Electronic Piracy

Electronic Books and Piracy

It’s come to my attention that there is a small but vocal community of individuals who see themselves as scofflaws or fighters for the freedom of information. They scan and post to newsgroups the text of published novels. When it was pointed out that what they were doing was patently illegal, they reacted contemptuously by scanning and posting the books of an author who had succeeded in getting a pirate site shut down in Canada.

Before I discuss their arguments for why the are doing what they are doing, let’s be very clear about what is going on. Use of copywritten materials without permission of the copyrightholder is a violation of United States law, and the violations are spelled out in Title 17 USC Chapter 15. Violators can be subject to criminal or civil prosecution, with damages for violations in a civil case ranging as high as $100,000 per violation.

Let me make something very clear before I go any further. I am more than willing to sell anyone an electronic version of any of my books, essays or short stories for $1001.00 per item, for their use alone. These items are protected by copyright and legal remedies will be pursued as necessary to protect my rights. (Face it, at $100K per count, I can make more hunting pirates than I do writing. And, while it’s true that I might not be able to get blood out of a stone, I wouldn’t want to be the stone during the attempt to exsanguinate it.)

What do the pirates suggest are their reasons for being justified in appropriating or converting the property of a writer to their own? They’re varied, from understandable to just ridiculous, but need to be examined to get an angle on the mindset of these folks.

1) Information should be free. This argument suggests that what writers produce is just information, and that we should not make any money off it, but should just share it. And, in lieu of this sort of largesse on our parts, they feel they have the right to strip our property from us and distribute it to others.

This argument is fatuous on the face of it and has ever been the argument advanced by the talentless and lazy. The farmer has no right to the food he raises, they would argue, because everyone needs to eat, after all. And doctors and teachers shouldn’t be paid because their work benefits mankind. Out of the goodness of our hearts we should each offer what we can do to everyone else, and we will all share and be happy.

And, of course, those making these suggestions are petty bureaucrats who offer nothing constructive to humanity or society. Moreover, the idyllic socialist paradigm they advance has been shown to be false, and has collapsed under its own weight the world round. The fact is that as long as money is our medium of barter, labor will be valued through money. The things writers produce are certainly not easily tangible – a story can exist (and did before writing) as nothing but memories; but clearly it is real, and, like the food produced by a farmer, has legitimate value.

The curious paradox of this particular argument is that it suggests that since information should be free, that the stories are without value; and yet the stories being stolen are those that have been published and have proven themselves over the years to have great value. They pirate these tales precisely because they are seen as having value, and they want the fame and glory – dubious, risky and miniscule though it is – of having tacked that pelt onto the wall.

Literature might not feed the body, but no one will deny it feeds the soul, and that is something which is beyond price. The plain fact is, though, that if writers are not paid for their writing, they will have to leave it behind and find another way to make a living. The writers I know aren’t afraid of that prospect – it would just disappoint them. But, heck, if you have the skills to be successful in a business as unstable and difficult as freelance writing, slipping into the Dilbertesque world of corporate intrigue will be child’s-play.

2) I just want the e-version of a book I own/or will buy in the future so I can read it on my Palm Pilot.

I can sympathize here. I have a Palm Pilot and I have ten novels currently sitting on it. I went over to Project Gutenberg, found books I wanted to read, formated them for my Palm and loaded them in there. I read them when waiting for the car to be fixed, or in a doctor’s office or on planes. Very convenient, not too hard to read, and definitely a sign that reading books on handheld devices is a viable way to go for the future.

All of that being said, the books I’m reading are in the public domain. Copyright statutes no longer cover them, so my use of them is not illegal.
Scanning a currently copywritten book into electronic form for personal use might fall into a gray area of copyright law; but the distribution of that copy to anyone else is a very clear violation of the law. I would imagine that any criminal prosecution of distribution of copywritten material over the internet would bring with it charges of conspiracy and perhaps even racketeering, which would bring yet other laws into play – the laws that made life tough for organized criminals.

It’s been suggested, of course, that folks pirating the work under this justification could be stopped if the authors would just bring out an e-version of their work. It’s not that simple: the right to produce an electronic copy of our books lies with our publishers. They have chosen, at this point, not to invest in putting their backlist in electronic format for a variety of reasons which doubtlessly makes sense to them. Remember, publishing is an industry where authors are still required to send physical manuscripts to the publishers, even though they also want disk copies. And typesetters sometimes still rekey the books. The fact that publishers are not fully up to speed with folks on the cutting edge of technology comes as a surprise to very few in the science fiction field.

Bottom line here, though, is simple: you share the e-version of a book you’ve scanned, and it can end up costing you $100,000 per violation.

3) It’s the thrill of the hunt. This is actually two reasons under one heading.

A) Nyahh, nyahh, catch me if you can. Face it, there are just some folks out there who like to live dangerously and walk on the wild side. Apparently, in the minds of these pirates, running OCR software and a scanner is roughly equivalent of a bloody shootout with Federal Agents. I’m sure the denizens of a biker bar will be impressed by paper-cut scars on your fingers, or mouse-hand bursitis.

This brutal outlaw existence fueled by Jolt cola and doritos is a rather pathetic state of affairs when you think about it. Guys sucking subway tokens out of turnstiles lead a more exciting life. The pirate’s sole thrill in life is to be the first to put up the scanned version of a book that you can wander down to the library and borrow.

It’s like eating celery: chewing burns more calories than the celery will give you. In this case, they spend more time processing a book than anyone else will spend enjoying their work. It’s kind of a masturbatory existence that produces nothing of value or lasting worth.

