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Feb28
E-book theft: Intellectual Property Law in the Digital Age
Filed under: publishing industry, Writer's Life; Tagged as: author, candice hughes, copyright, e-book, e-books, fiction, intellectual property, New England, publishing industry trends, Writer's LifeComments OffYikes! It’s been awhile since I have been able to post, nose to grindstone and all that. Here we are nearly at the end of winter. It’s been a real New England winter this year. Snow so high my mailbox was nearly buried. We may be at the end of it now. Today it’s pouring rain and found myself early in the morning mucking about in boots and a Gortex parka, sloshing through slush and mud to let the water company guy check the meter. He said, “It’s really coming down.” I nearly answered, “Ahyup.” But being in a weird bit of New England that glows with the silver glitz of New York City shining on the horizon, I bit that back and just said, “Sure is.”
I found a great blog post on how rampant e-book theft is. This is a serious concern since e-books are the biggest growth area in publishing. It seems to me that all creative entertainment types need to band together and figure out a way forward (from music to movies to written-word story-tellers- can’t call us book authors much longer, I guess). I’ve been studying up on Intellectual Property law for my other project (working on technology transfer). Copyright law is both robust (anyone qualifies who has created a unique, creative work, no need to actually apply for anything) and weak (it takes money and time to enforce and how many creative types have either of these to spare?) It seems to me that greater protection needs to be worked out somehow so that creators can be fairly compensated for their work. Otherwise, the whole sandcastle crumbles. How many of us can afford to devote our days and nights to work for free for our muse? Sadly, muses don’t pay mortgages or grocery bills and royal patrons have been few and far between for the last several hundred years.
Take a look at this blog for another writer’s take on e-book theft: http://ow.ly/44g9g
Enjoy!

