Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Interesting: You realize registration is another form of DRM?
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Not DRM (there's nothing necessarily "digital" about registration, or payment for use), but another form of rights management. And something of a nightmare to administrate--I believe the music industry has private companies that manage the licensing, and the book industry has no company set to take over that job.
I'm not anti-copyright-control-mechanisms. As much as I'd like to believe that, if all ebooks were floating around free, money would eventually make it back to both the authors and the publishers who found, edited and promoted them, I'm not that delusional.
We need *something* to prevent illegal copies. I think a big part of that something is public awareness, because we'll never have enough laws or strong enough technology to control individual actions on the scale that copyright now affects. And part of getting public awareness to agree that copyright infringement is wrong, is not exaggerating its effects, not describing it as a different kind of crime.
If your boss passes you over for promotion in favor of his less-qualified nephew, that's not "theft" of your income--but it's still immoral, and possibly illegal, especially if the reason he refused to promote you is that he thinks a person of your race/gender/religion/whatever is inherently unqualified for the job. I don't think you have to call discrimination and nepotism "theft," in order to get people to understand it and want to prevent it.
I don't think we need to call copyright infringement "theft," either. I think we can convince people it's wrong, without confusing them with the idea that it's "stealing." (Among other issues, if an author's income is enhanced by copyright infringement, it's hard to prove it was "stealing.")
And we'll need to look for technological support for copyright control that doesn't interfere with fair use. And no answer is going to be perfect--there have always been ways to get around attempts to make people pay for content. The point isn't to stop all infringement; it's to make infringement (1) more difficult than it's worth and (2) unacceptable to the public.
(1) is not the case when darknet books work on devices that legit books don't work on. When your purchased ebook "expires" because your computer is updated, but your torrented ebooks work forever, it's hard to convince people the paid versions are better.
(2) is not the case when the public hears the RIAA claim filesharing is destroying the music industry, but artists say things like "just download it if you can't afford it" in interviews. When authors like Cory Doctorow are saying, "my book sales are increased by free ebook versions," it's hard to convince the public that free ebooks are causing damage to other authors.
They are causing damage. (In plenty of cases, anyway.) But that damage isn't outright theft or loss of income, and the arguments against ebook filesharing have to acknowledge the real problems, not claim it's all about money, or about an author's moral right to control their creation.
It's about contracts. It's about a contract with the government, or the public that government represents: I give you content, and in return, you give me X rights over it for a while. Stop giving me X rights, and I may stop giving you content.