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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."
The books I respect I buy in hard cover, largely Pratchett and reference books The ones that will enjoy and read casually I want to carry around I buy in paperback. If they really wanted to promote sales they would include an electronic copy with the purchase. I don't pirate (really) so there are very few that I have in electronic form. The ones I have are very largely from Tor. The ones that I really enjoy I will buy in paperback or hard copy. Tor publishers have effectively proved that giving books away get them more sales. Many times I have read a book provided online and then bought the entire series in paperback or hardcover.
What are the odds that Sherman Alexie is simply making a controversial statement to gain publicity?
Prior to this article, I'd never heard of him. Given his statement, I doubt I'll every buy any of his work but his statement has gotten his name air-time.
linquendum tondere
Not long ago I wanted to buy an ebook (just published. I went to Amazon and they wanted the hardcover price for the ebook. $25 for an ebook, just plain silly. So I went to barnes&noble, they offered the ebook for $10, similar to a paperback. So I tried to buy it.
Aaaanndd.. an error came up saying that I could not buy this book from the area I was in (not USA). I looked around some more and did not find a european distributor for the ebook. Lot's of companies had the hardcover, but no ebook. I checked if I could order it from amazon (I had no intention of completing that !!$25!! transaction) and same thing. I was not allowed to buy the bloody book.
So I went to my friends at thepiratebay and got the book. I needed to do some conversion to get the text to display properly on my device, but it worked. The legal alternatives, which I tried to follow, simply did not work. Maybe there was a way to get the legal options to work properly, but the way to get customers to do the legal thing is to make that EASIER than the illegal way.
On iTunes I am guaranteed to get good quality files, on TPB I am not. Simple.
Here in sweden the streaming service Spotify has changed the game. It's just so easy to do the legal thing that illegal downloading went down. Do the same with movies, books, programs.. basically everything else. Make the legal way the best and easiest way, and people will come.
As for Cory Doctorow, I do wish that he gave me some way of giving him money for the digital copies I've gotten from him. I don't want to buy a paper version, and I don't want to donate a paper version. I just want to pay the author (and editor and all those involved) for his/their work.
It is worse than that -- the person in question doesn't even know what is happening in his own profession. From TFA,
"I'd be really worried if I were Stephen King..."
Stephen King has already released a no-DRM ebook and made a lot of money from it, by releasing it piece by piece and requiring a certain minimum number of paid downloads before the next part of the story is released; this was discontinued because King himself could not figure out where to take the story. Perhaps if these people spent less time whining about how their fans are not paying their publishers, they could be more aware of how the Internet can change things and how they can use computers to publish their stories in new ways, connect with their fans, and provide their books to more people.
Journalist Motoko Rich quoted Alexie as saying that he refused to allow his novels to be made available in digital form. Alexie called the expensive reading devices "elitist" and said that their widespread adoption would harm both readers from poor communities, as well as the authors themselves. He stated in an interview with Stephen Colbert that "digital books take away jobs" from the artists.[4] He said also in this interview that the culture surrounding books and bookstores is diminishing, and that the digital book phenomenon will only continue to decrease the value of hard copy.
I think he clearly understands it quite well, or at least its sociological effect. The concept of "artistic ownership" is an unfortunate consequence of an economic system that commidifies everything, even ideas. Open source represents something outside of capitalist production, producing for use value instead of exchange value.
Open source culture has indeed spread the idea that ideas shouldn't be treated like property, and should be proud that it demonstrates an alternative.
Property is theft.