AustonT wrote:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:

AustonT wrote:

Joey wrote:
And what was the basis for the German state?

Otto von Bismark.

Joey wrote:
Who gave the Jews a taste of freedom?

The Muslims.
Also The French National Essembly and especially Adrien Duport, in 1791.

I thought it was the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It did offer British support for a Jewish homeland in the middle east, after all.

The first country to emancipate the Jews in Europe was the French Republic just before the Reign of Terror.
The Balfour Declaration was simply a public declaration of the British government's support for the establishment of a Jewish National Home which would eventually be passed in the League of Nations.
Joey has a somewhat "loose" grasp on history which must be taken with a grain of salt...this one.

Spoiler:

poda_t wrote:

Kovnik Obama wrote:

marriage and gay rights, etc.

By your account KKK are social right protectors because they had an opinion on the social right movement.

uh, no. Go back and re read what's posted there, and read the context into it. I don't know where you got that interpretation from.

Also, your response regarding my comment about stalisnt russia proves my point. By changing the scope of definition of what Liberty entails, you change the perception of whether an era or setting granted any freedoms. In a hundred years from now the definition will have changed again, and there will be arguments about whether or not we today were liberal enough, too liberal, etc.

Consider that you do not vote for kings, and yet, kings can still leave a fair degree of liberty for the public in what religion they pursue, where they live, or whatever else. Depending on your mores, a monarchical system could still be construed as non-liberal by virtue of the fact that it's not a democratic system.

Joey wrote:Right. After Napoleon lost, the Ancien Régimes were re-instated in Europe. Then 20 years later there were huge populist outbreaks all over Europe.
Clearly you regard these as coincidences. Populist democrat conquers Europe, loses to reactionaries, then 20-30 years later, populist democrat uprisings abound. Yeah, definitely a coincidence.

biccat wrote:No, it was correct as written.

Ask your ancestors who worked 16 hour days in order to provide enough food to feed themselves and (maybe) their families.

Frazzled wrote:He may be talking about factory work.

Orlanth wrote:point, and in order for the some to be rich others must be poor. the last thing the west wants is even distribution f resources, especially the US. The US wastes an enormous amount of energy because the nation is very big and people are encouraged to be mobile. As reources tighten either wars must be fought to attain those resources (Iraq) or the expected standard of living must drop heavily.

Kovnik Obama wrote:

poda_t wrote:

Kovnik Obama wrote:

marriage and gay rights, etc.

By your account KKK are social right protectors because they had an opinion on the social right movement.

uh, no. Go back and re read what's posted there, and read the context into it. I don't know where you got that interpretation from.

Admittedly, a non-sentence is a hard point to start with. The question was ''Which civil rights protection, apart from gun control, has the conservative been preoccupied with? You answered 'Marriage and Gay rights'. One of which they only defend a very strict and narrow definition of, which isn't civil at all, while in the second case they oppose them. This is not civil right defense, it's right's denial. And before anyone ask the stupid question, no, you do not have a civil right to the biblical or traditional definition of marriage.

AustonT wrote:One could argue that antisemitism vice antijudiasm grew directly FROM emancipation. Emancipation was really more about legal freedom and full civil rights and liberties; not acceptance. There is still antisemitism in France today, forget the 18th and 19th century. They had real heated debates over whether or not Jews were human!

AustonT wrote:
The first country to emancipate the Jews in Europe was the French Republic just before the Reign of Terror.

Melissia wrote:

rockerbikie wrote:Liberalism does not equal progress. For example, censorship and copyright laws. Those are not progressive ideas, those are backwards and stupid.

But censorship isn't exactly a liberal idea. It's a conservative one.

English Assassin wrote:

rockerbikie wrote:Liberalism does not equal progress. For example, censorship and copyright laws. Those are not progressive ideas, those are backwards and stupid.

Yes, because equating the rights of creators to profit from their intellectual property to censorship isn't even slightly misleading and alarmist...

To answer the OP, yes there has been a liberalising trend over the last few centuries of human history. That universal suffrage, democracy, the rule of law and individual freedom all remain prevailing trends in our societies is pretty much a given. Now - ignoring the very obvious fact that liberalism (in its proper meaning) in no way equates to socialism (and that both are meaningless labels to apply in US politics; all your politicians are liberals of one sort or another, none of them are socialists) - the contention your brother seems to have been making is that there has been a similar historical trend to an increase in the power and authority of governments.

This, it would be fair to say, is probably also true; modern governments take on vastly more responsibility for the lives of their citizens than those of previous centuries, principally because there are certain areas (national defence, international relations, jurisprudence and public order, to pick generally-undisputed examples) which states are better-placed to provide than individuals.

The important word there is "responsibility"; if a government thinks it possible that the lives of its citizens would overall be improved by (to pick a contemporary US example) providing free healthcare, then it should feel morally obliged to at least consider the possibility, and to do so objectively. (Whether this is the case, I would not care to comment; what is disappointing is that both sides in the dispute seem guided principally by dogma, rather than by the facts of the case.)

rockerbikie wrote:
Many lawsuits are plain stupid though. I can find many examples where copyright claims are just plainly just going after profits rather than protecting their own intectual works.

An award-winning Spanish novelist claims that the illegal downloading of ebooks has forced her to give up writing and start looking for a new job.

"Given that I have today discovered that more illegal copies of my book have been downloaded than I have sold, I am announcing officially that I will not publish another book for a long time," Lucía Etxebarria announced on her Facebook page.

Etxebarria told the Guardian that Spanish authors faced a difficult future as online piracy spreads from music and film to literature.

She pointed to Spain's position at the top of the world rankings for per capita illegal downloads. "We come after China and Russia in the total number of illegal downloads but, obviously, there are a lot more of them so we win on a per capita measure," she said.

