Novelist Blames Piracy On Open Source Culture 494
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."
Poor broadband on the Rez? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wikipedia says much of his writing comes from his experiences growing up on the rez. Maybe a talk with Cory Doctorow would change his mind.
BZZZZT WRONG (Score:3, Interesting)
Almost every aspect of open source/creative commons etc. requires attribution, and even pirates don't bother removing credits. Your 'artistic ownership' goes nowhere.
sounds familiar (Score:2, Interesting)
Sounds Familiar, just like when people complain that the publishing industry has become like the movie industry, controlled by a select few.
like when people complain that books cost too much. sound familiar,,,,.
too many writers are having to turn to self publishing because the publishing industry is trying to play OPEC/MPAA.
when my favorite writers put out a book i buy it. they just don't as often as i'd like and the new writers that are getting fronted i'm not impressed by.
Re:When you don't understand something... (Score:4, Interesting)
Grabbing publicity? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
I have a personal anecdote to share on the matter (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:What do you expect. (Score:5, Interesting)
"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.
Re:Elimination of artificial scarcity terrifies hi (Score:2, Interesting)
"With the open-source culture on the Internet, the idea of taxpayer-funded artificial scarcity - of artistic monopoly -- goes away."
I've always wondered why so many people on slashdot find the right to profit of your creation to be such a bad thing. (I.e. artificial scarcity). It's especially odd for a site full of software engineers .etc. whose livelihood often depends on artificial scarcity.
Take the iPhone for example. The materials that go into making an iPhone and those that go into making your average run of the mill phone are certainly not different enough to justify the price difference. The real difference is in the design - I.e. pure information with effectively no-limits to the amount it can be copied. Yet another company can't just use that information without Apple's permission - I.e. they can't just go off an make their own iPhone. Is this "taxpayer-funded artificial scarcity" bad?
Or take Windows or any other peace of commercial software. It's purely information so the fact that I'm not free to copy and use it as much as I want must be "taxpayer-funded artificial scarcity". Is this bad?
The point is that making this information takes very real time and effort, whether it's designing a phone (or car or whatever), writing software, making a movie/song, or in this case writing a book. So what is so wrong with people having the right to demand payment for allowing people to utilise (Be it for entertainment, business or whatever) the information they have worked hard to create?
Now I'm not saying there shouldn't be limits to this right. But it seems that a lot of people just shout "Artificial scarcity" at anyone who raises their voice against piracy or whatever.
Now as for this guy, I think correlating the open source movement and piracy is stupid. People pirate stuff because they want things for free and the risks are so low. That's human nature, with or without the open-source movement.
Re:BZZZZT WRONG (Score:2, Interesting)
Almost every aspect of open source/creative commons etc. requires attribution, and even pirates don't bother removing credits. Your 'artistic ownership' goes nowhere.
However, his royalties may. Sooner or later we will have to consider, as a culture, what to do if established authors, and promising young authors, decide to abandon writing because too many freeloaders reduce author profits below subsistence. I'm not talking about the **AAs, I'm talking about individual authors who may have contracts with reputable publishing houses that do not insist on exploitive relationships. And what about the psychological deterrent to creativity? JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book in desperation on welfare. Might she have done so if she believed her work would be distributed freely without any compensation to her?
Do we want promising youths to avoid careers in writing because online distribution has hurt profitability? Would J.D. Salinger, John Updike, Norman Mailer have enriched our lives if they needed other jobs? And Robert Heinlein said that many of his stories were written "to buy groceries".
Without some requirement to pay for books, would enough people do so?
Since a large part of the US's trade brings our nation income from royalties on Hollywood movies, is it possible we need to make sure what we produce has value in the world market to improve our balance of trade and thereby reduce inflation and unemployment? Of course the answer is yes-- so maybe the question we should be asking is how to puncture the evil media conglomerates (like the **AAs) to make sure the wealth from our nation's creative minds does not unduly concentrate wealth and power.
I say we are in danger of devaluing books, for instance, to the point of discouraging authors-- and harming our entire nation by stripping the value from music and movies simply because we want the money we pay to be distributed more fairly to the creators. We should not fight to keep online distribution free unless we also fight to create new systems of direct compensation to authors and not to middlemen.
But what about the harm to books and to the confidence of new authors happening RIGHT NOW.... what do we do BEFORE we have a system of direct compensation in place?
Re:His publishers are a bigger problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Alexie's comments were in a Colbert Show interview (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:When you don't understand something... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:When you don't understand something... (Score:3, Interesting)
Just look how iTunes completely stopped selling anything when they started offering non-copy-protected books - oh wait, they didn't.
