Thursday, July 06, 2006

Property Is Theft, As Always

This is the second half of a post I started on the SFBC blog; it got opinionated and out-of-hand, so I chopped this bit off and moved it here. I think it still functions as a complete thought. I am, as you might guess, responding to Cory Doctorow's essay at Locus Online this morning.

It is one thing to give away one's own property freely (as Doctorow does), but it is entirely another thing to have one's property stolen without one's permission. I do think that giving away e-books freely has so far increased sales of the paper versions of those books; it's happened several times, and seems to be quite a solid phenomenon. But that does not mean that thieves should be ignored. Doctorow seems to be calling for throwing out the entire system of intellectual property because it would not harm him personally, but his only argument in this essay is that the death of IP is inevitable, so we might as well lay back and enjoy it. Well, world communism was also inevitable, not all that long ago, according to people who were just as devoted and perky as Doctorow, and I never agreed with them, either. So phooey.
Your Hornswoggler is Andrew Wheeler Released into the wild 7/06/2006 09:12:00 AM
Recurring Motifs: ,

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sure, there'll be a number of authors (genre and not) that benefit from a running dialog -- outside of their prose work -- with their readers but content will still be dominate.

Herding and milking a community won't help you write a better novel and it certainly won't stop you from being a successful novelist. For those who can they will reap the benefits and bear the cost and those who can't, or won't, will have to succeed on the merits (real and perceived) of their writing.

Neal Stephenson's (Personally I'm a fan) interaction with the community is all face-to-face and you have to be in his presence if you, as a reader, want to converse with the man and yet his sales aren't harmed in least by his lack of a blog or similar device.

Whether or not it's pirated has no bearing on this. Writers have to be paid for their work or they won't write anymore. Bookstores, in whatever form, will have to charge for books and deal with a certain amount of theft. They will use as much but no more technology than it takes to squeeze the most amount of profit out of a book. If that means DRM on eBooks or subscriptions or Creative Commons or dead tree form for all eternity than that is what it will be. The interesting part will be the experiments conducted (and the fate of their victims) on the way.

Kell Brown

Thu Jul 06, 01:12:00 PM 2006
Anonymous said...

Doctorow seems to be calling for throwing out the entire system of intellectual property because it would not harm him personally, but his only argument in this essay is that the death of IP is inevitable, so we might as well lay back and enjoy it.

Um . . . what? In the essay I read, Doctorow is taking it as a given that the death of IP is inevitable--but it's not an argument, it's a springboard to what he wants to actually address in his essay. That doesn't mean one can't disagree with the given, or think that it's poor form to skip over such a contentious topic, of course.

I personally feel that technology is killing "strict" IP good and dead. But I wouldn't want to associate with a committed "pirate" any more than I would with someone who liked to wear polka dots with plaid.

Thu Jul 06, 06:08:00 PM 2006
Anonymous said...

I personally have never really been convinced that "intellectual property" is property at all. IP rights seem to be more a government mandated monopoly than anything else.

Thu Jul 06, 06:29:00 PM 2006
Andrew Wheeler said...

Daniel:
Unless you've got a private army, all property is a government-mandated monopoly. Real estate in particular depends heavily on the rule of law.

Thu Jul 06, 06:38:00 PM 2006
Anonymous said...

Of course, the point of property being delineated by the force of government is that property is what needs force behind it, not that the force justifies the propertizing of whatever it is applied to.

(I am arguing very specific points in these comments, so that I might avoid crying.)

Thu Jul 06, 06:56:00 PM 2006
Andrew Wheeler said...

Robert:
The question of whether any particular force is justified or not is always a separate question. (And often a loaded one.)

Thu Jul 06, 09:30:00 PM 2006

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