And The Coveted Title of Fucktard Of The Week Goes To…
Wednesday, June 10, 2009Posted in: Piracy really isn't cool
From this thread over at Shiloh Walker’s blog:
“I will never in my wildest imagination, buy or read any work published by Pamela Clare or any other author that I have no respect for.
Would I share her books with other internet downloaders who want to read her work? You bet. That is their choice, not mine.
I’m already a thieving SOB, and if it’s OK for them to be totally lacking in integrity, why is it not for me?
Respect me and I will respect you.
…I believe that authors need to start viewing their readers – ALL their readers – as their ‘bread and butter’ rather than their creative content as such.
This shift in thinking will engender a different way of thinking and a new paradigm for publishing.
…When an author opens a thread denouncing pirating on their blog i.e. a public forum and someone responds with an opposing viewpoint how can the author then object to that person condoning pirating on their blog? I really don’t see the rationale in that.
A fixation on the belief that somehow simply because something is LEGAL it must necessarily be moral, right, just, fair, immutable, or serving the needs of all individuals involved, will only ensure that polarization to extremism will prevail i.e. the problem will never be solved.”
I either heard or read an analogy that was quite apt with regards to piracy the other day; It’s like a keen gardener who’s spent all his time cultivating his backyard, so that it looks beautiful with flowers blooming all over the place. Imagine then somebody coming along and plucking out his flowers, without his permission?
I’d be mad as a fucking cornered cat.
I can just hear the cries of, “Oh noes, not another piracy post!” across Blogland. Whatever bitches. It’s ok, I’m not gonna rant, I’m happy enough to point out fuckwits when I come across them.
FD
June 10
10:05 am
Some people are just nucking futz, I’m afraid. I would say self-justifying, thieving scum, but her arguments make so little sense that the former description probably fits better.
Nora Roberts
June 10
10:45 am
If readers are our bread and butter as opposed to our content, just where do we get the bread and butter from? If we don’t have content, we don’t have readers because–one assumes–readers just insist on having something to read. Which equals content.
If we don’t value, respect and, yes, get paid for our content, we can’t create the content then, oops, no more bread and butter.
I like bread and butter. I like toast and jam. I like writing for a living and am just fussy enough to expect people to obey that pesky legal stuff.
Karen Scott
June 10
11:44 am
Nora, I think that’s what these people seem to forget. To become a reader, one has to have something to read, and that something to read is generally written by an author.
Its a symbiotic relationship that starts first and foremost with the writer who writes the reading material for the reader to read.
I’m not sure why that’s so hard to understand.
Shiloh Walker
June 10
12:18 pm
People will come up with all sorts of excuses for doing the wrong thing.
Those are the worst ones, really. If they just had the guts to stand up and say,
“Yes, I’m a pirate and I don’t really care that I’m stealing your hard work. Deal with it.”
I’d be a bit more impressed than those who come up with all sorts of excuses. Hell, I’ve had one girl tell me that I should just grateful I’m being read.
If all I wanted was to be read, then I’d post stuff for free on my blog and not worry about the headaches of editing, contract stuff, business relations…and shudder…promo.
I ended up shutting the thread down because it was pretty clear she wasn’t going to let it go. I try to keep the atmosphere friendly at my blog and I’m not inclined to play babysitter.
KristieJ
June 10
12:31 pm
That person is a total nut job!! She’s being going around posting on any blog that takes issue with piracy using or rather attempting to use arguments that are totally illogical.
Randi
June 10
1:39 pm
Well, that Amber is a piece of work. Her arguments were random and I don’t even recall a premise. And what do sex scenes have to do with pirating?
Lori
June 10
1:56 pm
Truly, utterly gobsmacked. Who knew one could argue so ineloquently but verbosely for breaking the law.
That bitch needs to wake up and smell the illegalities.
