Do we steal what we love?

A friend of mine posted this link on his Facebook:  $20 DIY Book Scanner from Wired

Naturally, in the comments, a spirited discussion of copyright infringement ensued. 

One of them lamented that he must have been silly to think he could make money writing.  Someone else said, "Your failed business model is not my problem."  I think it was a signature line but it fit perfectly with the situation.

I've been thinking about copyrights lately.  I hate digital rights management software (known as DRM) because it's buggy and invasive.  It never does anything to enhance the product, and in the case of games, often renders then unusable.  We're often told that we should buy digital copies from legitimate sources, because the pirated versions have viruses attached and may have missing code, but generally, a pirated copy is a clean copy, DRM-free, and will work on your computer for years.  Just try passing your "legitimate" copy from one machine to another and see what the DRM does to you.  No computer upgrades for you!

DRM also uses data mining code to spy on you and report back to the host.  When Sony started putting DRM on its music CDs that not only locked up the data but launched itself into the computer, dug in tight and ripped other things out when removed, I vowed never to buy another Sony CD or any other music format as long as I lived.  I have kept and will keep that promise.  

I know I'd like to be paid for my writing someday, but before that happens, I need, as one commenter wrote, to write something worth buying.  Not simply worth reading, but worth buying.  I've bought Anna Karenina at least four times.  I've owned Strunk and White's Elements of Style about the same number of times.  There are books I'll buy again and again because I've loaned them to friends and never gotten them back, lost them in moves from one house to another, or simply misplaced.

By contrast, I've bought plenty of books I wish I hadn't, and there are plenty of books I've borrowed and given right back. I took John Grisham's A Time to Kill off my mother's shelf because she told me it was his best.  I read 15 pages of prose so dry and dead that I felt my brain desiccating and peeling back from the inside of my skull.  I'll never read him again.

Likewise, I'll never read the Twilight books.  The prose is an estrogen swamp with ethical quicksands and self-justification vines to hold you still until the Love Monster eats you.  I've opened each of the Twilight books in the store, read a page or two and had to laugh just to keep from feeling pain.  They reminded me of the time I visited some friends of mine.  These friends, a guy and two girls all platonic and living together in a tiny room in a gaijin house in Tokyo, had a lovely idea.  Every night before they'd all go to sleep, they would take turns reading a chapter from some novel. If I ever live with a group again, I am completely stealing this idea.

I had come over to spend the night, and my friends were in the middle of The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy.  They were worshipful of the book.  I, coming into it from the middle, and having no context, fell headlong into the swampy prose.  I tried not to laugh out loud.  I really did.  But I failed, and I wasn't invited back to Bedtime Story Hour ever again. 

So there are things we'll buy, things we'll sample and put down, things we'll avoid, and things we'll laugh at from a comfortable distance.  What are the things we steal?  Do we steal what we love?

Sometimes we do.  I know I've "stolen" a whole catalogue of music from the 80s by paying a tiny fee to a Russian music site.  They claim they are legal and the artists are paid, but I don't believe them. I don't care.  I love 80s music and I'm not willing to pay 99 cents a song from iTunes (plus DRM, yay) when I've already paid a bunch of money for all that music when I was a kid.  The artists aren't getting paid from Apple much more than they are paid from the Russian music pirates, really.

Would I steal a book I love? I've never felt the need.  There are book torrents.  I've never been interested in exploring them. As adorable as the Kindle is, and as much the geek in me wants one just to pet and coo over, I really prefer having a page-turnable book or magazine in my hands.  I love the smell of books.  I love the sound a hardback makes when you close it. (thump)  I love the physical stacks of books and there is nothing more sinfully lovely than a fashion magazine's September issue.  Our children, if they're still able to breathe and haven't burned up in the global warming, will hate me someday for all my inch-thick, glossy September Vogue and Elle copies.

My point, I suppose, is that the issue of copyright is a simple one.  We really ought to pay for what we consume.  But as a consumer, and a reader, I won't pay for what I don't love, or for what I've paid for once already.  And I'm not willing to load down my computer with buggy malware that allows a company to market me more accurately and aggressively, just so an artist can get a few pennies.  There's the simple "should" and the more complicated "is." 

Or maybe it's not so complicated.  Here's a business model I think will work:  give me a clean copy of what I want, and I'll pay the artist the whole amount directly.  Or I'll pay the artist the majority and a portion goes to the computer geek who programs the site, formats the artwork digitally and arranges the pay process.  Is 70-30 fair enough? 

Then a copyright will actually mean something.