No doubt to raise awareness and create a talking point, clever.

In terms of following your line of “how could this actually work”. Perhaps a solution could be to find some contacts who could upload there *stuff* directly to a few existing satellites? satellite hosting, is that an existing business model?

Earth based CDN could be used for speeding up the harmless content, with a failover to space should they go offline.

With books, I no long buy print copies of books, instead I buy what I can read on my tablet and/or e-reader. Why? Because when I’m travelling carrying around enough books to keep me entertained is a lot easier when I can have 1 or 100 books at the same 1/2″ x 4″ x 7″ dimensions and same 1.4lb weight.

With music, I buy what I can directly from the people making the music. Why? Because that means more of the money I spend goes to the people I am trying to spend it on. Its not because I want to get it in a more “convenient” format (admittedly I buy a mix of CDs and digital downloads). Instead its due to the fact that if I like someone’s creative work, I want to reward them for making it as much as possible. And in a world where I can reward them directly if they decide to sell it directly why would I every choose to pay people who don’t actually make what I’m paying for?

To illustrate this point, a musical artist by the pseudonym of Tech N9ne released a CD a year or two ago (can’t remember exactly) and purposely released as a free digital download to prove that fans would still buy it. It turned out to be one of the most downloaded albums that year AND one of the most SOLD.

Therefore next time you go to a place of business that has these magazines make sure you only read the magazines for which you have your own legitimate subscription. Next time don’t read something you didn’t pay for, because it may prompt you to go home and get your own subscription. Next time, politely inform the business that they are pirating those magazines, and they should therefore be punished.

Why didn’t the RIAA care about dual CD/Cassette players with copy abilities? They didn’t go after Sony for making a machine that can take their copy-written CD and put it on a tape. Where was the MPAA when I invited my friends over to watch a new VHS I had purchased? They didn’t go after JVC for making a VHS player that can also record programming from the TV (such as TV shows and Movies).

If I want to write symphonies or miles of code, the result is mine, not yours. I don’t care what the “societal agreement” is.

History proves you wrong. The very idea of “intellectual property” is a modern one, only spanning back a few decades.

“Copyright” did not exist until around the early 1700′s or so because of the printing press being such a problem. The first copyright law to speak of was the Statute of Anne in Great Britain, and even it only gave a monopoly on copyright for 28 years after the initial creation of the work (14 year, with an optional 14-year renewal afterwards).

“Copyright” is not ownership. It is a widely recognized fact that you can not own an idea, and despite your claims to the contrary, copyright is on the idea and not on the presentation. If I took the text of your book, put it in a different typeface, and published that, then that would be a violation of copyright despite me changing the method of presentation.

In fact, your argument isn’t even new. When the copyrights from Statute of Anne started expiring in the 1730′s, the printers and authors of the day began to argue that copyright was in the common law, and therefore perpetual. Look up the “Battle of the Booksellers”. The case of Donaldson vs. Beckett pretty much settled the fact that there is no such thing as copyright in common law, and that copyright is not perpetual either.

You do not own that which you create with your mind. Nobody does. Everybody dies. Everything passes. What you own is the right, granted by society, to exercise exclusive control over the results of your labors. For a limited time. Long enough to make it beneficial to you to create that creative work in the first place, and short enough to still enrich the whole of society thereby.

I have just finished a novel and was debating on publishing it in paperback but decided against it. Kindle readers are popular but I only know one other person that owns one. Most of my friends and family do not own kindles, so the audience is limited and paying 97 dollars or more just to read my book doesn’t make much sense. But I am going to give it a shot anyway and hopefully it will be eventually read on more than just kindles.

Gina has some valid arguments but she seems to be trying to keep the clocked stopped. The world is changing rapidly and books are increasingly become objects for collectors and not avid readers. Who wants to carry a backpack full of heavy books when they can car an ereader or tablet instead?

In a way I hope my book does get pirated. It will give it more exposure and since it is the first in a series that means better hope for future sales and anticipation from a market place.

Thanks for the article.