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Novelist Blames Piracy On Open Source Culture
joeflies writes "CNN published an article entitled 'Digital Piracy Hits the e-Book Industry.' It quotes the following statement by novelist Sherman Alexie: 'With the open-source culture on the Internet, the idea of ownership — of artistic ownership — goes away. It terrifies me.'"
The article also points out a couple of interesting statistics for a "slumping" industry beset by piracy: "Sales for digital books in the second quarter of 2009 totaled almost $37 million. That's more than three times the total for the same three months in 2008, according to the Association of American Publishers," and "consumers who purchase an e-reader buy more books than those who stick with traditional bound volumes. Amazon reports that Kindle owners buy, on average, 3.1 times as many books on the site as other customers."
from someone that doesn't understand technology?
No worries! If you're right, all even-numbered rehashings of a story get it completely right!
He clearly means something along the lines of "peer-to-peer" culture.
Exactly. We have to find a way to stop peers talking to each other. It only breeds discontent and piracy.
Alexie is a Native American. Those people have no sense of ownership anyway. Their tribes roam from book to book. It wasn't until the white man arrived with his culture of printing out books and putting his name on them and getting all upset if the Indians took them off the shelf and didn't return them within two weeks that the trouble started.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
My couch, bed, carpeting and most of my furniture is pirated. You got me. Please don't turn me in!
Blar.
Hi, welcome to Slashdot! You must be new here.
Whenever a piracy story comes up, the apologists come out of the woodwork here. Pirates have been hiding under the skirts of the open source movement for ages.