[wgrimm]

I was considering piracy after having read these posts, and I think that sometimes piracy can be a good thing. For example, a year or so ago I downloaded a complete set of the 1960s comic book "Space Family Robinson," published by Gold Key starting in the early 60s.

Now, for those nitpickers that want to condemn me for this, they should first realize that I own a complete set of the paper originals, and they are extremely hard to come by.

But consider- no one lost any money here- the comics have been long out of print. Gold Key went out of business years ago, back in the 90s Valiant purchased rights to this comic and was rumoured to be reprinting several of them. Never happened. Valiant is out of business now also. No one lost any money because these comics were scanned and made available, and my guess is many people benefitted.

So, here we have a situation where no one lost any money, readers benefitted, and culturally we all benefitted because these items were digitized and made more permanent. I don't see much difference between what this pirate did and what Google is doing with Google Books. The human race as a whole benefits when its cultural heritage is made more lasting (and some would even argue- like librarians, for example- when it is made available freely, like in public libraries).

In fact, I see a way for some savvy publishers to make a ton of money from books long out of print- digitize these books and make them available as ebooks, and charge reasonably for them, like $3 or $4. Or less. The books were long ago paid for, so what is earned is almost pure profit. Why let the pirates have all the fun- the publishers could be earning cash for what the pirates are giving away.

Sadly, there is not much innovation like this going on. The publishers are clinging to hundred year old business models, whining about piracy, and wondering why readers won't pay hardcover prices for ebooks.

Outfits like Smashwords are great- they seem to understand what most sellers and publishers do not....