Well you aren't going to find your book on some download or torrent site with 1000's of people downloading it every day. It's just not practical for book pirates to create a new account on their machine and install a new copy of Reader every time they want to grab another pirated book to read.
And I am not even sure you could install more than 1 copy on a machine without having to have more than 1 copy of windows too. So it is quite possible that someone having a collection containing 1000 pirated .lit books would have to have 1000 user accounts on their machine, or 1000 copies of Reader installed, or 1000 copies of Windows installed to be able to use them all. Not only that, but it would be really easy to track it down to the source with the email address provided.
And if I remember correctly, there may also be a limit on the number of machines that an email address can be used on with the Reader software, and that after I think 5 uses, you can't use it any more. This would limit the original purchaser to 5 machines, pda's, or whatever, over the course of their lifetime, with the need to repurchase all of their books if they exceeded that. (not too good for the consumer that formats his machine and reinstalls every 6 months!)
The real problem would be using Reader to create audiobooks, using an accessibility option provided in the Reader software for the visually impaired. Or copying & pasting the text to create an unprotected document. But there are controls available in the Pro version of Readerworks so when you create your book you can limit those things, by not allowing copying, printing, audio, etc.
I never registered my copy of Reader and associated it with an email address, since I only deal with things like public domain works that are totally legal to do whatever you please with,
CC licensed works, and
GFDL. My converting them to .lit means people can read them on their PocketPC's, and as long as I comply with the licenses of the Readerworks software and the books, I am allowed to do that, and distribute them, legally.
Any other copying and conversions I do is for personal use, and only when a .pdf file is in a very old format incompatible with the PDF reader software on my PDA. (it requires pdf files to contain special tags, or it has to be converted, resulting in a pdf file 2-3x the original file size. Converting to .lit keeps the files small)
I also don't have more than 1 user account on my PC. So I have not tested whether you can use it with more than one account/email address easily. I was warned before my first install of Reader NOT to enter an email address unless I was totally sure I wanted to be stuck with that one for life, and not to enter it till I have purchased my first .lit format ebook. I think the warning was due to the 5 machine limit.
A person giving a copy of an ebook to their friend or family member is much less damaging than some of the other sharing that goes on. How many friends could you safely give something registered to your email address before you'd have to worry about it getting out on the web onto a download or torrent site and you getting caught or massive amounts of spam? Once or twice maybe? With each person the risk increases.
And with each friend you give it to, you'd use up one of your 5 installs of Reader. Give one book out to too many people (1 person could be too many), and you will have to repurchase your
entire collection. It would be cheaper to just buy your friend a copy.
And we are talking about a book in which the original poster stated that all profits are being donated to a charity. Is this the time to be greedy and worry about losing a little money from the small amount of copying that goes on between friends & family? It would be much more important to control/prevent the mass distribution on download & torrent sites, where the real damage is done to authors.
And here's a bit of food for thought when it comes to DRM and sharing between family & friends:
I could go to a book store and buy a paperback or hardcover book dirt cheap off the clearance table, take it home, read it, and then loan it to a friend who reads it and returns it to me. And I can keep loaning it out until every friend & family member I have has read it.
I can then take that book and sell it on EBay (possibly for more than I paid for it, and thereby making a profit on it) and the buyer of the book can do the same, loaning it to all his friends & family, and then either sell it like I did or donate the book to a library where 1000's more people get to borrow and read it...all without the original author, publisher, or distributor receiving any additional compensation beyond the original discounted purchase price I paid when I bought the book at the book store...
AND THAT IS LEGAL.
What I don't understand as a consumer is how anyone can possibly think it's fair to stop me from doing the same with a digital product I have purchased. Why can I not give it away after I have read it or listened to it, like I can with a physical copy? Why are my rights to pass it on when I am finished, or loan it out, or sell it, or donate it to a library, being trampled upon? Why has there not been a way for people to be able to do this, built into any existing DRM scheme yet?
I don't think I would be so against DRM if it were possible for me to do the same with a digital product as I can with the physical version of the same product. And it is for this reason why I will not buy an ebook or an MP3, rather than a physical book or CD. I would be paying the same money but getting less rights, as a consumer.
It's not just the authors, artists, publishers, and distributors that have rights. Consumers do too. DRM only thinks about and addresses the rights of the first group and does not even consider the rights of the second, at all.
Recent Posts
) and nothing to draw upon in case of unexpected expenses.(I hope you meant crap like frozen dinners & microwave garbage, and not frozen vegetables bought on sale in huge bulk packs)
(our healthcare plan is $0, we don't have one. We just tough it out and hope for the best)
