[ETA: The person below now understands what she did was wrong. However, I am leaving this intact as an educational post to prove my point.]

Take this person, for instance. This author rants about the scourge of ebook piracy and then proceeds to lift an entire article off of CNN and reposts it, without permission, in her blog, IN THE VERY SAME POST. Really, people? Really?

I’ve saved a screencap of the post and my response to her in a screencap. (No, it is not further copyright infringement for me to repost her blog post, by the way, because I am doing so for the edification of the public and for the purposes of critique.) The author in question did not critique Matt Frisch’s article or quote from it; she COPIED it, WORD-FOR-WORD, and PASTED it into her entry. The fact that she attributed it to the author changes nothing. CNN and Mr. Frisch aren’t making a dime off of her blog post. She is now a pirate. She is now a “thief.”

I put the word “thief” in Scare Quotes because some authors bandy it about whenever they talk about piracy — of print books, of ebooks, of films, of music, of software. The problem with this conflation of copyright infringement with theft is that we’re using a moral judgment to talk about a legal concept in the same discussion and failing to differentiate between a loss of profit due to non-profit infringement and a loss of profit due to a loss of physical property, not to mention a loss of profit due to for-profit/commercial piracy ventures.

By its very definition, theft describes a loss in physical property by an owner. Physical property and intellectual property are not the same. Period.  It astounds me how many times people have to point this out before blogging authors ‘get it.’

It is so difficult for me to respect fellow authors when they don’t know the difference between a format for software, counter-culture, creative license alternatives to copyright, and copyright infringement, like Alexie Sherman. I’m sad now, because I cannot support one of the few Native American writers of literature. How can I give this man my money when he thinks the Internet is a harbinger of doom?

The man could take a few pointers from Paul Coelho, for one. As well as a heavy dose of reality.

This is kind of the way I feel about Shiloh Walker (only she’s not representing any oppressed group that I’m not already a part of obviously). I enjoy the genres in which she writes. I think writers who look to the future and believe in actively engaging with their readers are to be lauded. However, I can NOT, in good conscience, give my money to someone who thinks that cutting off someone’s lifeline (the Internet) is a proportional response to copyright infringement. I’ll buy her books used or rent them from a library or not read them.

The logic of the “three strikes” law is absurd. Given the amount of activities in our daily lives that rely on the internet for everything from telephone directories to maps to movie times to reviews to sources of income to cheap methods of communication, I would argue that having an Internet connection is more important than having a car in many cases, especially if you live in a metropolitan area. I know I rely on the web for my livelihood, as does Mrs. Walker for at least part of hers. I use it to order my medicines, check the weather, blog, write, communicate, and coordinate travel plans. Such is our burden: the limiting factor of our existence becomes an indispensable one.

Some thoughts to consider:

· We don’t take shoplifters’ driver’s licenses away when they steal comic books. Or TVs (such is the common comparison, despite the innacurate comparison of physical theft to IP infringement).

· Most people share an ISP and an IP address with other family members or roommates. Punishing innocent people, including the disabled, the mobility-impaired, and the innocent along with the guilty is not the best way to win supporters for your cause.

· Wi-fi signals that consumers set up can leave them open to roving attacks and parasitic activity by neighbors and crackers (the hackers without ethics kind, not the back-country white people kind).

Let me be clear: I have had people plagiarize my work. I have had people infringe on my copyrights by taking my work without permission. I have had people take my work and try to make money off of it (commercial piracy). Guess which one of the three pissed me off the least?

When I was plagiarized, it hurt like hell. When someone pirated my work to make a few cents, I was steamed. The person who just downloaded my stuff without paying for it? Who says they would have paid for it in the first place?

That’s not where I want to focus my time and energy. The people who resell books on eBay make me steamed. I want them fined and kicked out. Those are the true ebook “pirates.”

Illegal file-sharing is not the same as commercial piracy. THIS is commercial piracy. They are not the same. Just saying. Shame on eBay for letting sellers continue to break the law with impunity.