Why 'Piracy' is so the wrong word
Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly publishing has some salient points about the copyright/intellectual property issue in a column at OpenP2p.com:
- Lesson 1: Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy
- Lesson 2: Piracy is progressive taxation
- Lesson 3: Customers want to do the right thing, if they can.
- Lesson 4: Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy
- Lesson 5: File sharing networks don't threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing publishers.
- Lesson 6: "Free" is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service
- Lesson 7: There's more than one way to do it