Morning,

I love it when uncreative people yammer on about how everything in the age of the Internet should be free, free, free for the taking. Like an author’s words. Like a musician’s music. Like a photographer’s picture. Like a painter’s painting. Hey, if it’s not nailed down, in a shop behind glass, or guarded by some fellow without a gun, it’s free, right?

But in the tangible word, the non-Internet world, you wouldn’t walk into my restaurant and sit down and eat dinner for free now, would you? Or saunter into my shop, try on a pair of earrings and say, “Thanks. I’m taking these home and not paying you because I don’t feel like it.” No, you wouldn’t. Unless you were a criminal. Because that would be called stealing.

But making off with authors’ words goes on all day all long on the internet and people/businesses who simply don’t want to pay are convincing themselves (because it’s convenient for them to do so) that this is the brave new world and it’s a good thing that those unsuspecting creative people whose talent consists of the ability to make things that others can easily steal online should have to be flipping burgers for a living at some fry joint on the other side of town while someone else profits off of their efforts. More for them, less for the creative person. But that’s not the Democracy we claim we live in.

Thank you Scott Turow, wildly successful American author and lawyer, for sticking up for the little guy today. Turow writes, American Authors practice one of the few professions directly protected in the Constitution, which instructs Congress “to promote the progress of Science and the useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” The idea is that a diverse literary culture, created by authors whose livelihoods, and thus independence, can’t be threatened, is essential to democracy.

I’m intellectually, philosophically, artistically and spiritually weary of the specious and lazy and currently quite popular online belief being touted by many, many many people that the preservation of the sacred Internet is more important than the preservation of copyright (and therefore earnership integrity) of authors’ works. Turow, who knows this belief system is wrong on every level, writes about the problem from a cultural, historical, legal, financial, and Yes, for those of you who love to trot out our Constitution, a constitutional perspective.

Since most of us who have been on Google+ for a while know someone, or many someones, here who is an artist who is either already being affected by someone stealing their work, or will be affected by it soon enough, reading what Turow has to say would be a good idea. I’m sorry to say that our beloved Google is not innocent in this arena, and Turow offers up the sorry details about that, too. 

For it is just too easy to distance oneself from the seriousness of the issues of copyright protection if you are sitting in an office somewhere in Silicon Valley dreaming up new ways to become the most ferociousest, bestest, fiercest search engine and social media platform ever in the history of the Universe, if your wife, mother, brother, father, sister, daughter or son, whom you love, respect and care about very much isn’t an artist (thankfully or they might be poor the rest of their lives) trying to make a living off of their own creativity. So you don’t have to think about this much. And ponder the meaning of it culturally. Or legally. Or financially. Or interconnectedly to the rest of the Universe. Or constitutionally.

The problem is that unless you are a writer, it’s easy to talk yourself into believing that the issue isn’t important, that, Hey, words are free, right? Like music, right? Like it doesn’t matter that I would never walk up to you while you are eating a sandwich, grab it out of your mouth and eat it myself, right? Right here on the good old Internet I can take whatever I want if it’s not nailed down. If I have a website and I want to make a living selling ads so I can buy myself a nice new car, I can take what you wrote without asking your permission or attribution and purloin it for my own use and profit off it it, right? Like that’s Darwinism or something, right? Survival of the fittest, free trade, the modern world, the beauty of technology…the way it is now so get used to it, right?

No, that is not the way it is now. It is calling stealing. It is called taking for oneself what was created by others and profitting off of it without filling the bank account of the creator in the process. And, in case you are interested, and you should be, it is also Unconstitutional with a capital “U.”

I’d like to have a Ferrari, but I can’t afford one. I’d like to have a Cirrus, but I can’t afford one of those either. This does not mean that I can therefore talk myself into believing that stealing one, if I can get away with it, is okay.

Likewise, just because something is easily purloinable online, doesn’t mean it’s right to do so for one’s personal gain or for one’s business gain. But what is worse than that? Convincing other people online that it is okay is worse.

The value of copyrights is being quickly depreciated, a crisis that hits hardest not best-selling authors like me, who have benefited from most of the recent changes in bookselling, but new and so-called midlist writers. The Constitution’s framers had it right. Soviet-style repression is not necessary to diminish authors’ output and influence. Just devalue their copyrights. – Scott Turow, The Slow Death of the American Author

Support, fight for, and defend copyright protection for the creative people you know and those you don’t know. Artists have been around longer than the Internet. It’s important.

Have a grand day, everyone.

Giselle

#publishing   #authorshipranking   #eBooks   #writingcontent  

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/opinion/the-slow-death-of-the-american-author.html?src=me&ref=general