I’ve had some interesting comment on my book piracy blog and yes, there will always be conflicting views over what is perceived to be right (or acceptable because hey, it’s not murder), and what isn’t.
This guy sums it up for me. Sure, it’s not exactly the same thing, but it’s not so far removed either.
This is a soapbox issue for me, and many authors, I suspect–PIRATED BOOKS.
Recently yet another website was brought to my attention that has illegally copied books for download by its members. Now, while many people think, “oh yeah, that’s not really a problem,” let me tell you it really really is. It’s illegal, and breaches copyright and in a nutshell, in my opinion, is theft, pure and simple. Continued abuse must be stamped out and continued abusers dealt with to the full extent of the law.
The site upon which I most recently discovered a pirated copy of one of my books had comments on it telling people how to convert books into files for download by either using a high resolution camera or scanner to copy each page (like people really have the time to do that? Well, obviously!) as well as comments like this:
My 4shared account has been banned… and I’ve been so angry these last few days.. You know what.. I have thousand of books in there…. They told me that somebody reported about my account that it’s illegal… so they closed my account…
Don’t worry this problem will not dissuade me from create another free account and get into action again…
I will start uploading again soon….
And this one:
Some people are just plain nasty. They hate to see anyone have a chance to enjoy a good read. Not all of us can get out to the library or afford to buy books online. And some of us just enjoy having a nice big library on their computers that they can go to and always find a good book.
Now, I have never considered myself to be ‘just plain nasty’, nor would I ever begrudge anyone having the right to ‘enjoy a good read,’ but seriously, do these people ever stop to think? They’re not just stealing from my publisher they are stealing from ME, from my family, from my right to earn a living. I write full time, if all my books are pirated and book sales slump and thereby my earnings (which are based on a single digit percentage of the recommended retail price of my books) then I would have to go back to the general workforce, have less time to write, have less books published, thereby having less books available to be pirated. Now, if that happened to all authors it would be a very sad world indeed, wouldn’t it?
Okay, so that’s an extreme example. What about using an analogy. When these people who blithely pirate books go to the
supermarket to buy their groceries, or to a clothing store to buy clothes, do they just as blithely walk out the door without paying for them?
Seriously, downloading pirated books is no different. What does it take for people to understand that?
I could rant some more but that would really tick me off because doing so would eat even more into my writing time than protecting my copyright by having to check to see which thief has most recently decided to distribute my books illegally. I thank my lucky stars for the might of the legal department of my publishing house which acts promptly to seal off these illicit corridors.
