You might have heard of authors (me included) complaining about people pirating our books. It’s a huge problem these days for both print and e-authors. It’s also a problem for people in the music and movie business. For example, a rough copy of the latest X-men movie has been pirated before the release date.
Here’s a link to an article about the founders of Pirate Bay who have been involved in a court case regarding music downloads. The decision has come back and the judge has sentenced them to a years jail term, and they were ordered to pay $4.5 million in damages. They are appealing the sentence.
Here’s the link.
Samhain Publishing is having a Spring Fling. The fling starts today with a scavenger hunt. There will be a new scavenger hunt every day plus there are some free Spring Fling stories for you to download. I’m part of the scavenger hunt on 22 April, and I have a free short story called Wild Thing available on 20 April. Enjoy!
Related posts:
April 19th, 2009 at 8:31 am · Link
Shelley,
I agree that pirating is a terrible thing to do and I certainly would not be guilty of it.
I must admit though, that sometimes when I look at the price of things and see the often obscene profits the companies make due to the over-pricing on their products, I can understand why so much piracy happens these days.
April 19th, 2009 at 8:54 am · Link
Yes, I remember when I started the previous job to the one I’m in now, and one of my co-workers was telling me how he’d just downloaded a movie off the internet that wasn’t yet released as a DVD. I said, “Don’t tell me that. You do know I went to film school, right?” I gave him a brief reality check on the difference between stealing from a faceless corporation – his version – and stealing from someone like me, someone who spent years and thousands of dollars producing a film, yet having to work an unrelated day job in order to live.
April 19th, 2009 at 4:34 pm · Link
Have a good week, Shelley.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:53 am · Link
Book pirates don’t think anything about taking money out of the hands of writers, most of which don’t make a lot of money.
I wonder how they’d like it if their bosses expected them to work for free.