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Old 03-08-2010, 02:04 PM   #61
luqmaninbmore
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Originally Posted by HarryT View Post
The end result may be the same, but for me, yes, the origin of the material does matter.

It's the same as asking if there's any ethical difference between buying a bottle of Scotch in a supermarket, on which all the appropriate taxes have been paid, and buying the same brand at half the price from "a man in a pub", which has been smuggled from France, and on which UK taxes have not been paid. The end result is the same - you have a bottle of whisky - but one has been obtained legitimately and the other from an illicit source.
Do you subscribe to a deontological ethical system, Harry?

Anyway, the situation you outline above is different because the consequences are different; in your case taxes remain unpaid and the public is deprived of a benefit which it is owed.

In my case, I do not owe the author anything for making an additional personal copy of a book I have legally obtained. Whether I myself make the copy or have a volunteer (say my wife or my brother or, in this case, a stranger) do it is irrelevant from an ethical view point. Why is the case different if this second party makes the copy from their own legally obtained book? Is there some mystical property present in my own personal book that is transmissible via my own labor to the copy, thereby conferring legitimacy?
I am not going to buy an ebook version of a work that I have already purchased in paper format. A decision to download a scan made by someone else as opposed to making one with my own scanner does not result in differing consequences for any of the parties involved. From a consequentialist (or utilitarian) conception of ethics, the action is ethically neutral.

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Old 03-08-2010, 02:34 PM   #62
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Originally Posted by luqmaninbmore View Post
Do you subscribe to a deontological ethical system, Harry?

Anyway, the situation you outline above is different because the consequences are different; in your case taxes remain unpaid and the public is deprived of a benefit which it is owed.

In my case, I do not owe the author anything for making an additional personal copy of a book I have legally obtained. Whether I myself make the copy or have a volunteer (say my wife or my brother or, in this case, a stranger) do it is irrelevant from an ethical view point. Why is the case different if this second party makes the copy from their own legally obtained book? Is there some mystical property present in my own personal book that is transmissible via my own labor to the copy, thereby conferring legitimacy?
I am not going to buy an ebook version of a work that I have already purchased in paper format. A decision to download a scan made by someone else as opposed to making one with my own scanner does not result in differing consequences for any of the parties involved. From a consequentialist (or utilitarian) conception of ethics, the action is ethically neutral.

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I will happily buy an ebook version of a pbook I already own. I then donate the pbook, if it isn't in too horrible a shape to the library. I wanted to buy these books as ebooks, they just aren't available. I'm having the same issue with a couple of other favorite books -- they are only available on the darknet. I haven't succumbed in their cases yet, but it gets more tempting every day.

I note that Baen is slowly re-releasing a Heinlein. If The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is released by Baen, I'd buy it in a flash, just because I'd like to support them. That would be the only reason I purchased it at any expensive price now, however. Robert Heinlein died 22 years ago, his wife died 7 years ago and they had no children. By repurchasing a book that I have already bought 4 times in pbook (to replace copies that were falling apart) I don't see exactly who I'm supporting.

I agree that Auel is more a grey area, since she is still living. However, I did purchase each of her books as pbooks. If scanning those pbooks into a file myself is okay, I don't see how downloading them off the darknet is any different. It just saves me the time and effort. It is not similar to the whiskey analogy, since I would have bought the legit ebook if it was available.

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Old 03-08-2010, 03:24 PM   #63
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Dear Marcy, it sounds that you put a lot of thoughts into the authors situation and when I get it right, than you just download what you did purchase in any way beforehand. Many people tent to get leger when starting to use a pirates service: the first book I had in paper, but this one I`ll get es soon as... and so it starts. Anyway, I get the impression, that this is not the case with you so I think you don't have to re-read what I wrote above.
It was much more written for such persons who tent to talk themselve into "there is nothing wrong with this, my brothers friend has bought the book, he lent it once to me, so I could have scaned it than..."
For this kind of attitude I wrote what I did, because copyright is not a word the government inventet to make our lives harder, it is something to help the creative people, who make life much more worth living to all of us, get there money they earned.
God night, Ilkyway
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Old 03-08-2010, 04:41 PM   #64
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Well, but if you compare one has a venyl and downloads a copy of mp3 seems a very different case for me. It maybe because I am expereanced in making anything that has a sound and that I owe into mp3. But I have no clue how to turn a book that I own in an ebook. As far as I understand the process of making an ebook there is much more work to do. And the original might get hurt in the process, or am I wrong here?
It's not difficult, but it does require hardware that's not standard for computers--you need a scanner. Sometimes, depending on the original, you need to cut the spine off it so you can scan it; that destroys the original as a book.

Ripped MP3s are common because computers come with a CD player, and there's plenty of free software for making MP3s from audio CDs. If computers came with a scanner & free OCR software, ripping books would be common.

They don't, and aren't going to, although a lot of printers now have copy/scan abilities, and free scan-to-PDF software. But as hardware gets cheaper, both digital camera and page-scanner ebooks are going to be more common.

