The Sheriff, the widow and the free debate

Following our previous post in which we reported on Richard Stallman's comments on eBooks and the privacy issue, I found the good humoured comment from Keith Chapman AKA Chap O'Keefe to be especially interesting, and so I have reproduced it here.

Over to Keith:

Richard Stallman also rejects copyright laws and suggests authors can better be supported by distribution of tax funds, based on some mathematical calculation of their "popularity", and by anonymous voluntary payments.

I can't see the tax bit working for authors, other than within the country where they live and are deemed a "tax resident" -- that's how it works with Public Lending Right payments for books borrowed from libraries.

Voluntary payments? It's hard enough to persuade anyone to buy an O'Keefe Kindle novel for 99 cents let alone to make an additional contribution! As of this moment, NO ONE has bought a download of the just-released ebook of THE SHERIFF AND THE WIDOW.

If Mr Stallman would like to be the first and to make a voluntary payment to me, I will send him a non-DRM digital copy of the novel which he can own subject to the sames laws applying to a physical edition of the book.