While not exactly the same; I checked out Scott Sigler s [scottsigler.com] podcasts of his own novels (for free on his site), since I listened through all of it (and enjoyed it) I decided to buy his books in hardcover to support him. While I would probably have bought them in an e-book format if I could (as in if I had an e-reader and there was a good e-book service), ordering and buying them through my local store was fine and made me feel all warm and cuddly inside from supporting local businesses that I enjoy frequenting.
While e-book piracy might be an issue, my personal opinion on piracy (of all types of content) is that the only way to effectively lessen it is to have good online stores where those with the inclination and economical capacity to do so can legally purchase such articles. Draconian DRM systems does not work, or only works to a very limited extent while making life harder and less enjoyable for those that actually do want to buy their products legally.
As for "artistic ownership" I can not imagine that the "open source culture" imagined by Alexie will ever be able to change laws and general opinion to such an extend that authors/artists lose control of the commercial aspects of their own products (maybe a reduction in copyright length from its current standard at most). It is a great leap, in my mind, from the concept of distributing content created by others to being able to use that material for financial gain without the artists approval. Which is how I interpreted his fears.
Re:Elimination of artificial scarcity terrifies hi (Score:3, Interesting)
Open source licenses rely on the same system
They rely on the same system to counter the effects of the system. Without the system they would not need the system.
The focus should be limited copyright terms
Limiting copyright terms is ultimately futile. As long as copyright works as an artificial scarcity it damages the economy, and as long as it's implemented as a privatized taxation for you're basically not going to get it to stick at whatever number of years you want it stuck at. The incentive to increase it will always remain among the profiting stakeholders and the parties paying for the transactions will not be represented as long as the system cost is not accounted for.
The exclusive right to control copying is what needs to be done in with. If you want to fund creators out of what is the equivalent of state funds, then just fund them out of state funds (with funding gathered out of, for example, a vat system on content carrying copies). Tie it to number of copies made or something if you want economic effects equivalent to today, altho actually recognizing it as a transfer system has more interesting possibilities (what number of years maximizes public benefits is grossly generalized), more appropriate targets would be amount of payout to author per year, perhaps capped, perhaps scaled per work for a number of years, etc, to create an incentive for maximizing productivity. That would also dissuade from the non-core activities such as marketing, lobbying, partying and distribution, as those would not, and should not be funded out of creator incentives.
If we want to get there, defending piracy
Piracy is unavoidable and well on the way to being utterly uncontrollable. Further, in light of the media lobbyists attacks on freedom and democracy denying them revenue by any means necessary has become an ethical obligation. Whether it's making sure all your friends and relatives have access to any media they could desire to prevent them from providing funds to the media lobbyists, or to provide random strangers with copies they may desire, both are socially responsible things to do in the face of efforts such as ACTA.
And really, having 'reasonable' dialogue has gotten us well on the way towards multi-century copyright where artists and creators barely get the crumbs falling off the table (and far lower part of revenue than in any other state-run transfer system). You may want to update your idea of what 'helpful' means in this case.
Re:What do you expect. (Score:3, Interesting)
And guess what? A successful author caters to their fans, a successful band will do the same. Guess what? While you in IT might not want to admit it, those are your end users and you should take their advice because they end up using the systems. Yeah, there is the occasional stupid suggestion (what if we stayed with the exact same software and never upgraded because I don't like using the newer version of our e-mail account and browser) but occasionally you realize that something you, as a geek, thought was a good idea that the masses don't like and a good developer fixes that.
Re:Elimination of artificial scarcity terrifies hi (Score:3, Interesting)
As a software engineer, I don't. I get paid by the hour or by the project. I couldn't care less what happens with my work afterwards.
Most of my work is on custom internal applications and not things sold on the shelf. You can pirate it all you want, but it's not made for you, so you're unlikely to find it useful, and even if you can use it you'll still need to pay somebody to adjust it to your needs.
I've written open source software for money. It's easy. Customer says "I want this software to be able to do X". I look at it, negotiate with the customer, do the work and get the money. Modification gets released under the license of the original project (was GPL2). Maybe some other programmer somewhere will get money in the future for building on my work, and so on.
Yes. I'd like to have companies competing to make the best phone possible. For that purpose, it'd be best if any company could create a phone with any design it wanted, without being restricted by patents.
Yes. Attempting to keep it from being copied imposes a cost on society that I think we'd be better without.
I'm not against work being paid for, I simply think work is something that should be paid for at the time it's performed. A programmer can charge by the hour/project, a musician can charge for creating a song, and so on. Then we don't need the entire messy copyright thing.
