But it really was something to go through.

Over twenty years, I rose to a senior technical position in the Maritime Industry, Lectured in University for almost five years, and then repeated the feat in the operational side of the offshore oil industry because it caught my interest. Since retiring have been used as a trouble-shooter in the latter field.

Be an adult and walk away from it now.

Amy

Too short to acknowlege the truth and fight for it?

I don’t think so.

Get over it.

Amy

But if you don’t want to share your technical experience and show that it is deeper and broader than mine, and if you think it is beneath you to show how my arguments are sophistic, then I’m inclined to think that you don’t.

Deborah

At my age, I can afford to be bold and your CV doesn’t match mine in either depth or breadth.

Let’s stop wasting each other’s time with this nonsense. I’ve a manuscript to work on and your need for an explanation of the sophistry contained in your arguments suggests it would be more hard work than it’s worth.

We’ll just agree to differ and go our separate ways.

Amy

You think that you might have more “hands-on” technical experience than I do. Well, maybe you do.

But to set the record straight on my end, for 5 years at Microsoft I had a lab of 50 networked servers. I did all the maintenance on the servers and the network myself, plus purging all the machines, installing nightly new builds and testing them. At Ingersoll-Rand, for 7 years I spent a good part of each day with machinists, welders and assemblers, verifying the correctness of engineering drawings before they were published. At Crowley Maritime I wore a hard hat, drove a forklift and repaired tugboats. And I’ve rebuilt engines, transmissions, and done all the troubleshooting and maintenance on my own cars, especially my two babies - rotary engine RX-7s.

Now maybe you have more hands-on technical experience than I do, but it’s rather bold of you to think that you do, without knowing anything about me.

Deborah

It really wasn’t my intent to be patronizing, it’s just that using filesharing as a marketing tool is a relatively new way of looking at things and I thought you might like to hear about it. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails just made 1.2 million dollars by uploading his latest CD to the Pirate Bay. The list of similar successes go on, but I’m not sure you want to hear about it.

Filesharing isn’t a new technology, true enough. But it wouldn’t exist at all if it weren’t for new computing and internet technologies, hence the horse/car comparison. And again, many people are talking about it in these terms and arguing that what’s happening is a technological change in the way we do things.

And I hate to keep coming back to the library issue but it seems necessary nonetheless, to point out that the library does not pay full price to the author for every book that is checked out. This is simply a fact, that people read books for free when they check them out of the library - thousands of them, millions of them. The libraries may pay fees, but it must be a pittance compared to the full retail value of the books they lend out. I don’t know what exactly they pay, so I could be wrong here. But it really doesn’t make sense that they would pay full price to the author for a copy of the book everytime they lend it out.

You say that my arguments are “sophistry”, but you don’t give any reasons why you think so. And they really aren’t just my silly ideas, I got them from people who’ve thought long and hard about this. And I considered them and the evidence myself for quite a long time before deciding they had some merit.

Also, I don’t think I ever said that you should just lie down and take it. If I said something that sounded like that, I apologize.

But under the DMCA provisions you can write to the website posting your work without your permission and ask them to take it down. By law they have to, and most websites that are subject to DMCA takedowns are reporting that they obey the requests immediately.

I actually have a lot more to say on this subject, but at this point I’m not sure that I should.

In point of fact, dmars, you’ve not made one single rational point. Your comparisons are not accurate:

You brought up libraries and yet, it is YOU who don’t understand that libraries don’t give away books but rather pay use fees and use public funding to pay for the books they use. Comparing this to theft is apples to screwdrivers.

You bring up updating technologies as in horses to cars but this is not about a new technology. This is about theft of copyright. The issue isn’t one of not wanting books to be in electronic format from paper, it’s not wanting to have tens of thousands of copies made of our books without paying for them.

Here’s one for you - can I walk into your house and “share” your television or computer? Because hey, I need one and well, yours is nice and I’ll totally buy one in the future after I test yours out and all.

Or oh I know! Identity theft is totally common these days so why don’t I just help myself to the money in your checking account. Because well it happens and you’re a dinosaur if you don’t admit it.

The reality is - yes, people will always do selfish things like theft. Like cheating and hurting other people. All kinds of wrongdoing happens every day. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to smile and agree that hey I should simply accept people stealing from me.

My background is as technical as yours, unusual in a romance writer, and probably more hands-on. This allows me to note the fineness (technically) with which you qualify your statements, most of which align with the school of thought that suggests “if rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it.” (Something rarely thought by the victims)

To call file sharing a marketing tool is sophistry, to accept that some benefits might accrue from the act of theft is pragmatism.

Where do you personally draw the line?

For the rest N.J.Walters has captured my view of the reality we face.

Amy