Copyright. It's a piece of cake - John Dougherty

Who would have thought that copyright would be one of the issues of this election?

Not one of the major issues, obviously; not one of the really important issues like how best to eat a bacon sandwich, or whether Scottish MPs should be allowed to help make the laws or should just sit at the back doing raffia. But amid all the high-level politicking, someone noticed that the Green Party website expressed an apparent desire to reduce copyright to a period of 14 years.

Obviously, some people got cross. Some other people, however, couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. They started saying things like, It was an initiative to get copyright owned by artists & writers, not companies, and The idea is to support arts, and It is in all of our best interests to have a vast public domain, and No one needs decades of monopoly, and If you write a book and after 14 years you haven’t made enough money, maybe you should write another book.

Much of this demonstrates a real misunderstanding not just about the working life of the average writer, but also about the basic principle of copyright, which is this:

If I make something, it belongs to me.

This applies whether it’s a song, a story, a poem, or a cake. I suggested this to someone on Twitter, who replied, I give cakes away. And you know what? That’s fine. If you make a cake, and you want to give it away, you can. You can give it all to your friends, or you can put it on the wall outside your house with a note saying “Help yourself”, or you can throw it at the seagulls. That’s fine. It’s your cake.

Similarly, if you want to sell it, that’s up to you. You can set up a cake-stall and sell it slice by slice; you can put it on eBay; you can sell the whole thing to someone who forgot to bake a birthday cake, or who’s having guests round for tea and hasn’t been to the shops, or who has a cake-reselling business, or who just likes cake. Or you can ask the cake-shop down the road to sell it for you at an agreed commission. That’s fine. It’s your cake.

And if you want, you can leave it on the kitchen table till it goes stale and mouldy. You can hang it from a tree and throw apples at it. You can put it in the bath. You can bury it in the garden. You can do any of these things, because it’s your cake. Whatever you want to do with it, that’s fine.

What’s not fine is for someone else to decide that it shouldn’t be your cake, and help themselves without your permission. 

It doesn’t matter why they don’t think it should be yours. They can argue that you’ve got more than enough cake; they can argue that you wouldn’t have been able to make the cake if someone else hadn’t produced the flour & eggs & sugar; they can argue that cake should be for everybody. They can argue that the big corporations make too much money out of cake; or that wider distribution of cake benefits society; or that if you haven’t got enough cake then maybe you should make some more; or simply that they really really like cake. Some of these may be true, but none of them is relevant. Because it’s your cake.

Nobody’s been able to explain to me why a story or a song should be any different in this regard than a cake - or a business, to use another comparison. If someone builds a business up and then hands over the day-to-day running to an employee, would we say that after 14 years she should lose her rights either to profit from the company or to control its direction? I don’t think we would. If someone builds a house and then rents it out, would we say that after 14 years of not living in the house he should lose his rights of ownership? Again, I doubt it. When you strip away the sound and fury, most of the arguments for reducing copyright seem to boil down to one of two:

1. I want free stuff
2. The internet has made it easier for people to steal stuff

We wouldn’t accept either of these as a good reason for removing other property rights. I don’t see why intellectual property should be any different.

Cake images © Michael Dannenberg. Used with permission. Because, so to speak, it's his cake. 

Further reading:
The ever-wise Sarah McIntyre in defence of copyright
Jonathan Emmett on why, even as a solid supporter of copyright, he's voting Green. I think I may do the same. Thanks to Jonathan for sending me a link to this.
John Degen on myths about copyright. I found this one on Sarah's blog.
The wonderful Joanne Harris - again, thanks to Sarah for the link. This one contains a cool little test to help you work out if you support the copyright principle or not.
Tom Chance, a former Green party spokesperson on Intellectual Property, gives his view
The Society of Authors's statement in response to concern over the Green Party's position. The Society's quick guide to copyright may be found here.

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John's latest book is the extremely silly Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Evilness of Pizza, illustrated by David Tazzyman and published by OUP.

Highwaymen and pirates - Nicola Morgan

All romantic and richly-dressed, swash-buckling and thigh-booted, breeches of brown doe-skin, rapiers atwinkle, mounted on ebony thoroughbreds - that's the glamorous highwaymen. And as for the pirate chiefs, well, fearsomely moustachioed, portly stomachs bursting through silver-buttoned jackets, with scarlet-breasted parrots joining in the comradely sea-shanties, slicing their ships through the waves with the sleekness of dolphins. Ahoy me hearties! Stand and deliver! Romantic rapscallions on highways and high seas.

Most of us love or have loved a good highwayman or pirate story and where would those tales be without the romance and swash-bucklingness, the sense of robbing the rich to give to the poor - or at least just robbing the rich in an era where all the laws were made for the rich and justice was hard to come by?

