Yeah. Strictly speaking, the reason why the music industry shat their pants over Napster was because someone found out a more economically efficient way to scam artists. They'd been fighting for decades to ensure that they would be the one ripping off artists, and then charging the public as if the artists were actually making a decent living.
Every time I see an artist worry about online piracy, I roll my eyes. It's not not a threat, but it is a rather weak one unless you're a best-selling author or musician. You're far more likely to either get ripped off by a "for exposure" bro[0] or music label, or just have your work languish in obscurity.
There's actually a bunch of authors that signed a letter of support for the Internet Archive in this suit, specifically because libraries are very, very good at getting mid-list authors into readers' hands. They value the author's work at the expense of the publisher's ownership, which is why publishers hate them. An author that gets a bunch of library exposure can sell people on another book tomorrow, but the publisher is out on "lost sales" today.
[0] I expect this to be replaced with GPT/SD enabled hustles eventually
Every time I see an artist worry about online piracy, I roll my eyes. It's not not a threat, but it is a rather weak one unless you're a best-selling author or musician. You're far more likely to either get ripped off by a "for exposure" bro[0] or music label, or just have your work languish in obscurity.
There's actually a bunch of authors that signed a letter of support for the Internet Archive in this suit, specifically because libraries are very, very good at getting mid-list authors into readers' hands. They value the author's work at the expense of the publisher's ownership, which is why publishers hate them. An author that gets a bunch of library exposure can sell people on another book tomorrow, but the publisher is out on "lost sales" today.
[0] I expect this to be replaced with GPT/SD enabled hustles eventually