The recently announced anti-piracy plans certainly will help those U.S. companies that lose huge amounts of money as mentioned. But I’m not sure it will do much good for the rest of us.

It is a fact that people do not want to pay for music, software and other things they can get free on the Internet. On one hand, the authors and creators behind those materials deserve payment for the use of their work. On the other hand, the free use of artwork, scientific results and other useful things seems to me to foster a kind of cultural democracy. When your income regulates what you can enjoy, the needy won’t have as much as those who are better off.

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The Current Discussion: Does the crisis on Wall Street mean that the American style of capitalism is no longer the model for the world?

Here in Hungary, modern capitalism began in 1990. An earlier capitalist period in the early 20th century ended when the Soviet Union forcibly introduced socialism.

American-style capitalism was not a useful model during that first period; what we had was closer to slightly industrialized feudalism. After all, America was really far away, across a continent and then an ocean; how could we aspire to its ideals? When the modern period began the American style was no model, either; the country was too poor to even hope to achieve a similar kind of success. Now, believe it or not, the gap between our two economic system is even wider.

For small banks in other parts of the world, news of Wall Street companies in crisis inspires more of a feeling of gloating. Small banks and other financial institutions live in a permanent danger of insolvency or bankruptcy; to see the big ones in trouble is a comforting sensation.

It's not the American model of capitalism that we envy here; it's American democracy. That's the model to which our young and fragile democracy should aspire.

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The Current Discussion: American newspapers are in dire financial straits. How are newspapers faring where you are? Are you concerned about the future of journalism in America or in your own country? What does that future look like?

Since the fall of socialism here in Central Europe, we have been hit hard by America's problems. We don't get much in the way of gifts or fancy foreign aid packages, but we do get oil shortages and terrorism scares. Newspapers in Hungary have to cope with the same declines as America's. Moreover, the small size of our country makes the problem more daunting.

But on the Internet, journalism is flourishing. The future lies there, in online papers and blogs. As a novelist, not a journalist, I admit to being less concerned - my favorite pastime is the reading (and writing) of books, and less threatened. Although I know that the book, as such, may also be an endangered species.

What can be done? Journalists can improve their skills and try to better serve their readership. I have a childish belief: that in the long-run, quality will always win, whether in newspaper, book, theater, film, architecture etc. And even if a paper folds, the quality remains in the archives for the readers (or researchers) of the future. Try to stick to this, until the wind turns.