I did not realize you were so intolerant and unforgiving of the opinions of others.

It seems fair that in a discussion of piracy and psychedelic authors we should be willing to know what authors think, I have yet to find an author who is not disturbed or even outraged by piracy, and not one of them has a desire to get rich, just to make ends meet, let's not sweep it under the rug that we are harming our heroes with this behavior, or that they detest it.

I'm not sure I understand why you keep bringing up Shulgin and the fact that he apparently feels that piracy has hurt him.

It's been pointed out several times in this thread that his works have not been subject to much piracy at all. Pirated versions of PiHKAL and TiHKAL are either rare or nonexistent. I've never heard of a pirated copy of Simple Plant Isoquinolines or The Shulgin Index, Vol. 1 being distributed. And despite the tremendous demand for Dirty Pictures and the very long delays in seeing a DVD release of the film, still no pirated versions have surfaced on the internet.

Perhaps I'm just dense and not understanding properly, but.... How is it that piracy can negatively impact sales for an author whose works have not been pirated?

The Shulgins have been hurt by piracy.

I made a choice not to include any quotes from them, but not because they do not exist.
Why don't you talk to them about it?

The truth of their opinion may come as a surprise to you.
They feel it is terrible and wrong, that good people do not engage in it.

I started this thread knowing full well how they and other authors feel about it.
Betrayed.

Try and find a psychedelic author who feels otherwise and feel free to add their opinion to this thread.

I agree. Several people have made many, many valid points and Sir Albert doesn't seem to recognize any of them.

Like I told someone on another thread....

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. - Winston Churchill

People do love to hide inconvenient truth.

the truth is that pirating psychedelic culture authors is not loving or supportive of them, it has no place in a community looking our for one another.

It is a fact that psychedelic authors feel that this behavior is wrong, that it does hurt them and that it is a failure to support them. This is something that not one person other than me has been willing to admit, in this thread.

Where is the support for the Shulgins that affirms that they feel this is wrong and that it does not help them? Where is the support for the opinions of psychedelic authors upon this topic?

You may want to sweep this under the rug, to censor it. But is that any less undignified than the same type of censorship the government engages in when it claims that psychedelics only harm and do not help people?

The truth is that we cannot be a community of loving helpful and supportive people and at the same time be a community of pirates. You may not like this truth, you may wish to make it go away, but this is because it is true and at the same time inconvenient.

Piracy is self serving, it is not a way to contribute to the psychedelic community, it does not help or support others. You may condemn me and this message but you do so because you do not want to face the honest opinions of those who have been betrayed by this behavior.

Piracy isn't love, it isn't kind, it is ugly and harmful. This is the opinion of some very beautiful and kind people, people like the Shulgins and others like them. It isn't something that a community that loves and supports one another engages in.

With apologies to those who wish to see the end of this thread...


So...for you it appears to come down to the number of times a given work is borrowed.


What is your personal borrowing limit? At what point do you tell people they can no longer borrow your books because the author is now being hurt by your personal lending practices?

And with that...I assume, by the logic presented here, you would have no problem with online piracy if each person who uploaded a copy of their original book only allowed a limited number of downloads. Perhaps the same amount as your personal borrowing limit? Is that correct?


So, what is the number? At what point does it change from mere borrowing to malevolent piracy?

Piracy isn't going anywhere and the authors need to adapt to the times. End of story.

I do not hate any psychedelic book author, but i do think some are misguided. This thread is over for me, i won't have you put false words in my mouth.
I wish you could just nrecognize any of the points made in this thread.

no author i know or have heard of feels that borrowing harms them at all
every author i know however feels that piracy harms them

there is a quote out there from a conference where two very famous psychedelic authors were asked about piracy

hearing that some pirates admired them one of them replied:
"that is like having a rapist tell you they love you"

snozz, it is sad that you just don't get it

Seriously?

Why not answer the question?

I laid it out pretty simply...

How many times does something need to be borrowed before it turns into piracy?

You say that it matters that it only be lent out to one person at a time. Why? What is the difference between lending one thing out 10 times at once digitally and lending one thing out ten times in a row in the real world? They have the same impact on the profit to the author and the amount of people who wind up with the knowledge.

As we've alread covered, you can't say the digital copy came from nowhere...any copy has to originate from somewhere, meaning someone purchased the original...so either way, 11 people wind up with the knowledge and the author winds up with only the profits from one sale.


My point is that your distinction between piracy and borrowing (based on some arbitrary number of loans and their being read consecutively rather than concurrently, as per your own words) is a conceptualized abstraction that falls apart when applied to the real world.

At least one author gets what I'm saying, so it's clearly not that "I don't get it", as you so eagerly claim

..you seem to want a dialogue here yet you dont really adress any of the points others have brought up as if they dont matter. It is like you are engaged in some debate with yourself. Might want to fix that if you really want to get anywhere with this thread.