"People are making millions out of online piracy by setting up in places like Belize, which is where the money goes," Etxebarria said. "They are a powerful lobby and our government doesn't dare legislate."

The outgoing socialist government of the prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, ditched a proposed anti-piracy law this month. "They were too scared," said Etxebarria.

She said she was not convinced that the new conservative People's party government of Mariano Rajoy, who became prime minister on Tuesday, would be any braver.

Etxebarria, who has won several of Spain's best-known literary prizes, said she could no longer justify devoting three years of her working life to producing a book.

Her latest novel, The Contents of Silence, was published in October and although previous books have been bestsellers, this one is ranked low down the sales list on Amazon's Spanish site.

It is not available as a legal ebook but can be downloaded in pdf format from numerous websites. The print edition costs more than €20.

"We decided against publishing it as an ebook because that is easy to pirate. It would have been like throwing it straight to the lions," Etxebarria said.

She said she was now considering a job offer, and was also thinking of allowing her books – which have been translated into 20 languages – to be published only in French and German, as the laws in France and Germany offer greater protection to authors.Her vow to stop writing provoked a torrent of abuse from downloaders who filled her Facebook wall with insults. Some said they did not earn enough to buy her books.

"Literature is not a profit-making job, but a passion," said Kelly Sánchez, one of the least vitriolic critics. "If you had a real vocation then you wouldn't stop writing."

Others wanted to know how Etxebarria had spent one of the world's richest literary prizes, the Planeta prize, now worth €601,000 (£502,000), which she won in 2004. She has also won the Primavera prize, currently worth €200,000, and the prestigious Nadal prize.

Writers currently near the top of the Spanish-language illegal downloads list include the British novelist Ken Follett and John Gray, author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:People pirate books? Really?

At the end of 2011, an estimated 20 percent of all ebooks downloaded on to e-readers were believed to have been pirated.

That seems odd. They usually target games and movies.
I suspect she might be hiding something.

Before I begin, I would like to wholeheartedly thank all those people, and you are in a fantastic moral majority, thankfully, who have paid for my book. Whether you loved it or hated it or fed it to the dog, thank you. Loving message ends. Rant begins.

What’s up with Western civilisation right now? A burning sense of entitlement. That idea we have rights and expectations of reward just for breathing. Yeah, of course I mean the dole cheats and the folk who never work, the chaps that claim disability allowance and get caught doing backflips. I don’t have an issue with the government wanting to cap benefits (unemployment payments, American people. Not your rights to holidays and sick pay). The social safety net is one of the greatest moral achievements of Western democracy, and marks the human race out for being if not individually even-handed, at least somewhat corporately. But benefits and rights have gone too far, it’s doing stuff it never was intended to do, like trapping people, like giving people an excuse not to get off their lazy arses, like bankrupting the continent.

The SF community is left-leaning, so I expect some bother for that. But before you cut up your The Guardian to send me anonymous hate mail, hang on, here’s a digression. Author Neal Asher, whose books I really enjoy, tweets a lot of stuff that is deemed right-wing. I retweet it not because I agree wholeheartedly with him, but because I want to see the other side aired. One thing that winds me up about politics and people is that both are wholly partisan. I hear dross peddled from all sides by folks who don’t question their political convictions, convictions often inherited from their parents. (No, of course I don’t mean you, you are much too intelligent to be taking things at face value just because they accord with your micro-cultural preprogramming).

I’m also saying this: The super-rich at the top, the plutocrats, also have a ludicrous sense of entitlement, an entitlement to massive bonuses they don’t deserve, to not pay a fair amount of tax, and to squander money and resources because they can. I’m sure many SF types will agree with that, so flame off? ‘Kay?

But then, I’m also going to say, it’s me and you too. I assume you’re in the squeezed middle. SF is, after all an overwhelmingly bourgeoise pursuit. Pardon me if I’m wrong.

I grew up expecting to live in a big feth off house. To effortlessly get a good job, to be able to piss around and do what I damn well please provided it didn’t impact on anyone else (this last standpoint I clung to for a very long time, but even that kind of watered down moral relativism — leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone — doesn’t help societies work, so I’m re-evaluating). A lot of people like me spent a good part of the 90s and noughties living high off the hog on fake money. Credit cards and profits from house sales buoyed me through endless drunken nights, hallelujah and pass the beer. All non-money enabled, in the main, by New Labour’s economic miracle, which was miraculous in that it conjured money out of thin air by the very bankers we purport to so loathe now. Don’t blame them, we were all at it.

In the “middle class” (whatever the hell that is these days), we get do much hand-wringing, without thought as to how we can pay for all the good, honest, well-meaning services and so forth we wish to provide our fellow men so we can get on with our privileged lifestyles guilt free. An argument you’ll hear in the right-wing press, but it goes much further than that. We might complain about our slipping standards of living, but compared to some poor dude working on a dump in Lagos stripping wire from junk, and the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of others like him the world over, we’re frankly still having a ball. As much as the hippies I know make me grind my teeth sometimes (I grew up among hippy refugees, fleeing the end of the sixties, I know a lot of neo-hippies now. I must be attracted to them), at least they’re trying to do something about their outmoded 20th century lifestyles with their pigs and ducks and druids in their orchards. Never mind that they proselytise this lifestyle in a somewhat patronising manner, and overlook the fact that you have to be loaded to be able to afford to do what they say we should all be doing. At least they try.

Somehow, I can’t see all we hand wringing pseudo-liberals (I am one too, from time to time) wanting to give up our multi-room houses, cars and regular meals so we can all equally enjoy the bounty of Mother Earth any more than bankers want to give up their obscene bonuses. We’re all hypocrites, just a little bit, if you think about it.

