As you might imagine, since I am both an author and a publisher, I would like to see summary executions of those who violate copyrights (well, at least some time in a dank dungeon for them). A couple months ago, I read two interesting articles that approached book piracy from two radically different perspectives. I’ve been mulling them over since then.
First, Ben Hoyle, the Arts reporter for The Times in the UK, wrote a well-thought-out piece titled Internet Book Piracy Will Drive Authors to Stop Writing. The article recaps the position of Britain’s 8,500-member Society of Authors. Hoyle wound up his article with this:
Everybody agreed that the internet was a double-edged sword: good for growing an author’s audience but disastrous at turning that readership into revenue, he added. “Tracy Chevalier is right, it is worrying. At the moment, though, even the most pessimistic commentators still think that printed books will be popular for ages.”
Indeed. The Internet can be tricky rapids for authors to navigate successfully. How much to give away and for how long? Where is the crossover between building your audience and making enough money to live on?
If you can’t make a living as a writer, how long before you must give up (albeit reluctantly) and focus your energies on something that does earn a decent wage?
The other article was published on the University of Oxford’s website as a news story with the title “Digital Piracy” May Benefit Companies. Its second paragraph states:
In her talk at the Annual Conference of the Royal Economic Society, Oxford economist Karen Croxson suggests that piracy does not necessarily undermine profit as pirates may actually help to promote the product they steal.
Now, that’s the kind of “enlightened,” anarchistic viewpoint one would expect from the hallowed halls of one of the bastions of liberal-think. Croxson even proposes that companies incorporate something called “promotional piracy” into their marketing plans.
She suggests that companies not worry about those few pirates out there since they probably are not really likely customers who otherwise would have bought the product. And they would provide lots of free publicity.
So, let’s see, if I don’t really need — and wouldn’t likely buy at any price — an iPod, by Croxson’s reasoning I should be able to steal one from Wal-Mart and use it without either Apple or Wal-Mart harassing me. After all, I would likely use it in public. Just think of all the “free” publicity they would both gain.
Croxson, of course, would say I’ve taken her recommendations to an extreme. After all, she thinks it should only apply to digital products. In other words, only those products that are easy to steal should be allowed to be stolen without legal repercussions. I guess they don’t teach ethics at Oxford.
Almost all authors and publishers these days post some portion of their content in digital form on the ‘Net for people to download and share. However, the decision of if and how much must be left up to the author and/or publisher, not the digital thief.
I, for one, will no longer call these digital thieves “pirates” — that is just too romantic an image to use for those who feel they should be able to steal with impunity the product of months and years of effort and, in many cases, knowledge gained over a lifetime.
If I hear one more hacker/thief say “Information wants to be free,” I may go postal on him, or her. If they truly believe that, let them invest their time, blood, sweat, and tears to produce something new and worthwhile rather than taking the easy route followed by generations of thieves before them — all those people who lacked the talent, skill, or patience to create anything.
So, what do you think? Is digital stealing a good thing (for authors or society at large)? Whichever position you take, give me a good reason or I won’t approve the comment.
