Copyright Schmopyright... at what shaggin point?

So I want to get a copy of "Winning One Pocket" and "Shots, Moves & Strategies" (the two volume set) by famed author and wizard compiler Eddie Robin. I have money, I want to spend it. But I will not be the fool that pays 200.00 to 600.00 for either or both of these books. I don't care if they resurrect Cornbread Red to hand deliver the damn thing to me.

At what point is it reasonably acceptable, for the sake of scholarly study, to just go ahead and outright pirate yourself a copy of these books by any means necessary? I have morals and scruples and a conscience, but none of those parts of me is bothered in the least when I am faced with absolutely no other option. Its kind of like after a major natural disaster and your family is starving to death with no relief in sight.... the local grocery store is gonna be light a few canned goods until I get some steady help out this M'er F'er.

So what.... what are your feelings on the matter?


Regards,

Lesh

$600?$200?? for a book?? no, sry. Ive paid $150 for textbooks in college, and that was ridiculous. Mark Wilson came up as the name to buy when I asked around, $70 I think, but at least that's somewhat reasonable.
 
Yes--

Does anyone have a definitive answer as to why the books were never reprinted? Does Eddie not own the rights?

Eddie owns the rights.
I spoke to him at length in 2011 over the phone.

I also own a copy of W1P purchased for $30 in 2009:grin-square:

-CP
 
$600?$200?? for a book?? no, sry. Ive paid $150 for textbooks in college, and that was ridiculous. Mark Wilson came up as the name to buy when I asked around, $70 I think, but at least that's somewhat reasonable.

Mark's book is not specialized as are the One Pocket books.
 
Furthermore, there is nothing else out there because these books are so expensive. Keeping knowledge as power to be paid for by the few hurts us all in the long run.

Is there a sport is the world that is as archaic as American pool? $4k bits of wood. $1k for box-shaped leather. $400 for a book. Erm, $50 for a DVD. :o

The pool consumer is crackers and nothing will ever change whilst we still buy into this philosophy. Competition is needed desperately.

Go ahead write a book, make a DVD of your knowledge/thoughts/production values and see how rich you get, you might be suprised it is not so much cash for the effort.
 
So you'd make it easier? The whole point of snooker is saying "I couldn't do that". That NEVER happens on a pool table.

Not saying snooker tables cannot be better made, but there's not an overwhelming need to change them AFAIK. I'd quite like to have a go on one of the new Star tables, which all the pros rave about. I think club tables should have big bags, however, otherwise people just lose interest. I used to play on the table Cliff Thorburn made his Crucible maximum on, that was not pretty at all - high break, about 12. In a moment of great genius and clarity, that table is currently residing in landfill somewhere or other. :mad:

I think you got the wrong idea about the Diamond pockets.
It's not to change the opening...3.5 inches at the fall is fine.
It's the leather set-up that is not so good...I don't recall seeing even
one tournament in Britain where a ball did not pop out of a side pocket
because it was hit dead center at a fast speed.

Diamond tables have leather pockets you can fire a ball into...
...and it stays in.
 
Try your local library and if they don't have it, see if they got it at another branch. You might be pleasantly surprised.
 
Maybe someone in your area can loan it to you and then while at work you can be paid to photocopy it for free :grin:

Now there's an idea...

Maybe I'm in minority here, but what I think is this:
We've pretty much all made photo copies of something before, or recorded a football game or TV show, maybe copied an album or emailed a song and probably (technically) violated a copyright or trademark and never thought of it while while we were doing it, and I bet not a one of us called the offices of The NFL, or Paramount Pictures, or Capital Records and said, "Hi, I just wanted to let you know I made a copy of your material". So if I'm the OP, and if I want this book but don't want to pay the curent market price, some folks posting here might consider it theft, but I don't write a post about it. I find the books that I can borrow and quietly make a copy and don't tell anyone. If I run a stop sign I don't stop at the next police station and tell them.
If you've ever made a copy of something, electronic, digital, analog, paper, or whatever, or if you've ever got too much change at 7-11 and didn't return it, picked a few grapes off the display at the grocery store, hustled at pool or cards..... (hmmmm....), or even eaten your girls pizza when she wasn't looking, well then, I guess you're a thief too.
People that live in glass pool halls.....
 
A price tag accordingly.

I am in no way going to sell copies of these books. I would just like to read the dang things and study them to improve my game if at all possible. $450.00 for a book that was published in 1996 is absolutely stupid by any yard stick. I cant make copies of them because no one has a copy of them around here, so that solves that moral / legal dilemma. I am just aghast at the prospect of such an acclaimed resource being denied the public and the scarce few tomes allowed into circulation closeted away.... from me (mainly).

Tell me my intent will hurt the author or publisher of these books in any way and I will apologize. The only way this hurts anyone is the sheisting hack of a book scalper that I would have to pay an incredible amount of cash to in order to get a legal published copy from. So they can take a whizz in the breeze, I'm not feeding them.

Lovingly,

Lesh


They used to have copies in librarys, people who felt it was their right to put them in their collection or sell them, is the reason you can't find one to read.
How do you feel about all the high end cues that people resell for more than they pay on here ?
They order a bunch of cues which makes it so you can't get one for 10 years and then as soon as they get them , they resell them for more than the cuemaker made?
 
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I bought both books originally for $50 each, then loaned them out and never got them back. I then bought replacements for $200 each. I also have the 3 cushion book. I bring this up because although I had read them when they first came out, I bought them again for one reason. They are WORTH it. :wink:

These books will greatly increase your overall knowledge of the game and this can be used to earn money gambling or tournaments. My suggestion, Buy them, Read them, use the knowledge and win $$ with the knowledge. Voila' the books are now free.

