| > supporting theivery on a massive scale? That depends on your attitude. Only a very small minority of content creators make a living from that activity. Some people are always going to be cheapskates of varying degrees. Unless they are actually manufacturing and selling counterfeit copies of my books, in my view it doesn't rise to the level of a tort, much less a crime. Google indexes downloads of my books. What consequences should that have? Same as for Pirate Bay? If you are a poor person in Pakistan, how else are you going to get it? If you are a rich person in a developed country, you are just a jerk if you lack the creativity to ask for a review copy. I don't see a practical way to have a different view of the situation. I could rail against downloads, but what is that going to do? Publishing is a leaky bucket. If you take the advice of someone like Guy Kawasaki on how to promote a book, you should go with the flow and give away as many copies as you can. Every time I speak at a conference and give away a few dozen signed copies, sales go up. Someday that kid in Pakistan who torrented my book might work for a system integrator that hires me to train them. If I thought reality wasn't OK, what should I do? Many of the problems in the computing industry come from efforts to deny the reality that content can't be protected beyond the audience's willingness to be honest. |
And that's where the entertainment industry's efforts to brainwash people ("you wouldn't steal a car") and to make copyright violation a criminal offense (the longer the sentence, the better) come in: they are all efforts to try to make people so afraid that they'll be honest. What a way to treat their customers.