This week's Ethicist, the second in recent memory to tackle a book-related problem, addresses the issue of pirating a digital copy of a book after you've already bought the physical book. The letter-writer was upset that Stephen King's UNDER THE DOME was not available to buy digitally as it came out in hardcover, so bought the book instead -- and then later loaded up with a pirated copy.
I don't buy new e-books enough to know, but this tactic strikes me as superbly annoying. Sadly this kind of distribution -- the article uses the term "windowing" -- seems to be the latest in Content Owners Strike Back. Warner Bros. won't let Netflix rent their new DVDs out for the first month after release Hulu allows networks to delay the shows they put up by a week to encourage TV and DVR viewing, and so on. I would be interested to see how much if any money is being made off these types of deals. They do own the material, and it is their right, but at some point it might not be worth telling potential customers "not yet."
The other curious thing about this column is that, having gone to the trouble to ask the publisher of Grand Central what she thought, the Ethicist totally disregarded her answer and told readers the opposite. (Yet still quoted her.) What did he think "[his] friend Jamie Raab" was going to say? "Please pirate this book since it was published by our competitor"?
10 hours ago
2 comments:
I think the point of this column is not to just hand down Randy Cohen's opinion on what's ethical and expect us to accept it because The Ethicist told us to; I think the point is to have a genuine discussion on the ethical problems in the case at hand, weigh the factors, and then give good reasons for the conclusion he reaches (with the ultimate goal of building ethical reasoning skills in the reader so that we can handle these difficult questions in our own lives without having to wait for Randy Cohen to write us back). When building that discussion, it may involve consulting an expert in case there are factors specific to this case that he hadn't considered, but it doesn't necessarily require deferring to her opinion. I think it's better to acknowledge that people disagree, and then try to use the controversy to explore the issues at hand, than to just pretend that controversy doesn't exist.
I agree with you that the column is more about provoking discussion than offering strict advice.
I just don't think the quote was very well integrated, and after taking the time to include it he didn't really engage with it at all. (If they are truly friends I'm sure Ms Raab will forgive him for promoting different views on copyright law.)
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