09-29-2009, 09:59 AM | #61 | |
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All the debates would be better if people could use the correct term which in this case is copyright infringement and not theft. |
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09-29-2009, 03:44 PM | #62 |
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But they do see an (indirect) penny from you. The person who sold that book second hand may well use the money to buy another book. Or they may buy books they otherwise couldn't afford because they know they can get some money back by selling them on later.
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09-29-2009, 04:11 PM | #63 | |
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Why are you so concerned with the PLR payment (which we've argued about before and in which we saw that the vast majority of authors never see anything like a pound from over the course of the year)? Why aren't all you people decrying file-sharing and 'theft' not looking at the actual publishing companies that are fleecing, and have been fleecing authors for the last 100 years. If you all care so much about authors where's your outrage over the 5% in royalties and the £2,000 advances on a novel a new author gets? Where's your outrage about authors who have to take second and third jobs to make ends meet because the publishing companies couldn't be arsed pushing said author or doing any advertising? Where's your condemnation of an industry that regularly 'pulps' half of its output rather than donate those books to people who might be able to use them? If you want me to respect the copyright of publishers, then you're going to have to convince me they deserve that respect. As it is, I wouldn't spit on the lot of them if they were on fire (small publishers excluded of course). |
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09-29-2009, 04:19 PM | #64 | |
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You used the 'theft causes deprivation' definition. Well, let's see - you could have bought a book. The money you spent supports the publisher, editor, proof reader, typesetter, cover artist, distributor and of course the author. You might object to the distribution of your money, but it remains a fact that all of these people played a part in getting the book to you. Instead you chose to steal a book. To take it without paying. Your defence is that you wouldn't be buying that book anyway because of the regional restrictions. So by your logic, no-one has lost any money. Except you could have bought another book to read - a physical copy of the book you wanted, or another book on your 'to-read' list. So, someone has lost out, because you've chosen to take your entertainment for free. You've also done your best to support the mechanism by which you stole the book - so others reading this very public forum are more likely to choose not to pay either. Most of the people who work to bring you a physical book also work to bring you an electronic book. The author, editor, proof reader, cover artist, publisher and so on all contribute to create that work. In the physical case, they can afford to do that because they can spread the cost of doing so between x-thousand books. The fact that it's physical makes it seem more 'natural' to pay for it. When a book is sold electronically, there is still the need to spread the cost of it's production. The ones and zeros may cost nothing to reproduce, but their arrangement into something you want to read does. So it does actually make a lot of sense to spread that cost between the people who read the electronic copy. How can you claim that, just because the delivery mechanism is free, the costs of production magically vanish? You suggest that expecting to pay and the concept of theft are old fashioned ideas. I suggest that you're being old fashioned by thinking that something has to be physical to have value or cost. I've also come across the fallacy that just because a book can be reproduced ad-infinitum electronically, the value of a copy is vanishingly small anyway. The problem here is that just because you can reproduce it endlessly doesn't mean it's read endlessly - the audience doesn't necessarily grow (in fact, the audience for electronic books can be depressingly small). So again, we come up against the need to distribute the cost across a given audience for a book. I agree entirely that regional restrictions are ridiculous, and fully support the right of people to shop elsewhere. The laws that built up to protect our rights in the physical world do get rather twisted in the virtual world. The history of world trade is complex and explains a lot of the oddities we see exposed by the internet. However, the spirit of the law still applies - if someone works to entertain you, they can choose to do so on the condition or expectation that you pay them. If their conditions upset you, shop elsewhere. It's still no excuse to steal. |
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09-29-2009, 04:24 PM | #65 |
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In this time of self-publishing online, it is the author's right to choose how they distribute their works. You may have no respect for the publishers, but clearly the authors who publish through them don't quite share your point of view. What right do you have to deny the author's chosen means of earning money, just because you object to the the publisher they have chosen? Have you some higher moral authority than them?
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09-29-2009, 04:25 PM | #66 | |
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Copying is not stealing Not under the law Not as a definition Not as a social act Why don't you stop worrying about pirates and adjust your sails? (Stolen from Dan Bull ) |
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09-29-2009, 04:30 PM | #67 | |
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That saves the need of trying to omnisciently ascertain whether or not they "would have" bought it, had they not in their gravest moral bankruptcy chosen to do otherwise. If you didn't buy today, I say: "Could've, would've, should've... but you ain't gonna no more. BAM! You were the weakest link!" - Ahi |
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09-29-2009, 04:32 PM | #68 | |
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09-29-2009, 04:47 PM | #69 |
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Is it? I don't think it's that clear. In fact if I had to say, I'd say it was the location of the website that does the authorization of the credit card and issues and tracks the sale.
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09-29-2009, 04:53 PM | #70 |
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Of course it is wrong both in a legal and ethical sense unless that person has intentionally given the rights away. Ethically anything created by a person is their property. Taking that property is stealing.
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09-29-2009, 04:57 PM | #71 | |
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As far as I can see it, the only way to handle the digital age is to reverse the old paradigms of buying/selling. Now you get it for free and pay-if-you-like after you've consumed the entertainment. Authors/Musicians/Creative types get compensated for their work, but more than that, they get readers, viewers, listeners. And that's more important than money any day of the week. Bonus, the audience will never have to have that "I paid X amount of money for that rubbish! What was I thinking!" moment ever again |
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09-29-2009, 04:57 PM | #72 |
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09-29-2009, 04:59 PM | #73 | |
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No it is not. You're quite wrong. A digital file is just that, a file, zeros and ones. You are not depriving anybody of anything when you copy a file. You are not stealing, ethically, morally or any other way, no matter how you might 'feel'. The worst that you can be accused of is 'copyright infringement', but even then, because no money is charged or profit made, it would never be taken too seriously (anywhere but America that is). |
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09-29-2009, 05:01 PM | #74 |
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09-29-2009, 05:02 PM | #75 | |
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