Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Paul Cornell on E-Books & Illegal Downloading

Paul Cornell has a wonderfully detailed post on e-books and then illegal downloading. Illustrates a rather interesting development. Here is an excerpt:

It's hard, these days, to tell people they've done a minor wrong. Because one is now either a saint (or whatever the atheist version of that is) or a pedophile. Illegal download sites look perfectly normal, and ominous orchestral tones don't strike up when you visit one. 'Everybody' does it, and people who do are often quite surprised at the thought that they're doing something wrong. But they are. A small thing. They're each stealing small sums of money from creators. But put those minor wrongs together, and they become an enormous problem. Vilifying these people rather than educating or preventing them will just convince them that their minor wrong is cool and rebellious. A lot of them tell themselves that already. They're sticking it to the man. The trouble is, the man in question is me. And those like me.

The rest is [HERE] It's eye opening.

2 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

Well said. It's something that so many of us don't really think about.

Harry Markov said...

Or admit to have done...