AAP Sends Letter to Trump, Snobbishly Dismisses Online Creators as Inferior
Just when you thought that the Association of American Publishers had made its way into the 21st century, it demonstrates that it is firmly entrenched in the 20th.
The AAP released a public letter to President Elect Trump this morning which, as you would expect from a bunch of dinosaurs, called for greater copyright enforcement.
You can read the letter over on the AAP website, but I will avoid reposting any of it because it is the usual nonsense about how publishing won’t survive without MOAR copyright enforcement and how the industry would not survive without copyright (which is why the fashion industry died decades ago – NOT).
It was the usual patronizing drivel which is hardly worth your time to read. This was entirely expected; what I did not expect was to have the entire internet rudely dismissed as inferior to book publishing:
While the Internet and smartphones have added texting, tweeting, emailing, instant messaging, social networking, and blogging to the ways individuals communicate privately with a few or publicly with a crowd, publishing an original work remains a compelling way to tell a story, explain any subject, offer a viewpoint, or spread facts and ideas.
While the AAP may make random grunts about representing web publishers, they are clearly stuck in the past.
We live in an age where we are more likely to find useful instructions online than in a book, where scholarly essays are published digitally first and print second, where thought-provoking essays are discovered and read online, and where news breaks online first before being published in print hours or days later.
The internet has already killed off encyclopedias, niche nonfiction like gardening books, and newspapers.
And yet the AAP doesn’t think any of that matters.
Please climb in the dustbin of history, AAP, and close the lid. You’re done.
image by CJS*64
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