Which brings me on to my real point here: Illegal downloads. We’re so damn entitled, we think we should get stuff for free, all the time! Hooray! I have people who are related to me (I won’t say who) who insist on giving my son copied DVDs, despite the fact that I tell them not to. They maintain copying is not illegal in their country of residence (it most certainly is, but sadly it is so culturally acceptable it has destroyed the arts industries there. A further note – I am not saying all copyright laws are the same worldwide. But the differences in the territories I am talking about are not that great), and they can’t see who they’re hurting. In fact, they’re often congratulating themselves on how much money they have saved, and on the great quality of whatever movie they have ripped off.

The gentleman of this couple was most offended this Christmas. He had produced an illegal copy of a famous animated movie to watch, and he said “Good isn’t it? It did really well in its day, made $30million dollars!” To which I said, “Well, they won’t be getting any money for that copy, will they?” Cue shocked look, and mouthed upset. I don’t see Mega-Entertainment inc being fleeced of a few pennies here, I see some poor ex-kid actor or struggling screenwriter living off his residuals who ain’t going to be having Christmas next year because of people like you. (Yeah, I know most of the money goes to Mega-Entertainment inc, but the people at the bottom won’t be getting what pittance is due them either).

I tell you who else they’re hurting, through their furtherance of the acceptability of stolen entertainment, they indirectly hurt their own family. They’re hurting me, they’re hurting my kid.

I’ve found several illegal copies of Reality 36 knocking about on the web. Every time I do, I tell my publishers and they shut it down. These copies are usually tailed by dutiful thanks from all the mendacious, thieving bastards who were too damn tight to prise open their wallet to pay the £2.00 it costs to get it legitimately. On one forum, I found a lady thanking the person who had provided the copy to copy, saying “the epubs I use are usually my own, but…” What?! That’s not your book, that’s my book. It’s not yours to give away. You didn’t write it.

Another note – I don’t expect to make my living from this book, nor I am not out to get rich. It stands on its merit on lack thereof alone. What I do expect is to be paid for goods I provide.

Am I being precious? I look at the fat, buttery face of super-rich Kim Dotcom of Megaupload fame and I think not. Someone’s getting rich anyway, aren’t they?

I’ve spent twenty years trying to get published. I’ve had dozens of rejections. I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words. I’ve had my work demolished over and again, and I kept doggedly coming back for more. Why? Because one day I wanted to get a book published. Because I wanted to be writer. Writing of any kind, unless you are lucky or really good, or both doesn’t pay well. I am hugely in debt. I live in a small terrace house, I don’t have an office. I work in a gap on the landing between the bannisters and my bedroom wall. I spend hours writing this blog to publicise my work and provide a point of contact for those lovely folks who do pay to read my stories. Seeing as my old job went when Death Ray closed, what I earn from writing fiction is more important than ever.

I get 8% of every sale price of each book. So, each time someone downloads it illegally, I lose 16 new pence, give or take, at the current discounted price for the e-version (really! You can get it in the Angry Robot sale for two quid! Go on, buy it). You might say, so what’s the big deal? It’s only 16 pence (give or take, remember). But I say, every 16 pence I lose is a 16 pence more I have to earn twice, effectively, as I tread the slow road to paying off my (small) advance.

More importantly, every illegal download goes uncounted by publishers who use sales figures to determine if they commission more books from an author. At the early stages of a writer’s career, like now for me, every tick in the box is crucial, one more penstroke in the flimsy wall of ink between me and a job behind a till at a supermarket.

You’re not entitled to my work for free, just like you’re not entitled to unemployment payments while you are working a job, and I’m not entitled to make you carry my bags around and give me pedicures for nothing. I assume that the people who do look for free copies are intelligent. I also pray then that they are moral. Here’s a message for you: You are literally taking food out of my kid’s mouth. Literally. He’s three. I might be an angry fether worthy of your contempt, but he’s an innocent casualty in your quest for free gak. (Okay, I admit, I’m overegging it there. Sorry. He never goes hungry).

And you do yourself a disservice. A lot of people who download Reality 36 for nothing might love the book. They might well want to see more Richards & Klein adventures. But if enough people pinch it, there won’t be any more. Not because I’m sulking, but because I’ll be processing your shopping at the supermarket, if I’m lucky enough to find a job.

Or I’ll be chasing you out of the door as bacon slides out from under your coat and skids all over the floor. Downloading stuff is exactly the same thing as shoplifting. Exactly the same thing.

I paraphrase a quote I read the other week, I can’t find the original, but it went something like this:

“A society that is unwilling to pay for art will have to learn to live without it.”

For art also read Star Trek, and novels about cyborg detectives.

It’s pennies over £2.00. For God’s sake, don’t be a gakker.

reds8n wrote:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:People pirate books? Really?

Yes, of course they do.


http://www.havocscope.com/book-piracy/

At the end of 2011, an estimated 20 percent of all ebooks downloaded on to e-readers were believed to have been pirated.

That seems odd. They usually target games and movies.
I suspect she might be hiding something.

Instead of blaming the victim ( a long standing tradition here I know) it'd make for a much better attempt at a discussion if you try to come up with ideas and facts to support an argument instead of just making them up.

http://guyhaley.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/the-culture-of-entitlement-illegal-downloads-and-how-it-all-totally-pisses-me-off/

Before I begin, I would like to wholeheartedly thank all those people, and you are in a fantastic moral majority, thankfully, who have paid for my book. Whether you loved it or hated it or fed it to the dog, thank you. Loving message ends. Rant begins.

