Yet, it is disturbing to me how many people think they have a right to someone else’s work at the price they establish. And if they don’t get it, they feel justified in stealing it.

I learned that sharing with my friends was a good thing in Kindergarten. Was I taught badly? Was Mrs. White wrong?

Nobody is stopping you from sharing a photocopy from your magazine hardcopy. It’s not ideal and not even legal. But it’s not as damaging to the entire enterprise of the magazine as making it all available free, to everyone, anywhere, with the click of a mouse.

I know this is a complicated issue. Yet, it is disturbing to me how many people think they have a right to someone else’s work at the price they establish. And if they don’t get it, they feel justified in stealing it.

This reflects not just a “me-first” attitude but utter ignorance about what it takes to produce such work well as the foundation of a working press.

One more thing: before Google, the printing press was the greatest contributing factor to stolen content in the world (since you don’t want to blame the people who create and distribute particular pieces of pirated content, but rather anything that allows that crime to be perpetrated). Should we have destroyed every press and cursed Gutenberg’s name, because printing’s ability to spread knowledge implied an ability to spread knowledge illegally?

I am a Harper’s subscriber. That’s how I read the article (in the print magazine). You need to read comments in their entirety, and not be personally insulting or accuse people of crimes without any basis in fact. Based on your self-avowed advanced age, I would’ve expected a bit more maturity out of you than that.

My issue is how I can share the content that I have purchased and found interesting with my friends who don’t subscribe, once. They don’t want to subscribe to Harper’s, they want to read ONE ARTICLE. Since you don’t seem to understand this point, let me make it clear with an example you may be able to relate to:

Let’s say you’re down at the soda fountain and you want a nice raspberry fizz, but the jerk (a term, not an insult) at the soda fountain tells you he doesn’t SELL fizzes, but you can buy the machine for $5,000. Are you going to, so you can make a fizz? After all, you can probably sell the machine to the next kid in line for at least $4,995…

I want my friends to give money to Harper’s to read this article, and I don’t see why Harper’s wouldn’t want that money. And that’s the crux of this issue: no one will buy overpriced content, they will find a way to steal it or they won’t buy it at all. This is NOT a new problem, and it has nothing to do with ‘my’ generation or the Internet.

If you’d bought a subscription to Harper’s and read the article (since I can’t imagine you’d steal it for a ‘measly’ $17) you’d know that piracy in ‘your’ time and well before it existed in the form of handwritten copies, photocopies, or even entire print houses dedicated to ripping off the works of Shakespeare at discount prices. I don’t condone piracy of content, but I think that railing against it is a waste of time and money, which could be better served innovating desirable product distribution mechanisms to drive legitimate sales. Like Otto said, be the Steam or the iTunes of the world and profit from the content you have purchased and licensed from its creators.

Reading. It’s fundamental.

Kids, this is very narcissistic. And very scary.

So the magazine’s property should be offered at what you’re willing to pay? No matter how much it costs to make those articles available online?

And you made my point exactly. You found it free/pirated/stolen via a Google search. And you wonder why Google doesn’t want to stop this?

If Google ever produced something that could be stolen, you can bet they’d be crying bloody murder.