Only a few will remain

on science fiction

Foreword


I want to express a somewhat alternative point of view regarding the future of copyright and the book business.
Warning : all considerations apply only to books. But who knows, maybe musicians and filmmakers are brewing with writers in one pot.

A couple of definitions


  • Copyright: the right of the author to call his book. An example of his violation would be my claim that I wrote the book Ten Ten Indians.
  • Copyright: the right or lack thereof to copy and distribute the work. In Russian law, this is called "related rights."
  • Piracy : an attack on a sea or river vessel in order to take possession of another's property, committed with the use of violence or with the threat of its use.
  • DRM: a set of technical means that, in the imagination of their creators, will not allow anyone to copy certain protected information without permission.
  • Content: the author is often called the product of intense thinking, an extract of his nightmares and secret dreams.


Resistance is pointless


resistance

Creating such a DRM system that could not be broken, circumvented, hacked is impossible in principle. In general, this is the physical reality of this universe. An exception can only be the creation of an absolute dictatorship following the example of Orwell. Something like this: You can come up with any kind of abstruse multi-stage control system. But while there remains a need for easier access to content, DRM will break. Thus, a feedback system is obtained: with toughening and complicating ways of protecting content, access to content becomes more complicated and slows down, which leads to greater consumer dissatisfaction and stimulates DRM bypass. So many authors should understand that the magic button “make people pay” does not exist and they will have to come to terms with the fact that times are changing.

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About the future


- If you do not buy our discs, we will die, and the authors will have nothing to eat!
- We have not bought your discs for thirty years. When will you die?


Professional writers who live off their books often say that they will soon change their profession because they will no longer be able to feed themselves and their families. They say that no one else will write books. And this is just great! True, writers are likely to look at such a reaction like this:

wtf

I sincerely hope to find those times when only a dozen new books will be published a year.

When I go to the bookstore now, I am depressed by the endless rows of boring action-packed detectives, tons of snotty pink novels and fantasy storyline clones in the science fiction section. Who needs all this waste paper? Of course, no one forces me to buy this. But the very fact of using large amounts of paper to produce base garbage using the conveyor method ...

During the existence of writing, mankind managed to create a huge number of wonderful texts. There is not enough life to read all the books ever published.

There is nothing wrong with that if only five professional authors remain around the world and their paper books cost several hundred euros apiece. I agree to pay even 500 if this is a book that can be removed a year later from a shelf and read feverishly from cover to cover, once again finding there something new for yourself. Just paper editions will become the Rolex of the future. Books again, as once upon a time, will be bought to "throw show-offs." Or to say a big thank you to the author.

There is an argument that, with such a development of events, only graphomaniacs will write and high-quality literature will cease to exist. This, excuse me, is nonsense. A holy place is never empty. Graphomaniacs will not stop writing, geniuses will not stop being born. There will be less writing in your free time, which is good.

Technical literature is a separate issue. She quickly becomes obsolete and has a limited audience. But the existence of the O'Reilly publishing house confirms that no particular problems will arise in this area.

Conclusion


Once again, the old world bursts at the seams, a new one is born from it. Someone in this process will hit. This has always been and will be repeated in the future. So relax and have fun: the future is coming now.

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