Re:Not a big market for piracy surely (Score 2, Interesting)

e-Books are not there yet. Paper is simply better. When eBooks do get into the zone of usability then we have problems. Right now the technology is not friendly, the price point is high compared to paper and there is no good way of making sure the author gets the return he/she should expect. A real big problem is that the culture is wrong. The expectation is that you can go a torrent site and help yourself. Fixing/improving the tech is not the whole answer. You have to change the way people think of intellectual effort and intellectual rights. The way things are going it does not look as though the author is going to be respected or rewarded anytime soon. In fact the dynamic is all going the wrong way. I respect the Baen approach but wonder if it really, really is working. I was given the other day the entire works of Eric Flint the energy behind the Baen experiment. I took the download because I wanted to check out the Sony e-Reader I had just acquired. I did not feel all that guilty because I had every page and CD Flint had ever produced on my bookshelf (bought and paid for). And my own conundrum? A final thought is that I have seen the distortions wrought upon the copyright system by big corporations, and the nasty way they limit fair use of content. In areas other than books I have no real problems in stiffing the major corporations. They stiff the authors/composers/performers, and they stiff me with DRM and regionalization that renders my laptop useless since I source my DVDs from three or four markets. I own legitimate copies from the UK, Australia, US and Europe so why can't I play them on my laptop without getting locked after five plays? Its even worse for a Mac user because the chances of unlocking the player are almost nil. So screw them, culture or no.