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Cthulhu :
i completely agree with everything you say. this is why 1. i don't see myself taking on the digitalisation of my own books (even for personal use ; it's too much time / work, unless i was willing to destroy the actual book in the process to make it easier, and i'm not willing to do that with most of my books) and 2. i can't sincerely advocate the illegal distribution of copyrighted materials (hmm... maybe disney's works excepted, purely on principle... contrariness principle... i can't help feeling that they in particular seem to be asking for it, the greedy buggers). although i do think personally that if you already bought a particular book in paper version, getting a digital copy of it for your own personal use (even if you don't do your own format shifting) is rather a grey area, ethically. how many times should we have to pay for the same content ?
*however* if we examine the results of these practices in the music industry, many artists have affirmed that contrary to what the music industry executives would like us to beleive, far from being the harbingers of the death of the industry, illegal mp3s have actually helped them ; particularly in the case of more or less unknown bands who have gained a following because their music has been discovered this way by people who might not have had access to it otherwise, and also because true melomanes tend to buy just as much music as before (if not more, thanks to discovering new bands by downloading them first), even if they also download music in parallel, for diverse reasons including the desire to own the physical object and the desire to support the artists they appreciate.
it's a complex discussion and has too many ethical ramifications for me to want to stir that particular hornet's nest, but clearly things need to evolve and i can't help wondering (in a purely abstract, personally uninvolved way !) if that might be the most effective way of showing the publishing industry what the consumers really want ; just as it was effective for music.
according to the publishing industry representative cited in the article, people don't want e-books. we know they do (some of us at least !), even if we don't want to replace paper books completely (that's not really the question). how do we make them understand ? (*that* is the question !) especially if, as stated in the article, they *could* make e-books available (for the past 10 years...) but they don't because they don't recognize that there is a market for them.
but again, < disclaimer > i am not of course advocating distribution of protected intellectual property. </ disclaimer >
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