Michael Arrington Encourages Copyright Infringement

I not entirely sure why I have TechCrunch in my feed reader, but today Michael Arrington posted something that I found absolutely fascinating.

Yesterday he published a story about how the new Harry Potter book is widely available on BitTorrent. Today, in an article titled “Scholastic Loses It Over Harry Potter/BitTorent Story”, he tells us that he’s been contacted by the US publisher of the book and ordered to take down his post from the day before. Outrage! Arrington douth protest. All he did was inform the public, and that makes him a good journalist, like CNN and USA Today, which he mentions in his piece.

Except, that’s not what happened. He (edit: Actually staff writer Duncan Riley) wrote the following yesterday:

For educational purposes only, the Harry Potter book can be found by searching The Pirate Bay.

Yeah, sure, all you’re doing is informing the public. It’s not, at all, like you’re encouraging people to illegal download copyrighted material. Well, actually you are, but it’s not like you’re being supportive of that kind of thing. Oh, but you did also write yesterday:

what the leaking of the book does demonstrate is that the days of the mainstream media and publishers strictly controlling the dissemination of information has well and truly past; simply where there is a fan with a will, there is a way.

Riiiigggghhhhttt, but only if we take “strictly controlling” to mean “sell” and “mainstream media and publishers” to mean “writers”. How dare they control their work? I mean, it’s not like they struggled and toiled to create something. Bastards!

Look, I’ve written a book, three actually, all unpublished, for which the world is better off, but nonetheless it was something, and the thought of some asshole telling me I can’t control what I’ve written pisses me off. J.K. Rowling did the work, she toiled, she struggled, she imagined, and she deserves to do whatever the hell she wants with her books. Clearly, that does not include having some dick photocopy each page and post it on the Internet.

What I would call “defending an author’s rights” Arrington calls “bullying”. Which I find ridiculous, because at the bottom of each and every page of TechCrunch is this little thing:

Hey isn’t that a copyright symbol? Wait, so does that mean Michael Arrington hopes to “strictly control” how his website is disseminated? I wonder, if I were to start copying TechCrunch posts verbatim and posting them here, where there’s no intrusive advertising, do you think he would try to bully me into stopping?

I wonder…