Oh, there’s some come here to see me hanged; and some to buy my fiddle

[rolanni]

Well, so.

My intention was to get the rest of the. . .junk. . .off the floor of my office and into its proper place, be it another room, or the trash can.

Didn’t get there.  Instead, I filled out some more forms, did some laundry, put all the 99 cent electronic books back up to $2.99 and the $2.99 book back up to $4.99, was cranky in silence about outstanding emails to Various that haven’t been answered yet and it would really be nice if any one of these three things would get resolved, argh, and will shortly go off and do the dishes before sitting on the sofa and starting to read Necessity’s Child.

Well, at least the taxes are done.

I guess I’ll move “clean up office” over to tomorrow’s to-do list.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about off and on is the responses to the issues of copyright and piracy.  A couple commenters mentioned — sapiently — that publishers are shooting themselves in both feet by operating under the default assumption that their customers — or at least the greater number of their customers — would rather steal a copy of a book than buy a legitimate copy.  And so we have DRM, and boneheaded proposals like SOPA.

One idea put forth was that publishers should ally themselves with their customers to fight piracy.  This sounds like exactly what should happen, but — I’m having a hard time envisioning how that would work.

Does anybody have a Plan, a Vision, an Idea about what this collaboration would look like?

 

Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[adriannem.livejournal.com]

You might find _What Would Google Do?_ interesting. Among other things, Jeff Jarvis talks about piracy and the lessons learned from the music industry. I think those lessons are valid for books as well.

Many of us object to DRM. I lost my first digital library to DRM when I moved to Mac, and Embiid did not. I doubt I'll ever get over that lesson. However, most of us are honest people who want to support musicians, authors, and artists. If it's affordable enough, the vast majority will prefer to purchase their entertainment from legitimate sources rather than going to pirate sites. If nothing else, it's *easier* to hunt for and download a legitimate book from B&N or Amazon.

And as for the thieves? I think Jim Baen and Eric Flint made good points about how even readers who don't pay for books increase word of mouth sales, and how that's a good thing.

I can tell you that when I want a book from a BigNameAuthor I often check it out via OverDrive. Why? Because $13 is out of my price range. But when I want one of your books? I hop over to baenebooks.com and buy it on the spot - because $6 and DRM-free is a good deal.