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I'm writing a six-times-a-year column for Locus Magazine, the excellent trade magazine for the science fiction publishing industry. My first column, "Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet" has just gone live:
Before copyright, we had patronage: you could make art if the Pope or the king liked the sound of it. That produced some damned pretty ceilings and frescos, but it wasn't until control of art was given over to the market — by giving publishers a monopoly over the works they printed, starting with the Statute of Anne in 1710 — that we saw the explosion of creativity that investment-based art could create. Industrialists weren't great arbiters of who could and couldn't make art, but they were better than the Pope.
The Internet is enabling a further decentralization in who gets to make art, and like each of the technological shifts in cultural production, it's good for some artists and bad for others. The important question is: will it let more people participate in cultural production? Will it further decentralize decision-making for artists?
And for SF writers and fans, the further question is, "Will it be any good to our chosen medium?" Like I said, science fiction is the only literature people care enough about to steal on the Internet. It's the only literature that regularly shows up, scanned and run through optical character recognition software and lovingly hand-edited on darknet newsgroups, Russian websites, IRC channels and elsewhere (yes, there's also a brisk trade in comics and technical books, but I'm talking about prose fiction here — though this is clearly a sign of hope for our friends in tech publishing and funnybooks).
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I still read quite a bit of sci-fi (have you read Vernor Vinge's latest Rainbow's End yet?) and I don't dispute that decentralization will (is) changing the markets, but I suspect the reason so much speculative fiction (and technical books) are being scanned is because the audience has many more people equipped to do such things and the net has a higher proportion of people wanting to read them.
Theres a reason the rec.arts.scifi USENET groups are so much more active than mystery and romance groups, contradictingn sales figures...
Nitpicker's paradise: there's a " in the link that makes it not work. It's findable,though, if you go straight for the main page. (Cory, feel free to delete this post any time, say, when it's fixed.)
Great article this one, Cory. I think the same way as you do about this subject. I think the biggest problem about Internet and the cultural industry (music, movies, books,...) is that they still have no clue about it's importance and how deep it goes. But I think one day they will see this market and technology truth ... but I dare to say maybe it will be too late.
It occurs to me that the reason SF (more often than anything else) is stolen on the internet is because of the type of people who are most familiar with the types of technology necessary to do the stealing. Take for example the survey of blog readers and the huge bias toward IT people. This overrepresentation of SF is an extension of that skew. If people who really ejoyed romantic literature for example use and manage these technologies then I reckon we would see a similar black market of those.
While I like your conclusions, I disagree with your premise.
You say that SF is the only literature people care enough about to steal on the internet. And then you helpfully list the steps these people take in order to do it:
1. Scan the book.
2. Run it through OCR.
3. Correct the inevitable OCR mistakes.
4. PDF it (I assume)
5. Upload it to darknet newsgroups, Russian websites, IRC channels, etc.
"People" don't take those steps. Only a very small subset of people even know what an IRC channel is, and they ain't reading Toni Morrison. Try to imagine who the person is who owns a scanner and OCR software, AND has either enough free time or just plain loves sitting in front of a computer for a time period long enough to scan an entire book, OCR it, edit it line by line for mistakes, AND has working knowledge of the underbelly of the internet. Frankly, I'd be surprised if that person DIDN'T love science fiction.
Your premise shouldn't be "Science Fiction is the only literature people care enough about to steal on the internet." It should be something like "Science Fiction is the only literature that people who are l33t h4x0rs and spend a majority of their time in front of a computer and have skills 99% of the population do not have even bother to make available on the internet." I don't doubt that if the technological demands of actually getting a book from your bokshelf to the internet weren't so steep, you'd begin to see other kinds of literature floating around in the ether. But they are, so there isn't.
Just my opinion. Thanks.
The link is broken, remove the space at it's end.
[...] File sharing not a problem with Finnegan’s Wake? Craphound explains how Sc-Fi are the only texts worth smash ‘n’ grabbin. [...]
That final quotation mark in the link to your column causes a 404. Interesting article, though. It makes many of the same points I've heard you make in the lectures and appearances you've podcast(ed?), but I'm intrigued by the "technology taketh away". It seems the majority of litigation and DRM we've seen has come from corporate attempts at protecting what might be "taketh away".
I have a tough time blaming corporations for wishing that we would continue to consume as we've consumed all along. It costs money to switch business models. However, those same companies are often the ones encouraging us to embrace their new technologies. It costs us money to switch business models, too, be it iPod or HD-DVD player.
