ebooks and all that
Jan. 19th, 2011 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erdaI've been reading a small fraction of the posts about DRM and ebooks and all that, since it appears it would take a lifetime to read all of it.
I just want to say that for almost 30 years I ran a used bookstore that supported our family, and it was a much loved enterprise until the internet came along and killed it. Oh well.
I think also there were untold numbers of women who made a living making lace in the 17th century, and the overwhelming majority of them lost their livelihood when machine lace took hold. They couldn't compete with all the cheaply, quickly, uniformly produced lace a machine could spit out. Oh well.
Things change, jobs disappear, you have to move on.
So, I have to say, if writers can no longer make a living writing books, I don't really give a shit. This thing about how they will not have time to write if they have to earn a living some other way? Well, boo hoo.
There are tons of people writing online everyday who are not getting paid for it. And yes, most of it is not going to give you that punch in the gut that good writing delivers. But you're just as likely to get that punch from the unpaid stuff as from something that went past some publisher's idea of what kind of writing has enough mass appeal to make a lot of money.
People will write, others will read, we will sort it out. Things change, careers come and go, people kick and cry and act like the world will end. Oh well. I have more stuff to read than ever before.
I just want to say that for almost 30 years I ran a used bookstore that supported our family, and it was a much loved enterprise until the internet came along and killed it. Oh well.
I think also there were untold numbers of women who made a living making lace in the 17th century, and the overwhelming majority of them lost their livelihood when machine lace took hold. They couldn't compete with all the cheaply, quickly, uniformly produced lace a machine could spit out. Oh well.
Things change, jobs disappear, you have to move on.
So, I have to say, if writers can no longer make a living writing books, I don't really give a shit. This thing about how they will not have time to write if they have to earn a living some other way? Well, boo hoo.
There are tons of people writing online everyday who are not getting paid for it. And yes, most of it is not going to give you that punch in the gut that good writing delivers. But you're just as likely to get that punch from the unpaid stuff as from something that went past some publisher's idea of what kind of writing has enough mass appeal to make a lot of money.
People will write, others will read, we will sort it out. Things change, careers come and go, people kick and cry and act like the world will end. Oh well. I have more stuff to read than ever before.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-20 09:08 am (UTC)...and that would be why so many of us don't trust anything with DRM, anything we can't open in a text reader before using a program with corruptible features. Because some jerks think "they've stolen $3 in profits from me, therefore I should be allowed to destroy their last six months' worth of work and force them to reinstall their OS."
AFAIK, to date, there have been *no* convictions for ebook copying. I'm not sure there have been any lawsuits filed for nonprofit ebook copying, as opposed to piracy-for-profit or copyright-infringing-derivatives. (For profit. No lawsuits filed against fanfic, I think, just DMCA takedowns.)
I'm ready to start telling authors, "if it really bugs you, use the damn legal system to claim your rights." Because the idea that "we can't get a conviction, so let's inflict viruses on them" is not persuading me that authors are in the morally good zone in these debates.