[sdiy] OTA book on eBay

[Richard Wentk]

At 12:52 13/10/2005, Rainer Buchty wrote:
> >Now, lots of my work has found its way onto file sharing networks
> >despite it being readily available to buy, but still it is pirated (as
> >is almost everything nowadays)
>
>See, and that's the difference. You are still actively harvesting the
>market.

'Harvesting' is a meaningless word here. Gaining eyeballs means nothing.

>Now consider that your stock of CDs is sold and you completely retreat
>from the market, i.e. don't want to re-fabricate any new or just sell
>the pure data in an appropriate electronic form (MP3, OGG, whatever),
>even though there's a huge demand.
>
>Of course copying your work would be still IP violation, but OTOH it
>doesn't harm you, because you retreated already from the market.

Yes, but you're forgetting that piracy is one reason people retreat from 
the market.

>Even if you re-entered the market at some time in the distant future, it
>still won't harm you, because the die-hard fans would buy the original
>release anyway -- and all the others, as you said yourself, probably
>wouldn't have bought it anyway.

This is just plain naive.

How many people pay for shareware when they can get it for free?

Music and books can't come with a nag screen attached. They're completely 
open to piracy. This has three effects:

1. It diminshes the value of creative work. When so much of it appears to 
be 'free', the psychological effect is to make it appear to disposable.
2. It prevents new work. Creative work takes time, and it takes tools. 
Without compensation neither of those become available.
3. It reinforces the naive idea that IP doesn't matter. In reality IP is 
still *property*. The logical outcome of ignoring IP laws is to assume that 
all property is held in common.

Now, this isn't the place to debate whether common property would be a good 
thing or a bad one. But the point is that you can't make a legal 
distinction based on:

1. Ease of copying
2. The fact that you want something and the author doesn't feel like giving 
it to you

Legally and ethically, neither of these justify copying.

Of course if someone wants to release IP under an open license, that's a 
different issue. But until they do their work is *not yours.* In exactly 
the same way, and for exactly the same reasons, that if you work for an 
employer you will expect to be paid for that work.

Richard