Paulo Coelho promotes digital piracy of his own books
- February 8, 2008 @ 9:10amaarthilal says:In the interview www.newsweek.com/id/108715 - bestselling author Paulo Coelho reveals to Newsweek Magazine how he supports piracy of his own work.
- February 8, 2008 @ 1:28pmJanetCroft says:That's pretty cool. He mentions Cory Doctorow, who runs BoingBoing.net. Cory's been releasing his books on the internet for years under Creative Commons licenses, encouraging not just translations but things like comic book versions. His dead tree versions sell like hotcakes because people can sample the electronic version first, and he's a firm believer in this business model.
- February 11, 2008 @ 11:27amFreya Anderson says:Thanks for sharing this article, aarthilal! I especially appreciate Coelho's comment, "I always thought that when, at the beginning of your career, you strive to be read, you can't change your mind later and become greedy about it."
- February 15, 2008 @ 9:01amMollyKleinman says:This is a fun story. Maybe now I'll finally get around to reading The Alchemist.
I do want to point out that if Coelho has the electronic publishing rights to his books, and he's permitting/endorsing the translating and sharing of his work online, then it's not really piracy (even if he does look cute in his pirate outfit). I think it's important to fight the idea that any free online sharing of copyrighted work is piracy. If that were the case, we'd all be pirates. There is a lot of legitimate sharing of copyrighted work online, and we want to make sure it stays that way.
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