Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
So, okay... if I'm trying to find a way to protect my intellectual property, I'm a fascist. (I couldn't just be a capitalist?) But if the situation stays as-is, my works get posted to the Darknet, and I potentially lose a significant portion of income, that's fair. I guess there's no way for me to win this situation.
Frankly, I'm at a loss to figure out how to go about making anything more than lunch money in digital publishing without some amount of protection, and not be accused of being a Nazi sympathizer. If I have concerns about the protection of my intellectual property rights, what do you propose I do about it?
|
One question is whether you
can protect your intellectual property. Another is how much you
need to.
The underlying question is "Do you trust your market?" Do you assume they are for the most part honest, ethical, and willing to pay for value, or do you assume they will cheerfully rip you off given an opportunity?
Yep, your work can be posted to the darknet. So what? How much lost revenue does that cost you? How do you know? (Frankly, you don't know, and you
can't know. There is no way you can measure how many folks download from the darknet and read a book of yours
instead of buying a copy from you.) And DRM is a flimsy protection, given the folks who seem to live to crack such things.
The way you make more than lunch money from your writing is the way
any writer does, from electronic
or paper editions -- get higher sales. There's no magic process to insure that. You do what you are doing now, promoting yourself, making yourself as visible as possible to the sort of folks who might like your work, and try to grow your audience to the point where the income is more significant.
Growing your audience helps with the darknet as well. My assumption is that the darknet is a fairly small fraction of the total market. I think most folks
are willing to pay for stuff they like. The more folks you reach, the larger the percentage who will buy rather than search the darknet for an illicit copy.
_______
Dennis