No One Will Write Books Anymore
Only a few will remain
I would like to express a slightly alternative point of view regarding the future of copyright and the book business.
Disclaimer: all discussions relate to books only. But who knows, maybe musicians and filmmakers are cooking in the same pot as writers.
Some definitions
- Copyright: The author’s right to call a book his own. An example of its violation would be my claim that I wrote the book “Ten Indians”
- Copyright: the right, or lack thereof, to copy and distribute the work. In Russian law, this is called “neighboring rights”
- Piracy: an attack on a sea or river vessel to seize someone else’s property, committed with the use of violence or the threat of its use.
- DRM: a set of technical means which, in the imagination of their creators, will not allow anyone to copy certain protected information without authorization.
- Content: is often called the product of the author’s intense thought, the extract of his nightmares and secret dreams.
Resistance is futile
Creating a DRM system that can’t be broken, bypassed, or hacked is, in principle, impossible. No way, this is the physical reality of this universe.
The only exception might be the creation of an absolute dictatorship following Orwell’s example.
Something like this: you can create any kind of obscure multi-stage control system. But as long as there is a need for easier access to content, the DRM will continue to be broken.
So the result is a feedback system: as content protection methods become stricter and more complex, access to content becomes more difficult and slower, which leads to greater consumer dissatisfaction and encourages DRM circumvention.
Many authors need to realize that there is no magic button to “make people pay” and will have to accept the fact that times are changing.
Professional writers who make a living from their books often say that they will soon change professions because they will no longer be able to feed themselves and their families.
They say that nobody will write books anymore. And that’s just marvelous! It’s true that writers probably view this reaction as follows:
I sincerely hope to see a time when only a dozen new books will be published a year.
When I walk into a bookshop now, I’m depressed by the endless rows of boring, action-packed detective stories, tonnes of overbearing pink novels, and clones of fantasy plots in the science fiction section. After all, who needs all that waste paper? Of course, nobody is forcing me to buy it.
But the very fact of using a huge amount of paper to produce low-quality rubbish by the conveyor belt method…
Since the existence of writing, mankind has managed to create a large number of marvelous texts.
A lifetime wouldn’t be enough to read all the books ever published.
There’s nothing wrong with this if there are only five professional authors left in the world and their paper books cost several hundred euros each.
I agree with paying up to 500 if it’s a book that you can take off the shelf a year later and read feverishly from cover to cover, again finding something new for yourself there.
Only paper editions will be the Rolex of the future. Books will once again be, as in the past, bought to “show off”. Or to say a big thank you to the author.
It is argued that with this development of events, only graphomaniacs will write and quality literature will cease to exist. Sorry, that’s absurd.
A sacred place is never empty. Graphomaniacs won’t stop writing, geniuses won’t stop being born. There will be fewer people writing in their spare time, which is good.
Technical literature is a separate topic.
It becomes outdated very quickly and has a limited audience.
However, the existence of the O’Reilly publishing house confirms that no special problems will arise in this area.
The old world is once again bursting at the seams and a new one is being born out of it. Someone will be killed in the process.
It’s always been like this and it will be repeated in the future. So relax and enjoy: the future is now.