What’s up with Western civilisation right now? A burning sense of entitlement. That idea we have rights and expectations of reward just for breathing. Yeah, of course I mean the dole cheats and the folk who never work, the chaps that claim disability allowance and get caught doing backflips. I don’t have an issue with the government wanting to cap benefits (unemployment payments, American people. Not your rights to holidays and sick pay). The social safety net is one of the greatest moral achievements of Western democracy, and marks the human race out for being if not individually even-handed, at least somewhat corporately. But benefits and rights have gone too far, it’s doing stuff it never was intended to do, like trapping people, like giving people an excuse not to get off their lazy arses, like bankrupting the continent.

The SF community is left-leaning, so I expect some bother for that. But before you cut up your The Guardian to send me anonymous hate mail, hang on, here’s a digression. Author Neal Asher, whose books I really enjoy, tweets a lot of stuff that is deemed right-wing. I retweet it not because I agree wholeheartedly with him, but because I want to see the other side aired. One thing that winds me up about politics and people is that both are wholly partisan. I hear dross peddled from all sides by folks who don’t question their political convictions, convictions often inherited from their parents. (No, of course I don’t mean you, you are much too intelligent to be taking things at face value just because they accord with your micro-cultural preprogramming).

I’m also saying this: The super-rich at the top, the plutocrats, also have a ludicrous sense of entitlement, an entitlement to massive bonuses they don’t deserve, to not pay a fair amount of tax, and to squander money and resources because they can. I’m sure many SF types will agree with that, so flame off? ‘Kay?

But then, I’m also going to say, it’s me and you too. I assume you’re in the squeezed middle. SF is, after all an overwhelmingly bourgeoise pursuit. Pardon me if I’m wrong.

I grew up expecting to live in a big feth off house. To effortlessly get a good job, to be able to piss around and do what I damn well please provided it didn’t impact on anyone else (this last standpoint I clung to for a very long time, but even that kind of watered down moral relativism — leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone — doesn’t help societies work, so I’m re-evaluating). A lot of people like me spent a good part of the 90s and noughties living high off the hog on fake money. Credit cards and profits from house sales buoyed me through endless drunken nights, hallelujah and pass the beer. All non-money enabled, in the main, by New Labour’s economic miracle, which was miraculous in that it conjured money out of thin air by the very bankers we purport to so loathe now. Don’t blame them, we were all at it.

In the “middle class” (whatever the hell that is these days), we get do much hand-wringing, without thought as to how we can pay for all the good, honest, well-meaning services and so forth we wish to provide our fellow men so we can get on with our privileged lifestyles guilt free. An argument you’ll hear in the right-wing press, but it goes much further than that. We might complain about our slipping standards of living, but compared to some poor dude working on a dump in Lagos stripping wire from junk, and the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of others like him the world over, we’re frankly still having a ball. As much as the hippies I know make me grind my teeth sometimes (I grew up among hippy refugees, fleeing the end of the sixties, I know a lot of neo-hippies now. I must be attracted to them), at least they’re trying to do something about their outmoded 20th century lifestyles with their pigs and ducks and druids in their orchards. Never mind that they proselytise this lifestyle in a somewhat patronising manner, and overlook the fact that you have to be loaded to be able to afford to do what they say we should all be doing. At least they try.

Somehow, I can’t see all we hand wringing pseudo-liberals (I am one too, from time to time) wanting to give up our multi-room houses, cars and regular meals so we can all equally enjoy the bounty of Mother Earth any more than bankers want to give up their obscene bonuses. We’re all hypocrites, just a little bit, if you think about it.

Which brings me on to my real point here: Illegal downloads. We’re so damn entitled, we think we should get stuff for free, all the time! Hooray! I have people who are related to me (I won’t say who) who insist on giving my son copied DVDs, despite the fact that I tell them not to. They maintain copying is not illegal in their country of residence (it most certainly is, but sadly it is so culturally acceptable it has destroyed the arts industries there. A further note – I am not saying all copyright laws are the same worldwide. But the differences in the territories I am talking about are not that great), and they can’t see who they’re hurting. In fact, they’re often congratulating themselves on how much money they have saved, and on the great quality of whatever movie they have ripped off.

The gentleman of this couple was most offended this Christmas. He had produced an illegal copy of a famous animated movie to watch, and he said “Good isn’t it? It did really well in its day, made $30million dollars!” To which I said, “Well, they won’t be getting any money for that copy, will they?” Cue shocked look, and mouthed upset. I don’t see Mega-Entertainment inc being fleeced of a few pennies here, I see some poor ex-kid actor or struggling screenwriter living off his residuals who ain’t going to be having Christmas next year because of people like you. (Yeah, I know most of the money goes to Mega-Entertainment inc, but the people at the bottom won’t be getting what pittance is due them either).

I tell you who else they’re hurting, through their furtherance of the acceptability of stolen entertainment, they indirectly hurt their own family. They’re hurting me, they’re hurting my kid.

I’ve found several illegal copies of Reality 36 knocking about on the web. Every time I do, I tell my publishers and they shut it down. These copies are usually tailed by dutiful thanks from all the mendacious, thieving bastards who were too damn tight to prise open their wallet to pay the £2.00 it costs to get it legitimately. On one forum, I found a lady thanking the person who had provided the copy to copy, saying “the epubs I use are usually my own, but…” What?! That’s not your book, that’s my book. It’s not yours to give away. You didn’t write it.

Another note – I don’t expect to make my living from this book, nor I am not out to get rich. It stands on its merit on lack thereof alone. What I do expect is to be paid for goods I provide.

Am I being precious? I look at the fat, buttery face of super-rich Kim Dotcom of Megaupload fame and I think not. Someone’s getting rich anyway, aren’t they?

