not to let the filthy thief get away with being a freetard than it is for me to make more money.
Of course we can't couch it in such terms, even in our heads, or our insanity (or stupidity) would be revealed. So we have to make stuff up about how much we're losing and ignore all contrary facts in order to make ourselves look like victims.
Can't have people getting away with stuff! That's just wrong.
As loathe as I am to agree, it was the first thing I thought of when I read that sentence. Mike has expressed the other side of this many times when it comes to laws, and it's just as true here as it is there. If it can be abused, somebody will abuse it.
The fact that it's voluntary on the part of the users? That's a perfectly good point. Laws are imposed upon us, often against our wishes and sometimes to our detriment. This is a feature of a social site that the users can simply ignore if they wish.
It will cost us an additional $10m+/year to help prop up a dying industry so it can give us more unmitigated dreck and treat its customers like criminals while continuing to withhold content and options that we actually want?
Sign me up, I'm stupid and masochistic. I certainly don't want to see that money go towards education or social services.
The last time (years ago, and not here) I pointed out that it was in your doctor's best interests to keep you alive but unwell, I was told my viewpoint was "dystopian".
And I thought it was a quite reasonable argument. Tsk.
Actually I took it as dry humour [sic] and tried to reply in kind. Note the quip at the end about us really speaking different languages after all.
I'm old enough that our schools pretty much taught us to spell correctly. (I mean, American correctly.) I do remember the teacher telling us about a new, alternate method of teaching to spell phonetically, and showing us a book. At the time I thought it was pretty stupid, but heck, I was all of maybe 8.
These days... I'm not quite as arrogantly sure of myself on that opinion, but I'm still not convinced.
What I do know is that if I see a post that doesn't at least approximate English spelling (including substituting single letters or numbers for words), I will pass it by. I used to try to decipher such messages, and after having done so always concluded that it wasn't worth the effort I'd expended. Eventually I decided to stop bothering. I have yet to regret that decision.
On the post: Author Says eBooks Will Hurt Authors Because Of Royalty Rates
Also, shelf space issues go away.
"So, perhaps Swift knows something I don't, but everything I read seems to indicate that eBooks are going to result in options for higher royalties, not lower. So I have to wonder where this fear comes from?"
Maybe he assumes, as many seem to, that once one electronic copy has been distributed, no more sales will happen. There will be one sale and then everybody will just copy it.
Of course, if you can ignore one bit of reality, you can ignore all of them.
On the post: Australian Government Considering Three Strikes; Consumers Not Considered Stakeholders
Don't be silly
On the post: Tech Titans Shift And Change: Worrying About Dominance Is A Fool's Game
Entropy Just Isn't What It Used To Be
Of course there were scuffles over patents and copyrights and what constituted an IBM clone vs. what constituted IP violation. These days there's no way it would have happened. IBM would simply sue everybody in sight who tried to make a clone, the courts would back them up, and the market would continue to be fragmented for at least another decade.
Nobody at the time could imagine IBM losing dominance, they were so powerful. And yet... here we are.
On the post: Will John Sununu And Harold Ford Jr. Agree To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill Next Month?
Free rides
By not paying for the wires, poles and meters, GE gets a free ride every time I turn on a light.
Eljer gets two free rides every time I flush the toilet. Bonus! Of course after trying to digest stuff like this it tends to get clogged. More free rides! Ace Hardware gets free rides too, they sold me the plunger.
How much you want to bet John Sununu and Harold Ford Jr. never have to flush?
On the post: Of Course: New Fox Delay Means More Unauthorized Downloads Of Fox Shows
Jeez, Mike
If you (and Roettger, et.al.) hadn't told the world that it's OK to download illegally, people wouldn't have done it. Socialist freetard!
It can't possibly be anything Fox did wrong. 'Cause they're, you know. Experts.
On the post: Public Health Official Forced To Shut Up On Twitter, Blog For Daring To Speak Honestly
Re: autism
Don't be stupid. I mean, really, orange juice. Hah hah!*
My daughter was diagnosed for autism after being evaluated for autism. It's obvious that autism tests are the cause of autism!
*Joke.
On the post: Did Libyan Gov't Briefly Turn Internet Access Back On To Try To Stall Rebel Attacks?
Re: ^^^ "bombinb" in my post above is intentional.
