Sad to see you go like that John Always loved your contributions and love your books!

Scary to think these boards could have someone like that isn't it? But I consider this individual rather endearing. A warm and fuzzy borderline troll, if you will.

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Occupy Babel!

I really like John, and he's certainly the wise old man of go, but why does everyone have to Publicly Announce that They Are Leaving a Forum when they decide to leave? If you want to go, John, I and others will miss you, but an announcement sounds like you just want people to say how much they'll miss you...

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Last time he left we suffered through many posts wondering whether he had left or not. So there are issues either way.

The important thing is to keep kicking him.

Well, suppose you left because you thought a bunch of people were behaving badly, but that the average member of the boards still behaved fine. Wouldn't you want the average member to know that so they could respond?

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Occupy Babel!

I think that it is interesting if we compare piracy to libraries. Without libraries, would people buy more books? Almost certainly. But libraries have also positive effect, they kind of nurture their readers. People discover their favourite authors / genres thanks to libraries... and then they buy the books they love. Many readers go both to a library and bookshops (but not all.) The same we can say about film piracy, people download many films but buy their favourites on DVD (only favourites because DVDs aren't really cheap) and go often to cinema. But when distributors can see how many copies have been downloaded illegally, they are close to heart attack. But the thing is people wouldn't buy all of them, not even half of them. And many of them download so many films just because they can.

"Sing, o Muse, the wrath of John, Fairbairn's son..." This is an epic moment, but the discussion is strictly off-topic and needs to be taken to a separate thread. This thread is losing its original focus: pirates, and what to do with them.

Remind them of the existing international and national laws. Ask them to respect other human beings (in this case: the authors and their decision not to distribute freely) as much as they would like to be respected as human beings. Suggest them that there are various legal means to evaluate a book before buying incl. reading samples and asking the authors questions. The world has countless free activities (incl. playing on many go servers, downloading and studying countless free professional games or problems), so copyright violation is not a (commercial) necessity of the financially under-endowed but an illegal act after having recognised that refined, specialised contents does have an extra value worth getting hold of. As much as you pay for food you don't have to collect yourself in nature, it is just to pay for contents you don't work out yourself by effort. One of mankind's greatest inventions has been division of labour. It works only if both sides respect each other by acknowledging the value of work. If, e.g., you produce consumer food, then I respect your labour by paying for it. If an author produces books, then you respect his labour by paying for it.

That's a great idea if men were angels. But the sad fact is that there are some who have no respect for authors.

So if there are varying levels of people, let us match that with varying levels of product. The kickstart model allows writers to promise gifts to people who contribute. It could be structured something like this:

Since the invention of the printing press, we have been treating books as information carriers first and collectible commodities second. Let's reverse that and treat books primarily as collectible commodities. Printing a book would be a way of rewarding your patrons. Releasing the digital product would be the method of actually diseminating the information.

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Not somebody decides about an author's business model but the author decides. If you are an author, you can try such a reverse model.

Yes, but the basics (the spirit of the Berne Convention) are simple enough to understand so that reference to complexity is easily recognised as a fake excuse for intellectual property theft.

Helel, have fun to have a different opinion. My missing replies to your recent and possibly later messages can simply mean that I prefer writing books instead of having endless meta-discussions about conditions of writing or not writing them.

Joaz' plan, in which we combat piracy by appealing to go aficionado's love of paper books could hardly be realized without the author's consent. As someone who has supported several projects on Kickstarter, including a book, I'd suggest that we should encourage authors to consider whatever business model allows them to continue to keep us abreast of their latest thoughts, as opposed to edging them into tiresome and unfortunate conversations.

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Patience, grasshopper.

I'm sorry, but who are you that is masquerading as Robert Jasiek?

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Do you achieve anything by starting such a meta-discussion?

Either your humor is too advanced for me, or you missed that Kirk was joking, Robert. No need for a meta-discussion.

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Occupy Babel!

Sorry for the on-topic post Slate and Shell publishers were criticized in an earlier post for the quality of their physical books. I agree that it is not luxurious and falls far below the quality of the old Ishi Press and Kiseido books. But Slate and Shell operates on a shoestring; new books can't be published until older books have sold enough copies to pay off their expenses and provide monetary support for the new books. Keeping costs down by using just a basic quality book allows the publication of more books. Besides, the quality of S & S books is not all that bad.

I have no doubt that piracy makes it harder for S & S to publish new go books. I think it hurts Kiseido, too.

Please explain the joke! I have no clue.

An on-topic post is OK now and then.

The kickstart model that I've been suggesting could cure this problem. The publisher could calculate the cost of publishing the book with first rate materials, and then announce that if the fans put up enough money, they will publish. If the fans do put up enough money, the publisher prints and distributes. If not, the publisher does not print.
Either way, the publisher does not lose money, and when they do print, they can use first rate materials. Also, since all copies are spoken for when they roll off the press, the publisher does not have the expense of storing copies.

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How does this kickstart model work for (a) new authors that no one has heard of and hence have no trust in; and (b) consumers who put money up for a book that turns out to be lousy?