LoneCoder: Writing Computer Books and Bill C-61

[Christopher Browne]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 4:58 PM, Ken O. Burtch <ken at pegasoft.ca> wrote:
> "I've written about the misunderstandings of the DMCA in a previous
> Lone Coder entry. However, last week, someone asked me whether, as a
> writer, I would ever endorse the free copying of a book over the
> Internet.

I certainly agree with you on the "how profitable is it?" side of
things.  I haven't ever seen a penny of royalties, which has the
result that, from a practical standpoint, it wouldn't injure me for my
works to get "freely copied over the Internet."

I'm not 100% aligned on the "no career value" side of it; I would
suggest, instead, that the sorts of HR departments that evaluate the
merits of potential staff based on keyword matches (and the likes)
don't really care about *any* kinds of qualifications that don't fit
lockstep into their mandated evaluation criteria.

It strikes me that there's really two main kinds of copying that take place:

a) Cases where they never would have paid anyone anything anyways.

The classic old "software piracy" cases fit pretty well with that; the
"rings" of kids copying games might, by *some* criterion, be
"stealing" thousands of dollars worth of stuff, however, that seems
severely overestimated, as they'd never *have* bought the stuff at
full price.  They likely haven't the money to have imagined doing so.

Frankly, I don't care about these people.  Not even to
attack/prosecute them.  There's no money to be had, and there's a fair
argument to be made that they haven't done any meaningful damage.

b) Cases of trying stuff out.

If it seems of value, such people *do* have a high frequency of buying.

For books, I'd see it being pretty likely that if someone finds the
copy to be of value that they might consider paying full price.

That's certainly the case for me at work; I've had a case where I got
copies of an out-of-print book printed up, and tried to see if the
author wanted payment.  (He never got back to me, and payment wasn't
mandated.)

I'd probably buy more technical books than I do if I *could* get full
sample copies to verify that it's what I want.  I wouldn't buy every
one, but that's not the point - the point is that more information
would lead to buying more.
-- 
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"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and
expecting different results."  -- assortedly attributed to Albert
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