We don't much enjoy being reminded of the truth about highwaymen and pirates - that pirates ruthlessly and violently terrorised (and still do in some parts) honest seafarers bringing food or goods from country to country and that highwaymen were reckless and cruel in their robbery of people of all classes, ages and weaknesses. Dick Turpin's gang, for example, is said to have been responsible for countless violent robberies, mostly against people too poor to matter to the authorities, with gleeful torture and rape thrown in.

Which brings me to that other sort of "pirate", very different from both the parrot-ridden, shanty-singing, jolly-roger myth and the genuinely dangerous, ruthless robber of the seas: I'm talking about the scummy thieves who steal our work and prevent us being able to earn. I wish people wouldn't call them pirates, because there's really no comparison, either in perceived glamour or in power. Scummy thieves, they are. They just take what isn't theirs, without bravery, risk or effort.

This is close to my heart right now, as yesterday I received a Google alert, directing me to where I could (apparently) get free downloads of my ebooks. These are ebooks I published myself, no advance, no fee, no earnings unless people choose to pay the c£2 I dare to charge for them. No publisher to serve a take-down notice for me. They took me countless hours to create, and I paid real money for proof-reading, cover design, formatting and promotion. And three days before they appeared on this torrent site, I noticed that my sales on Amazon had plummeted to almost zero.

Well, thanks for that, to the thieves who put them up on the site.

And thanks, I must say, to people uncaring or unaware enough to download them.

I can't do anything about the site and the scummy thieves - though I'm following a few leads and doing what I can without spending a ridiculous amount of time. I contacted the Society of Authors, and, amongst other things, they suggested informing the Publishers Association about the pirate scummy thief site. If you're an SoA member, you'll find helpful articles in the members' section of the SoA website, by the way.

NB - incidental warning: I did not click on the links to download my books - including the audio version, which I was particularly intrigued about because I never created an audio version - and Kate Pool at the SoA said I was right to be cautious: "By no means all sites purporting to offer pirated copies are in fact doing so. In addition to entirely legitimate online retailers offering to sell new copies, or second-hand copies some are virus-ridden, and some are pfishing sites just after bank/personal details e.g. encouraging rights holders to contact them, and promising (not always truthfully) that they will remove the book from their site if the rights holder pays a fee." And I think, in fact, that's what this particular site was; which doesn't make it better, just different.

Anyway, as I say, I can't do much about the little thieves with their scummy sites. But I can do something about the uncaring or unaware behaviour of people who download from them.

And so can any of us. Two things. First, call them on what they're doing. Whether it's our kids or our friends, or casual acquaintances who drop into the conversation with a little laugh that they know a place where you can get any ebook/music free. Ask them (and yes, it can be done politely, and usually that's all it takes before the penny drops) exactly in what way deciding not to pay for a book or music or image because it's easy to steal is any different at all from shop-lifting? Explain that actually yes, writers need and deserve to be paid for their work, in exactly the same way as the shopkeeper or any other human does. But even if a writer happened to be very rich and moderately unsaintly (only one of which things I am), you still can't steal from them - just as if I left a cake cooling on a kitchen windowsill you wouldn't steal it. "But Nicola doesn't need that cake and anyway, I don't like her," doesn't make it OK to steal my cake.

And second, stop calling the people who steal the files and put them up there "pirates". Just stick to scummy little thieves. Because they are.

Most people, I still believe, are decent, and wouldn't do this if they understood and realised that it does hurt and that there are victims. Call me an idiot, but it is what I believe. And I think that making decent people understand is the best thing we can do.

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For my article on copyright for ALCS, see here.  Anne Rooney and John Dougherty have also blogged for ABBA on the topic before. So have I. (And so have others.)

PS At only a slight tangent and still on the subject of money, please note that there is NEW SOA ADVICE ABOUT FEES FOR AUTHOR/ILLUSTRATOR VISITS. If you detect my voice in it, there's a reason... Each author/illustrator is entirely at liberty to charge whatever feels right, but you might like to know what many were charging last year. And yes, every author/illustrator is different and every event/school/budget is different, but if your visit is valuable, give it a value. Interestingly, a lot of wonderful librarians and schools have retweeted that article, with supportive comments. Thanks, to all of them.  

The Right to Copy - John Dougherty

I really shouldn't look at the comments on the Guardian website. Too many of them seem to be written by clever people being wilfully stupid.

Take some of the comments on this article, for instance. If you can't be bothered to click the link: Philip Pullman, currently president of the Society of Authors, is cross about internet piracy.

