Over on Facebook, a single blog post was linked to by four different friends of mine: a physicist, a science writer/spouse, a saxophone player, and a screenwriter. Clearly something has struck a nerve!
The common thread binding together these creative people who make a living off of their creative work is the impact of technology on how we distribute intellectual property. In other words: do you ever pay for music any more?
Emily White doesn’t. She’s an intern at NPR’s All Things Considered, where she wrote a blog post saying that she “owns” over 11,000 songs, but has only paid for about 15 CD’s in her entire life. The rest were copied from various sources or shared over the internet. She understands that the people who made the music she loves deserve to be paid for their work, and she’s willing to do so — but only if it’s convenient, and apparently the click it takes to purchase from iTunes doesn’t qualify.
The brilliant (and excessively level-headed) response that my friends all linked to was penned by David Lowery. He makes the case much better than I would have, so read him. Making the case is necessary; there is a long tail of compensation in creative fields, and we’re all familiar with the multi-millionaires, so it’s easy to forget the much larger numbers of people sweating to earn a decent living. Not everyone has the ability to create work that other people are willing to pay for, of course; the universe does not owe you the right to earn money from your writing or thinking or playing. But when other people appreciate and benefit from your stuff, you do have a right to be compensated, I think.
Coincidentally, today I stumbled across a book that I didn’t know existed — one about me! Or at least, one whose title is my name. Since nobody other than my Mom thinks I deserve to have a book written about me, my curiosity was piqued.
Turns out that the book (apparently) isn’t so much about me, as a collection of things I have written, supplemented by Wikipedia pages. None of which I knew about at all. In other words, for $60 you can purchase a 160-page book of things you can find on the internet for free. There is a company, VDM Publishing, that specializes in churning such things out via print-on-demand. Turning Wikipedia pages into a book is bizarre and disreputable, but possibly legal. Taking blog posts and articles I have written and including them in the book is straight-up illegal, I’m afraid.
Fortunately, I’m not losing much value here, as only a crazy person would pay $60 for an unauthorized collection of Wikipedia articles and blog posts, and I like to think that my target audience is mostly non-crazy people. But it’s a bad sign, I would think. Stuff like this is only going to become more popular.
Don’t let that dissuade you from purchasing highly authorized collections of very good blog posts! For example The Best Science Writing Online 2012, appearing this September. No posts from Cosmic Variance this year, but I have it on good authority that the editor worked really hard to make this a standout collection.
universe bless America in its continued efforts to deal with its anxiety (which is an STD – a Socially Transmitted Disease) by trying to control the world
(and bully to the RIAA in trying to deal with failing revenues not by finding a better business model but by creating new criminals and bypassing IP law…tho it has had interesting results, like the iPod…)
Lovely movie, this — F For Fake http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2EZ9rFBRlI
This episode makes it clear that unauthorized digital copying is “intellectual rape” (with the added insult of “she actually wants it but is too stupid to know it”).
Despicable.
Wow, someone drawing in honest to goodness analogy between copyright infringement and rape. And here I thought the ‘piracy = theft’ analogy was daffy.
No kidding prasad. Somebody up there needs to take a good look at who they are and if this is really that serious of an issue. Apparently he must have really gotten screwed over while working in the music industry.
things are going to get even more surreal when Fabbers/Replicators/3-D printers become a household item…who can own an idea? and for how long? ;3
here’s a nifty talk by Corey Doctorow on the issues with IP, Copyright, computers and human freedom http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYqkU1y0AYc
“No kidding prasad. Somebody up there needs to take a good look at who they are and if this is really that serious of an issue. Apparently he must have really gotten screwed over while working in the music industry.”
No, I didn’t get screwed over while working in the recording industry. However, it would be a sad world indeed where only victims see injustice.
Serious issue? Copyright is the basis for the democratization of creative work. Take it away and you have a system like in the Middle Ages. It is one of the most serious issues in the world at the moment. Sad is that people will throw out 400 years of progress to avoid paying for the latest Lady Gaga song.