Friday, March 15, 2013

Piracy V's re-sale of digital ebooks

I am normally a nice blogger, but this has got me on the rant and I'm letting it fly!
If at any time I got this wrong, well shoot, does this surprise you. LOL. Nah, I'm sorry.

Well I heard some rumours that Amazon had applied to sell USED-ebooks and I was like, WHAT? How do you get a used e-book. It's not like I have spilled my coffee on a page or bent the corners. It's digital. It's 'nothing' They don't degrade for heavens sake.
 How can we possibly call it used?
So I decided to look into this rumour further and discovered a few things and one important one was the whisperer of this rumour got a little confused, but the gist is much the same.
What I understand is Amazon Technologies has received a patent for Amazon CUSTOMERS to transfer ebooks, music and other digital files to other customers and they are guessing this will be customers selling not just transferring which means they are cutting out the money for authors. Apple also have applied for this digital transferring. What the hell?
Now I know I sound like a ranter only because I'm an author and eel a little ripped off, but as a reader I know I wouldn't do this to an author anyway. I mean isn't this almost like piracy of our novels which we kick up a stink about?
I also am aware that ReDigi already has something like this in place, but they compensate by paying the copyright holder and artist. They don't cut us out.
I know, I know we all been bitching about how amazon haven't protected us against shoddy reviews of customers who may or may not be your competition and have up to thirty (yes 30) accounts in different names under one credit card. Not protected us from Piracy with a better system then the DRM and lets not even start on their RELAXED refund policy. NO! This is human beings being money hungry pigs.
I'm sorry, that sounds harsh, but it is what it is.
The competition reviewers (I haven't had one yet, thank god. Though, I have seen the devastation it leaves on my friends) these are humans. The piracy site and downloaders are humans. The people applying to re-sell and refund after reading your novel already so you don't get paid, are humans. They are not machines. So what has human kind come to when they CHOOSE to do this?
The option to sell my novels after reading them is probably worse than pirateing. I agree with Scalzi. I would rather no one got paid and you pirate my novel then have the company and CEO's get a profit and not me!Oooh I can't believe I just said that since pirates are A-holes.Jeez, Anyay, if there ever comes a petition for this proposal of re-selling my DIGITAL e-book I will be refusing profusely and I hope supporters of authors do too. 
What are your thoughts?

3 comments:

Condy said...

Kerri, you are dead right... Personally as an up and coming Author, I would honestly prefer someone rips me off legitimately such as by piracy than having some big company worth billions rip me off for the few dollars most ebooks cost. What a joke!

Unknown said...

damn true!

toplesshotdog said...

Per your giveaway, I think my favorite superhero is Spiderman. But it's so hard to pick!