There would appear to be room for compromise. Sell me your fancy new technology and I'll let you know how I'd like to use it. Then, if you like, you can go and create devices or software to help me better do the stuff I'm already doing. I'll buy that too. That sounds fair, doesn't it?
Cory,
I read the article and I think you make an engaging argument; I pretty strongly disagree with a few of your points, though.
I don't think the conversation can ever be more important than the content, because if your story sucks, there's nothing to talk about. And I think you're unintentionally sending the message to young writers that they're better off focusing on their blogs than on their craft... which I think is reeeeeeeallllly bad advice.
Also, this idea, that conversation is more important than content ("Conversation, not content, is king") - isn't that basically what the guys in favor of Intelligent Design are saying? They're big advocates for "the debate" and "the conversation." They have to be... because their "content," the theoretical basis for their ideas, stinks. All they can do is hide their bad ideas behind a smokescreen of talk.
And man oh man do I think you're wrong in your characterization of popular music over the last 70 years. You suggest that most pop musicians in that time period - with the exception of Phish and the Grateful Dead - built their careers around their studio recordings, and were no good when they performed live. Hey, man, what about James Brown? Bruce Springsteen? Frank Sinatra? Johnny Cash? The Rolling Stones? Jimi Hendrix? Even pure products of the recording studio, like Madonna, tour relentlessly because that's where the money is (and most of her fans seem to be pretty happy with what they get live).
That said, I'm a guy with a website, message board, myspace account and all the rest of the digital baggage, and I'm awfully glad to have so many ways to connect with readers. So I'm with you there.
It is true that the most pirated books on the internet are SF. The reason might be, that people that have the knowledge and technical means to OCR a book are more likely to prefer cyberpunk than romantic novels. The same can be said about readers. A proud owner of iliad from iRex is more likely to like SF.
However.
THE most pirated book on the net is Harry Potter
with DaVinci code following.
Also, the best website for pirated books
http://www.fictionbook.ru/en
has quite a few non SF books. Most of the books are in Russian, but there are several thousand english titles among them.
Nitpick:
The link to your article doesn't work.
There is %20 at the end of the string that shouldn't be there.
Greetings.
I hope the non scifi authors take up the challenge and give you a run for your money =). Wondering if you got a chance to go to this workshop to build an alternative to DMCA. It sounds like a worthy mob/effort.
From the Paris Accord meeting between Creators and Consumers
"This workshop aims to bring people together to examine relations between creative communities and the public, seeking to identify common interests and new opportunities to collaborate. Discussions will explore new and existing social and business models for the intermediary between creative communites and consumers. The meeting will look at models and relationships that recognize the importance of creative community earning a living, the interest of the public in obtaining affordable access to works, and the interests of both parties in supporting an environment for creativity and innovation."
http://www.cptech.org/a2k/pa/
Very well-done article with valid points. A Libertarian outlook on Internet piracy that flows logically. While it is true that piracy IS theft, there ARE benefits to be reaped in the long-term for those willing to go with the flow for a while. Personally, I will never read an e-book, but I find it to be a great tool for new authors trying to get their name out without having to suffer the trials of finding a publishing house to sponsor them.
I'm a writer, getting ready to start posting on the web. I don't know much about scanners and OCRs and such, so I won't comment there. But man, did I love that story; very engaging, top flight suspense, excellent character development of Arturo - thanks for the inspiration C.D.
hi cory, just stopping by. hope all is well. thanks again for your time to explain about the sim card at aula. it really has started a big discussion with me and some of my geeky friends.
Having now lost content twice due to unrecoverable errors (Webmaster: the draconian error handling policy here loses content -- Not Good!!), I'll try again. Might help my typign, but probalby not.
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I think you're onto something in observing that science fiction is the only literature people care enough about to steal. It's a lot of work, even if you have the equipment and known how to work it, and you will note that much of it is scanned, corrected, ... only far enough to preserve the content, not the form. Few here are concerned with duplicating the presentation -- the style -- editors and typographic / book / magazine designers struggled with orginially. Only the content -- the ideas -- matter.
But those who've noted the average (lit major?) type wouldn't know enough to do it in any case have a point. The only comparable effort that comes immediately to mind is Project Gutenburg, and it's my impression the participants aren't in it for the immediate flash of insight / realization / aha!!! that good science fiction manages to evoke in its readers, but rather for a sense of duty to the intellectual heritage of mankind. And agaisnt the kind of deliberate cultural erasure attempted by the Serbs against the Bosnians by their long sustained artillery attack against the national library and its contents. And the PG folk do care to do a 'professional job', as the presentation matters to them. For some of them it matters because deconstruction of any meaning is made more diffcult -- but I'll leave that aside as it leaves my brain stupified, by example, it seems, when I contemplate deconstructionist analysis. Even outside a deconstructionist fog, it's a big difference.