I have no doubt that there is a debate to be had about copyright legislation and whether in this digital age we need to take another look at it. But what annoys me about many of the arguments below the article is that they appear to be made from a position of either ignorance or selfishness. Let's take a quick look at a few:

• Why should I worry about ripping off rich people? Leaving aside the questionable ethical standpoint that it's okay to rip off people if they have more than you (though I do wonder if those who put forward this argument are okay with being ripped off themselves by others even less well off) - most authors aren't rich
• There's no difference between illegally downloading something and borrowing it from the library. Actually, there is. When you borrow it from the library, the author is recompensed
• Authors should write for love of their art, not for money. My personal view, actually, is that in an ideal world nobody would work solely for money*. But I wouldn't be so pompous as to tell anyone else that they should work for free, whatever other joys their work brought them, and I object to anyone telling me the same
• If I'm not going to buy it, but I download it and read it, the author hasn't lost anything/It's not like stealing; the author still has his work, I've just got it as well. I think these two arguments are really the same, and for some reason this is the argument that winds me up most of all. If you download it for any reason - even curiosity - then it has value to you. If it has value to you, pay for it - and you don't get to decide how much to pay**. If I've made something, it belongs to me and I get to decide under what conditions I share it with you

Writing's a job. If I do it well enough that other people want to read what I've written, I should get paid for it. So if you want to read my work, please don't tell me that you should get it for free and I should be grateful for your time. The world, as one of the wiser Guardian commentators put it, doesn't owe you free entertainment. And neither do I.

*I'd love to unpick this further, but I'd wear out your patience before the end of the post
**unless that's the model the seller has chosen
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John's next book:  

 Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Badness of Badgers, illustrated by David Tazzyman & published by OUP in January 2014

Copyright education - by Nicola Morgan

A while ago, I was tidying up after a school event. The librarian had already started her next class, which, I quickly surmised, was the annual “tell them about copyright and plagiarism” lesson for new senior school pupils. Hooray! So, I listened in.

After explaining something about copyright and plagiarism, she gave the reasons why they shouldn’t break the laws. Well, she gave two reasons.

1. You might get caught plagiarizing in an exam or coursework and then you could be disqualified. 
2. You are committing a crime and if you get caught you could get a criminal record and/or pay other penalties. 

These reasons, though true, are neither the whole truth, nor the most important truths, nor the arguments most likely to convince. We (people in general) are not very good at risk analysis. These risks seem far off and unlikely and once we observe that in fact it’s very possible to break copyright over and over again and not get caught, the argument loses all power.

Here are some better reasons (which she may have given after I'd left):

1. If you break copyright laws, you are stealing; in doing so you are directly hurting individual, real people, most often people who really can’t afford to be victims of your theft. (When people hear specific stories of hardship, this is powerful, and most young people care deeply about such things. In fact, it’s my belief that most people of any age care, and those who don’t are perhaps unreachable anyway. Some people will steal and hurt whatever we do or say.)
2. If you download illegally, you are also putting money into the rapacious pockets of large corporations. (Most people don’t particularly like the thought of benefiting huge companies while harming individuals.) 
3. If you wrote something and discovered that, although you were making no money from it, someone else was, how would you feel? How would you feel if that happened over and over again, and you remained poor while the people stealing it grew richer and lazier? (The “imagine if it were you” argument is a strong one.) 

I’ve been thinking (and talking!) about copyright and its effects recently, and I’d like to draw your attention to some things.

1. ALCS have produced some wonderful classroom resources, for primary pupils here and secondary pupils here, which outline the issues in useful and clear ways. Consider pointing teachers in their direction?

2. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 27, para 2: “Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author." Just in case anyone thinks we don't have any moral authority to protect our work.

3. You might be interested in the story in Der Spiegel of what happened when Julia Schramm, of Germany's Pirate Party, which campaigns on an anti-copyright platform, discovered that her book was available on an illegal download site. When she sold publishing rights to Random House, what did she think that meant, if she doesn't agree with copyright anyway and allegedly regards Intellectual Property as "disgusting"? Surely a better course of action for her would have been to self-publish or crowd-fund the project, then assigning a Creative Commons Licence?

4. What about TrafficPaymaster, the "scraping" software sold by HowToCorp? Do read this Guardian article. It makes the point that HowToCorp was founded by Grant Shapps, now chairman of the Tory party. He handed the company over to his wife, but I'm guessing there's one member of the Government who just may not be on our side in the copyright argument. I do hope I'm wrong, because we need governments to defend existing laws, if nothing else.

5. And companies that profit from illegal download sites? Danuta Kean explains it brilliantly here. Please read her full piece but these were some points that stuck out for me:

• That the illegal filesharing sites iFile.it and Library.nu are alleged to have made $11m from ebook downloads. 
• That "BitTorrent –the technology of choice for illegal filesharing – is estimated to account for 18% of global Internet traffic." 
• That when the FBI indicted seven executives of the file-sharing site Megaupload, those executives, including Kim Dotcom (!), had allegedly earned $175m from the site. In 2010 Dotcom took home $42m.  