It's *NEVER* going to be harder to copy things than it is right now. It will never be more difficult to create & share digital files, nor more difficult to remove anti-copy protections. A hundred years ago, if you wanted a copy of an out-of-print book, you had to sit down with a typewriter. Fifty years ago, you could hold it down to a xerox machine. Now, you can take pictures of the pages with a $20 camera, and convert it to a PDF with free software.

Right now, this is considered complicated and troublesome. It will get easier (in part, because legitimate businesses need to do things very much like this, and they will find ways to make it easier), and digital copies of printed material will be made & shared much like MP3s are now.

Publishers & authors who don't want their materials copied are going to be upset. If they want to *continue making money* at their craft, they'll have to figure out how to get people to buy what they could get for free, not fret over who's not paying for it.

It's not impossible. It's not even difficult. ITunes is raking in money for songs that are widely available on torrents. And bottled water is a billion-dollar industry, despite almost everyone having access to water just as good from their local taps. Many people are willing to pay for what they could get for free; the publishing industry needs to find them & market to them, not spend millions trying to prevent the digital equivalent of used ebook stores and private lending libraries.
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Old 03-08-2010, 05:34 PM   #65
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Originally Posted by kennyc View Post
I agree. In the first case it really is format shifting for your own use. Whereas in the second it is obtaining what is clearly an illegal copy.
There's no such thing as a specific copy being illegal, itself. The distribution was undoubtedly illegal, but that's on the uploader. As for the actual file, there's really no difference between scanning it yourself or downloading it from somebody else. It's the same file, in the end.
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Old 03-08-2010, 05:49 PM   #66
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Originally Posted by Marcy View Post
If scanning those pbooks into a file myself is okay, I don't see how downloading them off the darknet is any different. It just saves me the time and effort.
A second thing to consider... provided that you're not re-distributing these files yourself, the copyright holder is never going to know or care.
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Old 03-08-2010, 06:03 PM   #67
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy View Post
There's no such thing as a specific copy being illegal, itself. The distribution was undoubtedly illegal, but that's on the uploader. As for the actual file, there's really no difference between scanning it yourself or downloading it from somebody else. It's the same file, in the end.
Of course there is a difference. It depends on the source. The file may or may not be identical, but it is certainly illegal if it is not obtained via legal means.
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Old 03-09-2010, 04:50 AM   #68
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There's no such thing as a specific copy being illegal, itself. The distribution was undoubtedly illegal, but that's on the uploader. As for the actual file, there's really no difference between scanning it yourself or downloading it from somebody else. It's the same file, in the end.
You can not exclude other repercussions of downloading an illegal file. By downloading it, you're encouraging file sharing. And if for you it's okay because you have the original, there will be other people who will download for illegal reasons.

Even if the file sharer is not making any profit, he is getting something for that: either personal gratification for sharing something or even site ad revenue or something.

In any case, it's illegal and unethical to download a pirated ebook. Even if for the right reasons. You can just acept that what you're doing is wrong but live fine with it.
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Old 03-09-2010, 05:01 AM   #69
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I fully agree, why support those who obviously break the law (the people uploading the file)? Even if this is not financial support, downloading their stuff is still helping them and encouraging them.
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Old 03-09-2010, 05:28 AM   #70
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I have red, that the german law says: the souce has to be legal to make the copy legal. If one downloads from the internet not knowing if the source is legal or not, than this download is not legal and can be punished. And I have to say, that in this case the law and my personal sense of wright and wrong agree.
But I think Elfwreck is wright two: There has to be found a new way in dealing with digital files. Since sharing is so easy and has many advanteges, one beeing, that education is cheaper and easeyer to gain by poor people, there has to be found a way so that nobody is the looser.

And Since nearly everybody I know has a copy of one file or another from which the sorce might be illigeal, a way has to be found, to sort that out. If all the people who have but one such a file should go to jail, the streets would be empty. So law and realety have to fit together.
And I think, that moral is not oldfashined. You have karma in this forum. That is mend to show nice behavier. Here is an anty piracy policy. We are discussing the wright and wrong of piracy and wether or not there is a grey-sone (can I say that in english?).
All this seems to be part of the wright way. Unthoughtfull taking what ever is offered, just because it is possible and might not be punished isn`t.
Karma (the real one) means: all that you think and do has consequences.
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Old 03-09-2010, 09:44 AM   #71
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I think I know the site they are talking about. Is that the site where the ebooks are in Ms word format?
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Old 03-09-2010, 10:08 AM   #72
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Mostly pdfs from what I've seen.
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Old 03-09-2010, 01:13 PM   #73
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I thought they were talking about the site with mostly text & RTF files.
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Old 03-09-2010, 01:30 PM   #74
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You can not exclude other repercussions of downloading an illegal file. By downloading it, you're encouraging file sharing. And if for you it's okay because you have the original, there will be other people who will download for illegal reasons.
I'm sure there will be lots of other people who download without having the original, that has nothing to do with me though.
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Old 03-09-2010, 01:58 PM   #75
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If one downloads from the internet not knowing if the source is legal or not, than this download is not legal and can be punished.
That makes just about everyone using the internet guilty.
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