And you've got it wrong about the Statute of Queen Anne. It was not enacted to procure the benefits of private publishing for the circulations of the ideas of writers and such (illusory as they are to those of us not snowed by the rightness of Market-Lenninsm). It was intended to remove the dead hand of the market (enforced at common law prior to the statute) as reflected through the actions of publishers in adding much (however misguided) Clauswitzian friction to the intellectual life of, especially, England. They were attempting, as best they understood how to manage (poorly), to maximize their profits, and as in all cases of induced scarcity, evoked piracy, ham-handed Govt attempts to enforce the law, and so on. The result was the Statute of Queen Anne, an attempt to break the power of private enterprise publishers to benefit the commonweal in the promotion of a lively intellectual life including the circulation of books and ideas. The Conger was an early version of the MPAA, RIAA, BPI, etc, and made the same sky will fall arguments against the Statute made today (modulo bigger numbers and new methods of doing horrible damage to publishers, of course).
The actions of the Mouse House (and others) to extend copyright holders' property interest, and profit making potential, into the ever receeding event horizon of future passage into the public domain have been a return to the bad old days of the Conger, with cleverer ways of identifying the offenders (13-year olds whose terrified grandmothers get served with suts fo tdamages in the millions, ...). That they were able to buy / beg / bludgeon / bribe / bluff their way to extension of property rights in ideas from just after WWI is a perversion of the (US Constitutionally required) idea of limited monopoly privilege for copyright holders. The Founding Fathers, certainly Jefferson (and Hamilton too, for he favored a lively commercial life, not a fossilized one), would be astonished at the changes Bono's bill made (in the US) against the virtue of entry into the public domain after a limited time. Indeed, they would have been astonished by the copyright term extant before her Bill became law.
In software product development, it's feeping creaturism which leads to bloated, over-complex, user hostile (wahtever the perky PR), feature bestrewn dustbins of applications. Well, and incompetent design too. In copyright, it's the misappropriation of the public discourse (combined with some bad legal strategy -- see Prof Lessig's book for what he think was his misteak in the argument before the Court) and its perversion which has led to this noisome public policy swamp.
It's hardly a new phonomenon in human history. Indeed it's at least as old as human history, for the very first actual historian docuements just this is his account of a generation lomg squabble between city-state alliances in SW Europe, 2500 years ago. His account of the origins of the Revolution (esp in re Corcyra, in the Crawley translation at 3.82 (...And wordw were forced...) is chilling, or should be for anyone with the sense of a little green apple. Burke was right, human institutions are not like machines, readily redesignable and updatable; he was looking at the 'reasoned innovations' of the French Revolution. But we can see much the same in Pol Pot's approach to reordering and improving human society, and rather less methodically and more excitably, in the Hutu prescription for the cure of Rwanda's troubles, in bin Laden (and many other radicals from various religions / sects / movements around the world), and the troubles in what is now Bangladesh when it was being pillaged by what is left as Pakistan today. Or the Papal blessing for the extermination of a entire population and culture in southern France over a generation+ by Montfort and his Crusade against the Albegensians. And anyone who lived in, around, or near them, or in some cases, who just spoke like them. Or the extension, morally, of same to any one deemed in violation of the teaching of Malleus Malefircum by Heinrich and Springer, though this one lastly for a much longer time throughout Europe and much of the rest of the Catholic controlled world, especially so in Spain and Spanish possessions. The Spanish Inquisiton was hardly a joke, though the Pythons are hugely funny. In this, they followed earlier precedent against Christians by Nero and Diocletian and so on, and slightly later retaliation against heretical Christians in protection of the orthodox (the winners of course defined heresy). And against pagans, for example, against Hypatia, the last shining star of the Alexandrian Library who offended some fanatical monks by not doing, and believing, things their way.
A disrespect for any institution and for existing ways of doing things is dangerous as Burke suggested, though an unreasoning devotion to each and all of them is just brain dead. Our fathers and forefathers, in Burke's phrase, were hardly always right. Not hardly!
And the classic way of being stupid and evil about all this is to pervert the discourse. Father Coughlin did it in the US, Hitler and Goebbels did it to great effect in Germany, Le Pen and the resurgent pseudo-Nazi groups here and there in the West are trying to do it now, the Parti Quebecois are doing it (in a more polite Canadian way, mostly, eh!?), and the Ayatollahs and Imams are doing it (and have been doing it in an organized way since at least the 20s) against Zionism and Western intrusion and insult and existence, ever since; famously with rockets and murder and kidnapping just recently. There's something odd in the tradition there, See Pipes account of pevasive propaganda there; lots and lots of footnotes.
