Even though I run this thing to have conversations, and I encourage people to participate by freely expressing their opinions, I demand that people remain civil. If you have no arguments to levy, especially with reasoned, pointed, and useful prose, you have no place here. This is a forum for addressing issues from multiple angles and bringing what we all have to the table.

What have you brought to this discussion other than an ad hominem attack, a straw man, and an overworked callout? Yes, I can donate to charity and give my old books to local libraries. Yes, I can share my wealth with others. Yes, I can give my fiction away for free in hopes of inspiring thought. I do those things. I don’t feel like I need to prove that to you here.

However, by coming here to participate, what you need to prove to me is that your voice is valid. You do that by addressing the problems we’re discussing with workable solutions so we can talk about them. You argue with me and the people who comment here and on their own sites. Whether you agree with my solutions or not doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you bring something to the table other than whining.

If you have no alternate solution to propose, you have no place here.

Let’s try this. You live in a home or apartment. You have internet access and a computer. There are people, probably very near to you, who have neither a home nor a computer nor very much food. Please open your door and allow them to live with you, because you’re being unreasonably greedy having a roof over your head and all that stuff when other people don’t.

Don’t tell me that other people must live by your arbitrary moral code until you’re living it. And don’t say, “Well, if I was as rich as Bill Gates, I’d do that!” That’s a bull argument.

You have a warm home and a computer and internet access and a digital camera and all of those cool devices with which you argue about the evils of capitalism precisely because smart people with ideas and skills got together with other smart people with ideas and skills and made products which they were allowed to sell for a profit so they could have more ideas and interact with other people to make more products and so on to improve your life and the lives of everyone else.

The people who believe from each according to his ability, to each according to his need made the Yugo.

And, for the fiction that you absorbed that “the ultimate goal of long-term capitalism” is for one guy to own the whole world, you clearly need a few lessons in market forces and competition from somebody who isn’t praying at the altar of Marx and Mao.

I respect you, Levi, and I respect your opinions, but I don’t agree with you, either. That’s good, I guess, since it makes both of us necessary.

You said that whether you think a sale of the cure for the common cold at 10,000 dollars a dose is moral or ethical isn’t the issue, but it is THE issue. That is the issue in its entirety. The idea that our actions exist in a moral vacuum, separate from their effect on other people, is a fantasy used to justify actions that would otherwise be immoral.

You said, “If my front yard is beyond some arbitrary size, does it become a park?”

I say, “Yes.”

You said, “If I buy a large enough van, am I required to run it as a free bus service?”

I say, “Yes.”

You said, “If I live in a 300-bedroom house, do I have to run it as a free hotel?”

I say, “Yes.”

I say, “That man who won the song should have given it to people for free.”

I’m not a religious guy, even though I was raised Christian. I don’t know about God or Buddha or Allah. But what I do know is that my actions have a direct effect on others, and that’s enough of a moral system for me. Some people need more than that, and that’s okay. I don’t. But I’m not cold enough to think that my property is only mine, will always be mine, and that I have ultimate dominion over it to the determent of others. That’s the talk of people who think they have a right to burn rain forests and pollute the skies we all need to survive.

Everything is about ethics. Everything action is either right or wrong, or at the very least, there is always a best. Whether we achieve that best, or even know how to find it in very complicated situations, is our struggle. But what matters is that we keep trying to do right by people as best we can.

I’m not one of those writers who think that artistic expression is all about me. I write because I love it, but also because I feel like I have something valuable to contribute to people. I write because I feel like there are problems to be solved and I want to lend a hand to help solve them, whether that be through fiction or through essays. Recently, I read a comment on Mark’s blog by a woman named Zoe Winters. She said she would stop releasing her writing if she wasn’t paid for it. I’ve never read her, and with her attitude, I never will. If she only wants money, if that’s all she thinks will compensate her for her work, she can’t have anything valuable to say.

I’m not talking about taking the work of artists and giving them nothing for it. I know it’s not all about the love. We all have to eat. I work a job for a living so I can write in my spare time, but eventually, I’d like to get to a place where I could support myself through writing alone. I’d like the extra time it would give me, so I could write full time, because I believe that I have the potential to reach more people through writing than what I do as a day job. But that doesn’t mean I need a private jet to contribute what I have to give. All I need is a place and loving people to share that place with.

But If I won the lottery right now, if I won a million dollars in hard cash, I would invest enough so I would never have to work again and then I would never try to sell a book. I’d devote my life to writing and release everything for free. Because I believe in it. And even then, if I had too much, I’d give away the money, too.

I stand on the shoulders of giants who made this planet and this country into what it is today. And I support the giants of tomorrow. I’m not going to live forever, but I can do my best to make those that come after me a better place for them to live. I’ve done a better job if I’ve sold a cure for cancer as cheap as I can make it to as many people as possible. I’m not a scientist, and I don’t have a cure for cancer, but I have stories about people overcoming problems, or dealing with the pains of life, and maybe I’m not good enough to help people with them yet, but I’ve got 50 more years to get better at it, and to keep trying. Because that’s what I have to do.

So, my statement to the man who holds the cure for cancer all to himself: he is the real cancer. The disease is nothing compared to his greed.

I don’t care if it’s a novel, a software company, or the cure for all cancers, it’s property. It belongs to someone. That person has the right to control it, and to control access to it. Whether it’s the cure for the common cold or the elusive elixir of eternal youth, if you create it, you have the right to charge for it as you see fit.

If my front yard is beyond some arbitrary size, does it become a park? If I buy a large enough van, am I required to run it as a free bus service? If I live in a 300-bedroom house, to I have to run it as a free hotel?

There was a musician some time back (I could probably find the reference again, but following commenters are sure to supply it) who put up an original song as the prize in a contest. As in, the song wasn’t written yet. As in, you win this contest, the musician writes a song for *you* and it is yours to do with as you see fit.

Everyone assumed the winner would sell it, but instead, he chose to make one (count it, one) recording available to be listened to, in person, in his living room. As I recall, it is played only on headphones, to prevent it from being stolen.

Not only does he, as the owner of the song, have the right to do that, but it seemed to be taken as a stick-it-to-the-corporate-man move. I submit that this is somewhat at odds with your argument, where The Man is being put forth as the controller of content that should be free.

And all of the forgoing seems to assume that the source of piracy is the control of content, as exerted by the creators. If you create the cure for the common cold, and sell it for $10,000 per dose, whether I think that is moral or ethical isn’t even an issue. In case is it moral or ethical for me to steal your formula, make up six billion doses, and give them away. If you write that novel and sell it for $10,000,000 per copy, I can make a killing by pirating it at $10,000. I only have to sell a couple hundred, and I’ve got it made. You argument seems to say that if you set the price that high, I not only can, but should.

The bottom line, as I have said elsewhere, is that the creators of fiction must be paid, or all fiction will be amateur, and that’s not a place I want to live.

Levi