mispeled.net — What They Steal

And be warned: he’s going to point you to a post or two you should read even before that, so if you haven’t kept up with this conversation, go ahead and get caught up. We’ll wait.

Ok, for those of you who haven’t kept up with this issue, and who didn’t go read Luke’s post, here’s an excerpt:

Both of Mark’s scenarios that don’t involve the taking of something from someone else, but still involve physical piracy (free newspaper and concert), stem from the same given: content creators have a right to decide how, why, when, and where their content is experienced, if for no other reason than they created that content.
I’m not sure I agree with that given as it stands… [emphasis added – LM]

People should only have a right to distribute content if their profits from said content are reasonable. What right, beyond the creation itself do I have to price my novel at such an exorbitant price? I created the content, but if the book is so good that it might improve lives, what right do I have to price it so only a few lives can be improved?

Some of the following is actually a reworking of a comment I left on Luke’s blog, but I’m including it here for the sake of completeness (and for those of you who didn’t bother to go read it. Go read it. Really. We’ll wait. Really. While you’re there, subscribe to mispeled. Also Ditchwalk. Both are required reading.)

Before I go any further, I should mention that I know Luke Bergeron nearly as well as I know anyone else that I’ve only met online, and within the constraints of cyberspace, I consider him a friend. I’ve read his novel-in-progress, and it’s a great read. None of the following is to be taken as an attack.

But seriously, Luke? I don’t have the right to price my book at $10,000,000 a copy? (Oh, look. Someone just decided to go read that post after all.)

• If my house has three hundred bedrooms, does it become a hotel, and can I charge for the rooms in my hotel, or must it be free?
• If my yard extends beyond some maximum of good taste, does it become a de facto park? May I charge admission?
• If I drove to the job I don’t have in a 14-passenger van, would that make me a bus service? May I charge fares?
• Do I have the right to create a sculpture and put it in my living room, where no one will ever see it?
• Suppose I take a photograph of wake patterns in Deception Pass, from the bridge there, on a perfect grey day? Suppose I chose not to make it available, but to only hang it in my dining room? Do I have that right?
• Suppose I can do perfect impersonations of every president since the dawn of recording technology, but I refuse to do so for anyone except my wife? Do I have this right?

But someone has said that all comparisons are odious and someone else has said that analogies always break down, so let’s go back to books.

• If I don’t have the right to price my novel at $10,000,000 per copy, and if the denial of that right hinges upon the fact that some people cannot afford that price, then what price may I set? $24.95? There seem to be a lot of books released at that price, for hardcover, at least, but there are a lot of people that can’t pay $24.95 for a book. There are people that can’t afford a buck for a book.
• If I don’t have the right to limit readership based on price, then may I limit readership based on scarcity? You mention selling three copies to the three richest people on Earth. Suppose I write a novel, make three handmade copies of it, and give them to those same three people for free? Is this not just as unacceptable?
• If I don’t have the right to limit readership based on scarcity, then do I even have the right to not write at all? I have a fifth novel completed, but not published. My wife and some of my horde of offspring have read it. @JESeanachai has read it. Can I leave it at that? Do I have the right to not publish this novel at all? Do I have the right to limit the readership of A Place to Die to those few who have already read it?
• Do you have the right to not publish your novel, which I’ve read, but most of the population of the planet hasn’t? It’s a great book, a lot of people would like it, it could effect the lives of many people. Is it more immoral for you to publish it at $10,000,000 per copy, at $24.95, for free, or not at all?

I think I said it best in the comment:

I don’t care if it’s a novel, a software company, or the cure for all cancers, it’s property. It belongs to someone.

In the portion of your blog post that I quoted above, you seem to exclude from this discussion the “taking of something from someone else.” I can’t help but wonder why. Could it be that “something” can be owned, but “content” cannot? Could it be that if I own “something” I can charge what I want for it, but not if I only own “content”?

In a world where everything was given away free, then perhaps we could all afford to give things away free, but this isn’t that world. It’s never going to be, and requiring certain things to be given away (or idly standing by and allowing them to be) isn’t even the first step in getting there. You say that if my yard is too big, it becomes a park, that if my house is too big, it becomes a hotel, and yet you say that if you won a million dollars in hard cash in the lottery, you would invest enough that you would never have to work again. I say that a million dollars is too much for one man. I say that you have to find the poorest man on Earth and keep as much as he has. Give the rest away.

I don’t say any of that actually, nor will I accept the stipulation that the “the ultimate goal of long-term capitalism” is for one man to own the entire planet (the ultimate goal of long-term capitalism would obviously have to include a thriving market, which implies the existence of a lot of other people who own things, and the ultimate actuality of long-term capitalism (if we could ever get there) would be the existence of cheap, readily available fiction, art, and cures for cancer, but that’s another rant). But there certainly are people who say that owning one penny more than you “need” (by their definition, not yours or mine) is a sin (against God, god, or gods) and a crime against humanity. There certainly are people who say that extreme poverty as a way of life is a form of holiness. When you win your million dollars, are you going to let them decide how much you need to invest?

If there were a place where writers could just crank stuff out and let it go out into the world to sink or swim, I’d pack today. I’d live there in peace and happiness the rest of my life, writing my stories like the guy in Snow Crash spins his ideas out into the Metaverse to live free.

But until then, writers have to be paid, or we’re going to be stuck with amateur fiction forever.