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| Home > Charles Fuller |
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| Charles Fuller |
10/31/05
I do object to having my published/copyrighted works made available to the public via the Google Print Library Project.
Nonsense! When a plumber visits to fix a toilet, he/she is paid. When an electrician repairs an outlet, he/she is paid. Will someone please tell me why it is that the works of writers isn't comparable to toilets or electrical outlets, and everyone thinks it is perfectly all right to “take” from us, the things that provide us income and livelihood? Has Google suggested that it can walk into the Guggenheim and take paintings off the walls at its discretion and give them away? Does their effort mean they can film ballet performances without paying the dancers and the companies? Since when has art become free or not worth paying for? Google has billions of dollars—am I to believe they have no obligation to take some of their earnings and pay us? Has the technology driven them to a place where 1s and 0s are more important than human beings—children, our homes, our families, our educations, our food, our mortgages—all of which have to be paid for? Worldwide ought to include the understanding that people everywhere discover that what drives culture, promotes ideas and intellectual pleasure is the work of human beings who ought to be paid for what they do—wouldn't it be more offensive, if all of it was free and no one got paid? And that little girl or boy who read this wonderful work and had a wonderful work inside them decided, because writing couldn't buy them beans, he/she would decide to be a plumber and none of us would have the chance to learn what marvelous ideas they might bring to us all? Google ought to know better, the future should not only hold out the prospect of a better life for all, but the understanding that doing so must be accompanied by a just consideration of those things that have always made life worth living—and literature without a doubt has done that, and no matter who or where the writer is, it is simple justice that he/she must be compensated for their efforts.
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