Once again consuming: Holt Uncensored has a piece this week on how Amazon really ought to just pay authors a few cents every time it brokers a used-book transaction. After all, it’s got all that money and technology and there’s no reason not to, right? The author brings up the fact that the British library system apparently pays authors every time their books are checked out of libraries. I’m not sure who exactly pays that money, though, and I’m not sure whether it’s all rights-holders, just the living authors, or maybe British authors only. Anyway, that sounds lovely but try getting that paid for by state taxes in the US.
I agree, as a writer, that it would be nice to get a few cents every time one of my books was resold. But before you suggest that, ask yourself as a book seller what you are selling. When I buy a book, is it mine or not? Am I free to read it and use it in the manner I see fit? What are the implications for the ownership of intellectual property if authors (more accurately, rights-holders, who often aren’t the authors at all) have greater control over resale of their works?
When I buy a DVD, of course, I know that it is a crime to watch it or on an unapproved device such as a foreign DVD player or Linux-based computer, to make a backup copy or skip the copyright warning material. And when I buy an e-book, I know that it may be a crime to have it read aloud to me by software, to print it, or to lend it to a friend. Books, on the other hand, are mine to read. I may be unable to skip the FBI warning and commercials at the beginning of my DVDs, but dammit, I can skip the introduction to “Yellow Dog.” And although I may be prohibited from selling the copy of Windows XP that came with my last computer, at least I can buy a book knowing I’m free to unload it later.
The British library system sounds lovely, but it’s a state-backed system paid for by taxes intended to promote literature. A similar system in the US would probably turn libraries into something like the US commercial radio system: for every song played, the record label pays an “independent” promoter who in turn pays the radio station for playing the song. Small labels don’t have the money for what is essentially payola, so small labels don’t get played. Artists of course get nothing from any of it. Imagine if libraries were paid to promote lending of particular books, to carry some books and not others, and imagine the temptation to do that if you were a typically underfunded library. And what about authors who have died? Should Amazon pay Disney when I sell my child’s outgrown Winnie the Pooh books?
Libraries in the US, whether personal, public, or private, are under no obligation to pay authors for each loan of a book, and Amazon as a merchant is under no obligation to involve the author in the sales of used books. I’m sure it sounds at first like a “nice thing to do” but you’re leaping step into an intellectual property minefield.
Secretly Ironic 