Comedy Central has done a great job of making shows like the
Daily Show and
Colbert Nation available online.
Recently on Colbert Nation, the winner of the National Book Award, Sherman Alexie, made some interesting points about digital culture and why his new book won’t be coming to a Kindle near you anytime soon. Alexie’s focus on the dangers of piracy, privacy, and even the U.S.
government’s desire to take from him as a Native American suggest a
genuine but unfortunate disdain for e-books, which he later claims
eliminate jobs. Alexie doesn't want his books to suffer the fate of
music online, and notes that “depending on the study… somewhere between
seventy-five and ninety-five percent of music is pirated; nobody makes
money off their music anymore, their CDs. Everything is about the live
show.” That's quite a range, but still eye-popping if true on the low
end. Colbert rightly wonders why digital distribution would prevent
Alexie from continuing his book tours. If the demise of independent, and even chain, record store is any indication, there is something to be worried about. Much digital ink has been spilled over the movement of such communities online, in addition to their potential for better aggregating groups in the real world (see, e.g. meetup.com). In any event, Mr. Alexie's highly respectable desire for a personal connection with his fans is overshadowed by the broad brush with which he paints.
Mr. Alexie’s website is well-organized and informative, although
some of the links to articles or to purchase physical copies of his
books were broken at the time of this writing. His impressive resume made his concerns about the
power of technology seem perfectly reasonable until he said something
that terrified Stephen Colbert: “with the open source culture on the
internet, the idea of ownership, of artistic ownership goes away.” In
context this sounded like a call for some form of moral rights on the
internet. It is unfortunate that Mr. Alexie hasn’t fully explored the "open source culture of the internet” and the near-universal
requirement of attribution in copyleft or Creative Commons-type
licensing. He noted he would eventually adapt to the opportunities
available online, and Colbert does a great job, as always, of bringing
out the tensions raised by Mr. Alexie’s arguments. The bold statement
to close the interview makes it well worth watching.
-Joe Merante
