Comment by aidenn0
Harlan Ellison was an asshole though.
Harlan Ellison was an asshole though.
I have no issue with Ellison's colorful language, but the point expressed by LeGuin is quite different. Copyright violation is not theft. It's not even a criminal charge in the US unless done for profit! You know what also deprives authors of royalties? Borrowing books from public libraries, buying used books, and loaning books to friends. So does playing video games instead of reading a book! The fact that an action yields less money to an author does not in-and-of-itself make it theft, or even immoral.
Copyright was chartered to encourage authors to contribute to a large public domain of works. Lobbying (by wealthy corporations) perverted this purpose. Sure it's a nice fringe benefit that some authors were made more comfortable by this. That doesn't stop many authors from taking a "I wrote it, it's mine" attitude as if a monopoly on the use of works you authored is a natural right.
LeGuin has taken a nuanced view on this, with the apparent understanding that copyright is a framework under which she was promised certain things, and the piracy is a violation of that promise.
> That doesn't stop many authors from taking a "I wrote it, it's mine" attitude as if a monopoly on the use of works you authored is a natural right.
I think that monopoly (with various caveats, e.g. it can't outlive you much, etc.) is a good thing for authors to have, as it enables them to make a living off of their writing. Authors weren't just "made more comfortable" by this as a fringe benefit, as you say, but really, they were able to make a living from their creative work. Harlan Ellison himself says so in that article, and there are countless instances of up-and-coming writers fighting piracy (one legendary story is how Tolkien fought pirating of LOTR in the U.S. soon after it was printed in the UK).
Also, I don't see how LeGuin's point is substantively different from Ellison's -- they are both saying they'll fight people who distribute their books without paying them, the author.
On that note, this argument:
> You know what also deprives authors of royalties? Borrowing books from public libraries, buying used books, and loaning books to friends. So does playing video games instead of reading a book!
... is partly false -- authors do get payouts from libraries. As for "playing video games instead of reading a book", that's absurd -- the problem with pirating is that you get for free something that the creator has produced. For your argument to be true, we would somehow have to assume that the creator is entitled to us spending time reading their books, which is obviously insane.
As for the other things you mention -- buying used books and loaning them from friends -- they have essentially no overlap with online piracy. Piracy is a problem because you can distribute infinite copies worldwide for free, which doesn't apply to selling or loaning physical books.
> Authors weren't just "made more comfortable" by this as a fringe benefit, as you say, but really, they were able to make a living from their creative work
By "made more comfortable" I was not referring to the existence of copyright at all, but rather the multiple extensions that were made from 1976 to 1998, where copyright terms went from 56 years to over 95 years[1].
If the Ace paperback edition of LoTR was piracy, then I question the meaning of the term, since the original US publisher imported British editions which lacked the (then required) US copyright notice. Note also that Ace ceased publishing this edition (and paid Tolkein) due to public pressure, not any legal threats.
(Also lest I misrepresent myself, there were many good changes to copyright in 1976, including removing the notice requirement that caused Tolkein so much trouble).
1: Prior to 1976 the lifetime of the author did not involve in the calculation, and literature is one place where works-for-hire are still rare this is more complicated than just 39 years longer; nevertheless 70 years from the (last in the case of multiple) author's death is always more protection than 56 years, and may be considerably more for a young author. This also reinforces my point that media corporations (where work-for-hire is the norm) benefited from this rather more than authors.
I wouldn't describe him that way but, at any rate, his point is right: pirating books is taking money out of authors' pockets. Corporations (publishers?) aren't hit hardest and don't care the most about it.
You may prefer the same point expressed in less colorful language by Ursula K. LeGuin, from the same article as Ellison's quote: “I thought, who do these people think they are? Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?” https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/technology/internet/12dig...
Now, as we found out in the meantime from Rudy Rucker's comment, this anthology isn't pirated after all. If you put up your work for free, there's no piracy.