Mark Waid couldn’t be more clear: “Like it or not, downloading is here. Torrents and filesharing are here. That’s not going away.”
I recommend you read the article over on Comic Book Resources if for nothing else than its tone: optimism, a refusal to be cowed by traditional fears regarding filesharing and digital downloads.
Perhaps more interesting is the forum thread dedicated to comments. It’s a rare place on the Internet where people can interact respectfully, intelligently, and with any clear purpose, but the vast majority of posters in this thread give it a go. My (to date) closing thoughts:
Reading back through this thread, it’s interesting to note how much speculation, misinformation, and outright fear or anger pervades (I’m certainly not exempt). This is a tricky issue, an emotional issue for some, particularly those who make a living off their art.
I feel for those people. I do. I’m a fiction writer. Except that for me to get my novel published, I have build credibility by soliciting short stories to literary journals that publish without payment. That’s the world of poets and fiction writers, especially when you’re starting out. I give my work away magazines, some print, some digital, and I never get a dime out of it. I can hope that my novel does a little better, that my agent has enough clout to get me into the New Yorker or Harper’s or somewhere that pays per word, and I can hope that my publishing contract doesn’t cut out after one book so I have the opportunity to write another.
Fiction writers in my position, trained and injected into the industry, can expect to collect advances between 5k-10k, and sales revenue at 2.5% up to 5,000 copies, 7.5 up to 10,000 copies, and 12-15% up to 1 million copies. Some of us are really, truly great writers, or very, very lucky, and earn better percentages. For someone writing “literary fiction,” this is an Edith Wharton winter.
This is the kind of industry I work in, one where I absolutely have to teach (thank God I love it!) in order to get by. So, I feel for comics writers who have to leg it in an industry as grueling–perhaps more grueling–than my own.
But the crux of filesharing is its size, it’s leviathan aspect: it’s a massive beast, a true hundred-pound gorilla in a room of cramped, over-worked, under-paid art types who are already spend every available moment clawing for space, money, time. To say it’s an intimidating is ridiculous. Intimidating was 5, 10 years ago, the rapid success and decline of Napster, the sudden looming threat of technological invasion. Intimidating is old hat. Reality has set in, sails full, anchor up, and nothing–no prosecution, no court case, no ruling–has made so much as a dent in it. The Pirate Bay is still open for business, neon flashing, and the waters are choppy, break waves on creaky hulls. More than one person suspects a leak has sprung. Intuition isn’t always sure-fire.
The sheer volumes of data on filesharing–the legal definitions and rulings, the exceptions, the loopholes, the incidents and sales data, the numbers and statistics–have yet to come together someplace, somewhere. The White Whale’s true impact is still not understood 8 years out from the Napster ruling. How much hard data have we collected? How much of what we think and feel is suspect, undocumented, unconfirmed? An advance question: how the hell can anyone make this beast work for us, generate revenue?
I go back to my own work, sending off .pdf short stories to lit mags, knowing they’ll never see a dime. I think about the time and effort I put into my work, the keyboards abused, the caffeine saturation. And then I think about my novel, all of those inputs and energies multiplied, and the thought that keeps running through my head is this: if, when, it comes out, how will I feel when I see it on a torrent, being downloaded, seeded, consumed?
The answer is: pretty good.
Tags: Comic Book Resources, comics, copyright, digital, downloads, filesharing, forums, Mark Waid, torrents
