Start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone! Gather 'round, children. We all know how many bootleg DVDs get made in China. We all know about P2P piracy. This is a different era. It's an era where the copyright of your intellectual property still depends partly upon the lawyers you can afford, but now also partly upon the goodwill of your audience.
For example, I boycott movies like
The Hunger Games, because I admire the original novel by Koushin Takami. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale) If some paid corporate liar dared plagiarize one of Larry's or Misty's novels, I'd be similarly up in arms, and I'd expect y'all to follow, with the usual pitchforks and blazing torches.
Lawyers can only do so much. When a film named "Night of the Flesh Eaters" was changed, a typo left off the copyright notice, and the retitled
Night of the Living Dead inadvertantly entered the Public Domain. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Living_Dead) The moral?
Don't put too much faith in lawyers.If you've thoroughly ticked off your audience, to the point they're cheering the fall of your stock, don't expect that your IP will be respected in this brave new world. Assuming somebody magically put up a pirate server tomorrow, with fancy IP redirects and a server that shifted physical location every once in a while? Just what could NCSoft do about that? From South Korea? With their financial plots starting to dry up? Get serious, now.
By contrast, John Delancey just put up a documentary, and specifically asked the audience not to pirate it. It seems to be working so far, because he enjoys the goodwill of his audience. If you have established a rapport with your audience, a relationship, if the creator of a work you appreciate is part of your "monkeysphere,"
respect and affection is the most secure copyright of all! 'Cause the loser now will be later to win, The times, they are a'changin'!
