A Brief Plea for Sanity in the Internet Piracy Debate

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A Brief Plea for Sanity in the Internet Piracy Debate

Kent Brewster

As I write this I'm still short on sleep due to BayCon, our local yearly science fiction convention. BayCon was somewhat subdued this time; it generally is on years when Worldcon is going to be in the vicinity. We still had 2000 members and a fair-sized Speculations contingent. If you're still waffling about whether or not you really want to come to Worldcon and meet your compatriots, now's the right time to just jump right in without thinking and buy those tickets to San Jose.
     One of BayCon's guests was Harlan Ellison, up from Los Angeles to campaign for his Kick Internet Piracy fund. (Details are online at http://www.speculations.com/kick.htm, if you're not familiar.) Harlan had several interesting appearances where the debate over Internet publication and piracy surfaced, and—by pure dumb luck—we feature this issue a pair of duelling opinions by Mike Resnick and Eric Flint.
     I'd like to chime in now with my usual plea for calm discussion. I think Harlan, Mike, and Eric all have valid points. Harlan, not wishing to give up control of his material, can't prove that he's not making just as much money as he would have if the Internet hadn't come along. Bwana, who is occasionally willing to allow his work to be posted online for money, can't prove that he's not losing more than he's making. And Eric, impressive numbers to the contrary, still can't prove that his novels wouldn't have sold just as well or better if he hadn't given them away online in the Baen Free Library. You can't prove a negative, no matter how hard you try.
     What I find useful about this debate—besides the controversy, which all editors love—is the way it's educating the masses, many of whom think that just because something can be downloaded for free on the Internet it should be.
     I'll make a flat declaration, right now: all living authors of speculative fiction are utterly dependent on the Internet for success, whether or not they publish electronically. (Yes, this includes Harlan Ellison, whose editors and publishers use it, even if he doesn't.) The Internet has supplanted all other avenues of communication for sales, marketing, production, and delivery; I don't think any of us really wants to go back to the days of movable type, do we?
     What we need to keep in mind is that the same “hacker mindset” that made spam, Napster, and Usenet possible also created e-mail, the Web, and Amazon.com. As much as we’d like to, we don't get to reap the benefits without dealing with the drawbacks.
     The writing community is up against a technological change comparable to the invention of writing itself. Can you imagine how that felt, being an illiterate storyteller up against some techno-geek with a chisel who could capture your precious words and carve them in stone, so anybody who wanted could step up and read them without paying you first? The horror! The horror!
     One thing’s for sure: gnawing at our own entrails isn't working. Me, I'd like to see less name-calling and a lot more education. And if we want to get the word out, we need to do it through our work, and not from a soapbox.
     K. W. Jeter wrote a hell of a good book called Noir, about a dystopian future where intellectual property is the only capital worth anything, and is protected accordingly. (Boy is it ever ... you need to read this one, if only to find out what happens to pirates. Shiver!)
     Where are the rest of you on this? Speak up where it counts: in your work!

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