In modern Western society, the thinking part of it anyway, there is a widespread disregard, indeed ignorance, of all this history. Especially amongst the tech set, who routinely abandon stuff done last week for a better design / approach / technique / fad / bag 'o tricks invented this week. As a reasonable approach, it doesn't extend beyond engineering, and nor mostly beyond software engineering (remember Brooks' characterization of software as infinitely malleable thought stuff), since people (and their beliefs) have an inconstant op code collection and persistent state across all histories. Except that, for political reasons, convenient (ie, bent and twisted beyond most possibility of recognition) history is sometimes resorted to (a Pipes suggested in the Mid-East and as has happened in the modern West as well, eg, the atorcities of the invasion of the Low Countries by the Germans in WWI, or the Turner-Joy incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, or in much of the way J Edgar handed out information to the surrilous press for much of his career.
On the soft-headed lunatic left, for example, we have attempted enforcement of political correctness, while on the lunatic right we have unthinking committment to Market-Lenninist 'invisible hand' self-interest as the remedy for most all ills (though even Adam Smith, the hand's inventor, realized the intractibility problem -- see his comments about the inherent monopolism in any meeting between competitors. Sound like a socialst trust-busting wuss, doesn't he?). Making nice, as the right (and others) observe, has an exceedingly poor track record in changing human nature. Abandoning the social good to a by-product of the dark urges of self-interest is no remedy, as the left (and others) point out. The left repeatedly, and far far too little wit (ie, too earnestly) in an era which has learned to demand entertainment, makes the correct moral point that unbridled self-interest is dangerous and causes avoidable distress, distortion, death, and disaster. The extreme right mocks the do-goodism and soft-headedness of the left, rather successfully -- at least in an entertainment sense, but offers little beyond that save that business, without the inconvenient bridle, will provide for all as boats float higher on the Laffer curve. And the discipline of centrally produced talking points FAXed at speed from teh Central Office. Not only can't human nature be changed (a dismally depressing view indeed), there's no need to change it, for all will be well if we will only laissez faire, except of course to help business out from public funds, as demanded. Most oligarchs are insistent on especially large and resplendent boats (Veblen's 'conspicious consumption' summarizes the point nicely, but he has much else to say, most of it tres amusant), leaving many outside the boat system since they don't contribute to the (peripheral) self-interest of business. they won't float, they'll sink, and drown. Too few are like Carnegie, who with all his faults, was genuinely interested inthe welfare of his fellow humans and put the fruits of his oligarchy where his beliefs were. Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Warren Buffett may be of similar cloth, but their choices thus far are not compelling along this dimension.
The true believers of any sort are non-Burkean, ill-liberal, and certainly not conservative. They characteristically care little about upsetting apple carts; indeed one of the Market-Lenninst ier economic saints (it is a faith, and a harsh one, rather close to Spencerian Social Darwinism -- not compassionate at all, regardless of talking point repetition) talks about 'capitalist destruction'. They wish to eviscerate existing institutions in favor of a fervently believed-in (and quite unhistorical) 'better way'. Orthodox Jews have pride of place in this True Believing; many are opposed to Israel's very existence and in any case those who can bear to participate in political life have largely hamstrung that nations' policy on Old Testament land allocations. Christians are next in time: Catholic Church policy exists in a land of no consequence for papally infallibly declared policy such as no birth control (God will provide, apparently), and fiercely protect a secretive hierarchy (based on a mistranslated phrase from the Greek and in any case Milan might have come to primacy, as late as the last the last few centuries of the First Millennium; it was Charlemagne's example and a series of very effective Bishops at Rome who won out) which has behaved badly in finance and politics for generations beyond the ken of most. the Renaissance papacy was shocking, and its behavior as a large part of the motivation for the Reformation (and a couple of hundred years of war). Thus the fascination of the otherwise uncompelling Da Vinci Code -- all that secrecy must (surely!) be about Something!!? Islam is no better, nor more immune to True Believing/ Equally malign in some cases. Consider the Assassins of N Persia, ended only by Mongol power. It was more than mere goofiness. Insistence on veils for women is not Islamic -- it was imported from into Islam from the Turks. Indeed, much of the Sharia, pointed to with devotion as a polemical weapon, is bogus, being tribal tradition unconnected with Islam at all. When Islam was at its peak (prior to the Mongols), it was the most advanced and most tolerant, if poorly governed in many respects, culture on Earth. bin Laden, the Ayatollahs and the radical Imams in the madrassahs wouldn't have lasted an actual historical moment in that culture. Their imagined purity is of society and practice is as fanciful and unhistorical as that of many a Christian fundamentalist. Christianity has its own purity of governamnce and society crowd -- the Christian Reconstructionists, fo example -- who also live in a fancied, unhistorical, universe. And would dispense with the Constitution in a heartbeat; it's fundamental to their vision of a Reconstructed United States. On the Protestant side, there were and are some no less devoted to heresy hunting that the medieval Church, though the burning at the stake is metaphorical today. Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and some of the more worldly leaders such as Swaggart and Baker, are eager to point out the faults of anyone who catches their attention. Piosly too. The Islamic clerics in Pakistan and elsewhere do the same, and in both cases manage to influence public discourse out of proportion to their actual numbers. And on quite unreligious and unhistorical grounds in many cases, also in both cases.
