Don’t Fight The Wave, Surf It
This morning my Twitter feed tweeted about a takedown notice over on TechCrunch. Scholastic, the U.S. publisher of the Harry Potter books, wants them to remove the article that mentions that the latest Harry Potter novel has had all its pages photographed is available for download through The Pirate Bay. USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and CNN have all reported on this as well.
So, to be clear: they’ve filed public legal documents saying that we shouldn’t report about what their public legal documents are referring to.
That bit of irony aside, Scholastic couldn’t possibly be more unrealistic about this. You can’t just do a bunch of paperwork to make it all to go away. It doesn’t work. Just ask Blizzard.
Scholastic and Blizzard are basically doing the same thing: fighting the wave. One is trying to make piracy disappear by pretending it doesn’t exist, the other is trying to get gold farming to disappear by chasing after hundreds (maybe thousands) of individual farmers with throwaway accounts. Both are in denial of just how big the wave is, and of the direction that it moves. They’re trying to beat the ocean back which, obviously, doesn’t work.
What is this wave I’m referring to, exactly? Call it self-determination. We have decided, individually and collectively, that we will have what we want. Go ahead and write your paperwork, file your lawsuits, and define your ‘Terms of Service’. None of it has anything to do with what we want, and our will is a juggernaut. Work with it or work against it, that’s up to you. We’ll have our way regardless.
This wave is the future. Here it comes. React.
