Electronic media is usually licensed. Are you performing as the licence permits?
Physical books are sold. The publisher prints X numbers of books and expects to sell a percentage of that for a profit which is used to partly pay the author and other rightsholders. They do not expect to profit twice from the sales of the same physical book so it's ok for the first buyer to sell it onwards. Secondly, used books come in many different conditions. Some are excellent, some are tattered. If a book is really great and well used, the original owner may have decided to purchase a second new copy for his collection while selling off his less desirable copy cheap to other people who don't mind paying less for lower quality.

Does buying a second hand physical copy take away from the rightsholder. My answer is no because it is within their expectations when they first printed the book.

Do you buy stocks on the secondary market or do you only purchase shares via the company in an IPO or in a placement?
Does trading stock on the secondary market take away from the financing function of stocks for the company involved?


If it's really rare, I doubt you'd be able to find a pirate copy. Some Asian go books are so rare, I doubt you'd even know they existed.
But for the ones which are rare and available on pdf, if you hunt for them long enough on ebay or amazon, etc. you can usually eventually get a physical copy although the prices may be high and the wait may be very long.

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It was more of a hypothetical question, because it is really difficult to define at what point you have exhausted all means to legally obtain an original copy.

For instance I have bought a book on Felix Dueball ( http://senseis.xmp.net/?FelixDueball ) after seeing it as a prize on a tournament. The book cannot be bought through normal means, no book store has it no place where you can order it since its a private printing by the author Mr. Günter Cießow. Only way to obtain it is by contacting the author. If now Mr. Cießow would pass away (I certainly hope not), and all other books are sold and no second hand copys are available - that might be such a situation.

OT: That article on senseis is pretty slim. Felix Dueball was quite a figure in the german and european go scene when it was just beginning.

Let me give you a concrete example. I highly doubt you'll be able to pirate this Japanese tsumego book even if you tried really hard through any channel.
http://tchan001.wordpress.com/2010/07/2 ... selection/

It took me years of searching to find a copy and I've only seen it available twice. I highly doubt you'll have the ability to pirate this book.

What is the significance of this particular book? If you don't have a copy, you can't completely collect the List of Major Works of Japanese Tsumego.


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On another note, would you purchase a copy of either volume of the important English language book set "All About Life and Death"? If you do, you'll be purchasing from a real physical book dealing pirate who ripped off Cho Chikun and all the other Japanese rightsholders and never paid them anything. Would you consider that piracy? Would you consider it morally wrong? I already own Chinese and Japanese editions of that book set so I know I have contributed to the rightsholders of that book.

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I haven't followed this discussion all the way through, but isn't this thread crossing the line on discussing politics?

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Why give an example that doesn't matter? I don't think the author or publishing company would care if you pirated it at this point. We are discussing modern books. I don't know and haven't looked to see how many modern Asian go books get pirated.

The book came out in 1955 and the author only died in 2004. In the sense of modern copyright law, it's still modern and under copyright. Just because you don't know Asian go books doesn't mean it doesn't matter. This is an international forum so it matters to some people even if it doesn't have any meaning to you.

Does "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go" matter to you? That's a translation of the Go Super Book Series Vol#11. This series of books came out between 1969 and 1975. So are you trying to tell me that something written in 1955 is ancient while something originally written between 1969 and 1975 is considered modern?

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I would argue both at this point are ancient. They made the money they were going to make in their print runs. What matters is what authors and publishing companies do from now on.

Helel, I only have one thing to say to you.

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Yes, but this is the (rare) case where the rule is obviously misguided. Hypothetically, if the US government banned visits by Go professionals, we would discuss it on the boards. And if someone seriously objected that it violated the TOS, they would be "a bad person" (as I remember the TOS).

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No time to seriously address topazg's questions, but I'd recommend "The Teleporter Thought Library: A Copyright Thought Experiment"? which does a lot to illustrate how hard it is to answer Topazg's questions.

If you still want more, you could also read "What Do Copyright/Theft Analogies Really Illustrate" by him.

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They aren't independent questions. 7) is illegal. Whether or not I believe it to be immoral also depends on whether I subscribe to the idea that there even should be such a thing as intellectual property. Some people clearly don't, but I do. Although patents, copyrights, etc. can be abused I think it is fair to say that a large number of contributions cannot be made without some protection. I don't think it's viable to try to develop most new drugs without IP protection, for example.

