Supporting

Last evening, I went to an event where Scott Turow was “interviewed” by the General Counsel for Qualcomm, Don Rosenberg. Really, it was a big book promotion event so I wasn’t expecting much out of the talk except for the usual stuff about the writing process, even though the co-sponsors of the event were not only a local independent bookstore but also Qualcomm and the Law Library of San Diego.

Turns out the evening was very much a discussion about intellectual property. I was in my own particular kind of nerd heaven.

For those of you who don’t know, Mr. Turow is the recently-former President of the Authors Guild. Under his four years at the helm, that organization has done a metric ton on steroids to promote strong copyright for the small creative professional. As Mr. Turow put it at one point last night, publisher contracts these days are very favorable to best selling authors so the fight that the Authors Guild has been fighting is for the smaller professional writer who, these days, is finding her/himself no longer able to make a living by writing.

Sound familiar?

I was so happily surprised to hear Mr. Rosenberg speak about the importance of IP as well. He made a convert of me (I was not a Qualcomm fan before this) as he discussed the problems with IP in China and Russia and, along with Mr. Turow, expounded on how if we don’t protect IP then innovation will die off–IP is the foundation. He made a big point of how although much of Qualcomm’s IP is patents, they have a lot of copyrights and a few trademarks too and that protecting all IP is vital.

Together, they discussed how fewer choices will make us more and more like China, where there is little innovation but much imitation. Also, how companies like Google make their money from the ads that appear in all of their products/platforms so they don’t care about whether the content is legal or not or if the cellphones that deliver their ads are pirated/counterfeit; etc. Amazon wants to become the only publisher in the US (world?) so that they can then take a bigger and bigger cut from each author or publisher because there will be no other place to go.

We have to stand up now to these companies. We have to make the hard choices to avoid using their products, to say “no” to their terms and their temptations of free, to seek out other sources for the products/services they offer. We also have to make sure that their voices are not the only ones heard in Washington, DC.

Amazingly, there were lots of heads nodding in agreement as they discussed these issues, especially when the idea of an artist being fairly compensated for her/his work was mentioned. The people really do get it–they just need to be reminded. The younger generation needs to be educated, especially about how it is NOT fair to expect free.

We also, each of us, need to support our creative brethren in all the disciplines. Take some time to think about what you do that contributes to the problem. Are you watching videos on YouTube that you suspect are not posted by the copyright owner(s)? Are you using Amazon because it’s just so convenient? Gmail, anyone? Are you using music you haven’t paid for or did you share that facebook post from BuzzFeed (notorious infringers)?

Now is the time to be more mindful of what we are doing and to do everything we can to support ourselves and our creative culture, before it is too late.