Wednesday, October 2, 2013

On intellectual property theft: music vs books

You could do worse today that spend 7 or 8 minutes viewing the trailer to the upcoming film Unsound, which examines the impact that intellectual property theft and the ensuing collapse of the traditional music business model has had on the lives and careers of five different performers and bands. 

As publisher of Philip Giddings' much loved classic reference book Audio Systems Design and Installation, I made an explicit decision NOT to make the book available as an e-book for many of the reasons explained in Unsound. Printed books, unlike music recordings, cannot be duplicated and shared with one or two mouse clicks by those with a sense of personal entitlement to the content.

At Post Toronto Books, we consider that the time and expense of acquiring and then scanning or photocopying this 600-page text just to share it with friends and others would far exceed the attention span of even the most diehard file-sharing enthusiast and act as a deterrent to the theft of Philip's intellectual property. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for music, the groundwork for the wholesale copying and outright theft of which was laid some 50 years ago with the introduction of the recordable compact cassette. It's just a little easier with today's technology.

Watch the Unsound trailer on Vimeo.

Info on Audio Systems Design and Installation

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