Is piracy mainstream now? (Anne Rooney)

 Every now and then over the last 10-15 years, there has been a little flurry of panic and outrage as another author discovers there are free downloads of their book(s) available somewhere online. Seasoned authors point out that they can send as many take-down notices as they like, the sites will just ignore them and be unprosecutable because they are always under the non-jurisdiction of some bit of the cyberhinterland. Google some of my books and there are TEN THOUSAND links to illegal downloads.

I could spend my whole life sending pointless take-down notices, so I send none. Lots of those sites don't even have any books; they are just harvesting email addresses or depositing the digital equivalent of doggy dung, not in a plastic bag but on the gullible consumer's device. This style of piracy is part of the landscape. Like shops trying to stop shoplifting, it's a fight that will never be won, though we can possibly pick off a few of the more amateur attempts.

But this year has seen something rather different,involving large and generally respectable organisations from public libraries to the BBC.

The Internet Archive Open 'Library' has been scanning any physical book it can lay its hands on, uploading the files and offering them as a free digital 'loan' through its worldwide library. It's hardly the first attempt to make all books illegally available, but as it doesn't require the potential pirate-reader to register a credit card or any other details, it's probably more attractive to a wary book-thief. It also brazenly declares that it's legal under US 'fair use' rules. Firstly, it isn't — that's just a lie. (The Trumpesque stance of saying something untrue and browbeating people into believing it doesn't actually make it true.) And secondly, not all the world is the US. It most certainly is not legal in the UK. Boston Public Library (shame on them) have been providing physical books to OL to facilitate the theft and defended the practice to the Society of Authors. But it's still illegal.

Another, similar, illegal e-lending site appeared in March. With a little coy request that people don't upload copyright material it claims to have done its bit for protection, though of course it takes no notice if people do upload copyright material. And they are probably perfectly happy with that, as the site would have little appeal if all it hosted was books by long-dead people that have either vanished without trace or are available to own from Project Gutenberg.

Even this is not the worst. At least these are contentious sites and although the public might be duped into theft by spurious and grandiose claims of legality and open access, they are still on the fringe of public engagement and discourse. The last couple of months have seen widely respected organisations — the BBC and LinkedIn — taint themselves.

The BBC news website published a story (in distinctly admiring tones) about teachers live-streaming themselves reading entire picture books for their pupils to listen to at bedtime. Excuse me? Would that be the same BBC that kicks up an almighty fuss when bits of its programmes appear, unauthorised, on YouTube?

I have written to the BBC asking them either to take down the story or at least to amend it to point out that this is illegal copyright violation and harmful to the very writers and illustrators that the teachers presumably admire (or they wouldn't be using their work). So far, they are finding it tricky to resolve. Funny, that. If I were spotted encouraging someone to put unpaid-for goods in their bag at a supermarket and bypass the tills, I don't imagine the supermarket would find it tricky to resolve. I fully accept that primary school teachers may not realise they are breaking the law (though really, they SHOULD know how to use the tools of their job legally). But for the BBC to endorse and applaud criminal abuse is a sad sign of the times.

And LinkedIn. It has a service called SlideShare originally aimed at professionals with that PowerPoint malaise that means they are incapable of talking to more than one person at a time without breaking out in bullet points. If it were for $$geeks to share their 50 points about worthwhile investments or whatever, and they chose to do it, fine. But it's now full of 'slide shows' that are five slides 'about' a book with a link to an illegal download on one or more of the slides. Do LInkedIn care? No reader, they do not. If you wade through their intractable site and find the link to complain, they suggest you send a take-down notice to the original poster. If you write saying 'I don't want to hear your advice to send a take-down notice', they still suggest you send a take-down notice to the original poster. Again, it's a legitimate and respected company endorsing or turning a blind eye to crime on their patch — indeed, hosting it on their platform.

This, by the way, is why we need the new EU copyright legislation. It would make LinkedIn and their ilk liable for these infringements and so give copyright holders a one-stop shop to get stolen content taken down.

Why does it matter? This is our work. We have spent a long time producing this work and are paid, on the whole, very little. Authors (writers and illustrators) are scraping a living. The more stolen copies of our work circulate, the fewer legitimate copies will be bought or borrowed from libraries and so the less we will earn. The more stolen copies circulate, the fewer books publishers will be prepared to invest in producing. Readers will lose out in the end. Quality books are expensive to produce; why bother if it's going to be stolen?

There is a wider issue, too, in that if we allow various types of criminal activity to be ignored, there is a thin-end-of-the-wedge effect. We've seen that with the kind of abuse certain groups of people are now routinely subjected to by offenders who don't fear any consequences, and possibly don't even see anything wrong in it. If a teacher violates copyright reading to her young pupils, where are those pupils going to learn respect for the property of others? And tomorrow's citizens really need to realise that digital property is still property as more and more property is digital every day. Those ££s in your bank account? They have no physical reality, you know. If you can steal my book, how is it different if I steal your digital ££s?

And finally... The pictures I've used here reflect a different, popular narrative. That pirates are an exciting, freedom-loving, bunch on the margins of society. That they are outside the laws of any particular country, seeking adventure and danger on the open seas. Yes — but also they were (and are) violent criminals with no regard for the rights, property or bodies of others, treating rich and poor alike and avoiding all social responsibility. (I used one of my own books* because I didn't want it to look as though I was criticising anyone else's book — there are other pirate books, equally good and better.)

Today's digital pirates cash in on the first bit, the romantic heroes dodging danger. They cite the 'information wants to be free' mantra and claim to be doing public good. But information IS free — it's creative work that is not free. And they are doing public harm. It would help if people remember that pirates routinely slaughter the crew of ships in the Indian Ocean and other places, just to get their hands on some money. They are not figures of romantic heroism but straight-out criminal thugs. It would also help if we started to label the consumers of pirated goods as thieves, receivers of stolen goods, fences, and so on. Public broadcaster tells you how to do crime; network for professionals and thieves; primary-school teacher and stolen-book fence; doesn't sound so good, does it?

*All text and illustrations from Pirates: Dead Men's Tales, copyright Carlton books; illustrations by Joe Wilson; text by me; all these pages are available legally on Amazon Look Inside.

Anne Rooney

Chair, Educational Writers' Group, Society of Authors

Dinosaur Planet, Lonely Atlas
Winner 9-12 School Library Association prize, 2018; shortlisted, Royal Society Young People's Book Award 2018

 

See the Dinos at Hay Festival, 1st June 2019

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

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.