(Quoted with Danuta's permission...)

6. Here is another online article, the Trichordist’s Letter to Emily White, including a personal story of the negative effect on a writer. As Danuta and the Trichordist both argue, it’s not just the file-sharing sites but the companies that sell the hardware to both parties in the transaction; the sites that profit from advertising and hardware sales (Google, ebay, Facebook etc); and the finance companies that provide the money-handling facilities when people sign up for premium subscriptions to illegal file-sharing sites. It seems as if everyone benefits except the creator.

That’s the point: I don’t believe I have a right to earn a living from my writing. What I do believe is that if anyone is going to earn anything from my writing, that person should be me. Not only me, but me foremost, me in control. That's what copyright means. It doesn't mean greedy, rapacious miserliness. It means being able to share in the results of our own creativity, talent and hard work.

And this is important for young people to realise because they, too, are creators. One day, many of them will try to make a career in a creative industry, not only to pay their bills but to contribute to the culture of their time. What will that be like if in the meantime they and we have allowed the Cult of Free to hold sway so that paying the bills is not only difficult but impossible? Creative people must eat, too.

Some people disagree with the whole idea of copyright protection. Fine. Disagree away. I'm telling you why I support it. And why I want young people to know the score. Then they can decide.

Edited to add: Thanks to a friend on Twitter for pointing this out to me today - Japan introduces a tough anti-piracy law.  

Caught read-handed... by Nicola Morgan

Recently, the Guardian reported the story of author Terry Goodkind, who "turned to Facebook to name and shame a fan who pirated a digital version of his latest novel".  As usual when a case of theft is revealed, there were arguments on both sides, regarding whether words should be free or authors should be entitled to protect their work and earn from it. Paulo Coelho is quoted as calling on "pirates of the world" to "unite and pirate everything I've ever written". Coelho has every right to say this of his own work - he is exercising the degree of control (or lack of) that he chooses.

However, I do not recall him calling on pirates of the world to pirate steal everything that anyone else has ever written. 

And this is what the proponents of the "words should be free" argument so often forget. Surely the choice should be made by the creator of the content? Otherwise it's theft.

Whether or not illegal downloading increases sales is utterly beside the point. It may well do so. All my self-published ebooks are DRM-free, not because I want them to be stolen but because I want my readers to be able to read them on any device in as many places as they wish, and if the price I must pay is that some people will steal, that's a price I'll pay. That does not mean that I am happy with anyone stealing it, or that I can afford to be stolen from. But frankly, even that misses the point: theft is still theft however much the victim can absorb the loss. 

Recently on my Crabbit At Home blog, I linked to an excellent but long piece arguing why illegal downloading is morally wrong, but to be honest, when will we stop making the arguments so complicated?

Taking something without the owner's permission is theft and theft is wrong. I grant that if you'd die without the stolen item, it's forgivable. But it's still theft. And last thing I heard, books may be important but you don't generally die for the lack of one.

It really is that simple.  

Recently, I downloaded the remarkably wonderful Adblock program, a piece of free software which instantly removes all adverts from my internet experience, including those dreaded "belly-fat" ads on Facebook. After I'd downloaded, I was given the option of paying a contribution, if I wished. I paid $5.

A few days later, I received this email (my bold):

Hi Nicola
I wanted to say thanks for paying for AdBlock at http://chromeadblock.com/pay. I wrote AdBlock hoping to make people's lives better, and you just told me that I managed to do it :) Thank you very, very much!  

It's been over a year since I quit my job, asking my users to pay what they can afford for AdBlock to fund its development. Most users (like, 99%) choose NOT to pay, so you should know that I appreciate your support that much more!

In any case, Katie and I feel that this is important work, so I'll keep working on AdBlock as long as I am able.  Thank you! :D

99% of people choose not to pay? I'm not sure whether I'm shocked or just mildly surprised. I'm sure that the vast majority of these, however, would not dream of downloading illegally. Would they?

Those are quite different scenarios, different choices by the creators, but each is about the struggle of the creator to earn from his or her work.

When we buy a book, we have several choices, of format, of price and of retailer, new or secondhand. Or we can borrow free from a library or a friend. It seems to me those are sufficient choices to make illegal downloading a purely selfish and/or ignorant crime that never has any justification. 

It seems to me that if we value creation, it is morally right to respect the creator and not steal from him. Many creators - Paulo Coelho and the Adblock guy, for example - are being extremely generous in their offering. Many writers, especially those who control their own output, are being similarly generous, trying to offer many options in price and free downloads. Other writers, whose books and pricing are controlled by their publishers, behave generously in many other ways, for example by going to great lengths to give up time to campaign for libraries - including school libraries, where we don't earn PLR, and none of us grudge for one moment a book lent free in a school library. 

That's what genuine book-lovers do. They do not steal from writers.