Snozz does not really have a point worth addressing
this is not about semantics or logic, it is about the real world, not some abstract debate method

He cannot even show a single psychedelic book author that supports piracy,

What this is about is that piracy harms authors and they feel it betrays them. This is not something that one of you has admitted or conceded.

borrowing a book is nothing like making infinite copies and giving them out for free, that notion is so absurd that it isn't worth addressing.

At least one extremely well known psychedelic author likens it to rape.

the idea that piracy is like a library is absurd, the idea that it is like borrowing a book is absurd, the idea that it doesn't hurt authors in our community is absurd, the idea that they don't mind it is absurd. I realize i am trying to tell thieves that stealing is wrong, that I am wasting my time in that regard, but i would rather be the little boy who noted a naked emperor than be one of the people lying to myself and others about this

"borrowing a book is nothing like making infinite copies and giving them out for free, that notion is so absurd that it isn't worth addressing."

Thats all fine..but on that same note, the notion that pirating a book is comparable to rape is just as absurd(if not more) and also not worth adressing. You cant say one example is absurd and then back up your claim with another absurd example. I personally know someone who was raped. I highly doubt that authors go through anything like the sort of trauma that rape victims go through. Think about it. That example is actaully really offensive reguardless of what some well known psychedelic author says. Just because someone is a psychedelic author does not mean I worship every single word they say.

Since this thread obviously isn't going to end anytime soon... I would MUCH rather hear from some authors directly instead of Sir Albert.

No offence sir, but discussing this with you truly is like beating a dead horse. It's just not worth the effort. I'm sure you're a great guy, and I can appreciate your passion for this matter... However... You are not a very good representative for this topic.

I realize that piracy is bad for authors. They feel violated, cheated and used.

WE GET IT.

The fact of the matter is you can scream that the emperor wears no clothes all you want but it isn't doing your cause any justice since you are so unwilling to acknowledge much less accept the responses you've been given.

Like I've said before, piracy isn't going to go anywhere, ever. That's just the way it is.

I appreciate all of the time, effort and hard work that these authors put into their works, but lets be real. They write about psychedelics. What exactly is the point of using psychedelics? To open your mind. If these authors cannot open their minds to new ways of publishing and distributing their works and just want to whine, cry, bitch, moan and complain that they are getting bullied by hateful hackers that just want to steal from them, then I don't have a lot of respect for them.

This is the reason I want to hear from the authors directly. You are making me less sympathetic to their cause, not more.

Please do yourself, this community and most importantly the authors a favor and take a deep breath and re-read this entire thread with a clean slate and an open mind.

As it stands now, you are not doing anyone any favors.

Ok... Enough bickering about this...

To Albert and the authors who feel so threatened by piracy, I apologize if my comments were a bit harsh.

Let's try to make this thread productive instead of an endless and counter-productive debate.

What are some SOLUTIONS to these problems?

To quote a comment from Dan on the link that Snozz provided...



One site that has been incredibly successful with this is Safari Books Online

Here's how it works



Something like this for the psychedelic community would not only benefit the authors, but the people who wish to access these often rare and out of print books.

They offer several subscription levels which correspond to how many books you can have on your "bookshelf". They also offer tokens that you can buy to download individual chapters of the book. I believe you get 5 free tokens per month but of course you can buy more if you wish to download more content.

Let's try to pull together some more ideas and solutions and stop all of this petty bickering.

Piracy isn't going to stop and the sooner everyone accepts that, the sooner we can move on and come up with better ways of doing business.

I think this idea is great. I know we have a book store that works similar here - they make you become a member, but instead of paying a monthly fee you have to buy a certain amount of books every month; all of which you get at very very reasonable prices. If you don't buy enough books you have to pay something instead.

In any case this would be a great way to support authors and also supply everyone with information for a reasonable price. The thing is the monthly fees would have to be low enough to attract people from all social classes, but high enough to make it worthwhile. And priating will of course still continue. I suppose the best you can do is add something to each online-content - like on the front page -

"this book is published via ____ internet publishing collaboration. If you are reading this and are not a member of said club, please consider becoming one to support authors and the distribution of quality information"

More than appeal to the common sense of people at this point is probably impossible. I have no idea how well it would work. Otherwise you would be subject to the same fears as every other online-publishing place. once someone owns the pdf he can distribute it for free. You just have to hope that enough ppl want to support the author. Or am I missing something?

Maybe writers of psychedelic/ethno-botany/phyto-chemistry books could make sure their books are
significantly less expensive. Many of these books are mindblowingly expensive. Some I've seen on Amazon.com anyway.

Maybe this has to do with shipping prices having risen insanely? And maybe publishing and printing costs have risen too?
Who knows. And then the store from which you buy the book wants to get some profit too so up goes the price again.
Could there be any way of reducing the prices of these books significantly?

Today I asked Jonathan Ott what were his thoughts on this, he said that we should go ahead and copy and distribute his books, he doesnt write them to make money, he's anti-commercialism, he says that information should be spread.

That makes me feel warm and fuzzy

Knowledge FTW

Thank you for asking this. I was very curious myself. This seems to be the general attitude amongst the psychedelic community.