I’ve spent twenty years trying to get published. I’ve had dozens of rejections. I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words. I’ve had my work demolished over and again, and I kept doggedly coming back for more. Why? Because one day I wanted to get a book published. Because I wanted to be writer. Writing of any kind, unless you are lucky or really good, or both doesn’t pay well. I am hugely in debt. I live in a small terrace house, I don’t have an office. I work in a gap on the landing between the bannisters and my bedroom wall. I spend hours writing this blog to publicise my work and provide a point of contact for those lovely folks who do pay to read my stories. Seeing as my old job went when Death Ray closed, what I earn from writing fiction is more important than ever.

I get 8% of every sale price of each book. So, each time someone downloads it illegally, I lose 16 new pence, give or take, at the current discounted price for the e-version (really! You can get it in the Angry Robot sale for two quid! Go on, buy it). You might say, so what’s the big deal? It’s only 16 pence (give or take, remember). But I say, every 16 pence I lose is a 16 pence more I have to earn twice, effectively, as I tread the slow road to paying off my (small) advance.

More importantly, every illegal download goes uncounted by publishers who use sales figures to determine if they commission more books from an author. At the early stages of a writer’s career, like now for me, every tick in the box is crucial, one more penstroke in the flimsy wall of ink between me and a job behind a till at a supermarket.

You’re not entitled to my work for free, just like you’re not entitled to unemployment payments while you are working a job, and I’m not entitled to make you carry my bags around and give me pedicures for nothing. I assume that the people who do look for free copies are intelligent. I also pray then that they are moral. Here’s a message for you: You are literally taking food out of my kid’s mouth. Literally. He’s three. I might be an angry fether worthy of your contempt, but he’s an innocent casualty in your quest for free gak. (Okay, I admit, I’m overegging it there. Sorry. He never goes hungry).

And you do yourself a disservice. A lot of people who download Reality 36 for nothing might love the book. They might well want to see more Richards & Klein adventures. But if enough people pinch it, there won’t be any more. Not because I’m sulking, but because I’ll be processing your shopping at the supermarket, if I’m lucky enough to find a job.

Or I’ll be chasing you out of the door as bacon slides out from under your coat and skids all over the floor. Downloading stuff is exactly the same thing as shoplifting. Exactly the same thing.

I paraphrase a quote I read the other week, I can’t find the original, but it went something like this:

“A society that is unwilling to pay for art will have to learn to live without it.”

For art also read Star Trek, and novels about cyborg detectives.

It’s pennies over £2.00. For God’s sake, don’t be a gakker.

haven't picked up the 2nd one but I can recommend "Reality 36" very much, if you dig the cyberpunk genre BTW

More importantly, every illegal download goes uncounted by publishers who use sales figures to determine if they commission more books from an author. At the early stages of a writer’s career, like now for me, every tick in the box is crucial, one more penstroke in the flimsy wall of ink between me and a job behind a till at a supermarket.

The post I made on 27 January certainly got a lot of people stoked up, that’s for sure. Which is really good, because I want people to read this blog, because I want people to know who the hell I am and consider buying my books, but more on that later. And now, some more on the subject. You’ve had emotive me, now here’s something a little more reasonable.

I warn you, there are more questions than statements in today’s blog. The topic is: Pirates – evil sea-rapists who terrorised shipping for a century, or lovable cultural memes and suitable subjects for children’s parties?

1. Entitlement
Referring to the first part of my previous blog, it seems that an awful lot of people feel entitled to download free things off the internet. From a strictly “Thou shalt not steal” point of view, that’s baaaad. But is it as simple as them being very naughty, amoral villains, and me being a poor little author? Shall we see? Okay then.

2. Try before you buy
There’s suggestion (not just you lot, but research and that) that some pirates are super-consumers, ie, they’ll consume creative stuff, and if they like it enough, they’ll pay for it. If they like it a lot, they’ll pay for a lot of it. They just might try it for free first, or pay for it when they feel like it, but enough of them generally contribute money to a creative venture to make it worthwhile.

The problem is for creators and publishers is that this removes all control (control is a loaded word, I choose it deliberately). How do I know if my book will be paid for by the majority of people who try it for free, or none of them at all? This is frightening for me, and my mortgage.

3. This is not a new problem, and is it a problem?
Copied tapes, bootleg videos, unauthorised reprints of Dickens – this has been going on forever. Is it, even, a necessary corollary of the distribution of entertainment? (Let’s leave other idea “sharing”, like patent infringement, out of this). One comment on my other post suggested pirated copies should be regarded as shrinkage/wastage. Maybe it should.

Here’s a positive example, again inspired by a comment – the entire anime SF subculture in the west might never have been as big as it is were it not for those bootlegged, home-translated videos of Japanese shows doing the rounds in the 80s and 90s. I’m no otaku, but I’ll bet there are still self-taught anime freaks translating the latest Naruto before the official DVD comes out and banging it on the web. Without that, there’d be no action figure, spin-off/original manga or dodgy little schoolgirl cosplay costume sales. Or even legit Naruto sales. Is anime an entire geek subculture, a lucrative one at that, founded in piracy? I don’t know, answers in the comments box please.

4. Someone is making money
Whether it’s the operators of upload sites coining it in off advertising (have you seen how many advertisements are on those site?) or it’s the more obvious villains selling copied DVDs at a car boot sale, someone is generally making some money off the distribution from illegal copies. You might do it because it’s free, if you’re of a particular mindset you might think you’re getting one over on “The Man” – those Hollywood coke-snorting whoremasters, or Wicked Publishers Inc, but instead you’re giving money to criminals. At the lower, non-internet, car-boot (yard-sale) end, a lot of this cash goes into more serious crime. So, er why not just give the money to the person that made it?