Re:Poor broadband on the Rez? (Score:2, Interesting)
Agreed. First thing I thought when I read this was that he needed to talk to Cory Doctorow.
However, Doctorow told me when I met him that he'd publicly debated another copyright zealot, Harlan Ellison, and it didn't go well at all. Although that may just have been because of Harlan being his usual Harlan self.
b.
Re:I have a personal anecdote to share on the matt (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What do you expect. (Score:3, Interesting)
Your logic escapes me. I understand technology very well and I understand his concern. Piracy is much easier and cheaper in a digital world than in a print world. It is a threat to the business of content creators (authors) and their publishers. Ads won't pay the bills. All the clowns on this site who think people should or can work for free or a pittance need to get of their mommas' basements and try to support a family.
Aren't those clowns called authors? Not every author has best-seller credentials backing their latest project. And, consequently, there are some seriously lean times ahead of any new author - even some established authors. Yet we still have authors writing despite the uncertain economics of it all.
How much of a threat "piracy" represents is very much up to debate. But clearly the quoted author has no concept of the technology - right down to naming "open-source". They're full of fear for a mystery that they have no insight or understanding. The author offers no insight that uncovers that mystery as a boogie-man or real threat.
The problem is that content industry representatives see every case of copyright infringement as a lost sale. So while there are statistics that show quite decent sales figures, the industry reps focus on "loss sales" and paint a picture of doom and gloom.
With said doom and gloom on the horizon, authors are spooked. J.K. Rowling avoids eBooks because of this fear. Yet I have a digital facsimile of every one of her Harry Potter series. I also have the entire collection in hardback on shelves but the digital (DRM free) files are much easier to carry around and read. I suppose she's doomed. But does she has the publishing industry or people like me to thank for it?
Book authors are yet another content producer being dragged in to the digital age. I doubt they're going the way of the buggy whip manufacturers. But individual publishing houses might. The question is, will they drag their feet like the music industry has for the past millennium or will they look forward and figure out how to gracefully make that transition and start making money?
Re:Elimination of artificial scarcity terrifies hi (Score:3, Interesting)
Hi there.
I'm a software developer, currently employed. I don't care about the copyright status of what I produce, as I can earn money in any case.
Most programming work isn't of the software sold in shops variety, but of the custom coding for a client kind. It doesn't matter to me how many copies of my work exist, as I don't earn money from royalties, I get it from performing the job I was hired to do (which is for instance improving a program to support X). The clients generally don't have much of a reason to care either, as they have specific needs, and don't sell the software I work on.
I have been hired to work on GPL2 licensed software, and it worked just fine for me.
So here you have an example of somebody who has absolutely no problem with "Information wants to be free, man!" as you put it.
Re:Just missing the right term (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, there are quite a few authors who misuse FLOSS terms - even those terms that have a very specific meaning - as synonyms of "piracy". For another example, here's a (translated) citation from one fairly popular Russian sci-fi/fantasy writer, Sergey Lukyanenko (the guy who wrote the book on which this movie [imdb.com] is directly based), from his essay on author's rights and Internet:
"The text is stolen? This is the inevitable destiny of any good (and not even necessarily good) book. It will spread through various "online libraries" (mostly owned by proponents of "copyleft" - that is, theft of author's rights)."
He repeats the word "copyleft" three more times within the same chapter, repeatedly stressing his understanding of the term as equivalent to "pro-copyright infringement".
Re:BZZZZT WRONG (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a strawman, and you know it. Yes, you can sell open source software, but only an idiot buys it without some kind of added value (like technical support). What kind of added value can an author of an ebook offer that would compel someone to buy it? None.
Simple fact is, the open source model doesn't apply to other creative works because there isn't the opportunity for side revenue.
Re:What do you expect. (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org] instead of exchange value [wikipedia.org].
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.
Re:What do you expect. (Score:2, Interesting)
standard slashdot routine, meanwhile, is to help yourself to everyone else's work.
If you expect content to be made, expect someone else to pay for it. Not you, you are special, you are born with the inate write to take for free what everyone else has to pay for to make your life special.
Such is the self-entitlement sleazebag attitude of the slashdot leech.
An overgrown sense of entitlement is pervasive in our society, not a /. phenomenon. It's been taught for decades in our educational systems and through all forms of media.
Re:No shit. Duh. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sometimes I wish that Obama really was a Socialist or Liberal.
People have short memories. Obama's not that far left of Bush Sr.; if Bush Jr. hadn't been such a wacko, nobody would be calling O anything left-er than a centrist.