Copy protection for Notecards (authors/writers/publishing)

I'm saying that I don't believe that it is fair that people who produce content can be ripped off so easily as they can be now. I'm saying I don't believe that switching to a system like the groups you cite use would be right for me or right for my business. What I like most about the work I do is that I can help people and I can *know* that I have helped people. If I were to licence my work as part of some great library, I'd never know how many people actually read my work and I would feel like there was little point in writing it as I'd have no idea if anyone ever read it. When people pay me for my work, in world, and I get told so, I feel good because I know that I've sold someone something they will find useful.
Being part of a great online library wouldn't give me that as I'd have no way of knowing if people actually read my work or found it useful, and I wouldn't get that warm feeling which comes from people buying something I made because they like it... heck I probably wouldn't even know who read it. To me, that matters, because when I see someone I know has bought my work, or a big community name is reading it, I feel happy that I've made a difference and helped spread knowledge.

To put it simply : using a library system like that deprives me of quite a lot of the joy I get from the spread of my work, and does not solve the moral issue I have with people getting away with theft.

Some people say, very simply : "it doesn't matter what you create in SL. Either you let people use a copy of it as they like after you sell it, or you stop making things". These people forget that it takes a great deal of time and effort to make what I make in SL, and I earn next to nothing from it. Thus, if I were to one day get annoyed enough with piracy, I could simply stop making my product, or stop offering it for public sale.

It's very simple : the content creators make the stuff everyone uses. If they feel they are being treated unfairly, they can, and will, simply stop making the stuff, or even worse, keep it non-public or never make it at all.
They can do this because the economy in SL is such that artists and writers make almost nothing from their work anyway.

If you want good quality content in SL, you have to give content creators the tools to make sure their wishes are respected as is reasonably possible. If you don't the quality of content in SL suffers, and this makes SL a less interesting place for *everyone*.


Webscriptions and Fictionwise may exist. They may even be profitable. This does not matter to me, because it does not address the moral problem I have with people agreeing to buy something under certain conditions, and then violating those conditions. It is at the very least breach of contract, and stealing. If they do it intentionally, it is also lying and deliberately making a contract you have no intention of keeping. It's immoral because it is a form of theft and a disrespect to those who chose to make you offers when they did not have to.

I like the current system because it discourages people from stealing my work - and when people buy it I feel good that I've helped someone and I somehow know a little bit about that person from the fact they've bought my work. There's a degree of personality and individuality to it, a sense of connectedness that one doesn't get from contributing to a library.

If you enjoy writing something, and decide to charge a modest fee for it so that you can earn enough from it to spend enjoying your SL... how would you feel if people decided to take advantage of you and intentionally break your terms of sale, costing you money, by giving what you made to someone else, possibly even profiting from ripping you off by charging money for the ripped copies?

Would it motivate you to keep writing, or would it motivate you to stop offering your products in SL until SL had better content protection?

I know that perfect content protection is impossible. I know that very good content protection is impractical as users won't buy things with heavy content protection.
Thankfully, I'm not asking for either of these. I'm just asking for the most basic, simple form of protection, which is that if the creator has clearly indicated within the permissions system that they do not want their written work copied or transferred..... then control-C keyboard shortcuts should not be able to get around that in 5 seconds flat! It is unreasonable that anyone who knows how to copy-paste can get around the 'no copy' flag in the permissions system so easily.


I agree that most people who write notecards don't care if they're copied. Some of us, however, are writers, and we very much do care. I believe content creators should have the right to sell only *one* copy of their work to other people, and make it difficult for the person to violate the terms of sale.

Perhaps the solution is to leave notecards alone, and create a new type of data format - an 'ebook', which has a much longer length limit than a notecard, and which one can set as uncopyable both in terms of the item and also in terms of its content. That way nothing that already exists would break, yet content creators could have the protection they want.

