E-Book Piracy -- Take A New Perspective

Over at the Intern blog, she had an interesting post on thoughts about e-book piracy. Commentor Michael further directed readers to this YouTube post in which Neil Gaiman discusses piracy and his viewpoint on it.

I see a startling amount of vitriol in regards to various forms of digital piracy, from these two things:

1. a lack of comprehensive understanding of how new technology is shifting the paradigm, and
2. a corporate culture whose prices do not reflect real economic values where supply/demand are concerned.*





*There is a huge supply of e-books; as it was explained to me in school, when supply runs high and demand low, prices fall. But paying $12.99 for an ebook of, say, Gregory Maguire's Out of Oz, considering that there are a few thousand out-of-copyright books I can get for free, to say nothing of the cheapies out there available for .99 -- isn't going to happen. I can't justify the price by comparison to what I am paid in my daily job. Obviously, other factors come into play, such as branding of particular authors and what a devoted reader is willing to pay.

Also, it's worth noting that the entertainment industry might be the only industry where, if you're not satisfied with your product, you are unable to bring it back for a refund. If you buy a power tool from Home Depot and it doesn't make the grade, you can bring it back. Buy a shirt from a store and you don't like the way it fits, you can bring it back. But books? CD's? DVD's? If the talent behind these entertainments fail spectacularly, you're shit out of luck. Obviously, word of mouth can tank someone's artistic endeavor if they fail to please an audience, but what is horrifying to corporations churning out crap is the discovery that we now have an audience who can test drive your product before committing to it.

So let me ask you this: why is your product so special that no one can try it on for size before they buy it, but every other industry allows you to? Hmmm?

Maybe it means you have to work harder.

Maybe it means you have to put out something worth their time.

"But wait!" I hear you cry. "You're an artist! Don't you want to be paid for those pirated items you create?"

First, my product is only worth what it can fetch on the free market. And guess what? It's not worth jack-shit if no one is willing to pay for it, and I have to admit to stifling quite a few mad cackles when I observe other writers who tread in my similarly obscure waters insisting they've been swindled. Unpopular opinion: you've only been swindled if you have something worth stealing in the first place. Spend some time in the economics section of your library for five years like I did before the crash of '08; the definition of "value" and "worth" is varied and abstract and are not synonymous with "money." Vincent Van Gogh learned those definitions in the most bitter of educations.

Second, no one is arresting librarians for loaning books.

Third, I have, over time, developed something of a photographic memory. I'm not being funny about this -- in the aftermath of PTSD, I experience an interesting plethora of after-effects that I am often at a loss to describe. One of which is the sudden intensity of experience, of perception. Now, when I look at something, I often roll it back in my mind like a film reel. I looked at a license plate once during a near accident and repeated it back to enforcement by taking a moment to close my eyes and re-imagine the license plate as I saw it in that moment. I didn't quite understand what was happening to me. The capacity of the human mind to recall details is breathtaking in scope. And quite terrifying. It does not make me unique, or "special." If I can do it -- everyone and anyone can.

So let me ask you this -- are you going to arrest me for piracy because I can close my eyes and recall your book, page for page? That I did, in a sense, "download" your work as a sensory experience, filtered through my brain? You think it's laughable, but I see no end to the ridiculousness of what copyrights/patents will constrain people with as long as there is a corporation that stands to profit from it.

And don't get me started on Monsanto's patents on pigs.

For a more comprehensive understanding of this subject, everyone should read Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. It should basically come with your internet connection. Oh, and it's free. Legally. Though you may never look at copyright the same again.