| Let me extend the Free Beer analogy. Suppose the bar where you serve free beer: 1. is an eyesore 2. serves beer I hate 3. bars the entry to vendors that serve beer I love Then I think you'll find I can do much better than simply being silent about the apparent conflict: 1. I can protest your bar. 2. I can promote the belief that your bar is an intolerable eyesore. 3. I can campaign to have the bar removed from the town square. In that way, I work to restore access to vendors I love. That is why I believe it is necessary to picket and complain about this mechanism, reduce the reputation of any author who seeks to profit from it, and foreground the damage it causes: to highlight the fact that it makes it harder to find writings that are genuinely for the public good. A writer can arrange for their public writings to be fully free. Many writers do that. It's not a privilege. It's a choice based on the writer's values. It is choice based on the value of not extracting profit from the Public Good. There is simply no excuse for marketing and SEO spam in writing. Writers who choose that route have no more valid reason to expect an income than writers who eschew it. Indeed, writers who do it have reason to expect a loss of reputation. Again, when writers choose that route, they make it harder for honest writers to have their writings seen. Therefore, writers who choose that route have reason abandon that route and seek a more honest monetization route. Finally, writers who refuse to do that have reason to expect my boycott. |