Piracy on the High E's!

I'm not sure where you come down on the issue of piracy. Not the Somalis in a speedboat with some vintage Soviet RPG type. The new-fangled method of copying intellectual property that has been the bane of folks from the members of Metallica to J.K. Rowling.

And to show that nobody is safe, even I have been pirated. That's right. No sooner were the Angel's Luck novels in print over in Russia than somebody with a scanner and some OCR software gutted copies and converted them into files for the RocketBook – a late 1990′s eReader that is so vintage that there's almost no information on them out in Internet land… not even on Wikipedia. All I could find is this rather odd video.1 Apparently it never took off here, but was popular in Europe, judging from the accents on the video (and the Russian piracy).

It's probably also worth mentioning that if you're Russian, you can also read the Pembroke Hall series online – here and here. More wonders from scannerland. I suppose if you're a dab hand with cut and paste, you could bring up the pages and put them piecemeal into one of the many online translation apps out there and read yourself the books for free. Sorry, I can't guarantee it'll be an effective use of your time, but the many quirks of online translation are guaranteed to make the story more amusing than it already is.

So where do I come down on the side of such hijinks?

It doesn't bother me. Maybe if I were an impoverished musician like the members of Metallica, I'd have a different attitude toward it – after all, what do you do when your "loyal" audience is cheating you out of the money you desperately need to feed your family? But in the case of a writer, the objective is to be read – and judging from the glowing reviews Ferman/Boddekker have gotten, Russians are reading the books.

Plus, to be honest, if I complain about this, shouldn't I be complaining about that grandaddy of file sharing schemes, the public library system?2

Also, I have a day job that helps me feed my family. Maybe those tapped-out souls in Metallica should look into getting one themselves. Hey, a man's got to do what a man's got to do.

The Russian Cover for Harry Harrison's "Galaxy Hero Returns"

What's particularly fascinating about piracy of intellectual property is how it seems so boundless. For example, here's the cover of a Harry Harrison novel that was recently brought to my attention. It's a version put out by a Russian publisher. Looks pretty exciting – but then notice the odd resemblance between Harry's Russian cover and this American one by yours truly.

What's interesting is that we're getting into a whole different field of piracy here. I'm not sure it was out of laziness (although the artist did take the time to replace the green hologram on my cover with what looks like a full color holo of what might be a pole dancer – although that image might be nicked from somewhere, too.

While I find this amusing, I feel bad for David Mattingly, the artist who did the work on my original cover. Unfortunately, like the online version of Ferman's Devils, there's not a lot I can do about it were I so inclined. It's what comes from dealing with countries with a more relaxed attitude towards intellectual property than ours.

Meantime, I guess we can take consolation in the fact that it ain't just me and it ain't just Russia. Witness this cover spotted by my son in a bookstore in Hangzhou, China:

Photo courtesy of my globe-hopping son.

It's for Uncle Tom's Cabin. I suspect Harriet Beecher Stowe would be amused and even flattered by this whole thing, but no guesses where Mr. Freeman or Ms. Judd would come down on this whole thing.

Oh, and three words of advice for the malnourished members of Metallica: monster dot com.

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Although, admittedly, I only spent about five minutes looking.

Which I once attempted to satirize here… but nobody got the joke.