Net Neutrality for Writers: Its All About the Leverage

Perspective: Cory Doctorow:Net Neutrality for Writers: Its All About the Leverage

How do successful writers use copyright? As negotiating leverage. Once youre a successful, non-commodity writer that is, a writer whose mere name can sell books and whose work cant be freely interchanged in the publishers catalog or on the booksellers shelf with another writers work copyright becomes a moderately useful tool for extracting funds from publishers. Copyright becomes a productive club-with-a-nail-through-it with which to threaten publishers who might consider publishing a well-known writers work without her permission. Likewise, copyright is a useful tool for publishers to use in threatening each other, should one publisher take it into his head to copy a competitors copyrighted books and sell them. Because of this, a successful writer can even auction her copyrights off between more than one publisher.