Quote:
Originally Posted by bill_mchale
It may peak the reader's interest, but it is almost certainly going to prevent them from buying a copy of the book you gave them. Lets look at this way, is it ethical to use someone' money to gamble for them without their permission?
So lets see if we can put this in perspective. You obtained illegally distributed copies of novels you already obtained legally, and then gave away the legal copies since you had obtained the illegal copies. This is correct right? Would you consider it ethical to have purchased illegal hard copies to give them to charity? Or to buy illegal hard copies and then give away your legal copies? Ethically, it seems to me, those two cases are more or less identical to what you have done.
--
Bill
|
There are two differences. First, I didn't obtain illegal copies so I could give my legal copies away. The reasons for obtaining the illegal copies were for personal use. I gave the copies away because I didn't want to waste them.
Second, most everyone on board is assuming that everyone should follow the same ethics. Ethics vary by culture, religion, economic standing and education.
I'm not rationalizing my decision, I have no need to. I find my solution perfectly acceptable and ethical. If you don't... well... tough. I'm not telling you to follow my beliefs and I sure as heck don't want you telling me that I have to follow yours.
Let me ask this. Is it still unethical had I gone through the steps of cutting the binding, scanning, editing, etc... resulting in a format shift and the destruction of the original format?
What if I paid someone to do that for me?
What if, instead of downloading, I retyped the book, or was able to scan it without destroying the book still resulting in 2 viable copies? Would your ethics require me to destroy one copy?