YOU can buy “The Lost Symbol,” by Dan Brown, as an e-book for $9.99 at Amazon.com.
Or you can don a pirate’s cap and snatch a free copy from another online user at RapidShare, Megaupload, Hotfile and other file-storage sites.
Until now, few readers have preferred e-books to printed or audible versions, so the public availability of free-for-the-taking copies did not much matter. But e-books won’t stay on the periphery of book publishing much longer. E-book hardware is on the verge of going mainstream. More dedicated e-readers are coming, with ever larger screens. So, too, are computer tablets that can serve as giant e-readers, and hardware that will not be very hard at all: a thin display flexible enough to roll up into a tube.
Tim O’Reilly
Summary of comments by Tim O’Reilly on this issue:
Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.
Piracy is progressive taxation
Customers want to do the right thing, if they can.
Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy.
See full commentary by Tim O’Reilly here.
Will they be? Bit too late for that
Downloading Harry Potter as a text file was what got me into HP after the 2nd? book. Without that I would have never read the books, watched the movies in the cinema, bought the dvd’s and blu-rays and bought the magazines talking about the movies or indeed gone to the websites talking about the movie, complete with their advertising banners.
I think what the story should have mentioned isn’t so much the paid for vs free, which is obviously a big thing but also the free vs something you think is overpriced. When you have a big weighty book like the latest Dan Brown, you know you’re getting something for your money. When it’s digital wheres that emotional connection? Then you start thinking, well if they’re not producing the print, the shipping etc why am I paying so much, in fact why am I paying for it atall?
I know some stores reduced the price a bit but one supermarket here in the UK sold it for less than a third of the RRP. If that’s not devaluing the worth of the book I don’t know what is. That just shows people how screwed over they are getting the rest of the year! (ok they are often doing it as a loss leader).
I’ve no idea how big a pdf of the book would be but I can’t imagine it’d take more than a minute or so to download if you got a good torrent.
File Apartment
http://www.fileapartment.com … enough said.