What's wrong with that? Used books can legally be exchanged without money changing hands?
Piracy - Astatalk site post re. my book
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What's wrong with that? Used books can legally be exchanged without money changing hands?
That is the problem of the whole piracy debate. There is a difference between legality and morality, and there are illegal acts which are clearly morally identical to legal acts (and in reverse obviously). It's not that easy to explain why downloading a book morally wrong but borrowing a book is not. Because to the reader, it's the same act, he's reading a book for free. (And to the author it's also the same, he's not getting payed)
If one wants to explain why one is wrong and the other isn't, one has to point out that the essential difference is the permission which needs to be obtained from the author, and that it's the author's rights which can be violated.
The hysterical "piracy is theft" propaganda by the music and film industry doesn't help, because if you try to frame the whole issue around the money the author is or isn't getting people are obviously going to point out there are plenty of legal ways to read books without paying, so why should downloading be different?
johnnysannie
Banned
Really? I guess those teenagers I see with their Kindles - including two of my kids - are facing early senility and premature graying.
Hilarious non-point if you ask me.
If I buy a book, read it, and give it to a friend, there's still only one copy of the book involved. If another friend says, "Oh, I heard that book was good, did you like it?" and I tell them yes, I no longer have a copy to give them. If I want to read the book again later myself, I have to either borrow it back (in which case my friend now no longer has the book) or I have to go buy another copy.
Sure, you can wait until your friend is done with the book and then borrow their copy. You can check a book out of the library. (Keep in mind that paperback books tend to fall apart after about 20-30 checkouts, so the library /will/ eventually have to buy another copy.) But in all, the supply of books does not change unless the publisher prints more. If I give away my copy of the book, then I no longer have a copy of the book. If I want a copy again, I either need to buy one (money to the publisher), or else retrieve my old copy or find a used one (in which case someone else no longer has their copy). Rinse, repeat.
With pirated eBooks, that's not the case. I have my book, and give a copy to a friend /and I still have my copy/. Now the other friend comes up and says, "Oh, I heard that book was good, did you like it?" and I tell them, yes, it was good, and hey, here's a copy! Now there's /three/ copies of the book off of that one initial one. The reader -- not the publisher or author -- is controlling the supply.
No, I was illustrating that there's an actual, quantifiable difference between "I can give my physical copy of the book to someone else" and "I can make a digital copy of my book for someone else." Thus, "I can give my already-purchased copy of a book to someone else, so I should be able to give away digital copies of any eBook I've bought to someone else" doesn't really follow. It would be like saying, "Because I can loan my car to someone, or sell it to them used, that means I should be able to give away an infinite number of cars to anyone who asks." Physical limitations of not being able to digitally duplicate a car aside, there's just no logical jump from point A to point B.
But you are right, I'll admit, that this won't convince anyone who's already feeling the other way. Many people aren't actually pirating books because of real /logic/, and will be determined to find any justification for why they should get things without having to pay. In those cases, no argument will convince them, because even the arguments they might buy will result in them feeling guilty or wrong. They don't want to feel guilty, and they don't want to stop getting things for free, so the arguments will be discounted, dismissed or excuses made.