Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Strnad
Hmm...do I pay $2.39 for a copy of Risen, or download the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe and H. P. Lovecraft for free?
Strange days, folks. Strange days.
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I stopped watching PBS because every show that caught my eye came wrapped in a beg-a-thon. Nowadays I just watch their stuff on Netflix or buy the more interesting stuff on XBL. Radio? I gave up on radio 20 years ago. Lately, I've gone with Last.FM and Pandora but even that is going away next month; I'll be getting a Zune Pass now that its available on XBOX. I don't mind renting (Infinite) music.
As to the abundance of free quality PD stuff, yes there is a lot of good stuff there. Also a lot of crap (Sturgeon's Law!).
More importantly to me, though, if you stick with PD you're stuck with the ideas and experiences of the past. You don't get to see the issues of today explored, debated, or illuminated. Emma Wodehouse's milieu is a fun place to visit but it's no place I want to live...
...not when I could be visiting Manticore or Torch...
...or Barrayar or Cetaganda...
...or Pern or Mote Prime or Tabletop or Trantor...
The oldtimers are good in their place but I don't live in the 19th century, I live in the 21st.
I want to see what today's writers see and feel, what they think; what they have to say. What they have to contribute to the common good.
And that is why I literally don't care about the pirates; I do care about what the publishers might do to keep the freeloader mentality of the pirates from spreading but the pirates themselves I waste no time on; they are meaningless, irrelevant. By choice.
They are simple consumption units who contribute nothing meaningful; not even the minimum of providing a few coins to the creative types.
The writers *I* know write because they *have* to write; the passion drives them. They have things to say.
I'm willing to listen and I'll encourage them the only way I can; with coin.
I may not have the talent to pay them back in story but that much I can do.
Pirates? They can go right ahead and keep on leaching and freeloading, rationalization or not.
When the dust settles at the tail end of this ongoing ebook technology disruption the pirates will only end up hurting publishers and right now I'm having trouble finding any sympathy for most of them. The ones I might feel for won't need it because they know which century they live in.
And the writers will keep on writing because it is their nature.
Scorpions sting, pirates steal, and writers write.
Let's face it, with 7 billion people on this tired old planet, there's bound to be a lot of worthless trash piling up. Our choice is to spend our time shoveling the manure out of the way or step around it and leave it behind as we move forward.
It's their choice not to contribute, after all.