Why is online piracy bad? Traditional piracy was bad because it necessarily excluded. Online piracy is different--it doesn't exclude. So there's a distinction between traditional piracy and online piracy. Is online piracy, then, so to speak, a misnomer? Why do traditional books cost? Publishing, producing the physical book. How much of the price accrues to the author or artist? So since online piracy rids us of the middlemen, ie the publisher, bookbinder, then we should pay only the author or artist. So the cost should be dictated only by the mental labor. But then again, who really deserves to be paid over and over again based on work they did in the past, often once-off? Why don't we pay architects again and again for the buildings they design that are used repeatedly by different people who inhabit or seek shelter in them?

But how much does the average author earn under the traditional scheme anyway? (According to an online comment, 8.5% of the cover price of the book.) How much does J.K. Rowling earn? Are the earnings or the profit what drives them? What exactly drives them? What drove the likes of: Tolstoy? Flaubert? Proust? Joyce? Pushkin? Shakespeare?

Why is on-line piracy good? Free publicity. Out-of-print material (so the demands of the consumer are not subject to profit-making or cost-effective considerations).

How are books different from music? SOPA Why is Paulo Coelho an exception? Is he even an exception? Extrapolation from Coelho's case--piracy as a way to winnow out real talent first, then publish in traditional book form?

How about library book sales and thrift stores? The earnings don't accrue to authors either.

What if the author is dead? Whose labor is it supposed to be then?

The problem of quality books that are appreciated by few--this often results in out-of-print books. The problem is the assumption that high demand always equates to high quality.

-- EugeneThong - 12 Oct 2012