Is it wrong to give away someone else's work for free?

I met a BookTuber a couple days ago who said that she reads books on YouTube and Twitch, in their entirety, and as an author, that rubbed me the wrong way.

She tried to compare it to game streaming and say that it helps drive up sales, but I don't think those are the same. Most games have more than JUST a story, so you can easily watch someone play a game and still want to play it yourself, even if you know the story. Because playing it is different than just watching someone else play it.

But with books, listening to her stream I'd exactly the same as listening to an audiobook, which authors pay a lot of money to create. So why would anyone pay to buy an audiobook that they can hear for free on YouTube?

My opinion is that this is wrong and she shouldn't do it if she actually cares about authors and doesn't want to steal their business. What do you guys think?

 

Also, just to be clear, I am aware that there are some games that ARE just story, and I don't think people should be allowed to stream those in their entirety either.

 

Without the author’s permission, I think it’s wrong.

I’m thinking there must be clear cut legal material out there that’ll cover this type of case. The woman is giving out copyrighted material without any permission from the author as well as no compensation to the creator of the material.

I like to write. I’ve only shared one of my short stories in a public forum. If someone where to take any of my stories and start reading them in public without my permission I’d want that person to stop. And if I was trying to sell that written material, I’d be looking for legal counsel to stop that person.

 

One reason I’m sure there must be something in writing covering this is what I’ve seen with printed material online.

Gutenberg.org has thousands of free books that are over a certain age limit. There are no restrictions to sharing those books online. There was once a site that tried sharing A.W. Pink’s books online for free. He’s was a very good Christian author from 50+ years ago, deceased. That website received a cease and desist order. They had to start selling the books.

I think it’s a safe guess that sharing books that are within the age limit for copyright coverage even verbally is against the law.

 

Yeah, I completely agree. I don't think what she is doing would hold up in court, if one of those authors decided to sue her.

 

Definitely wrong..

Game steaming is totally different..Unlike gaming ,reading a book / listening to it it's all you can do, but when it comes to games ,you can actually play them yourself ,and experience them ,even if you care / seen about the story.

So yeah, I agree with you .

 

Streams and videos bring popularity to that game though( I think the developers would be fine with that ), and even if it's only story ,if it's called a game ,it still has some sort of gameplay elements that can be individually experienced.

 

Eh, that's debatable. There are some games where you literally just click a button and go through a story with no choices made by the player. So I'm not sure that would improve sales of the game.

But really, it should come down to permission from the creator. Some game developers just don't want any footage at all of their games being streamed, and I think they should have the right (and they do) to get those streams taken down, whether it's a wise idea economically or not.

 

It depends. Some people are all about creating content to benefit other people and improve man kind. if thats that case they would probably rather you share it. If these people are clearly trying to sell their product to make money then I would say you shouldn't share their material.

 

Yeah, but the point is that she isn't asking for permission. So she can't know whether or not the person is okay with her sharing their work for free, unless they have that explicitly stated somewhere.

 

The author probably won't be too concerned as the one who loses profit if people buy less copies of a specific book is the publisher. Besides, it's more likely that the free advertisement she gets from people reading her works online will make it a net positive thing.

I think it's time to rethink copyright. In the Internet age it makes as much sense to pay for (digital) books as it does for music and film, i.e. none.

 

There is interesting exemptions for artists covering a song live, but that obviously isnt a recording. The YouTube video is a recording. Is it wrong to read aloud to a group of people at a park? I wonder if that is similar to a library reading books to kids or something. Hmm....but then again those situation dont create a lasting copy of the work, but they are giving it away for free.

 

I suppose that might be true, but it depends. As an indie author myself, I was thinking of indie published books where the profits go directly to the creator of the work. But obviously in the larger scale, poor sales numbers definitely effect authors as well, not just publishers. There's a whole lot to be said about how that works, with the royalty rates and how much you have to sell to start earning royalties, etc. But that's a whole different subject. Point is, sales effect authors as well.

That might be true, or it might not. But again, shouldn't that be up to the creator of the work to decide if it's worth it for them? I mean, I might decide to give my book to someone for free, knowing they will spread the word and it will benefit me more in the future, but that's my choice. That's very different than having someone make that choice for you and start giving away your hard-earned stuff for free and declaring that it will be good for you in the long run. I just don't think that's her choice to make.

I don't understand this perspective at all. That sounds very entitled. How do you think books, movies, music, games, etc. get produced? People spend tons of money to make these things, not to mention their time, so why shouldn't they be compensated for that? Why should you just get to have all their stuff for free? That doesn't make any sense to me.

Even singing a song cover is kind of different, because you are changing it and making it your own by using your own voice. People aren't going to listen to a mediocre cover band of an artist and then not bother to buy the actual artist's CD. They'll still want to hear the real thing. But with an audiobook, that free version already is the real thing. There would be nothing different about reading the book yourself.

I think that's different because it's a much smaller scale, but still, even those types of things have copyright concerns if you're actually doing it through an organization. I remember when I used to be a youth leader at my church, if we wanted to have an official movie night sanctioned by the church, we could only choose movies made by a certain production company that we had the rights to show in front of a group. Obviously if we had broken that rule, nothing would have really happened, because nobody could have known unless someone directly told the people who made the movie. But still, there were rules even with that kind of thing.

 

Also, YouTube even has a rule that if you're making a reaction video to someone else's work, you can't show more than a certain percentage of the video in your reaction, because then nobody would have any incentive to go watch the original video if you showed the entire thing. So if someone does a reaction and shows the entire video their reacting to in their own video, the person who made the original video can report it and get it taken down. So I don't see why it wouldn't be the same for something like this.

 

Well, it could go something like this. The author would sell their work to a big player who would then offer the writing for free while extracting profit via ads. That's essentially how music videos on Youtube work except the revenue for the channel is fairly low as most of the artist's money is made through concerts.

I see no reason why film couldn't go the same way with the main revenue stream being movie theaters. The difference with books is that they can't be performed, at least not to big audiences so the price at which they'd be sold to e.g. Amazon should be higher.

The reality is that all media except the most obscure things is easily downloadable for free and legally thanks to open formats. That there are or have been some rules in conflict with this is irrelevant; times have changed. I know it probably sounds heretical to someone used to common law system.

 

Sorry, but this all sounds like entitlement from someone who has never made a book or movie in their life. It's absolutely ridiculous to think that people will spend billions of dollars and tons of time and hard work creating a movie to only get money back from ads on YouTube. There's absolutely no way I'm agreeing with you on this, so we will just have to agree to disagree. I think people should be paid appropriately for their work, and I don't think it's right to pirate products that someone worked hard on and deserves to be paid for.

 

Movie stars and producers are worth hundreds of millions of dollars despite the fact their work is pirated left and right and nobody buys DVDs anymore. I'd say they're safe from ending up on a street when copyright laws get that badly needed update.

I had to chuckle when you mentioned entitlement. Pretending to be someone else on camera is entitlement. Digging a foundation for 14 hours straight and then falling asleep with your clothes on because you're too tired to take them off - that's work.

 

That's not true at all... plenty of people still buy DVDs and go to movies.

When did I say they would end up on the street? You're putting words in my mouth. I'm simply saying that if someone creates something, they deserve to have the right to decide if their creation is given away for free or not. That should be pretty simple to understand. No need to make up crap I never said.

And entitlement is demanding that you get stuff for free that someone worked hard to create. I also never claimed that being an actor is harder work than other jobs, so again, you're just putting words in my mouth. I can't stand that.

I'm done discussing this with you if you're going to start arguing over a bunch of things I never said. It's a total strawman tactic and it's super annoying and not worth my time.