Quick Takes
- Georgia Aileen, the american bully rescue mutt, is whuffling and twitching on her bed here in my office/foyer. It’s a good life, I think, being the dog that owns Marcia and I.
- I pre-ordered Robin Sloan’s next book, Moonstruck, this evening. I *think* I have everything he’s written, and I enjoy the hell out of his premises, his characters, and his writing style.
- Looking back in email searching for something else, I came across something I wrote to Jerry Pournelle back in December 2011:
Congress is a bunch of loons whose only concern is where the money is coming from for the next election. Yeah, there are occasional principled and knowledgeable folks there, but follow the money. Who goes to jail and who doesn’t?
The record companies are said to rob their artists blind … and no one cares one whit. Their old business model has gone the way of the buggy whips, and their response? Artists sue for not getting paid, and the companies sue the fans of the artists. My only real thought on your comments below is that suing your customers is a great way to ensure that when you’re done, you don’t have any customers.
Use guilt? Sure. Market the hell out of yourself online and in the social media scene. There’s plenty of folks making a living doing just that. This includes former nobodies like Pomplamoose and Zoe Keating and Robin Sloan, and well-established authors like Gaiman and Scalzi.
And it’s pertinent to this conversation that it’s TRIVAL to get a copy of nearly anything today. So, on a purely technical basis, I need never pay for content again. I pay for books and music to support the artists and creators who do the work I love.
Those who won’t pay, mostly never would. You can make it so difficult to use a DRM copy that you make legitimate customers run screaming, and it won’t stop the “piracy” for a moment. And while we’re at it, let’s not keep helping the bastards by framing the argument in terms of assault by ship on the high seas.
It’s silly to argue that every unpaid copy is a lost sale, but that’s what the BSA and the MafiAA would have our legislators believe. But for our bought and paid representatives, it’s polite to at least pretend to believe in the people who fund your next campaign. And that “pretend” is what gets turned into sausage. Errr, law.
- There was a .signature quote from another email I glanced at:
My favorite yoga pose is the one where I stand upright, watching the class through the window while eating a cheeseburger. — @shazzz_lee
- Finally, I broke the shorts streak this week – it was cold and raining today, so back on with the jeans for walking the dog … but she still went and walked into the reservoir when we got to that point in the journey. Yay, dogs.
