A Dick Koan
A student entered the hall of dickishness at the top of the penis-shaped tower of cockitude, and asked the Dick Master who he was watching in the All-Seeing Orb of Testiculi.
“I am watching” said the Dick Master, “this man in New Zealand, in his anger and his rage. I have caused this thing to be.”
“How, master?” said the student.
The Dick Master replied “We recently published Iain M Banks new Culture novel, “Surface Detail”. And when this man heard that the novel was now published, he went to iBooks, and found it not.”
The student nodded.
“And then he went to his sneakily created US iBooks account, and he found that we had only released it in the UK. And his anger was great.”
The student smiled, and said “Master, that is quite a Dick move.”
The Dick Master raised one finger, and the student fell silent.
“I am not done. So he created a sneaky UK iTunes account, only to find that Surface Detail was, despite being published in the UK, not available in iBooks in the UK. And his anger grew.”
“Master” said the student, “That is superbly dickish!”
The Master raised his finger for the second time. “And then he found out that Surface detail WAS available from Kindle UK, but that you can’t create a Kindle UK account from an NZ IP address.”
The student bowed deeply before the Dick Master. “Master, that is a seriously Dick Move!”
The Dick Master nodded, but then told the student. “There is more.”
“More?” said the incredulous student. “More dickish than that?!”
The Dick Master told the student “This man then ranted and raved and wondered aloud why the publishing industry did not want to take his fucking dollars, goddam it. And then he got a friend of his who already had a working UK kindle account to buy the book, crack the DRM, and produce an epub version that he could read on his iPad.”
The student was puzzled. “But Dick Master! Now he has the book, and can read it. That’s doesn’t really seem like a very Dick Move on your part, does it?”
The Dick Master smiled gently, and said “We shall see if you still think that when I complain in the media about piracy costing us sales.”
And the student was enlightened.