I've never understood that concept when you consider libraries. The number of books I've read through a library without paying for in any way, shape or form is staggering compared to the books I've downloaded. How am I cheating someone any less if I read their book by taking it out of the library than if I download it? I'm genuinely curious about this differentiation.

~DarkSov~

The fact is simple: technology has forced the clock back to the days before the establishment of copyright laws (I looked it up, and they begun to be effective in the early eighteen hundreds, more in some countries than in others - the USA used to be notorious for pirate-friendly copyright laws, with the result that every visiting author from Charles Dickens on would launch a strafing run on American leglislation, and as late as the nineteen-sixties JRR Tolkien had to make an infrequent public statement against a virtually pirated edition of LOTR).

Now, the truth is that until copyright became an ironbound law, one did not become rich as a writer. Shakespeare made enough to become the leading landowner in his little home town, but he did that as a stage impresario, not as a writer - he barely cared about printed reproduction, and (if we are to take Heminges and Condell seriously) had only begun to think of a definitive revised edition when he died. In general, people wrote when they were already rich, or when they had a post or the protection of an important personage.

The rise of a capitalistic publishing industry - which I date to the late 17th and early 18th century - increased the number of professional writers, but certainly did not improve their lot. In fact, the Grub Street hack, the full time writer catering to the various needs of the ever-grinding presses, was a by-word for hunger and desperacy. There are a few exceptions, especially in France; but even Voltaire owed his prosperous life as much to his very ready pen - he wrote more or less continuously on every subject under the sun - and very high-placed admirers, from Madame Pompadour to Catherine II of Russia, as to his continent-wide popularity, and at any rate was hardly above rounding it off with illegal financial transactions and smuggling. (His relationship with Frederick II of Prussia eventually broke down over his apparently unstoppable eagerness for disreputable deals, and the reason why he eventually settled in Ferney near Geneva had a lot to do with the nearness of the French border.) A writer who, like Samuel Johnson, had no taste for dishonest dealings and no illustrious patron, could only be expected to come, like Johnson, to a modest prosperity, and that after decades of back-breaking work.

We are back to the age of Dr.Johnson now. Publishing is still a capitalistic enterprise, but it is looking more and more like the hand-to-mouth operations of Grubby Street and less and less like the arrogant cultural colossi of yesteryear. Copy is and remains in demand, but the prospect of wealth, or even of prosperity, is increasingly threatened. The related field of music has already reverted to the pre-recording situation where the largest source of income is public performance.

I have no idea where we go from here. I am not going to argue with you about the pracitcality of DMRs, you are probably right, and at any rate the unstoppable practice of piracy make them a marginal issue. All I can see is that copyright is a corpse that walks, and that this can only be bad news to authors.

Edited at 2010-08-25 01:26 pm (UTC)