Pirates!

No, not these oh-so-sexy pirates or these asshat pirates. No, these pirates. Or these. Or these. Or, hey, even this one!

E-book piracy is becoming a huge issue. I'd like to climb up on my moral high horse and scold people for downloading pirated e-books, but I was in college only a few short years ago. Yes, a good chunk of my musical collection was gained through LimeWire or Bearshare. Fortunately, karma kicked my butt by wiping out all those files when I switched from my old computer to this laptop. Since then I've acquired all my music legally through iTunes. I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever again download illegal files.

When I was a broke ass coed, I used to think musicians were a bunch of whiners. Now, I'm on the other side of that fence. Yeah. I'm the whiner, lol. In all seriousness, it's really demoralizing to search through these sites and see a novella you worked so hard to write being downloaded 3000 or 4000 times. You peek at your royalty check and choke because the number of books sold is nowhere near that high.

Yes, obviously, I realize those download numbers don't really correlate to sales. People who download free books probably wouldn't pay for books anyway. Still, though, it's annoying to know your work is basically being stolen. I fully accept this as my punishment for being a lame coed who pilfered free music. For other authors, those people who've never downloaded a pirated song or book or movie in their lives, the issue is different. They deserve to have their hard work protected--and so do I, of course, but the Catholic in me says to accept this as my divine punishment for poor moral behavior. So I will...

This is issue is one that will likely never be completely resolved. As a reader, I'm irked by DRM protected files. As an author, I understand the desire of the publisher to protect our shared interest. I'm not tech savvy enough to know if there's some kind of middle ground. For now, I think the best authors can do is educate.

Today's lesson: Pirates are bad. Well. Unless they look like this.