We Roared. We Were One Big Animal

The United States Of America Was A Pirate Nation For The First One Hundred Years Of Its Existence, Ripping Off The Patents And Trademarks Of The Imperial European Powers It Had Liberated Itself From By Blood. By Keeping Their Gdp At Home, The U.s. Revolutionaries Were Able To Bootstrap Their Nation Into An Industrial Powerhouse. Now, It Seems, Their Descendants Are Bent On Ensuring That No Other Country Can Pull The Same Trick Off.

Digital Distribution And The Whip Hand: Don't Get Itunesed With Your Ebooks

I'm 17 Years Old. I'm Not A Straight-a Student Or Anything. Even So, I Figured Out How To Make An Internet That They Can't Wiretap. I Figured Out How To Jam Their Person-tracking Technology. I Can Turn Innocent People Into Suspects And Turn Guilty People Into Innocents In Their Eyes. I Could Get Metal Onto An Airplane Or Beat A No-fly List. I Figured This Stuff Out By Looking At The Web And By Thinking About It. If I Can Do It, Terrorists Can Do It. They Told Us They Took Away Our Freedom To Make Us Safe. Do You Feel Safe?

There Are People Already Sharing Ebooks Out There, .. And They Do It Simply Because They Love Books. You Don't Buy A Second Copy Of A Book, Cut The Spine Off, Lay Each Page On A Scanner, Run That .tif Through An Ocr (optical Character Reader), Hand Edit The Resulting Output For Errors And Then Post It Online If You Don't Love The Book. It Can Up To 80 Hours To Turn A Printed Novel Into An Ebook. I Figure If Someone Out There Is Willing To Put In 80 Hours Of Work Promoting My Book, Then I'd Prefer They Do It In A Way That Gives A Better Return To Me.

It's Not Necessarily About What Career You Pick. It's About How You Do What You Do.