Santayana was precisely correct. "Those who do not learn from history..." And the part we are on schedule to repeat is ecological disaster (as at Easter Island, though this time writ planet wide), and violent (as with Hypatia, though this time the Four Horsemen may intervene as they did on Easter Island, there being less margin worldwide, given the population loading).
There are wide connections to the copyright issue you see. It's a pointer to human nature, which, as the right observes is not innately very nice in a conventional sense. But the left is right, unthinking devotion (especially in a party of ideas! Where's the pea now?) has predictable Bad Results. It is after all, unthinking.
One becomes a pessimist to avoid the let down as True Belief policies crash in a BSOD Writ Large, Very Large. Poor design, no thought, heads wedged. Adn we can't plan to throw one away and start over (our prior policy as a thoughtless species, eg in central Madegascar, NA SouthWest, slatating lands throughout the world, ...). We're down to the last one we have. Where will we be if we throw this one thoughtlessly away?
I remember finding Charles Stross's Accelerando under CC, and although it didn't catch me as my kind of sci-fi it showed me his writing style which caused me to go out and buy Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise, and Singularity Sky is one of the best SF books I've ever read.
Another thing about the SF market is in the shows, they always seem to get cancelled due to low ratings and then the studio gets a backlash from angry fans that were watching it on tivo or catching the marathon reruns on the weekend. Firefly is probably the best example, it totally bummed with low ratings (no thanks to the execs screwing around with it) but its DVD sales justified a movie. That's what makes me think the internet is the perfect place for sci-fi as it technologically puts the writer in the same room as their fandom, which is exactly what the fandom wants as can clearly be seen with the conventions and the special features, and everything SF fans love.
Thank you for being so loyal to Russian websites. I've just downloaded a couple of your books, so this entry got me.
In this emerging new world distance is not measured in kilometers any more, but in kb/s. Its 10000 km to Moscow (where my traffic goes through) but only 300 ms ping over 10 hops to your site. «Further decentralization», indeed.
Besides, you can't possibly lose much money: probably i would buy a translated printed copy — for better understanding ;) and to fulfil my hamstering instincts. Most books i've read i've read from screen, but libraries have not lost its charm yet.
Looks like your theses seem obvious to russian youth living so far from amazon. Conversation is king. With so much of information flowing everywhere its hard to get through person's personal brain firewall.
Presenting a book for download isn't stealing. Nor is it gerrymandering, murder, barratry or some other crime of the week. It's transcribing a book for distribution for the purpose of reading the thing. If this is theft, prepare to board every library on Earth and arrest the scallawags who've been lending -- FREE -- all the books in existence to any thief who wishes to steal the contents.
You can't own a book, or the contents thereof, or the ideas that you had as you were writing it. You own a copyright. Allegedly for a limited time. That's it. Once you publish a work, you give up the words for all time.
Can't meter people's heads.
My firm opinion is that the social contract, copyrights in exchange for an eventual release into the wild, has been unilaterally and emphatically canceled by the self-described "owners" of intellectual "property". If the owners wish to renew that contract, then reinstate the time limits for copyright at fifteen years or so, and I'll respect that. As it stands, we've an illegal law -- yup -- that permits "owners" to hoard and trade the works of man until the end of time. Nyuh-uh, ain't gonna happen. This is more important that even secret prisons and secret laws. This notion of ideas as "property" threatens civilization itself, as the very tools that we use to advance and liberate ourselves -- science and art -- are now eternal property of the very wealthiest corporations. Fie on it.