I would not want to punish potential fans by taking away their Internet rights. I’m an Internet-only publisher and this would end any chance of their purchasing my books. The proper punishment to me seems to be requiring them to pay the author for the book plus a small penalty fee. In other words, make these bargain hunters risk paying more than they would have paid had they purchased the book honestly. The big time distributors will risk paying more than wholesale for their entrepreneurial efforts.

Risk? You can’t catch all of them. Benefit? You keep your fans and they help pay your overhead. You also don’t drive the bad guys underground or make whistle-blowers fear for their life. I don’t see how taking away their Internet rights helps me at all.

I’m an unknown author who values word-of-mouth even from these ‘criminals’, so long as they like my books. Of course, I’m not expecting to pay the rent with my book sales either. It’s just another way to look at it.

The reaction against the Digital Economy Bill is mainly based around a false assumption that you can’t stop filesharing, or that you can’t protect yourself if you’re running a public wifi hotspot where people can be downloading files illegally. You can. It also makes it seem as if you’re at risk in your own home if people hack into your network or if members of your family download files illegally. You can protect your computer against all of this, it doesn’t cost much, and you’re only obliged to be able to show who downloaded the files. You do need to be able to keep that record and it’s not hard with the right software.

You will need to be able to show who downloaded files and it’s possible to get inexpensive security software, or to subscribe to a service that can handle this for you. The same kind of software can block malicious websites and filesharing websites. Public networks like libraries can do this and it’s not even expensive to do it at home.

It is stealing and has an effect on authors and publishers that can’t be ignored. Internet Service Providers can already disconnect your service if you illegally download files, and a documentary on TV already showed it happening. Public wifi hotspots have already had massive fines and their service disconnected because customers illegally downloaded files on their network. It isn’t new. The penalties already exist.

The Digital Economy Bill is making it more efficient. I think the people raising fear about it are using tactics to make people think it’s impossible to fit in with the regulations. It isn’t. And the penalties already exist and are used.

I also doubt the statistics provided by a company that is solely focused on making clients fear the “boogeyman”. The music industry has completely mishandled their decline. There are many reasons for it including people just not wanting to pay for a whole album that they only like a few songs. This is why iTunes and others have done well.

What is needed is a new delivery system. Deterrants are all well and good, but will not be the answer. DRM, for example, has both increased piracy and decreased buying because tech savvy people refuse to have something they pay for tied to one distribution channel (ipod, computer, etc). If they pay for it, they should be able to move it from PC to iPod and back if they feel like it. Even Apple dropped DRM eventually.

This will play out the same way with eBooks as more eReaders come on the market. Just like VHS dominated Beta-Max a standard file format will emerge and that the very least all eReaders will need to support it (and allow easy conversion from their own locked formats) in order to be successful. Companies like Amazon with its Kindle are doing the same thing as what publishers are doing with the hardcover version of their book. This is where their money is made.

Piracy will not go away though, with cases like Pirate Bay, may lessen to some degree. The real way to combat it is with reasonable pricing. The eBook market is still relatively new. True, it has been around for at least ten years or so, but it is only now becoming widespread through better devices and more content availability. The book publishing world will struggle with how to handle it, but hopefully it will learn the hard lessons from the music industry. Punishing consumers is not the way to a healthy bottom-line. They will revolt. Besides, most pirates are people who would not have bought the product anyway. The other issue with this is ownership. If you cannot take the book with you from one device to another (an actual file to transport) than ownership in the traditional sense does not exist. The fact that any company can remove a book that you “purchased” as Amazon has done at least once means that it is not owned like a physical copy is owned.

Providing easier, more cost effective ways to get books into the consumers’ hands will in the end deal the largest blow against piracy (at least the kind that actually affects sales). Books are different fom music in that a book is the product whereas in music, the collection of songs is that industry’s product. A book is always singular, and (except for short story collections) cannot easily be separated into individual items. I am sure that there will be publishers who try to sell chapters like iTunes does songs (some already do), but that will have very little impact on buying habits or piracy. The majority of people will not buy a book one chapter at a time.

To get back to the higher-level subject of the discussion, this type of legislation is usually made by those who do not actually understand the ramifications of nor the underlying working of the industry they are making laws about. They are listening to lobbyists (another barnacle / leech on the butt of society). While something does need to be done to allow creators / artists / publishers to make a living, these heavy handed type of measures are the wrong way to go about it.

This is in the publishers hands to fix, not government.

My question is this. Do these people who believe that “art should be free” work for free themselves? Do they turn up at the office every day and just shrug when there’s no money in the bank to pay them because everything they made was stolen? How do they pay their bills. Is what they do more valuable than the writer, the muscian, the artist whose work they want to enjoy, but don’t want to pay for? Try getting away with that argument at the supermarket.

One wonders how many of these modern, Internet using, thieving cow-persons would think it acceptable for the owners of the stolen property to send their gang of rednecks around to bash the thief senseless, or string them up, like everyone else did in the ‘good old’ original wild-west.

I’m pleased another country is opting to address Internet piracy with a, responsible, and workable solution to address a very serious, International, threat on civilised social values.

I’m horrified that so many people take lightly the stealing going on via such piracy, whether of music or books. If the thieves lose their Internet privileges, too bad. Me, I’d lock them up in prison if they persisted after being warned. I think they’d be getting off lightly just losing access to the Internet.

I earn a living as an author because I work ten-hour days six days a week and therefore produce three books a year. I don’t see why I should be expected to give away the results of that extremely hard work for nothing.

I’m not up at the top of the bestsellers with JK Rowling (good luck to her) and am not rich. I need the money I earn to live on. Surprise, surprise – creative people need to eat, pay mortgages and cover all the other daily expenses.

The downloaders are fooling themselves if they think they’re hurting big companies – the ones they’re hurting most are hard-working authors like me.

Keep on speaking out, Danuta!