Successful authors are mounting the argument that strict enforcement of copyright in the digital age is working against the interests of writers and other artists. JOHN HARRIS reports.

Cory Doctorow is an author who believes that giving away his books on the Internet helps to sell more copies of his novels from bookstores.

Doctorow illustrates this claim from his own experience: 300,000 copies of his first novel were downloaded while "only" about 10,000 were sold. “Those downloads cost me no more than glances at the cover in a bookstore and the sales are healthy,” he said.

Although the argument is counter-intuitive, it is borne out by my experience of the music file-sharing in the early noughties.

I’d stopped buying CDs in the 1990s because I rarely heard new or interesting music on “hits of the last three decades” radio stations. Peer-to-peer site Kazaa allowed me to listen to new music, whetting my appetite for new sounds and encouraging my return to the music store.

I came across Doctorow one lunchtime when a friend recommended his sci fi novel Little Brother, about how governments are using fear of terrorism to undermine civil rights.

I downloaded the book from the Internet, read it one weekend and didn’t pay a cent for it - which is just fine with its author.

Doctorow is one of the 21st century artists challenging the concept of copyright, a “property” right created after the printing press allowed mass production of books that were previously hand copied.

Copyright law gives the author an exclusive right to exploit the commercial potential of a book for a fixed period. In Australia, copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years.

During the past 300 years, copyright has grown from regulating copying rights of books and maps to cover areas as diverse as music, films, photos and software.

Today, copyright is under attack from digital technology that allows cut-and-paste copying and global file-sharing of almost any digitised work. Large corporations, music publishers and film studios have hit back with a barrage of legal action, seeking to protect their copyrights.

However Doctorow suggests that strict copyright enforcement actually works against, rather than for, the interests of authors. He argues the biggest problem for most writers is not piracy, but obscurity.

Doctorow publishes Little Brother under the Creative Commons License - akin to open source software for authors - which allows him to communicate which rights he reserves and which rights he waives for the benefit of recipients or other creators.

That means he can permit people like me to download and read his novel for free, but require a major movie studio to pay him if it wants to make a film based on his book. You can download Little Brother from http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/.

John Harris is managing director of Impress Media Australia. You can view his website at www.johnharris.net.au

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