Gordon Gecko in Wall Street said, "The single most valuable commodity I know of is information, and how to get it."

Spend the $$$ and don't look back.
 
$600?$200?? for a book?? no, sry. Ive paid $150 for textbooks in college, and that was ridiculous. Mark Wilson came up as the name to buy when I asked around, $70 I think, but at least that's somewhat reasonable.

You, like some others are thinking about just the price of a new book that anyone can get. Not an out of print book that many people are looking for. Hence the price. You should buy an economics book for that $150 hehe. 10 people want something but only one of that something is out there. The one that gets is will often be the one that has the most to offer the owner.

For about 5 cents you can get a nice new baseball card. Why pay thousands for those old ones?
 
So I want to get a copy of "Winning One Pocket" and "Shots, Moves & Strategies" (the two volume set) by famed author and wizard compiler Eddie Robin. I have money, I want to spend it. But I will not be the fool that pays 200.00 to 600.00 for either or both of these books. I don't care if they resurrect Cornbread Red to hand deliver the damn thing to me.

At what point is it reasonably acceptable, for the sake of scholarly study, to just go ahead and outright pirate yourself a copy of these books by any means necessary? I have morals and scruples and a conscience, but none of those parts of me is bothered in the least when I am faced with absolutely no other option. Its kind of like after a major natural disaster and your family is starving to death with no relief in sight.... the local grocery store is gonna be light a few canned goods until I get some steady help out this M'er F'er.

So what.... what are your feelings on the matter?


Regards,

Lesh



Lesh

If you just want to study or read these books are other billiards books.... just go to your public library and check them out. Or if library does not own an item, users can request it through the interlibrary loan service. Also Library of Congress

http://www.loc.gov/rr/main/inforeas/request.html
 
They used to have copies in librarys, people who felt it was their right to put them in their collection or sell them, is the reason you can't find one to read.
How do you feel about all the high end cues that people resell for more than they pay on here ?
They order a bunch of cues which makes it so you can't get one for 10 years and then as soon as they get them , they resell them for more than the cuemaker made?

I'm fine with folks reselling extremely desirable cues at whatever price they want, and I have no problem with book sellers getting all they can for out-of-print books. They are both selling objects that they own. It is their right to ask whatever they can get and let the marketplace sort it out. I got a lot of pleasure out of watching my reference books rise in price astronomically, and by the time I sold most of them I had gotten years worth of use from them and sold them at a substantial profit.

There are plenty of copy cues out there for sale, and in my field there are numerous copies of Martin, Gibson, and Fender guitars out there being sold quite legally every day. Folks may question the ethics behind doing this, but legally they have been getting away with it for over 30 years. They probably outsell the real McCoy 20-to-1, too.

Back in the 80s, Tokai of Japan was putting out such a slavish copy of an early 60s Stratocaster that it far surpassed the quality of the real Fenders being manufactured at that time. Fender tried unsuccessfully to put a stop to them, so they had no choice but to up their own game and research into what made their vintage guitars so desirable in the first place... research the Japanese had already done. Eventually, Fender had a factory in Japan produce them. They are some of the nicest Fenders on the secondary market, and I own one myself. The real deal 50s and 60s USA-made Strats, however, are the ones that go for tens of thousands of dollars, not the copies.

Personally, I wouldn't spend the cost of photocopying for the Robin books, but I would have no problem spending $150-200 (or whatever price) for the original if I wanted it bad enough. If I desperately needed the knowledge contained in them, I would go as far as the Library of Congress to get it. A photocopy of a book is terrible thing to own and has no value to me. But if somebody were to get the book and make an illegal copy for themselves, I wouldn't hold it against them. Just isn't my cup of tea is all.
 
Stealing from a library is a sh*tty thing to do. Seriously...



You bet!

There was a particular book on boatbuilding at my library that I used to borrow several times a year. One time I went in and the book was gone, so I put in a request for it. Months later I still had not heard word of it, so I called the library again. The librarian said it had been probably been stolen, and since it was out of print, there wouldn't be another copy coming to replace it.

I decided to get my own copy through Amazon. It was about $60 or so, over twice the retail price when it was new. When I got the book it turned out to be an ex-library book, something not mentioned in the seller's description. In my case it bore the word "WITHDRAWN" stamped in large black letters on the frontispiece of the book, so at least it was a legitimate sale.
 
You bet!

There was a particular book on boatbuilding at my library that I used to borrow several times a year. One time I went in and the book was gone, so I put in a request for it. Months later I still had not heard word of it, so I called the library again. The librarian said it had been probably been stolen, and since it was out of print, there wouldn't be another copy coming to replace it.

I decided to get my own copy through Amazon. It was about $60 or so, over twice the retail price when it was new. When I got the book it turned out to be an ex-library book, something not mentioned in the seller's description. In my case it bore the word "WITHDRAWN" stamped in large black letters on the frontispiece of the book, so at least it was a legitimate sale.

Receiving stolen property can be prosecuted as a felony in most states
just sayin'...
 
Receiving stolen property can be prosecuted as a felony in most states
just sayin'...

As I said, the book was withdrawn from the library and carries a large stamp stating that to be the case. It was not stolen. My library routinely withdraws book from their stacks and puts them out for sale at ridiculously cheap prices. What doesn't sell get tossed out. A pity, but it happens all the time.
 
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