Word Soup

According to this statement (via Techdirt) from the VP of the Science Fiction Writers of America, those who give away content online are "webscabs" who hurt other authors by undercutting the price of their work:

"I'm also opposed to the increasing presence in our organization of webscabs, who post their creations on the net for free. A scab is someone who works for less than union wages or on non-union terms; more broadly, a scab is someone who feathers his own nest and advances his own career by undercutting the efforts of his fellow workers to gain better pay and working conditions for all. Webscabs claim they're just posting their books for free in an attempt to market and publicize them, but to my mind they're undercutting those of us who aren't giving it away for free and are trying to get publishers to pay a better wage for our hard work."

As if Cory Doctorow handing out a free pdf is going to cause the roaring cash furnace that is the Sci-Fi publishing business to grind to a halt. In fact as Mike at Techdirt notes, giving away content can increase sales.

I'm so tired of people who try to pretend that "me,me,me" is some sophisticated ethos. Like the guy who whines about government social programs and gives a lecture on the broader implications of efficient government and minority work-ethic when he's just annoyed about taxation. Here we have a guy who doesn't necessarily understand economics turning an unreasonable fear into a treatise on publishing.

A user in his comment section has this to say: "Giving away one's literary work for free is hardly an invention of the Internet, as any poet could have told him."