And, of course, it’s ridiculous to assume someone can’t be caught. People have been caught and prosecuted, and more will be. The statute of limitations is three years for a civil case and, quite frankly, there are folks who will rat someone out for a finder’s fee – if they don’t go hunting just because this thief is stealing from an author they like. In my case, heck, if I’m going to be pirated out of a job, I can spend three years learning what I need to know to track folks down.

B) I was the one who bagged it. This side of the thrill of the hunt I understand very well. I spent four months tracking down all of the Tutt stories by Arthur Train. I bought collections from antiquarian bookstores. I went the Library of Congress website and pulled down the tables of contents of the collections I didn’t have. I went to the Phoenix Public Library to use the indices of periodicals from that period to track down the stories, then I used the microfilm to find and make copies of the stories that weren’t in any of the collections. After that I cross-indexed the stories and discovered that some had two different titles, their publication title and their collection title; and that, as a result, Train actually had not written over a hundred Tutt stories but, instead fell short by 3 or 4.

Working on snagging every last one of those stories was great fun for me. It was part obsession, part hobby. As I writer I loved reading the stories and watching Train develop characters as they went along. I was inspired enough to create a new SF universe and actually write and sell two stories set in that universe (thereby more than paying me back for the money spent buying collections and making photocopies). And, yes, the copies were within the law, since they were for my use, and the books are in the public domain in any event.

The thrill of the hunt argument advanced by the pirates loses its validity when you realize that by bagging books that are readily available, they’re essentially ranch-hunting. You’ve heard of those game farms where hunters wait in some air-conditioned lounge while professional hunters track down and tree whatever beast it is the hunter wants to kill. The hunter’s beeper goes off, he’s helicoptered to the site, kills the beast, has his picture taken, then is whisked back to the lounge where he can drink and brag on having just killed a bear or lion or whatever.

Kinda like the skill and bravery needed to bash bunnies with bats in a barrel.

I remember, way back when in the dawn of time, learning about historical pirates and I found them kinda boring. More interesting were the privateers – freebooters who got a government to sanction them. They preyed on the pirates and on the enemy. They pursued what they wanted to do, but in a constructive way.

I think the pirates should become privateers, and here’s the letters of marque I’d provide them: go out and make electronic versions of public domain texts that are hard to find, but are of historical significance. Some examples:

* Arthur Train: The books of Arthur Train, including the Tutt stories, are wonderful and should be available in e-format. If not for Train there would have been no Earl Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason) and certainly no John Grisham. Heck, if not for Train, chances are excellent I’d not have become a writer.

* Edgar Allen Poe: First off, in reading Kenneth Silverman’s bio of Poe, then comparing all the stories he mentioned with the table of contents of a “Complete stories of Poe” book I have I noticed three ommissions. Three Poe stories that I can’t find anywhere. (Off the top off my head I don’t remember the titles, it’s been a while since I searched for them.) Find those stories, post them.

On top of that, Poe used to do wonderful and brutal criticism of contemporary work. This is stuff that was going on in the early days of American Literature, and Poe was a tireless advocate for Americans developing their own literature as opposed to waiting for things to filter in from Europe. Those essays would be priceless and should be available.

* Jacques Futrelle: Futrelle created an American rival to Sherlock Holmes and wrote nearly 50 stories about him before Futrelle died on the Titanic. I have two collections of stories which contain just over half of them, but the rest are uncollected. And Futrelle did novels as well. Hunt these down, collect these pelts.

* Two other books chuck full of leads: The Tale of the Next Great War, 1871-1914 edited by I. F. Clarke. This has excerpts from books talking about what the next great war will be like. Wonderfully predictive works that should be available.

*Future Perfect by H. Bruce Franklin is an anthology of SF writings by 19th Century authors, and we’re not just talking Verne here. These works should be available for everyone.

I guess what all this comes down to for me is rather simple. Folks can claim information should be free, and can cloak themselves in some self-righteous mantle of delusion that paints them as freedom-fighters for the liberation of ideas. The fact is, however, they are bandits. They convert easily available material into the electronic format. Why? Because it’s easy. They’re lazy and don’t really have the confidence of their convictions because they have talked themselves into thinking they’re providing some sort of service to humanity. The fact is that they’re contributing nothing.

If they really did believe that information would be free, and that what they were doing was performing a service to humanity, they’d get out there and rescue historically significant documents and spend their time preparing them. Project Gutenberg is brilliant, and always needs volunteers to prepare material. There is so much in terms of science fiction and its precursors out there about which we know next to nothing, and all of it could be rescued by folks who truly do believe that information has value and should be shared.

If it is the thrill of the hunt, go to a library, do the research. Check the bestseller lists from the turn of the century, see if you recognize any of these writers, then put their books up in e-format. Just sitting down with a microfilm of back issues of the Saturday Evening Post looking for Train stories I saw lots of tales go by written by great authors. These should be preserved. Instead of hunting on a ranch for information, go out into the jungle and get it.

A quick note: how do you know if an author’s work is in public domain? This is a tough call. Copyright law allows for a work to be protected for the life of the author and a certain period after his death. As a rule of thumb, if the author is alive and/or died after Walt Disney, the work is protected. (The Disney Corp is very dilligent in getting the time limit extended for copyright protection.)

The question comes down to this: if you want to be a petty thief in the information age, and pay a hefty price when you’re caught, continue to pirate copywritten material. If, on the other hand, you want to be a constructive part of the information age and help others, do some research, locate some tough pelts, and harvest them. Those are contributions of which you can be proud, which is something that can’t be said of thieving, no matter how seemingly valuable the swag is.

©2000 Michael A. Stackpole