Yesterday was a busy day. The busiest this blog has had. Book theft is clearly a hot topic, and generated a phenomenal number of comments, mostly it has to be said from people who are appalled by the spiralling crime of ebook piracy.

But not all. People who think it's OK to go to sites hidden behind foreign countries and grab ripped-off commercial books for free came into the game too, anonymously usually, of course. I get most of the same arguments from them every time this issue is covered here. Let's deal with a few right now, and if you want another view on this issue<a href="http://www.joanne-harris.co.uk/v3site/faq/piracy.html" target="_blank">, read the excellent Joanne Harris on piracy too</a>.

<!--more-->First...
<blockquote>It's not really theft, is it? So stop calling us thieves.</blockquote>
I'm a writer, not a lawyer. Given that there's no chance of my bringing any of the people who purloin my work to court, I'm not much interested in pedantic legal definitions. Theft doesn't need them, frankly. We all should know what stealing is: taking something that doesn't belong to you and having the benefit of whatever that thing is without paying the purchase price.

Think of the behaviour here. People are going to illicit sites, often paying a fee to gain access anonymously to software, books and audio files that are commercially copyright, protected by intellectual property law. Then they're running them, reading them and listening to them without paying a penny to the people who produced them. That five-letter word 'theft' covers this just fine for me.

One other good reason for calling it theft: those involved hate it. They are desperately trying to convince themselves that what they do can somehow be justified. A lot of them are individuals who wouldn't dream of stealing under other circumstances. They hope to rationalise what they inwardly know to be unacceptable behaviour by pretending it's something it's not: OK. They resent being labelled criminals because it interferes with that process of self-justification. Good.
<blockquote>People rip off books because they're too expensive.</blockquote>
At least this acknowledges the theft side of things. Unfortunately -- a few exceptions aside -- it ignores plain fact. There are territories in the world where books are, in my opinion, overpriced. They're mainly ones where foreign language and translation issues have pushed up the prices. They're also the ones where ereaders in those languages are in their infancy at best.

Book theft is most prevalent in developed markets, especially English, where ereaders are readily available. So what people are often saying is, 'I steal books because I can't afford to buy them for my £200 ereader'.

Quite.

More importantly, books are cheaper than ever in some key markets, notably in the UK and America. If you want to see a simple illustration of <a href="http://davidhewson.com/2010/08/inflation-in-the-book-business/" target="_blank">this look here</a>, at what's happened to the price of <em>The Godfather</em> over forty years.

Authors, whose income depends on a royalty on the selling price, have seen an effective price cut in their take on each book of around 30% to 40% in the UK alone over the last decade, simply down to the fall in cover prices. Cutting those prices even further won't have any impact on book theft. It will simply diminish the income of authors, publishers and retailers even further. Book thieves steal because they can, not because they're broke. If you're seriously mired in poverty I very much doubt you're sitting there thinking, 'If only I had a book...' And for those who really can't afford to buy a book there's a very simple place to go to get one. It's called a library.
<blockquote>This is a new world, dude, and you need a new model 'cos the old one's broken.</blockquote>
Publishing is in trouble for a variety of reasons but it's a bit of a stretch to say that the business is broken because it's now victim to widespread theft. There may be new models coming. But if they get robbed too they'll just go the way of the old model.
<blockquote>You're not losing out because these people wouldn't buy your book if they had to pay for it.</blockquote>
You get that one a lot. Firstly, it's highly dubious. Read yesterday's article. I show one thief on that site actually asking and offering 'payment' for someone to supply my entire Costa series as ripped-off copies. He knows the titles. He even knows the order they appeared in. Maybe he thinks of himself a 'fan' (message to 'boraz' if you're reading this -- you're not -- go steal someone else you light-fingered jerk). If someone's that keen, wouldn't they be tempted to buy a book -- if a stolen one wasn't around?

Besides, even if this argument is correct -- which I doubt -- it's irrelevant. The people concerned are still stealing copyright material and getting the benefit of it illegally. Remember the phrase 'right and wrong'? This is the 'wrong' part.
<blockquote>Maybe you should spend your time opening a dialogue with your fans and figuring out how you can create a mutually beneficial arrangement (they receive your work, you receive compensation) rather than clustering a bunch into a group and calling them names.</blockquote>
Thank you for that advice 'Bob', well meant I'm sure, though quite who you are to offer it God knows. This is quite a busy web site in case you hadn't noticed. There's plenty of dialogue with my fans already, and a 'mutually beneficial arrangement' in place too -- they receive my work, I receive compensation. It's a simple, well-established, functional system known as 'buying the book'. One anyone can participate in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&amp;field-keywords=David+Hewson&amp;x=0&amp;y=0" target="_blank">as easily as this. </a>People who don't want to be clustered into a group shouldn't sign up for dodgy web sites in dodgy parts of the world just so they can rip off stuff they ought to be paying for.
<blockquote>It’s disheartening to see that the enlightened souls here aren’t willing to engage in debate.</blockquote>
And thank you 'Jerry' -- why do you keep posting your comments from a different email address I wonder?

I find this question a bit baffling frankly. If a burglar in a mask breaks into your house and starts stealing your property do you engage him in debate too?&nbsp;Would you be interested in a conversation if he said, 'I'm stealing this because I'm poor/I can/you won't notice/no one's going to catch me'?

Perhaps you would, Jerry. Me? I have to be honest. Opening a dialogue with petty criminals isn't a high priority.

Why should people who pay for what they consume spend their time engaging with those who go out of their way to filch it instead? We're all in the same boat here. I have to work to pay the bills like anyone else, and that work happens to be writing, the very work book thieves value so little they think it's OK to steal it without a second thought. They choose to step outside the law and rip off the world right, left and centre. And then they want decent people, who do pay for what they consume, to listen to them too?

Finally, 'Jerry' again...
<blockquote>The free market value of any infinitely reproduceable object is zero...&nbsp;There is an upfront cost to producing a book, of course there is. However, once produced, there is effectively zero cost in reproduction. That makes the fruit of your labour economically worthless. If food, or energy, or anything else were infinitely reproduceable at zero cost, they would be economically worthless too.</blockquote>
Chanting teenage pseudo-intellectual mantras like this is sadly common in what passes for 'debate' over this issue. In truth it's just one more exercise in obfuscation, another attempt by book thieves to convince themselves 'it's not really stealing' by concocting ridiculous faux intellectual arguments about the 'death of copyright' and the injustice of the notion of property.

But... please. Web sites hiding behind domain names in countries without enforceable copyright laws, selling subscriptions to allow access to stolen software, music and books are <em>not</em> part of any free market. They're just criminal money-making fencing operations for ripped-off property. If you were to take this to its logical conclusion there'd be no software companies, no publishers, no music companies, and pretty soon no jobs for developers, writers, publishers, musicians...

A pretty boring world in other words.

I don't know how to tell you this Jerry but... you know that John Lennon song <em>Imagine? </em>

<em></em>That's all it was. A song. And it's copyright too.