Quote:
Originally Posted by Tuna
It's becoming increasingly apparent that you're deliberately ignoring the fact that the work still cost some amount to produce. Scarcity or not, the cost of production remains. If that cost is not met, in future the work will not be produced.
It's not an abstract concept that an author who spends a year writing a book needs to feed, clothe and provide shelter for themselves whilst they do so. It doesn't matter how the book is reproduced - whether it's physical, electronic or (as you so kindly offered) tatooed on your backside - it still cost to produce it, and the author has the right to choose how or if they should be recompensed for doing so.
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And it's becoming increasingly clear that you're ignoring the fact that digital objects have little perceived value as a 'thing'. They are not objects. And if that cost isn't met in the future, it will mean that we'll just find another way to create (which a lot of us are already doing by distributing through Feedbooks).
And here it is again, the old 'put food on the table' argument. It doesn't matter if the author has to put food on the table, doesn't matter how long it took to write, the expectation of payment is rapidly disappearing, and the backstory of poverty and starvation cannot be attached to the file itself. Authors who understand this and understand how our society is changing, have a better chance of flourishing in the future. Not once in this whole argument has anybody said 'don't pay the author' or 'I don't want authors making a living' (publishers are a different matter altogether). You seem to equate file-sharing with stealing and that's all she wrote as far as you're concerned.
But it's not. The file-sharing culture is a natural culture, a human culture, as you should know by now considering the site you're at and the software that powers that very site. The web itself is based upon ideas of sharing, not monetary profit. If everyone needed to 'get paid' for every creative endeavor, we wouldn't have the awesome 'Calibre', or 'Sigil' both created by MR members. I wouldn't have been introduced to Moxie Mexcal or Small Stories of Nick Name's work if they hadn't been progressive enough to share their works freely. We wouldn't have had the entire works of Franz Kafka (published after his death).