Anon76
June 10
2:14 pm
Ah man, Nora. Now I have that song playing over and over in my head. LOL
Lauren Dane
June 10
2:45 pm
In the end, it’s always people who lack soul, heart and brain who love to make up reasons why they shouldn’t have to engage in common decency. They do this by making the very idea of common decency something that is totally individual. It’s not and no amount of heretofores and therebys will make it so. Not that the cheaters, wife beaters and thieves of the world will ever stop trying to make it that way.
However, if it were them being stolen from? You’d never hear the end of it.
MB (Leah)
June 10
2:47 pm
I can’t even comprehend her logic, if it is logic. By her way of thinking just because anything is out there it means that we are all entitled to whatever we want to just take. WTF?
I wonder what she would feel if her employer said I’m not paying your for your work because I feel you should give it to me for free and not only that but you should feel grateful that I even want you to work for me. It’s the same thing she’s asking of authors.
Writers offer a service just like any business or person does for a living and should be paid for it.
theo
June 10
2:47 pm
Anon76, me too. I so didn’t need an earworm today. I finally managed to get rid of the one I had for three days.
*sigh*
😉
Shiloh handled this idiot with a calm I don’t think I would have had. She is a thief, plain and simple and is trying to justify her actions to anyone who will give her a minute to do so.
And she must have scripted it all before she decided to claim she’s got every right to steal from people because what she posted on PC’s blog, she posted parts of, almost word for word on Shiloh’s.
She’s an idiot who has no grasp of the law. She’s trying very hard to let everyone know that by these ridiculous posts of hers.
AztecLady
June 10
2:53 pm
One of the things that puzzle me is the claim that *she* must receive respect first, then she’ll return it.
If everyone took that attitude, no one would get respect ever, right? So… a free for all, anyone?
Sparkindarkness
June 10
3:33 pm
*tries to find logic* *logic not found*
I… I just don’t know how to respond to Amber. She’s just so out and out batshit insane on this that I can’t
Why does ANY author owe ANY respect to someone who downloads their work without paying for it? Seriously, should they be grateful that their hard work is being taken and exploited by people who give them nothing back?
No, something being illegal doesn’t make it immoral. She’s right there. But this is IMMORAL because someone has put in a lot of hardworkd creating something and she is TAKING it without permission, consent or even trying to give something back
Randi
June 10
3:40 pm
The only sense she made was when she mentioned people who had NO access to hard copies of books and have problems ordering online. I think there was a thread at SB or DA just last week about it. Someone in the Caribbean mentioned he couldn’t get anything except a handful of NY Times bestsellers in hard copy and couldn’t order much online; much less m/m and other types of erotica.
While it doesn’t excuse piracy, I think that particular situation is tough. How does someone gain access to a legitimate copy when they can’t buy it or order it?
Maybe we should start groups of us gathering a load of books and traveling to odd places in the world who have problems getting books! LOL.
HOWEVER, those who have easy access to books have no excuses. None. Whatsoever. End of story. I just want to emphasize that.
Anon76
June 10
4:18 pm
Wow!
I went over and read the rambling comments left at the other author’s site and…Wow!
Some people just have to be ignored, left to ferment, left to self implode, whatever. It’s not even worth discussing things with them because they are so all over the board you can’t maintain a logical conversation.
What’s that term? Don’t feed the trolls.
Tuscan Capo
June 10
4:32 pm
Hmm. In the time Amber takes to preach and then re-sermonize her views she could have written a freak’n novel instead of advocating the piracy of novels.
kirsten saell
June 10
4:42 pm
Yup, a paradigm where no one gets paid for books. No authors making a dime on their work, no editors or agents toiling to sort the wheat from the chaff, or, you know, take a raw manuscript and make it fit for public consumption.
A new paradigm that’s one big slush-pile, where the reader is left wading through a quagmire of unpublishable drek seeking that one diamond that might not even be there.
A new paradigm where the best and most talented authors who once made a living off their words have to seek other employment and now put out 1/10th the number of books or none at all.
I can’t wait.
Mireya
June 10
5:28 pm
What exactly is that woman trying to say? Respect? WTH?
