Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
So if we accept it is OK ethically to sell a book or give it away after you have read it then we have an example were we do not think that the ethical arguments above are very strong. The arguments are much stronger if we give away many copies of the same book (electronically for example). And if these are the ethical arguments we use to decide if it is OK to copy (consume) a CD and than give it away then we ought to come to the same conclusion. The time shifting of the timepoint when you give the item away should not matter.
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I really can't understand your argument. Don't you accept that there's a fundamental difference between giving something away, and giving it away while retaining a copy of it yourself? In the first case, you're simply transferring ownership to somebody else; in the second, you're illegally duplicating it. There's a significant difference between the two activities.