That's cool, I'm not arguing that it's right, or that you have to do the same thing as Fictionwise or Webscriptions, I'm just suggesting that you don't have to be so worried about the breakdown of whatever protection system you think you're depending on... because other people have "lowered their shields" completely and the world hasn't come to an end. People really do pay for ebooks from Webscriptions and Fictionwise, and the authors really do get their cut.
OK, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about real life online ebook sites that don't protect the downloads in any way and yet people really do buy the books and authors really do get paid.
That's cool. I'm also not saying that they solve that problem for you either. I'm saying that in practice even without any protection mechanism people still buy more eBooks from Baen Books through Webscriptions even though they could rip them off. Most people aren't out to get you.
Ah, you really don't want to ask me that question. Because that happened to me, and it doesn't bother me at all, so long as I keep getting paid by the people who do value my work.
That sounds like a great idea to me.

I think I'm going to let this topic die now, and stop pressing for it, given that :
1) Argent just showed me that really it shouldn't matter to me if some thief makes off with my work, so long as I still know that my work helps people, why should I care? It's the thief's moral problem if he steals, not mine. I shouldn't care, because although it's a moral evil, one should not go around trying to stamp out all the moral evils one encounters, or one won't be able to enjoy one's life.

2) LL have such serious issues right now that I doubt this idea is going to get considered any time soon, simply as there are so many other issues to look at.

3) When it is considered, it should be such an obvious change to make that it really doesn't need a lot of argument. It's basically "the no-copy and no-transfer permissions should actually mean something when applied to written works, just like they mean something for objects and textures".
It should be obvious that the intentions of creators of written works should be honoured, just like the intentions of creators of objects, or textures, or similar, should be honoured.

4) I have lots of other, more urgent work to be getting on with. If this other, more urgent works continues to demand all of my time and most of my energy, I should probably release a version of my work under a Creative Commons licence, so that others can keep it up to date and ensure it is widely read even when I no longer have the time to maintain it. I'd prefer not to do that... for the moment at least, but it's something I'll consider if I continue to find I have little time to work on it.

That's not what I wrote. That's not even vaguely like what I wrote. I've pointed that out twice now... three times now, I guess. Please, please, for the love of God, it's so much more useful to respond to what's actually on the screen.

1. People who are publishing ebooks (and music) with no copy protection at all are selling them for money and making a profit at it. According to Eric Flint's figures, they're making more off it than they're making from selling books with DRM. This has nothing to do with whether your work "helps people", it's everything to do with whether your work makes money for you.

2. As a separate issue, you asked me rhetorically how I'd feel about it. I answered that. I'm not asking you to feel the same way. I was simply answering your question... perhaps my lack of moral outrage is a character flaw, but I'm not going to pretend it's there when it isn't.

And.

3. I think your idea of a new object type is a great one.

I was reading your posts and I got hit by the idea that I just shouldn't care so much if people steal my work. I doubt I'd have had that change of mind without reading your posts. So I class you as having shown me that, even if you diddn't write it and weren't trying to argue for it at the time. I said you showed me it because it was a change brought on by reading your posts and discussing with you, even if you weren't pushing for that change. In order to show someone something, one does not need to intend to do so. If we could only learn from other people what they were trying to show us, then learning would be a very slow process indeed.
I probably should have said "Thinking about the issue again, I now realise ______". Sorry for suggesting you wrote something you diddn't.

As for your other points :

1) If I cared more about money than other things, there is no way I'd choose writing as my SL (or RL) job. Going into writing aiming to make big chunks of money is like going into football aiming to make big chunks of money. It is possible but very few achieve it.

2) Your lack of moral outrage suggests to me that you don't get upset over issues which you have little to no control over. My problem was that I got annoyed at something that I can't do much about, and the correct solution when that happens is to do what you can (lobby for the creation of the 'ebook' item type) and then put the issue behind you. As for my moral outrage... it's more a moral annoyance than an outrage, and while it was definately there when I started this topic (as I'd recently had some of my work stolen), it's rather faded away since, given that I'm not aware of any other copies of my work which have been stolen, and I've done pretty much all I can do about the issue anyway.

3)

Thank you Argent, for the constructive criticism

Has anyone mentioned that the people who steal books weren't going to buy them anyway?

I'm sorry, I thought you were being sarcastic, and I was reading something into your words that you didn't put there. Sometimes it's hard to take things people write simply at face value. Thanks for clarifying that, I really do appreciate it.