A few weeks ago I spent a few hours reporting a list of links to .pdfs of young adult novels that was floating around Tumblr. It frustrated me physically in ways I can't describe and made me rage against a keyboard. I wasn't originally going to write a post on downloading books (illegally) in today's digital age, but the post from the fabulous Amanda Nelson Book Riot got me thinking again.
If you haven’t paid for a book and it isn’t available in the public domain, downloading it without paying is wrong. You’re stealing. That’s what I think. But my easy-breezy, beautiful black-and-white ethical pronouncements get grey if you’ve paid for the book in one form and expect to get it in another form for free when the industry hasn’t caught up with your changing reading habits yet.
I'm somebody who loves free things. Seriously. I'm constantly nabbing free books when there are boxes of them to be had. (Garage sales are a girl's best friend.) I'm in the process of downloading all of my favorite classic texts as .pdfs to my computer. iTunes' free classes and podcasts litter my computer.
But there's something about downloading books illegally that sets me on edge, or the fact that people blatantly share them online.
Now, if you own a book and are downloading it to also have a digital copy, I understand. I upload my CDs and movies to my computer so I have back up copies in case something goes wrong, like my house gets set on fire. If I have the time, I can just snag my harddrive and off I go.
Publishers are behind in the times when it comes to trying to figure out ways for e-books and physical books to live together. I'd love to see a system that allows a code to be scanned that can only be given upon buying a text. (Issue: Would the code be shared? Probably, but people would still be buying books. There's no way to stop illegal downloads in a digital age.)
The thing that makes me sad is when people upload texts and share them, and they're shared everywhere, and people download them without checking to see if they can get them somewhere else first - just for the sake of having them.
What happened to checking your library? Or reading excerpts to see if it's worth reading? Hell, go to your local bookstore and sit down and read the first half of the book!
But on the other side, there are benefits to downloads. Neil Gaiman did a giant video about it -- here's a chunk of what he said.
I started to realize that actually, you’re not losing books. You’re not losing sales by having stuff out there. ... What you’re actually doing is advertising. You’re reaching more people, you’re raising awareness. Understanding that gave me a whole new idea of the shape of copyright and of what the web was doing. Because the biggest thing the web is doing is allowing people to hear things. Allowing people to read things. Allowing people to see things that they would never have otherwise seen. And I think, basically, that’s an incredibly good thing.
It does allow the book to get to people who otherwise would never have seen it, who might end up sharing it and people will buy it. It's sharing on a giant scale.
But if it's not approved by the author or the publisher, isn't it a bit insulting?
I just - hmm. This is a complicated issue, and I'm not sure where I stand.
Pros: On one hand, it's reaching out to people who wouldn't have been able to get the text otherwise. A fanbase can be a strong thing, especially when an author is starting out. It allows people who do own the book to download it without having to pay for it again.
Cons: People who may have bought it are now downloading it, taking away from potential author sales. Libraries might not be being used. It's not approved by the publishers.
What do you guys think about downloading books in the digital age? The more I think about it, the more my head starts to spin, and it becomes more and more complicated...