Posted by Charles at 11:54 AM
Thursday, January 20, 2011
This past week, the “controversy of the week” happens to be eBook Piracy and Copyright. Troisroyaumes and Jamyee Goh have link round-ups in their corresponding websites.
I’m an author so I do want to get paid for my work, whether it’s print or electronic. However, I live in a country where right across the street, vendors are selling pirated DVDs (the fact that Blu-ray never caught on here--or have yet to--should clue you in as to the living conditions here) so to be naive about piracy is ludicrous. In an ideal world, people would compensate everyone justly but the reality is we don’t live in a fair society, nor is the distribution of wealth equitable. That’s not to justify piracy, but it’s there to shed light as to how the current practices and laws can be unfair.
Having said that, when it comes to the Philippines, I find the idea that authors are complaining about eBook piracy funny. Not because it’s irrelevant, but because there’s bigger fish to fry when it comes to infringement on copyright, at least in this country. The entire university ecosystem subsists on photocopying books and textbooks.
