Article: Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web by Motoko Rich
Source: nytimes
In this article, Motoko Rich discusses the problems of digital piracy in the literary world. In the past, publishers used to believe that their books were safe from piracy because, due to the scanning process, it was hard labor to produce a digital file of the book. Now, because of the production of digital editions, it is easier for hackers to make digital copies of the books and post them on the Internet. Some authors and their publishers believe that book sales are down due to the electronic piracy. Many unauthorized editions are uploaded by users, and it is hard for anti-piracy associations to track down illegal e-books.
On the other hand, some writers view digital piracy as a way for new readers to discover writers. Cory Doctorow, a novelist believes free versions; even unauthorized ones, will attract new readers.
This article is interesting to me and the class because it shows how the notion of intellectual property is becoming more problematic. In the realm of books people, having been conditioned by the Internet, now are starting to expect certain commodities for free. The first aspect of this phenomenon was with music, but now this attitude is beginning to affect book publishing and also movie distribution. Society has not yet figured out a way to reconcile the desire to have this material available for free, with the providers’ wish to get a profit for their efforts. Perhaps publishing as we have known it will disappear. This would be bad for the concept of ideas. If everything is expected to be for free, then one idea is as good as another, so how is one to gauge quality? This will be a major problem. Conversely, as this phenomenon takes place, there is another phenomenon happening, which is the expansion of the notion of intellectual property to sometimes ridiculous extremes.
