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."

Comments

Re:Elimination of artificial scarcity terrifies hi

[Sycraft-fu]

Well the thing is that a non-trivial amount of people on Slashdot aren't software engineers or the like. Many of them are unemployed college student types. They've never had a real job, or have had nothing but a menial job. They haven't really given their position much thought, it is just a kind of general parroting of the "Information wants to be free, man!" slogan without real consideration. They've never had to support themselves so the consideration of how one does so hasn't really entered their mind.

Re:If the formula is flawed the result means nothi

[Zero__Kelvin]

Great point. I mean unless you count that his entire article is wrought with quotes making that assumption, and he makes no attempt to correct it. I guess he could disagree with them all but never state that in his article. It happens all the time, an author presenting only one side of an argument and it's the side to which he doesn't agree.

"And I do not believe that the "this will most likely result in increased sales for Dan Brown" will apply at all... it is just someone trying to justify their illegal downloads."

You are the one making assumptions. I have no reason to "justify" behavior in which I do not engage. I do like to actually understand what I am reading and assess if the claims hold water. In this case they don't.

"For unknown bands, bands on tour (not the top ones, as everything will be sol out anyway) etc, some illegal downloads might help. But for the top artists, movies, authors etc, this is nothing but a loss (the size of which is not "X illegal copies times RRP")"

A: Plenty of poeple in the world still ask the question "Who the hell is Dan Brown"

B: Maybe I heard of him, but I haven't given him any thought lately. Most people have heard of Ford Motor company. You might want to inform them that they are just throwing their money away advertising, because nobody explained that to them apparently.