I’m not for a second suggesting upload sites should all be shot down in a cyber-orgy of digital destruction while we all wave the Stars and Stripes (why the hell would I do that? I’m English) and hit people offenders in the face with rolled up SOPA manifestos. Upload sites do have legitimate uses, I use them for such. However, I don’t have the facts, but I’d be really surprised if the majority usage is legit… Still, they do have legitimate uses. Like guns, yeah. You can shoot targets with them, not just people! (I’m joking, chill out). And the people who run them can stop it dead themselves: Don’t allow illegal crap on your sites. Easier said than done, but if there’s enough legal threat, they’ll employ people to do just that. Enough legal threat to outweigh the ad revenues, at any rate.

On the other hand (there’s a lot of hands in this post), the advent of the digital age actually cuts out revenue for baseline crims. A copied physical book sold on by Mr Dodgy does not the same social impact as Joe Average getting my book for free.

I still don’t get paid mind, but I’m thinking bigger. Isn’t that big of me?

5. This is not just you
I’m no psychologist, but a large number of the responses I’ve had (except for the one in Spanish that told me to have sexual congress with my dear old ma – funny, I didn’t approve that one) have come from people who are attempting to justify copying. I use justify, because they kind of sound like they know they’re doing something a bit wrong. But it’s not just you. What about those corporations who advertise on upload sites which have a large amount of illegal content – they know that site has a large audience because of its illegal content. Do they care? Um, not really.

6. Fair usage
“But I loan books!” Yep, so do I. And DVDs, and I copy my CDs onto my computer, and I buy second-hand books. So what? But, someone, originally paid for even that secondhand book. That’s the killer difference. And it’s legal.

My industry relies on sharing, it’s called word of mouth. More on this later. It’s the killer question, I’m saving it for last. Is potentially millions of people not paying for something the same as lending a book to your sister? No, but then I ask myself, is it really “millions” of people downloading this stuff?

7. The nightmare scenario
This is the thing that keeps scaredy pants like me awake at night: What if we get to a situation where NOBODY EVER PAYS FOR ANYTHING EVERY AGAIN. And I don’t mean in a Captain Picard “Oh, hero Cochrane from the past, we do not have money anymore, we’re all communists now, and it works!” kind of First Contact way. I mean in a culturally inculcated, why should I pay when I kind have it for nothing,?kind of way. It doesn’t matter if it’s still there when it’s been taken, if no one pays, no art, and no job for me. This is happening in some countries/ cultures.

8. What will happen
But honestly, do I think this will happen? No. I think people are in the main too moral. I think people who enjoy the kind of stuff I write aren’t that stupid. I think people are of this mentality: “Hey guys, if we like oranges, let us pay the orange growers to grow oranges and we can all have yummy oranges forever and a day.” And not the “BURN ALL ORANGE TREES AND STEAL THE FURNITURE!” Viking-types (heck, even the Vikings were more of the former, not the latter, unless you were a monk. I don’t think they ever really saw the point of monks).

People do pirate, have pirated, and always will pirate. But it’s important it does not get out of hand. SOPA and the rest are not the answer, that’s a 20th century solution to a 21st century issue.

People pirate not just for free stuff, but for flexibility, to try things out, to experience new, foreign stuff. The solution to the “Oh Christ, they’re downloading my crap for free!” is one of accommodation. The current situation has arisen from an imbalance between what people expect, the technology that enables them to do what they want, and the slow response by the industry. The equation’s a complex one, but it can add up for everyone. Rock stars might not be living it up quite like they used to, but then I don’t see many begging on the streets either.

And “free” can work. Spotify? Artists get money per play. Libraries? You actually get money every time someone takes your book out. Very cheap and instantly available works even better. iTunes? I buy a ton more music than I ever did and funny, all of it is legitimate. Do I think Ebooks are overpriced? Absolutely. Would I rather sell ten million books for £1.00 (at my 8% I’d get £800,000) or ten thousand for £7.99? (I’d get £6392) What the hell do you think?

9. Publicity and exposure
The internet is a very powerful tool, that’s for sure. I was advised by my publishers to start this blog. I use it as a kind of diary, and an archive of work I’ve done –there’s a fragment of my journalism here, but when I have chance, I put more up. (By the way, the copyright on that I do not own, but I asked permission to reprint it). On average, I’d say I get about one hundred hits for every post.

By deliberately choosing something contentious, like piracy (heartfelt though, it’s not fake, I wouldn’t do that, but I did think about it), I’ve had well over six hundred hits. I’ve sold books. A lot of people who have no idea who I am have at least glimpsed me, even if some of them think me a jerk. That’s me exploiting the internet, not the other way around.

By that extension, is the wide availability of my book for free on the internet actually good for someone like me? Or is stealing simply wrong?

I give work away for free for publicity. Here is a sample from Reality 36. Here from Champion of Mars, here’s a free Richards & Klein short story. Here’s another free short, and another. There’s plenty on this site, I’ll be putting more here over time. But that’s my right to do so, it’s not a pirate’s right, because it’s my frigging stuff.

And I will say, people do expect to have everything given to them for nothing. And I will also say, when my book is available as cheaply as you want, as conveniently as you want, when there are free samples of it here and on my publisher’s site and it meets all the other halfways and market forces we’ve been discussing and you still choose to download it for free? Then you really are ripping me off.

It’s all going to change. New encryption systems and bigger computers will eventually put the lid on this (mostly). I wouldn’t be surprised if every piece of entertainment in the world has free elements, but then quantumly encrypted, embedded programming demands payment every time you get past that. Whatever, I reckon this whole debate will be of far less importance in a few years time. Seeing my work given away for free by people who have no right to do so upsets me right now, though. Still, creators and consumers will meet halfway.

Thanks for reading, and commenting.

dæl wrote:I'm afraid I don't agree with the article in regards to there never being any art if people can't make money off it. There are many great artists of history who died in poverty but never stopped creating.

reds8n wrote:

dæl wrote:I'm afraid I don't agree with the article in regards to there never being any art if people can't make money off it. There are many great artists of history who died in poverty but never stopped creating.

