Quote:
Originally Posted by QuantumIguana
Why would anyone buy a book rather than check one out from the library? If you buy a book, you get it right away, and you get to keep it as long as you want. But if you want a book from the library, you are probably going to wait. And wait. He keeps talking about copyrights being devalued, but copyright has been extended over and over again. If no more books were made starting now, I'd probably have enough books to keep me going for life.
He says "If I stood on a corner telling people who asked where they could buy stolen goods and collected a small fee for it, I’d be on my way to jail. And yet even while search engines sail under mottos like “Don’t be evil,” they do the same thing." Search engines do not tell you where to find pirate sites. It simply searches for web sites based on your criteria. It's just an index.
If there's a slow death of the author, then why do I have no trouble finding authors who want to sell me books?
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This. There are more books available than ever before (even when you exclude self-published works). At least it seems so to me as a voracious consumer of books. It must be worthwhile for people to produce all these works, or they wouldn't get produced. So money is being made.
I do have a certain level of sympathy for authors in that if their stuff gets pirated, they don't really have the alternative revenue streams like concerts and merchandise that musicians have. They might get some speaking/appearance engagements if they're lucky.
Then again my sympathy is tempered by the fact the in the U.S., authors can continue getting paid for
their entire life, and for 70 years afterwards. I get paid for the work I do in a given day, and that's it. I don't get royalties on that work. So a part of me says, "cry me a river".
P.s. It appears I inadvertently stole "cry me a river" phrase from wizwor. Knew I'd read that somewhere. You may now sue me for infringement