On the post: Judge Slams Photographer For Bogus Copyright Lawsuit: Says Use Some Common Sense, Points Out 'Utter Lack Of Similarity'
What copyright means
What it does not mean is that I can't take a picture like hers. I don't care if the composition is identical. I took the picture, not she.
If it does, we're all screwed, the lot of us.
On the post: Ubisoft Removes 'Always On' DRM From New Driver Game; Replaces It With Something Slightly Less Annoying
Somebody might get away with something
(This was in the bad old days before cell phones were in common use. Just about everybody used landlines in those days. AT&T had recently been broken up, Sprint and MCI had barely become legitimate, and so on.)
I thought that was kind of cool, actually, and a few people agreed with me. But a number of people were outraged by the idea: what if somebody called his cousin in New Zealand and then left the phone off the hook for a week?
Of course, New Zealand would have been an international call, so the example was a bad one. But what would happen if enough people did something like that domestically? (Answer: probably raise the monthly bill by a few cents, and the phone company would probably add ways to automatically detect and disconnect unused connections, if they didn't have them already. Would it be widespread enough to jack up the rates? Doubt it.) And what about some lonely old grandma who only used 10 minutes of long distance every six months? (Dunno. Obviously there's no possible way to handle that, right? Because personally I can only think of three or four possible ways off the top of my head.)
This is what I call the "somebody might get away with something" syndrome. It doesn't matter how much money you'd save on long distance; if somebody else got ten times as much service than I did but we both paid the same amount, even if it was 1/100th of what we used to pay for the same service -- if somebody could get away with something, I didn't want it.
This is what I see happening with Ubisoft and a number of other companies (and people) regarding copyright violation. If one person gets something for free undeserved, it doesn't matter that the same availability causes 10 other people to buy it that wouldn't have -- it's more important not to let the filthy thief get away with being a freetard than it is for me to make more money.
Of course we can't couch it in such terms, even in our heads, or our insanity (or stupidity) would be revealed. So we have to make stuff up about how much we're losing and ignore all contrary facts in order to make ourselves look like victims.
Can't have people getting away with stuff! That's just wrong.
On the post: German Officials Outlaw Facebook 'Like' Button
Re:
The fact that it's voluntary on the part of the users? That's a perfectly good point. Laws are imposed upon us, often against our wishes and sometimes to our detriment. This is a feature of a social site that the users can simply ignore if they wish.
On the post: German Officials Outlaw Facebook 'Like' Button
Oh, fer cryin' out loud...
On the post: CBO Says PROTECT IP Will Cost Taxpayers Over $10 Million Per Year To Censor The Internet
So...
Sign me up, I'm stupid and masochistic. I certainly don't want to see that money go towards education or social services.
On the post: Jay-Z And Kanye West Go To Ridiculous Efforts To Stop Album From Leaking
Re: Re: Radiohead dislike leaks too
On the post: Jay-Z And Kanye West Go To Ridiculous Efforts To Stop Album From Leaking
Re:
This has been proven time and time again.
On the post: As Governments Get Censorship Happy, New Technologies Popping Up To Route Around That
Re: "Routing around" Youtube requires high bandwidth.
On the post: DailyDirt: Cures For Everything..?
Re:
And I thought it was a quite reasonable argument. Tsk.
On the post: DailyDirt: Cures For Everything..?
Re: Re:
On the post: DailyDirt: Cures For Everything..?
http://xkcd.com/938/
On the post: Where In Trademark Law Does It Say It's Okay To Trademark A Town Name 'For The Good Of The Community'?
Re:
Too late, I just got the trademark, as you can see! :)
Hint: ® gets you ®
™ gets you ™
© gets you ©
On the post: Spanish Appeals Court: Linking Is Not Infringement
Re: Re: Re: How can any number be infringing?
I'm old enough that our schools pretty much taught us to spell correctly. (I mean, American correctly.) I do remember the teacher telling us about a new, alternate method of teaching to spell phonetically, and showing us a book. At the time I thought it was pretty stupid, but heck, I was all of maybe 8.
These days... I'm not quite as arrogantly sure of myself on that opinion, but I'm still not convinced.
What I do know is that if I see a post that doesn't at least approximate English spelling (including substituting single letters or numbers for words), I will pass it by. I used to try to decipher such messages, and after having done so always concluded that it wasn't worth the effort I'd expended. Eventually I decided to stop bothering. I have yet to regret that decision.
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