Is it time to abandon consumer copyright?
Is it just me, or is copyright becoming a real pain in the butt at a consumer level?
Reality is that people lend each other books. No doubt they also give each other electronic books. They certainly give each other ripped music.
We seem to be stuck in the myth that writers are suppliers and readers are consumers. In reality, most writers (and musicians) couldn't give their art away. Writers gain pleasure writing. Readers gain pleasure reading. Most writers are avid readers. Many readers write too.
So let's recognise the whole thing as a symbiotic relationship, and stop threatening to sue a few billion people who share electronic files and always will.
Sure, companies should still pay for selling books and music or for using it for commerical purposes, but why shouldn't consumers be allowed to share their enthusiasms without the gratuitous threat of prosecution hanging over them. Nothing much will change except that the world will become a marginally more benign and kinder place.
Reality is that people lend each other books. No doubt they also give each other electronic books. They certainly give each other ripped music.
We seem to be stuck in the myth that writers are suppliers and readers are consumers. In reality, most writers (and musicians) couldn't give their art away. Writers gain pleasure writing. Readers gain pleasure reading. Most writers are avid readers. Many readers write too.
So let's recognise the whole thing as a symbiotic relationship, and stop threatening to sue a few billion people who share electronic files and always will.
Sure, companies should still pay for selling books and music or for using it for commerical purposes, but why shouldn't consumers be allowed to share their enthusiasms without the gratuitous threat of prosecution hanging over them. Nothing much will change except that the world will become a marginally more benign and kinder place.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Book Calendar on
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How do you get paid for selling your ideas in this new market? Copyright certainly might not be the answer. What is? If you are an author you do not work for free. If your ideas are instantly copyable anywhere in the world what does it mean?
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Permalink Reply by Tim Roux on -
Most authors do not get paid anyway. The statistics are something like 500,000 books are written a year, 40,000 are published, and only 200 make significant money.
If you listen to most writers, we do not write to make money, we write because we feel compelled to do so. We are going to write anyway, and at most 5% of us will be able to live on the money.
If I take myself, I love writing. I cannot imagine not doing it. I will write come what may it is not a business, it is an obsession. The biggest compliment I get, and luckily I get it quite often, is somebody saying "I finished your book," which means that somebody committed 10+ hours to my story. What flattery! That'll do me. My bottom line is even simpler: if I enjoy reading what I write, I am already successful. I write as a reader. I write the books I most want to read.
Sure, I rather like the idea of that film contract or of selling a million books. Basically, you make about $1.50, however you publish.
I am not arguing that a commercial organisation seeking to make profits shouldn't pay for my 'component' as a writer. I think it should.
What I am saying is that the whole anti-piracy movement is compromising the integrity of its own argument (and I speak as a lawyer) interfering with our private lives. I hate the anti-piracy movement because it seeks to stop me offering a copy of a CD or a DVD to a friend because I really enthuse about it, I have recommended it, and the friend is keen to hear/see it. That is what friends do, and it plays in favour of the copyright owner. Where I have been given copies of ripped CDs and really enjoyed them, I have then gone out and bought maybe 3-4 other of their CDs. I would never have bought any if the friend hadn't slipped me the 'pirated' CD in the first place.
If I hand a book to a friend saying "Read this, it is fantastic!", should I be liable to prosecution? No, and in that case I am not. If I do the same thing with an e-book, a criminal offence is committed.
I think that the anti-piracy movement should back off out of our private lives. If I want to hand a DVD, CD or e-book to a friend, at no charge, I should be entitled to do so. Should I take my guitar down the bar for fun and sing a few standards, I should be allowed to do that too.
Should I start selling CDs, DVDs and e-books, that is a different question - that is commerce and, sure, the retailer should pay for the merchandise. I would say the same of Napster and other P2P stuff - that is organised business / transactions.
But between friends?
Anyway, in my case, I have 7 novels. All are available as printed paperbacks. Those are going to have to be bought unless I give them away - silly me, I have to sell 10 books for every one I give away to break even. But e-books? It costs me nothing for e-books to be moved around, so if I sell one to somebody who is prepared to pay, and they then pass it on to 10 friends for free, what's wrong with that? I am happy - the word is being spread at no cost to me. The chances are that those ten people would not have bought it anyway, but now the chances are much higher that they might buy some of the other seven.
Perfect world, really.
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