So how many did stop creating as they couldn't eat/pay rent/etc etc then ?

do the publishing company or the record label have to moonlight? They create nothing and are parasites living off the brilliance of others who they treat awfully.

dæl wrote:She sounds like an interesting author, I should download a book or two

I really don't think people will expect to make money off things that can be digitised in a few years. If you look at how Radiohead released their album for effectively nothing, but were able to make money from live shows and vinyl, you can see that it's possible to remain profitable. If this author wishes to make money she must create something that cannot be digitised. I believe this might be what GW is trying to do by making Codexes hardback and colour, they are making the product a product in itself rather than a collection of information.

rockerbikie wrote:Many lawsuits are plain stupid though. I can find many examples where copyright claims are just plainly just going after profits rather than protecting their own intectual works.

dæl wrote:I really don't think people will expect to make money off things that can be digitised in a few years. If you look at how Radiohead released their album for effectively nothing, but were able to make money from live shows and vinyl, you can see that it's possible to remain profitable. If this author wishes to make money she must create something that cannot be digitised. I believe this might be what GW is trying to do by making Codexes hardback and colour, they are making the product a product in itself rather than a collection of information.

Kilkrazy wrote:

dæl wrote:She sounds like an interesting author, I should download a book or two

I really don't think people will expect to make money off things that can be digitised in a few years. If you look at how Radiohead released their album for effectively nothing, but were able to make money from live shows and vinyl, you can see that it's possible to remain profitable. If this author wishes to make money she must create something that cannot be digitised. I believe this might be what GW is trying to do by making Codexes hardback and colour, they are making the product a product in itself rather than a collection of information.

How can an author make a book that cannot be digitised?

I own a scanner I bought for £80 that will colour copy A4 and make the document into a PDF.

With a bit of effort I can digitise any book of that size and publish it as an illegal PDF.

If I want to do that on an industrial scale, the scanner at work will automatically feed pages up to A3, scan both sides, stitch the document together in correct page order, and email the output. I buy one of them (a few thousand £) and I'm away!

I can appreciate that a music group might put out an album for free, and make their living off live performance, which cannot be digitised. That's how I think the musicians will make their money in future.

Is an author supposed to write books for free and give readings that people will buy tickets for?

English Assassin wrote:
Radiohead, a band who had cultivated a vast fanbase, seen their records certified multi-platinum and played stadia around the world before internet piracy became commercially significant, are a very poor example. Simply put, the up-front costs for a new artist or writer to record/print and promote an album or book are such that most will require external backing; that means signing a contract and taking an advance from a publisher. Now it goes without saying that recording and publishing contracts are a byword for cruel corporate exploitation of artists, but then it's seldom considered that the the vast sums gouged from successful artists also have to cover the cash lost on unsuccessful books and records which never recoup their advances.

Now don't presume I feel the least affection towards, say, Harper Collins or EMI, but the present system - one within which successful artists and writers were able to profit in the pre-internet age - seems, like democracy, to be the least worst of all possibilities. Oh, and it's worth pointing out that short runs of vinyl records and other "special edition" issues (for which I am a terrible sucker) function principally as a tax dodge for record labels, their higher costs allowing the total cost of the limited run to be written-off as a promotional expense.

Reds8n: Guy Haley's article is a very impressively lucid summary of the situation; well done for finding it. Since I have promised (amusingly amateurish rock and metal fanzine) Heavy Magazine an article on music business piracy for their first proper issue, I shall be using him as reference material.

dæl wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

dæl wrote:She sounds like an interesting author, I should download a book or two

I really don't think people will expect to make money off things that can be digitised in a few years. If you look at how Radiohead released their album for effectively nothing, but were able to make money from live shows and vinyl, you can see that it's possible to remain profitable. If this author wishes to make money she must create something that cannot be digitised. I believe this might be what GW is trying to do by making Codexes hardback and colour, they are making the product a product in itself rather than a collection of information.

How can an author make a book that cannot be digitised?

I own a scanner I bought for £80 that will colour copy A4 and make the document into a PDF.

With a bit of effort I can digitise any book of that size and publish it as an illegal PDF.

If I want to do that on an industrial scale, the scanner at work will automatically feed pages up to A3, scan both sides, stitch the document together in correct page order, and email the output. I buy one of them (a few thousand £) and I'm away!

I can appreciate that a music group might put out an album for free, and make their living off live performance, which cannot be digitised. That's how I think the musicians will make their money in future.

Is an author supposed to write books for free and give readings that people will buy tickets for?

To be perfectly honest, I don't know. Books is a weird one. I don't download novels, legally or otherwise because I prefer a hard copy of a book (and I can read in the bath, try that with a laptop) which can then live on my bookshelf (and show how incredibly intelligent and cultured I am of course ). I do remember reading a collection of short stories by Will Self called Liver and the Hardback of that seemed a really nicely made book, it felt well made, out of quality materials. But the situation isn't going to be resolved by a better quality paper. Perhaps e-books should be much cheaper and much easier to buy, iTunes has shown people will buy music if its easily available online.

Kilkrazy wrote:
You should get a Kindle. It's really easy to buy books. Anything larger than a paperback or with detailed or colour illos does not work, or course. It's great for typical paperbacks, though.

The problem on Kindle is the amount of crap published because it's really easy to publish your own works or else reformats of public domain works.

Radiohead’s debut album Pablo Honey was released in 1993, and was followed by the release of The Bends in 1995, both of which have sold over 1.3 million copies to date (Elberse, 2008). But their peak album sales was in 1997, when their third album Ok Computer was released, which has sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide (Sexton, 2000).

