Quote:
Originally Posted by Hamlet53
Hmm, I'd never heard that about Harlan Ellison. Loved his work, but I tend to love the books (or music, or film) without much caring about who the author is. Being aggressive about his copyright would not make feel more or less justified in pirating an author's work.
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Not so much "aggressive" as "vicious."
Harlan Ellison's one of the few authors who's successfully sued TV & movie studios for copyright infringement. In order to do that, he had to be tenacious and several types of aggressive, and really good at cutting through corporate BS and vague rationalizing doublespeak.
And then fans started distributing his books on alt.binaries.e-book. And he went after those, as he could find them; found one & sued (the case was settled for a few thousand dollars).
Legally, there is no difference between "Paramount makes a movie that grabs crucial elements of his short story" and "A fan typed that story into his computers and emailed it to 20 friends." Both are copyright infringement; both carry potential fines of $150k+. And Ellison went after both with the same approach: threatening letters from lawyers, long diatribes about the evils of copyright-theft, bigger & better lawyers when the first wave seemed to be losing ground.
Against movie studios, that approach works. It got him a hefty settlement from the Terminator's profits, and credit on the screen. (And I'm glad it did; Ellison's contributions to science fiction *should* be acknowledged, and *should* make him rich.)
Against fans? Less effective approach. Oh, it shut down the guy who first shared some of his ebooks. (With a lot more than 20 friends. The alt.binaries hierarchy was not small.) But fans weren't trying to cheat him out of millions; they were trying to *promote* his works, which weren't available as legit digital versions at the time. And shooting rats with a flamethrower may kill the rats you see, but is hardly an effective method of pest control.
And word goes out among fans: Ellison, he's that guy who thinks his books should only be appreciated by people who've got time & money to track down out-of-print used copies. And fans said, shrug, I'll read what I like and not pay attention to the wishes of control-freak litigious jerks. Cue scanners & proofreaders, and relatively soon, all of his works were bouncing around the torrents & binaries groups. (Now, I think most of his books are available as ebooks. Multiformat, even, so no complaints about DRM problems.)
I've loved the small bits of time I've spent in Ellison's company at conventions. He's brilliant and funny. And arrogant as hell, and absolutely scathing to people he thinks deserve it. (Which is incredibly entertaining to watch if you don't happen to be the target.) I applaud his going after publishers and production studios who try to screw over the authors whose works they want to use without compensation.
I have less applause for his approach to ebooks; the fact that we haven't sorted out how to allow & encourage the social side of books in digital form *and* compensate the author (and publishers, where that's relevant), doesn't mean that authors should go after individual filesharers with lawsuits.
1) It's overly-harsh; punishment is disproportionate to the offense.
2) It's trying to punish people who want you to succeed.
3) It's
ineffective. Chasing the ones you can see just encourages the others to hide better.