"Copyright
piracy," meaning the digital copying of music and movies and,
sooner or later, books, is a legal problem that hasn't gone away.
The implications are huge. The music industry loses large amounts of
money on music shared across the internet. It consequently pushes
the adoption of totalitarian controls, which are the only kind that
could work. In fact companies that lose money on digitized copying
are proposing remote controls over everyone's computer that the FBI
would not dare suggest. Much more is involved that teenagers
stealing ghastly noise.
Regarding all of which, a
few thoughts.
People argue that piracy
deprives authors of their legitimate royalties. Maybe. A case can be
made that copyright hurts writers by reducing sales of books.
Consider:
Books cost too much. A
hardback today costs twenty or twenty-five dollars. I will not pay
twenty-five bucks for a book I will read once and put on a shelf. If
books cost a dollar per each, I would buy without thought any that
appeared interesting. If it disappointed me, I wouldn't care.
Now, about current prices of
books: It is important to distinguish between money that goes to the
author, and money that goes to the publishing industry. Authors
typically get royalties of roughly five percent-that is, a dollar on
a twenty-dollar book. (This may be slightly off. I haven't fought
with New York for a while.) The rest goes to the industry. Some of
it covers costs of production and distribution, yes, but it doesn't
go to the author.
Certainly we ought to pay
authors. They create something of value. Writing a book can easily
take a year of full-time work. The publishing industry serves only
as a middle man. It is no more necessary, nor deserving of
protection, than a slide-rule factory. At best it serves as an
inefficient means of distributing books. At worst, it abuses
writers. For example, a beginning writer has no choice but to agree
to restrictive contracts that make him a virtual slave to the
publisher. Either he signs, or he doesn't get published.
So the question becomes how
to get the author his dollar without paying an additional nineteen
to hucksters in New York.
Suppose that, instead of
paying twenty dollars for a hardback, I could download the same book
from a website, pay a dollar by credit card, and know that the
author would receive it. I would buy a lot more books. The author of
each would earn as much as if I had bought his hardback. I would be
happier with more books, the authors would be happy with more
sales-and New York would be out of the loop.
For example, I like P.J.
O'Rourke. Yet I have read only two of his books. Why? Well, I don't
much like libraries because going to them is a nuisance and I always
forget to return books on time. When I'm in a library, P.J. slips my
mind. I won't pay New York sixty bucks to read three books. Now I'm
in Mexico. English libraries are scarce.
But I'd download all of P.J.
right now if I could pay a buck or two each, and burn them onto a CD
for later rereading.
For this to work, we would
have to have electronic book-readers that were pleasant to use and
didn't cost too much. They exist, but do cost too much. They aren't
much good because copyright keeps most books from being available
for download. When a new book is downloadable the distributors
sometimes try to charge the same twenty bucks you would pay for a
hardback. It's nuts.
The technical challenge of
making a reader with a clear screen and the size and feel of a book
is not great.
But there is a problem with
digital downloads: Once a book were loose on the web in digital
form, people could get it without paying. A friend could simply
email it to you, for example. The question arises: Would people pay
a dollar for a book they could get free?
I think they might.
Suppose I wanted a
particular book and could find it easily on a central download site.
Suppose further that the page describing the book had a button that
said, "Contribute to the author," which would let me simply
and easily pay to the author an amount which would be
charged to my credit card. I would pop for a dollar without
hesitation. If I liked the book, I might well come back and tag on
another few bucks. A dollar isn't worth stealing.
Now, some people would not
pay. However, many people, who would not have paid $20, would buy it
for a dollar.
And of course distribution
on the web makes a book globally available to the entire earth. I
suspect that the inconvenience of buying books, of having to go to a
bookstore, substantially lowers sales. If books were available for a
buck, from home, I for one would do more impulse buying.
Some arithmetic: If ten
times as many downloaded the book as would have bought a hardcopy,
and only twenty percent of them paid the dollar, the author would
make twice as much as he would have made by selling in hardback.
The advantages of allowing
unrestricted copying would be large. The intellectual heritage of
mankind would be at the disposal of anyone with a computer. The
internet would become a vast public library. Any book, any music, or
any movie would be instantly available to anyone anywhere. The
world's cultural wealth would become a public utility, like tap
water.
And it is technically within
grasp. All the pieces are there. We just need to assemble them, and
find some way of remunerating artists without letting publishers and
record companies milk us.
The alternative may be, and
looks very much as if it is going to be, an elaborate system of
chips and software built into all computers to allow remote
authorities to monitor your files, and erase automatically
ones they don't think you should have. Sounds like paranoid
delusions? Read this.
(Slightly techy.)
The crucial fact is the
interests of government, which always wants more surveillance of
citizens, and of the entertainment industry, which wants to stop
piracy at any cost, are converging. Finding a way around the
copyright question would eliminate the support of business for
spying.
A lot more is involved than
the theft of Santayana.
