The trade-off is that a lot of poor people will never hear about your book, or only read a substandard version of it. I've seen official torrents from the owners of the copyright, simply for quality control purposes.
> The trade-off is that a lot of poor people will never hear about your book
There is always a trade-off between accessibility and compensation in creative works. I think the value of copyright is that it gives the author of the work—the one who has the most skin in the game—some agency in picking a point in that trade-off. (For example, I chose to allow anyone to read the books for free on the web, which maximizes accessibility for those who can't afford it, while selling print and eBook copies which enables me to be compensated by those who can.)
You can argue that copyright prevents poor people from accessing works. But that argument presumes a world where the work already exists. Without some ability to reliably predict and control compensation, there are many works that would simply never be made.
You may then argue that if someone really has that creative drive, then they'll make it even without compensation. But that means that only those with independent means will have the luxury of being creative. And the last thing I want to do is put even more cultural control in the hands of the rich.
I agree. Your monetization is kindly, and that deserves respect. The opportunity to create would never be there for many, and the skills involved never refined for many more, if compensation was impossible. You enforce against poorly formatted copies of your work. Derivative creations of your work that might not be transformative enough, but aren't intended to copy your work directly, might not trigger your enforcement? Systems like youtube's contentID are how most people notice copyright enforcement, if I had to guess. Your point on survivorship bias is interesting to think about.
> Derivative creations of your work that might not be transformative enough, but aren't intended to copy your work directly, might not trigger your enforcement?
This is a tricky balancing act and has come into play for me with translations. There are several translations of both of my books, but they have all been done using real publishers with real contracts and stuff.
I've had a number of people volunteer to do community-driven free translations but so far have declined.
Part of being a publicly visible creative person is that my name and identity have a certain reputation attached to them, and that reputation has real value for me both emotionally (it feels good to know people think I'm cool) and economically (a lot of people bought my second book simply because I wrote it). Transformative works that are still explicitly and visibly derived from me run some risk of dilluting or weakening that reputation. (Of course, there is also the chance they can elevate it.) Imagine if, say, a Portuguese fan translation of one of my books has some racial slurs inserted it and now everyone in Portugal thinks of me as "racist author Bob Nystrom".
Since I only have one real identity on this planet, I tend to be cautious about allowing other creative people to visibly build on it, even when they do so with good intentions. Much of this is probably just because I'm a perfectionist.
On the other hand, there is some stuff I've been happy to see: many people have translated the code in the book to other programming languages, and several have done video series' about the book.
> The trade-off is that a lot of poor people will never hear about your book
Is this meant to be bad for poor people or for me, as a creator?
If for poor people - all of the information required to live a relatively good live is available on the internet, free of charge. The vast majority of copyrighted content is entertainment. Nobody is entitled to entertainment.
If for me - I'm ok with that. If someone else isn't - they can reduce the price of their work, self-publish, or release the work (or even an excerpted section of it) as public domain/creative commons.
> I've seen official torrents from the owners of the copyright, simply for quality control purposes.
...which is extremely rare, and not really relevant to the discussion.
You're on a throwaway, so correct me if I am wrong, but this is your first comment in this discussion? How is it irrelevant enough for you to insist such a thing? Distributing in such a way that illegitimate copies disappear but your margins are affected as if the piracy were there all the same is useful to think about in this discussion, because it has happened and you can study it somewhat.
To your point on copyright, unaffordable things aren't always entertainment, though it would be nice if that were the case. Feeling that the majority of content is frivolous entertainment is just a feeling; a feel-good feeling that trivializes any drawbacks to the copyright system.
At least in the US, you're free to reject copyright and publish your book as public domain if you want more poor people to be able to read it. Most authors just like copyright law and requiring payment for their works though.
