Piracy Stops an Author from Writing
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 by Patrick RossAny parent of a teenage girl is aware of the mega-bestselling Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer (major motion picture of the first novel due out in November). My 13-year-old daughter is eating it up, so much so I think she would willingly become a vampire if she met one as sweet and dreamy as Edward.
But now Ms. Meyer has found herself in a place not unlike J.K. Rowling when her final Harry Potter novel was pre-released. In many respects, this is worse, however — Ms. Meyer’s partial transcript for her next book, Midnight Sun, has been posted on the Internet without the permission of Ms. Meyer or her publisher. Because it was a partial, unedited manuscript and there was no guarantee the final book would have followed the path she was pursuing, she writes on her personal web site, the novel “is on hold indefinitely… I am now focusing on spending more time with my family and working on some other writing projects.”
This is a great loss to her fans and to popular literature. I can’t imagine how she feels right now. Naked is probably the word. As a professional writer of 20 years, someone who has written fiction and non-fiction, I would most definitely not want the general public to see a partial manuscript, and I can understand how she could feel derailed. As she said, “It was only an incomplete draft; the writing is messy and flawed and full of mistakes.” I also understand her frustration as a creator regarding her rights:
I did not want my readers to experience Midnight Sun before it was completed, edited and published. I think it is important for everybody to understand that what happened was a huge violation of my rights as an author, not to mention me as a human being. As the author of the Twilight Saga, I control the copyright and it is up to the owner of the copyright to decide when the books should be made public; this is the same for musicians and filmmakers. Just because someone buys a book or movie or song, or gets a download off the Internet, doesn’t mean that they own the right to reproduce and distribute it. Unfortunately, with the Internet, it is easy for people to obtain and share items that do not legally belong to them. No matter how this is done, it is still dishonest. This has been a very upsetting experience for me, but I hope it will at least leave my fans with a better understanding of copyright and the importance of artistic control.
I hope so too, Ms. Meyer.
Finally, there is a sad irony here. Ms. Meyer acknowledges that by writing about this, she will be driving still more traffic to the unauthorized pages circulating online. So she was forced to upload the pages to her own site, in other words promote the infringement that she finds offensive and embarrassing. If anyone out there still believes creators are not victims when their works are circulated online against their will, I challenge you to defend what has happened to Ms. Meyer.
UPDATE: Not exactly fresh news at this point, but Reuters has picked up the story.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Merely reading about this makes me feel physically ill. Ms. Meyer has my utmost sympathy and my respect for dealing with such a horrible assault in the best way possible. I don’t use the word “assault,” lightly. It is an assault against her, every bit as traumatic as if someone had physically attacked her. There is no defense for what has happened to Ms. Meyer. None at all.
September 2nd, 2008 at 5:36 pm
I’ve been pirated several times over the past couple years–it’s bad enough when it’s already published work, but this is appalling. I’m so sick of the net mentality that everything is up for grabs that it makes me want to retreat into a cave some days. And the sad thing is, the people who did this are going to try to defend their actions. And there is *no* defense.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:57 am
My sympathies go out to Ms. Meyer. I enjoyed her books and as a fan, I am upset that I will now have to wait, and possibly never see, Edward’s side of the Twilight story. The “fans” (really, if you steal from a favorite author, are you a fan? I am not so sure. Theft is NOT the highest form of compliment. But I digress….) who did this have, in their eagerness to be first, or simply share, have ruined things for all of the fans. And most importantly, they have tainted the experience & success for Ms. Meyer.
I am very sorry for that.
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Thank you, all of you, for your comments. As creators, you understand the significance of what happened here, in terms of both her creative process and her rights as a copyright owner. If only more could understand.
I often try to get copyright critics to not focus on the artist, because they seem uninterested, but instead to focus on the loss of works that can result when rights aren’t respected. Justine, you point out how this affects every fan of Ms. Meyer’s work, namely by depriving them of a new Twilight work.
September 15th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
[...] no purpose without creative works. But it’s becoming so easy for those works to be hijacked, sometimes even before completion, that many creators are questioning whether it’s worth it to create. That will only increase [...]