Is downloaded software unethical?

[The_Doc_Man]

I will preface my comments by saying that I have no expectation of ever selling my fiction in a way that would lead to a movie (live or animated) or, heavens forfend, a children's cartoon series. All too often, fantasy stories end up that way.

Having said that, the actual writer of a novel that becomes something more in another medium will have very limited income realization even though it is the author's "baby." To make that transition to another medium, the author usually must sell the rights. Which usually means, in turn, that the author's creative control is gone and the characters become warped beyond belief.

The ruthless production teams of Hollywood and other big screen producers will first try to write out the original author by giving a pitiful lump sum, or (worse) offering a percentage point or two of the profits - after which they will warp the idea into something almost unrecognizable when compared to the original work. BUT by the time they plow through a ton of money, you would have to have a frickin' blockbuster movie or a cult classic with some longevity to its popularity for the movie's profits to go above zero. In the mean-time, the producers and actors get paid, the set workers behind-the-scenes get paid (which they should...), the special-effects companies get paid, but those folks who took the "percentage" option usually get very little.

For that reason, "copyright" and "intellectual property" issues somehow don't appear to actually protect anything anyway.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Which usually means, in turn, that the author's creative control is gone and the characters become warped beyond belief.

The latest example of that is Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. I had read other books he'd written but not this series so when I saw the advertisement for the series on Amazon Prime, I bought the first book and read it. Half way through the second episode I was so disgusted I stopped watching. Jordan's writing is a little plodding because of all the detail. He really brings you into his world. That is very hard to depict on the screen so the best they can do is allusion. I think they embarked on this project because they liked the action scenes and they're just going to skip over everything else because it isn't good cinema. In the first episode, they dropped two characters, both of whom move the story later on. I've only read the first book so far but I ordered the entire series, all 14 books so I have a lot of reading to do. I decided to buy them all at once because they came in three book boxed sets for about 15 dollars each which is about as good as you get for paperbacks. Plus the series was written 20 years ago and I didn't want to get into it and not be able to find the "next" book.