F. Paul Wilson

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SUNNI: Moving from one minefield to another, I've had a hard time finding someone who's willing to speak with me on intellectual property -- I'll abbreviate it IP -- issues. You up for some of that, Paul?

PAUL: Let's try it. I should be into the issue but I've got too little spare time as it is.

SUNNI: I noticed that you're offering a digital Repairman Jack short story -- The Long Way Home -- exclusively at Amazon. How did that come about, and how's it selling for you?

PAUL: As of now (end of 2005) it's been #2 in overall downloads since Amazon Shorts -- and if you're thinking "briefs or boxers," you're not the first -- launched in August. I split the $0.49 download fee 40-60 with Amazon, which comes to 20 cents per hit. I won't get rich on The Long Way Home, but it's introducing thousands of people to Jack.

SUNNI: Wow. Congrats on its success! Were your dead-tree publishers concerned about you going digital for a story?

PAUL: Never asked them. They have first dibs on my novels, but I sell my short fiction where I damn well please. Besides, the whole purpose of Amazon Shorts is to sell books. And it's working. My backlist sales have shown a nice jump. The story's turning people on to Jack.

SUNNI: Do you think e-books will ever replace much of the mainstream market for dead-tree books?

PAUL: Not in the near future. The paper book was supposed to be dead years ago, but it's still keepin' on.

SUNNI: File-sharing of music and movies has apparently scared a lot of people, even some anarchists I know, into a position of supporting the state's copyright system. The claim is generally advanced that some government system of protectionism for creative works must exist in order for creators to be paid for their efforts. Do you agree with that view?

PAUL: Absolutely.

SUNNI: What about this, then, which I view as the crux of the IP issue: can a person own an idea? It isn't tangible property, after all ... Can a person legitimately claim to own and control ideas, as expressed in a book or piece of music, after he or she has sold instantiations of those ideas to others?

PAUL: As far as I know, you've never been allowed to copyright an idea. I used recombinant cloning of dinosaurs from fossil DNA in Dydeetown Girl [now part of the novel Dydeetown World], years before Jurassic Park [book and movie]. Could I sue? No. It's not the idea that's copyrighted, it's what's done with it. In 1986 I used a T-rex cloned from fossil DNA as a watch animal; in 1990 Crichton filled an amusement park with recombinant 'saurs. Different takes on the same idea.

If I've spent a year writing a novel, there's a year of my life invested in that book. I want some return on that investment, want something for that piece of my life. If someone downloads the text for nothing from a file-sharing site, they're stealing my work, they're copping a piece of my life. Fuck 'em.

SUNNI: The biggest problem I have with the pro-IP position is that it allows the heavy-handed kind of stuff that the MPAA, RIAA, Sony, and Microsoft are pushing on legitimate users, because of their fears of piracy -- the digital rights managements (DRM) stuff that's on CDs, and in some computers and media players. So, people in some corporate headquarters end up having some control over users' computers and files. That doesn't enhance anybody's freedom ... but isn't something like that inevitable if IP is the model under which creators are paid for their work? I mean, you can't have it both ways ...

PAUL: I'd rather you had a problem with second-raters stealing other people's livelihoods.

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