[Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

[Leandro Lucarella]

Steven Schveighoffer, el 27 de agosto a las 17:34 me escribiste:
> On Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:40:43 -0400, Leandro Lucarella
> <luca at llucax.com.ar> wrote:
> 
> >Steven Schveighoffer, el 27 de agosto a las 15:03 me escribiste:
> >
> >>No, libraries don't steal, they buy their copies or are given books
> >>that other people have bought.  If I lent you my copy of TDPL then
> >>it wouldn't be stealing either, someone paid for that book.  If you
> >>have a copy of a book from the library, then nobody else has that
> >>copy.  This falls under fair-use.  You are allowed to transfer your
> >>copy of IP to someone else (despite what EULA's try to enforce), or
> >>lend it to them as long as you are not also using it.  There is a
> >>difference between copying and lending.
> >
> >That being true, the practical consequences are the same: A doesn't buy
> >the book, but reads it anyway. So according to the argument about
> >downloading the book via torrent was "A is stealing profit from the
> >author". If A lends the book instead of downloading it, he is still
> >getting the knowledge but not paying from it (so the author doesn't get
> >paid either). I really have a lot of trouble understanding why one is
> >reasonable or fair use and why another is stealing.
> 
> See my response to retard.  The publisher prices his book with the
> *understanding* that libraries will buy the book and lend it to
> people, or that some people won't buy it and will just borrow a copy
> from a friend.  They have done lots of research to find the correct
> price point so people will buy it (not to expensive) and they make a
> profit (not too cheap).

Well, that's not true in Argentina, most books (and music records)
explicitly forbids public loaning (on the other hand, anyone that
receives any kind of subsidy from the national treasure must provide
a free copy to the National Congress Library).

> What screws up the pricing is when people can easily get copies
> without paying for them, without following the "one license, one
> book" model.

I really think that what publishers really want is one fee per user, not
per physical copy. Maybe they count the lending as a variable to
calculate the price, but is not what they wish for, as in some countries
are lobbying to put a tax to compensate for piracy.

> Then they lose money.  Look at what it has done to the music industry.
> The losses are hard to comprehend, because a "non-sale" doesn't cost
> anything.  But when you invest so much money expecting a return on the
> investment, only to not get your money back, the model doesn't work,
> the industry suffers, and the eventual beneficiaries from the industry
> (i.e. you) suffer.  It wouldn't happen overnight, but if copyright law
> was abolished, eventually we would have only poetry to read :)

You are insane, really. I don't know much about books, because I don't
read much (yeah, I'm an illiterate), but I do hear a lot of music, and
I'm following the development of alternative models for a long time, and
music is *completely* sustainable without distribution companies. There
are plenty of cases (most notably the In Rainbows Radiohead album, as
a major band, for small bands is even better, because having the
opportunity to sign with a big label is almost impossible while using
alternative channels to distribute your music, even for free to get
a wider audience that will *pay* to go to the shows, gives you a fairly
good chance of earning *something*).

With books is harder because there aren't shows. The music industry is
desperate to cover this reality to survive a little more.

[snip]

> >I'm not convinced about the argument about the paper book taking
> >a "time-slice" to be read so it's OK to share because 2 people can't
> >read the same book at the same time, I think libraries usually have
> >a few copies from the same book because there is usually little people
> >reading the same book concurrently.
> >
> >I'm not talking any side here, I really think authors should be
> >encouraged to keep writing books, and for that to happen, they have to
> >live, and to live, get some profit, but I'm not convinced the topic is
> >so black & white. There is a lot of discussion about IP because of
> >digital media, and it's not very clear how the future will be, but I do
> >think the old model is exhausted (CC and FLOSS making an excellent point
> >that there are viable alternatives).
> 
> FLOSS only exists because writing software is profitable :)  Think
> about it...  I write software because I can make a living doing it.
> If FLOSS is all that existed, then I wouldn't write software (gotta
> make money somehow), so I wouldn't have the skills to contribute
> software to the OSS community.  Same for Walter, Andrei, etc.

FLOSS exists because in software people found other ways to get profit
with services or by request from a single user.

Anyway, this is getting too long and time consuming. My point was only
that this is no black or white, there are a lot of alternative models,
and some have proven to be sustainable, and a lot of copyright laws are
plain BS, and goes *against* innovation and society.

-- 
Leandro Lucarella (AKA luca)                     http://llucax.com.ar/
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