All of the others (1-6) indirectly help those who do 7), just to different degrees. If someone breaks into an armored truck and starts flinging cash all over the street, I'm sure there are many people who wouldn't feel too guilty about picking some up. I probably would if I was sure I wouldn't be caught or that if caught, the consequences would be minor. I can justify this to myself by saying, well, hey, I wasn't the one who broke into the truck. That's one thing. But what if picking up the cash somehow encouraged the thief to do this again and again, breaking into armored trucks everywhere? And furthermore, what if that thief spent significant time and energy teaching other thieves to do the same thing successfully and with impunity? If I thought that would happen, I wouldn't want to encourage such behavior. (If you think the armored car analogy is too far-fetched, consider looting, which occurs quite often in association with riots.)

Now I know that for cultures that don't believe intellectual property exists (or has a right to exist), that analogy will resonate somewhere between meaningless and offensive. But you're asking my opinion. Because I believe that IP has a place in the world, I think 7) is immoral and all of the others are as well, just to lesser degrees and they are immoral to the extent that they enable 7). Specific situations will vary.

Can we please keep things a little more civil here? Pretty please?

I am pretty sure they were kidding, and quite cleverly.

Question - were you kidding when you called John Fairbairn a condescending bigot? Pretty please?

In the U. S., anyway, the express purpose of granting copyright and patent monopoly is to promote art and science. IMO, currently it is having the opposite effect, overall. In the case of go, however, I think that it is serving its purpose.

Support your go authors, translators, and publishers!

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Never called him a condescending bigot, simply suggested he add the category to his list of categories of people who are against him.

Oren, if those books are ancient books from a period which doesn't matter, why is Smartgo books recycling "Killer of Go"?

I quote from Smartgo Book's listing for this book:
"This work went through more than 100 printings during the late 60s! The English translation has been out of print for a number of years; we're excited to bring this book back to life."

The key is that good old Asian go books that are still under copyright have the potential to attract western publishers to negotiate and pay for translation and publication rights. It does matter even if you don't pay attention to the world of Asian go books.

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Go is such a beautiful game.

Sorry, you keep missing my point....

The most interesting thing in this thread is what to do in a future world where piracy will occur more. Bringing in examples of past books that have or have not been pirated has little to no bearing on what will occur from now on. When I mean I don't care about releases from 1950s and 1960s has little do with the legalities but has more to do with the fact that people will take more time before copying those than modern releases.

How do we keep new authors and publishers wanting to produce books in the age of easy piracy? That is why I don't think examples of a 1950s and 1960s book are really what is important.

Totally OT, but you've heard wrong (because while you can get fined, it is extremely rare, nobody does what you suggest, and if they did that would be against the law, too)

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Now I'm curious. Do you really think buying a dead-tree book, reading it once, and then selling it to someone else, is immoral and should be illegal?

On a similar note, concerning question 7): Does anyone here seriously think that buying a (dead-tree) problem book for a go club and using it to teach 10 people is immoral and should be illegal? Do you really think you ought to buy 10 copies?


As I see it, the only real problem is that in the digital world, it's hard to distinguish "giving away" from "producing another copy". The technology gives us the ability to easily do something that's morally not ok (that is, producing more copies without paying the author). Copyright law tries to fix that problem by placing restrictions, but in doing so, it takes away a lot more: Suddenly, you're no longer allowed to sell something that you previously bought. If I buy a dead-tree book, I'm allowed to sell it later (or even give it away for free, the price doesn't really matter). If I buy an e-book, why should exactly the same behaviour suddenly be immoral or illegal?



That's only one side of the story. Business laws always have two sides, in the case of copyright, the side of the author and the side of the customer. The law has to strike a balance between the interests of both sides. Anti-piracy laws are necessary to protect authors, and that's what they should do, not more.

I think that's the critical point: The internet, and digital media in general, make it easier to produce copies. Anti-piracy laws *should* protect the authors, so they still receive benefits. In an ideal world, that would be the same benefits compared to before the invention of e.g. CDs, DVDs and e-books.

But what anti-piracy laws *actually* do is, they grant the authors (or more accurately the publishers) new rights that they never had before. For example, with DRM, suddenly it's technically possible to enforce that reselling or renting is not allowed. So hey, let's go ahead and make this actually illegal. That's something completely new. Before digital media came around, it was unthinkable to outlaw that. Ok, technically reselling is still legal, and in the EU it's actually not even possible to explicitly forbid reselling in the EULA. But hey, we have DRM, and circumventing DRM is illegal. Horray! All rights to the authors!


TL;DR
I think that you should be able and allowed to do everything with an e-book that you're allowed to do with a dead-tree book. Not more, not less.
That is, of topazg's list, 1) and 2) are immoral and also illegal, as they should be. Everything else on the list is morally ok and should be legal. In the case of dead-tree books, it actually is legal. With digital media, unfortunately not.
Try for a moment to ignore the existence of e-books, and answer the questions with dead-tree books in mind. Suddenly, the questions become easy

Lots of people would want this; but in the same world, people wouldn't need to lock their doors. It's impossible to enforce.