Talk about anything here as long as it is not against the rules. Post count not affected.
Apr 6th, 2021, 2:33 pm
Hello.

I have written this very personal essay about my relationship with e-books, and I think it is more or less in-topic here.

I will be publishing it on other places too. If you have ideas about other media where people might be interested, do not hesitate to suggest them. In fact please do, or even re-publish this text yourself if you think it is worth it, you would have all my thanks.

I intend to monitor the reactions to this post, but I do not expect I will participate in a discussion.

Confessions of an anonymous book pirate

Dear authors.

I am sorry, I pirate your books, sometimes as soon as as they are available. I have no other solution: I love them, I love you, and I have principles.

Let me explain. Let me explain to you my personal relationship with books, how it interlocks with my principles, how the current practices of the industry force me into a dilemma between these principles and the law, and how I try to navigate this dilemma by taking liberties with the letter of the law while trying to do right by you, the authors.

Books are books. Books are abstractions. Books are windows to worlds expressed in words. (I am thinking of fiction, mostly.)

I love books. I read as much as I can. I don't read very fast, that saddens me. There are so many books to read and so little time.

Things have their places. Books I loved (and even books I just read) belong in `files/books/${author}/${title}.html`, where I can remember them, and re-read them, and quote them. Where I can search for words, to find where something happened in a world, or in any world I have ever visited.

You see, I am somewhat of an old fashioned hacker despairing in a modern consumer world. I use my computers in a very idiosyncratic way, I am very proficient and happy with it, but I am afraid of the day when new features of the consumer world will require me to use new tools. Tools that I cannot understand in their entirety.

So. When I read a book, I want it in a clean HTML file. There are many reasons. Sometimes I want to run miscellaneous experiments on them. For example, what are the longest walls of text? Or can compressibility recognize a text's language? an author's style? I never have time, but these are experiments I would like to run, just for the pleasure of intellectual satisfaction. Pour l'honneur de l'esprit humain. And for that, having the words of my favorite authors in a simple format that I chose is something that matters very much to me. The fact that the files are there for me, ready, gives me a warm feeling of wholeness. I couldn't have it by staying within the authorized lanes.

So, when I read a book, I first endeavor to find it on pirate sites. I never pay for anything on these sites, I do not want to encourage these people profiting from your works. I even try to minimize their ad income, also out of anti-ad principle. If I cannot find the book I am looking for, I put it back on my list of things to read sometime later. This is a list that never shrinks, I suppose you can guess.

When I've found the file, I unpack it and clean it up. I mean really. As much as possible, just the words, in a logical way, with a standardized format. I spend time, I risk spoilers, to distinguish single quotes from apostrophes. I spend time, I risk spoilers, to decide whether a punctuation mark belongs in or out of an italics segment. I am that meticulous. When I am satisfied, when I am sure the quotes are all balanced (I have a program to check that), I save the file one last time and I run scripts that synchronize it to my phone, converting it into .epub. I have spent a lot of time on these scripts. They help me keep things where they belong.

Then, as soon as I can, as soon as I have finished the current book (I no longer read several books in parallel), I enjoy your words and your worlds.

During my read, when I notice an imperfection, I make a bookmark, to fix it later. I notice imperfections anyway, it's tiring, I might as well clean up for the next reader. More frequently than not, there will be no next reader. I wish I could notify publishers of the typos I fixed.

Some people that I let see me call it OCD, but it's not. I cannot allow myself to suffer if one of my self-imposed rules is broken. I think my therapist only half understands.

If somebody I know wants to read a book I have, I offer it. If I had it in paper, I would lend it. I will not do less with an e-book, I refuse to lose the essential right to lend a book just because it is now a file.

Anyway. Back to our business. First, principles. I will never pay for a file with DRM. Without DRM, I will not pay beforehand on a per-book basis for a file that I barely own. If there was a subscription service with a full catalogue, a Netflix for books (without DRM and before the exclusivity wars), I would subscribe in a heartbeat. But the current market model for e-books is stupid, and I will have nothing to do with it.

Books, art, creation, belong to everybody. I do not want to pay to enjoy them myself, I want to pay so that everybody can enjoy them. In the physical world, it means I am glad when my taxes go to museums and libraries. I want to pay more of these taxes.

In the digital world, it's more complex, but it doesn't have to be. Now that an additional copy is free, we can make this ideal of sharing culture really true. Instead of trying to enforce copyright, instead of endless mandatory filters, countries should remember that the purpose of copyright is to allow creators to get an income, not to limit the diffusion of creation.

You deserve our material gratitude for your words. You do not deserve the right to control who can read them, just like a parent doesn't deserve the right to decide what their children will become — and this too is a very sensitive point for me.

Instead of trying to fight torrents, countries could declare that everything gratis on the Internet is the Universal Electronic Library, and apply Public Lending Rights on it. It's that simple. Well, almost.

But you don't need to wait on countries to do something, there are things you could you right now, on a small scale. You could for example tell your publisher to open a subscription service: all we can read for a flat fee (equivalent to five e-books a year? twenty? I don't know how to price things, it depends on how large the catalogue is). Even better: tell them to work with other publishers to make it an independent non-profit. Don't forget to ask us how much we liked the books. And let us go above the default fee: if we know that the money will go directly to creators and not tycoons, we'll be happy to support you as much as we can. I think if your publisher is Tor, they might listen, because they are very smart about things like that, and their catalogue alone is enough to make it worthwhile.

As you can see, this is a matter I have given a lot of thought. I have just scratched the surface here.

But we live in an imperfect world, where I have to pirate your books, and you need to eat and deserve comfort, and my conscience tells me it's not right.

So I buy books. Actual books, in paper. As often as I can, as many as I can afford. From my favorite local bookshop, as much as possible. Books I have already read, mostly. Books as gifts, books for myself, that I may lend to friends or that will sleep on my shelves.

I pirate your books, but I spend an inordinate amount of time making them perfect, re-doing the work of composers to my perfectionist's satisfaction, and I contribute to their notoriety. I spend as much of my income as I can convince myself to on books. And my conscience is clear. More or less.

In your books, you often have characters with disabilities; characters who have an atypical relation to sex and gender; characters with atypical ways of thinking. This is part of the reasons I like them. You show that the trials of these characters come not only from active hate and discrimination, but also from the indifference of the majority. A step that serves no purpose; a form where there is never the proper checkbox, and why do they need that information in the first place? It's infuriating because there are often elegant solutions that would work for everybody. But since it already works well enough for most people, it doesn't change. You know what I mean?

My attachment to the preservation and sharing of information, including books, is an atypical way of thinking. It is a very important and deep part of who I am. It's atypical, but it's not unique: we are many, one way or another, to share that attachment. And let me tell you: to me, your casual defense of the current market model for e-books and all it entails feels like the indifference of the majority.

I know my case is not at all representative of people who pirate books. But is there such a thing as a stereotypical book lover? I don't demand anything for my case. I know some people, some organizations profit from you work shamelessly, and I am appalled by it, and I realize it is a much wider phenomenon than my situation. But next time you make a broad condemning statement, next time you try to shame us all and make us feel guilty, remember that not everything is black and white. Not every book pirate is cheap. Piracy is also caused by clinging to a failing market model that robs readers from the essential freedoms to lend books and to peruse them in the way they like.

P.S.: Consider this text to be Public Domain. Which doesn't mean you can dispense with the courtesy of acknowledging my authorship and take responsibility for changes you may make.
Apr 6th, 2021, 2:33 pm