Amarinda Jones
June 10
7:12 pm
The best excuse I heard, from a book pirate, was “I’m young and we grew up expecting things fast and we take what we want.” Absolute dipstick and I gave up trying to argue with the selfish wankerette
Anon Anon
June 10
7:41 pm
Worse than nutjobs like Amber are the authors who applaud piracy. They even chirp online saying, “I love it when my books are downloaded illegally and pirated! It’s great exposure for me!”
Seriously.
I wonder how much these authors would enjoy getting statements like mine in which sales have slipped on ebooks, sales I’m sure were lost due to book piracy. Maybe then they wouldn’t chirp as much about giving their blessing to book pirates.
Anya Howard
June 10
9:29 pm
People like this Amber may use the word respect as a pitch to defend their behavior, but they do not care to embrace the meaning as part of their behavior.
Myra Luz
June 10
11:16 pm
“I love it when my books are downloaded illegally and pirated! It’s great exposure for me!”
I don’t imagine those nut-jobs are making any money or they wouldn’t make such a ridiculous statement. If they’re giving their work away, that’s one thing. If they are selling it and make idiotic comments like that, they need to have their collective asses hiked up with a hobnail boot.
People who download e-books without paying for them are thieves. Cut and dried. Pure and simple. No argument there from any sane person. Those creeps can try to justify their thievery all they want to but they are STILL creepazoid thieves and deserve to have the same boot that kicked the above-mentioned stupid authors shoved up their butts. Respect them? Hell, no. I HATE them. As a matter of fact….
I LOATHE PIRATES! They are fucktards of the lowest class in my book!
Louise van Hine
June 10
11:35 pm
was that comment as illiterate and incomprehensible as I think it was? I’m not sure I can go back and reread it.
Lorraine
June 11
4:35 am
It’s incredibly disrespectful to steal the work of an author who brings one hours of reading pleasure. I can’t count how many books I’ve read that have stuck with me for years, be it one or two lines, a certain scene, perhaps even words of wisdom. There are many books that I’ve read over and over again.
It’s impossible to justify the theft, especially when going to the movies costs more and gives you far less entertainment bang for your buck.
I think people forget that writing a book is an author’s source of income, same as my job is for me. And I’d be really pissed if someone came along and stole money out of my paycheck. Just saying.
By the way, Amber is full of shit. Pamela Clare’s books rock!
Lori
June 11
6:06 am
I don’t know how you do it, Karen, but you always find something to make me speechless. Wow. Just wow.
I do have to second Lorraine, though.
Dawn
June 11
8:55 am
Umm…
I saw both of Amber’s rants. To be honest, I started to doze off during the one about Nazi something or other.
The woman is dumb, immoral and disrespectful.
Mary Winter
June 11
9:30 am
I work in the IT industry and trying to reason with the guys who download software and the one guy who literally downloaded every movie “to collect them. Because he could” was frustrating at best. “It’s Microsoft,” they’d cry. Yeah, but Microsoft has got to pay programmers and toilet scrubbers and all the other hundreds of thousands of people who make a big company work.
On an interesting and somewhat related note, after several weeks of calls to my internet provider, one of the reasons why I’m having speed issues is because someone was doing 1 GB downloads at midnight… I hope to hell they cut that sonafabitch off. Can you say pirate? (that or they were playing WOW, haha) *grumbles*
And Shiloh was super classy, as always. 🙂
Grace
June 11
2:02 pm
“I will never in my wildest imagination, buy or read any work published by Pamela Clare or any other author that I have no respect for.”
Considering she’s advocating piracy, I doubt she would have bought Clare’s stuff anyway.
Her argument, such that it is, makes absolutely no sense.
L.E. Bryce
June 14
5:31 am
My response to you in five words, Amber: “I am not your bitch.”
Karen Scott
June 18
5:02 pm
Lol @ L.E Bryce. Which author was it who said that?
AztecLady
June 18
5:04 pm
Neil Gaiman, referring to… George R. R. Martin, I believe? here
(edited to add full name and link)