Do you love free and unauthorized digital content but find you really want books and they're not available on YouTube? You're in luck. A visit to www.eSnips.com and you'll find all sorts of books, as well as other copyrighted content. None of it has been posted by the copyright owner; this is posted by fans, like YouTube. Yes, it's odd that a fan of a novelist would want to deny that novelist the payment that would come if a downloader were instead to buy the book, but this is an odd world we live in.

I spent exactly one minute on the site, and after that I had a pristine copy of Bill Clinton's My Life on my hard drive. The file is about 7.5 MB, and is the full 883 pages. The image quality is spectacular; there's no sign of page distortion like you might find when a book is pressed against a scanner and the photos are crystal clear, including a cute one of Socks the Cat briefing the press on page 565. I can only see one page missing; the copyright page that warns against unauthorized reproduction. I of course did not pay for this and neither Bill Clinton nor his publisher Alfred A. Knopf received a dime.

I plan to delete this file after I am done with this blog; I had to download it to find out how much of the book was in the file. Apparently many entire books have been uploaded to it; the RWR (Romance Writers Report) says that Venable on behalf of the Romance Writers of America has sent cease and desist letters to eSnips insisting certain books be taken down. It doesn't seem to be working; one of the authors in question, Madeline Hunter, shows up on the first page of offerings.

eSnips is anything but snippets. This is flat-out theft. But of course they're following the YouTube model of looking the other way as unauthorized copyrighted content is posted, then waiting for cease-and-desist letters that will be moot the moment someone reposts the content. Copyright is not an opt-out system. We did not design it so that anyone can do whatever they like with copyrighted content, and the content owner is responsible for finding out about that use and asking that it stop. That is the model of Google Print, and it's wrong. The goal of all of these services is to build a critical mass of users who will come to love the service and won't want it to go away. Then they will find "consumer advocacy" groups to say this is a new fair use and must be respected, and that anyone who doesn't is just frozen in old business models.

We mustn't let this happen. Bill Clinton apparently is a multimillionaire now as a result of his book and his speaking fees. That doesn't mean I have the right to acquire his book without paying. If he chooses, he can give his royalties to charity. But the employees at Knopf -- the copyeditors, the editors, the production coordinators, the janitors -- might like to see payment for each book obtained. The First Sale Doctrine says I can resell a book, but I no longer have it. I downloaded My Life but the uploader still has a copy. That means one payment for two books, not good math for compensating artists.