In 2007, after Radiohead’s contract with EMI Records had expired, the band decided to self-release their new album In Rainbows as a digital download from their website, and allow users to select their own price for the album. The worldwide results showed that an average of 60% of users downloaded the album for free, while the other 40% paid for the album. The average price per paid download was $6.00 worldwide, and in the U.S. was $8.05 (Cabral, 2009).

In its first week, In Rainbows sold 122,000 copies, which was a significant drop from the band’s 2003 album Hail to the Thief, which sold 300,000 copies in its first week (Kafka, 2008). To date, it is estimated that In Rainbows has sold approximately 3 million copies, also a significant drop from their Ok Computer sales of over 4.5 million (Randall, 2011). However, even though the consumption of Radiohead’s music had changed, shifting from paid physical album sales to name-your-own-price digital downloads, production and distribution also played an important role in their changing business model.

Michael Laskow, CEO of the world’s leading independent A&R company, TAXI, states that “While the band, its fans and artists alike are celebrating what looks like a success for Radiohead's bold move in releasing their new album using the ‘pay what you'd like’ model, I think everybody has overlooked one very important aspect of this, and it doesn't bode well for the future of the music industry: Radiohead has been bankrolled by their former label for the last 15 years. They've built a fan base in the millions with their label, and now they're able to cash in on that fan base with none of the income or profit going to the label this time around. That's great for the band and for fans who paid less than they would under the old school model” (Cabral, 2009). So essentially, even though Radiohead may be selling less albums than in previous years, they’re also able to keep a much larger percent of the profits by producing and distributing the album themselves.

Radiohead’s front man Thom Yorke agrees with this statement, saying that “In terms of digital income, we've made more money out of this record (In Rainbows) than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that's nuts. It's partly due to the fact that EMI wasn't giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff” (Byrne, 2007).

In terms of their contract expiration with EMI, Yorke also states that “I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say 'F___ you' to this decaying business model" (Tyrangiel, 2007). But Yorke also believes that this method only works for them because of where they are, and the large fanbase they’ve built. For emerging artists, Yorke suggests, “Don't sign a huge record contract that strips you of all your digital rights, so that when you do sell something on iTunes you get absolutely zero. That would be the first priority” (Wired, 2007).

Even under the most lucrative record deals, artists can end up with less than 30% of overall sales revenue, which is then often split among several band members. But according to Time Magazine, even though record sales are declining, the concert business is booming (Time, 2007). Yorke also agrees with this, stating that “At the moment, we make money principally from touring” (Wired, 2007).

Luis Cabral argues that the most significant trend in the past decade is the “decrease in recording revenue and the increase in other income sources, especially touring.” According to Billboard’s editor Rob Levine, “Touring is the cash driver in the music business as album sales decline” (Cabral, 2009). For Radiohead, this also proves to be true. According to Billboard’s Boxscore, in September of 2003, Radiohead’s gross ticket sales were between $459,739 – 600,769 per show (Billboard, 2003). In November of 2003, Boxscore results were similar, totaling a gross of $598,944 per show (Billboard, 2003). However, in August of 2008, less than a year after their In Rainbows release, the band’s gross total had increased to $1,652,061 (Billboard, 2008). They also made Pollstar’s list of “Top 100 North American Tours” in 2008, grossing an average of 933,709 per show (Pollstar, 2008). But one of the highest figures was in May 2009, where their Billboard Boxscore gross totaled $5,175,752 (Billboard, 2009). Therefore, even though Radiohead’s album sales may have declined over the past decade, their concert sales have greatly increased.

Clearly, self-releasing In Rainbows was a smart business move on Radiohead’s part. Because of the small profit percentage with major labels, it makes more sense for artists today to either go with an indie label or self-release an album in order to actually turn a profit. So essentially, even though artists like Radiohead may have had a decline in album sales in recent years, they’re also keeping about ninety percent of the profits from In Rainbows because it’s self-released.

Radiohead has changed their business model by embracing the digital era and all the tools it has to offer. In the old business model, the band’s albums were produced and distributed via their label EMI, and music was primarily consumed by purchasing a physical album at a set price. In the digital era, Radiohead has now changed their music production, distribution and consumption by parting ways with their major label and self-releasing their album via digital downloading at a name-your-own price, which has resulted in a higher profit percentage for the band.

In addition, Radiohead has also been a prime example of how the music industry’s business model today primarily profits from concert sales. This case study shows that Radiohead’s album sales decreased from 4.5 million in 1997 to 3 million in 2007, however their concert sales increased from as low as $459,739 per show in 2003 to over 5 million per show in 2009. This is a clear example of how the primary revenue source for the music industry today has shifted from concert sales to album sales, and although album sales may be on the decline, concert sales are still increasing.

Is Higher Cost of "The King of Limbs" an Indicator

Obviously, Radiohead believes the "In Rainbows" test run worked. However, the fact fans now have to pay $9.99 and $14.99 for Radiohead's new album download leads me back to the question of digital sales and promotion, and the financial sustainability for musicians.

The download pricing is higher on "The King of Limbs." On the Radiohead ordering website, it is also offering a deluxe, artwork-infused "newspaper album" for $48 and $53. Perhaps the thinking is: that this new release is so amazing, if someone cannot afford the stupendous deluxe package, surely nine or fourteen dollars for the download looks more inviting.

Maybe it is marketing genius. For all the boisterous hype, maybe digital music sales are not nearly stable enough to stand entirely on their own yet.

A burning sense of entitlement.

reds8n wrote:

AustonT wrote:
The first country to emancipate the Jews in Europe was the French Republic just before the Reign of Terror.

Actually I would suggest that it was in fact England under Cromwell who were first.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interregnum_(England)

I'm not saying it was a picnic for them by any means whatsoever, but better than it was anyway.

EDIT : need that last bracket in the url