Hi. I am a young writer who is trying to find ways to create full time (all the laughter can now subside) and who would like togive his views on filesharing.

A lot of the freespeech and file sharing programmes seem to portray creators like writers and muscians as greedy. While that may be the case in some instances, the great majority of us (who don't have big book deals or even any book deals) are just struggling to survive. Filesharing programmes are therefore both a blessing and a "curse".

The blessing part is the freespeech aspect and the fact it allows a way to distribute works which we don't get through mainstream sources. This is especially helpful for writers like me who combine erotic and dark elements and therefore can not place our work on free mainstream webhosters (because of terms of service restrictions) and get no traffic if we place our work on free porn webhosters (since it's not porn and therefore not what people are looking for). I can place my work (which I have not as yet because of the points mentioned just below this) uncensored and unrestricted.

The "curse" part is the reason I have been hesitant about placing my work on filesharing networks. Basically there is no way to get financial compensation from my work making it impossible to create full time. In the country where I live, with a unemployment rate of anything from 25% to 50% (depending on if you believe the government or the opposition parties), things are made doubly difficult. All of the programmes like PayPal require debit cards and credit cards and the banks here will only give proper debit cards and credit cards to people with fixed incomes way out of the range of what I get. Instead we get useless debit cards that only work at supermarkets etc within the country and are not accepted by companies like PayPal. Trust me, I have spent over a year now being frusatrated by that one.

Even if there was a way around that and I could get onto a programme like PayPal, asking for voluntary donations, there is no way to compel other people sharing the files to keep the link to such a programme such as PayPal on the page since they can alter the page or text however which way they feel like.

Don't get me wrong here. I don't think that filesharing networks are bad or should be banned. I would use such networks quite willingly if there ways to overcome the problems and get a steady "income". I even don't mind if people who can't pay don't pay. I know what it is like to have no money to buy books or music or anything else and I know a lot of students use these networks. I just think that until filesharing programmes find a way to overcome the creator compensation problem, even those creators like me who would like to support the programmes will find it difficult to do so.

Just my opinion. Don't get all in a huff.

GMcB

I disagree - they tend to portray the large record companies, their major signings and lobby groups as greedy.













It is these lobby groups which then try to link in all the minor artists, pretending that they represent all artists, even though they do not.










This is a problem in all nations. It is a chicken and egg situation, and the odd thing I find is that people with a bad credit record have a greater chance of getting a credit card than people with no credit record at all!











Have you looked into 'offshore' banks - I have never tried them because they seems dodgey and luckily I finally 'made the grade' and was accepted for a credit card recently (just!) but there are banks which may grant you a credit card. Search the net, there is plenty of info on them (it wouldn't be proper for me to provide links here).









There is another file sharing protocol called <A HREF="http://freenet.sourceforge.net">freenet</A> which would be very suitable for what you would like to do.







It allows anonymous, untracable publishing, and allows cryptographically signing pages, as well as URLs which cryptographically 'lock' a pages content (if the page contents changes, then the URL must change).

Once this network takes off you will be able to establish an anonymous identity which people will recognise by reputation (assuming you are any good )and so although people will still be able to copy your work and repost it elsewhere, you would have a fighting chance, since you will always be first with the goods.







Unfortunatly this project is currently too slow for most users patience. As a result there is also little content. Soon they will release a majorly-rewitten version which should speed things up a bit.







There are <A HREF="http://www.cypherspace.org/links.html">open source projects to develop ecommerce systems using distributed computing technology deployed on users PCs, such as Eternity,</A> which if they ever come to fruition will fix your problem with PayPal.







Good luck







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