Shareware the Pirates?

[TheAuldGrump]

Hmmm, I would also suggest adding a clause forbidding further distribution of the product, and that having a legal copy does not confer legal permission to distribute the product. Just to prevent people gathering the PDFs into a bundle and selling them on EBay or the like.

The Auld Grump

 

[HamarSkald]

There are two factors that contribute to violation of intellectual property restrictions:

1. Those who make unlicensed copies are called "pirates", thus glamorizing them. Calling them software thieves wouldn't give them the same association with action, adventure, and booty on the high seas. Being associated with pirates and eyepatches and such is almost enough to turn me to "piracy".

2. It's sooooooo easy. The real hindrance to stopping the violation of intellectual property rights is that it is trivially easy to do in most cases. Books, music, software, etc... are all readily available and there is no practical way to stop that. People are apparently willing to scan in entire hardcopy books AND use optical character recognition software to render the text and then add bookmarks and even identifying marks to their "work". Thse folks, who also labor to crack any DRM or other such technology, distribute the fruits of other people's labor on teh Intarweb where anyone with a computer can download it.

It's easy to convince someone that walking out of a store without paying is wrong. Most people will feel anxious and nervous and are afraid of getting caught. Unfortunately, downloading illegal copies of software and books is easy and can be done in one's underpants in the middle of the night with no practical way of being caught.

The real solution will be to find some way to make money off of publishing music, books, etc... without being dependent on artificial scarcity because there is no more scarcity when it comes to information that can be transmitted and copied with almost no cost.

The above is not intended as a justification of piracy. Today, we have laws protectint intellectual property and we don't have any alternate way for publishers, authors, etc... to make money. Until such a system is available and is being used, we should all abide by the current laws.

The above is intended, though, to point out the futility of the paper model of publishing in hte digital age. The business model used by book and music publishers will change. I have no idea what the future will hold, but it won't be one where easily copied data is treated like difficult to copy physical objects.

Hamar

 

[Cergorach]

Whoa! I think it's a really bad idea, with a statement like that you kind of say that it's allright to pirate your books. And even a micro payment is enough to stall legal action. But i would suggest that putting your paypal account somewhere (in small leters) would be usefull for those folks that feel that your book was worth more then you asked for it or those who got it through less then legal terms.

Let's be honest, your books are very cheap for the page count, i don't see how anyone could claim they would be to expensive.

 

[GlassJaw]

The business model used by book and music publishers will change. I have no idea what the future will hold, but it won't be one where easily copied data is treated like difficult to copy physical objects.

Good post. And contrary to what RIAA is doing right now, you can't slow down technology with lawsuits. The pirates will continue to find away. It's just going to take some smart and clever people to figure out a new business model. There are some options now (in the music business at least), but I know that the major record labels are resisting because it reduces their relevance.

 

[S'mon]

I like your idea. "If you like this, please send me $5" or similar also works I think. I think it's a good idea to have a suggested donation or price included in your .pdf, so if people get hold of it they know who to donate to. OTOH you don't want to charge legal purchasers $25 and include a note asking illegal downloaders to send you $5, i'd think charging $5 and including a note asking anyone acquiring & using it to send you $5 would be best.

 

[S'mon]

Take out the bit that even mentions legal actions and try it. IE if you haven't paid for this I would appreciate it if you sent a little money my way so I can continue producing these pdfs.

That sounds good.

 

[Jonny Nexus]

If it was me, I think I'd say something like:

If you've been given this PDF book by a friend, or have found it on an Internet site somewhere, you might not be aware that it's actually a commercial (i.e. non-free) product. If you fall into this category, and you like our book and are going to carry on using it, we'd be grateful if you would legimatise your copy by going to web address and paying the $5 purchase cost. In return, you'll get all the benefits of being a registered user including free updates and corrections and we'll also be able to continue to produce products such as this.

That way you're not saying that it was okay for them to acquire it in this way because it's couched in terms of "someone else might mistakenly have given this to you / distributed this, and you might not therefore have been aware that you were supposed to pay for it". It's hopefully a plight version of saying: excuse me, were you planning on paying for that?

 

[philreed]

If it was me, I think I'd say something like:

If you've been given this PDF book by a friend, or have found it on an Internet site somewhere, you might not be aware that it's actually a commercial (i.e. non-free) product. If you fall into this category, and you like our book and are going to carry on using it, we'd be grateful if you would legimatise your copy by going to web address and paying the $5 purchase cost. In return, you'll get all the benefits of being a registered user including free updates and corrections and we'll also be able to continue to produce products such as this.

That way you're not saying that it was okay for them to acquire it in this way because it's couched in terms of "someone else might mistakenly have given this to you / distributed this, and you might not therefore have been aware that you were supposed to pay for it". It's hopefully a plight version of saying: excuse me, were you planning on paying for that?

I've seen similar phrasing in the past and I think it's a pretty good approach to the problem. You're not calling the individual a thief -- you're just saying they may have stumbled onto something that shouldn't be floating around.

 

[philreed]

it was a bingo game for windows 3.x, it was called Bingo V3.5 not sure if I could find it now. Why do you have it

No. But there are lots of "experts" and "I already did that!" posts on the internet and it's nice to get some details -- especially from someone with one or two posts.

I see that you're new. Welcome!

 

[Buttercup]

Take out the bit that even mentions legal actions and try it. IE if you haven't paid for this I would appreciate it if you sent a little money my way so I can continue producing these pdfs.

This is what I think too. If doing this gets you even a little extra gelt, then you can count it a success.

Myself, I'll keep paying full price for legal copies of your work, Joe. (Looking forward to seeing you and Suzi at GenCon next week!)