He's not earning anything if I pick up the book from the free books box in the mailroom, either. And the publisher has no way to measure demand. Is that also stealing from him?
*WHAT* would I be stealing from the author if I download his book from the darknet? Do you assume that I would have otherwise bought the book full-price new? I almost never do that. Never for leisure/entertainment reading.
If the publisher has half a brain, it's monitoring common torrent sites and keeping track of which books are popular. Note: Dan Brown's newest book was torrented *madly*, and sold madly. If those torrented copies meant lost sales, you'd think he'd have *less* noticeable income because of them. Instead, over and over, what's torrented most is what sells most.
How much richer do you think Rowling would be if her books had not been digitized by her fans?
It's not theft, because copyright isn't about property--it's about a monopoly on certain business transactions.
It's not theft because you can't show how much was taken from one person and given to another. If I download
Harry Potter And the Sorcerer's Stone, how much money is Rowling out? Does it change that value since I've already paid for it in print? (And this thread is about out-of-print books. If I download Chumbley's
Azoetia, how much money are the author's heirs missing out on?)
"Just wait for it" is reasonable advice when we're talking months or maybe a few years. "Just wait until it hits the public domain when your grandchildren have become parents" is not.
And again... there's no "taking" involved here. Nothing's being taken *away* from anyone. My taking pictures of your car isn't the same as stealing your car. Using those pictures to build a copy of your car isn't stealing, either. You may no longer have the only car with that paint job, but removing your uniqueness is not the same as theft--even if you have a legal right to be unique.
If someone takes my TV, I don't have it. If someone stares in the window & watches the TV channel I'm watching, I'm not missing out on anything.
I haven't taken his book. Haven't broken into his house; I don't have access to his printouts. I have taken *words*--which are not his property; the English language has no owner--and arranged them in the same order as he did. I have striven to inspire the same ideas he did when arranging them.
That doesn't mean it's non-harmful or legal. We have plenty of ways to harm people, to cost them income, that aren't theft. (If I slash his tires, I haven't stolen anything from him, but I may still be liable for the cost of the tires *and* the lost work from not having a vehicle.)
The argument "it's not THEFT" doesn't mean "I condone this act & believe there's nothing wrong with it." (Y'know what? It's not rape, either, to take an author's brain-baby and let hundreds of people fondle it.)
We'd just like crimes & torts to be labeled accurately. We can't come to any agreements on what the problems are and how to fix them, if we can't agree on a description of what's happening.
If you want to be firm in your moral belief that copyright infringement is "theft," you're welcome to do so. If you'd like to stop problematic distribution and widespread torrenting, you'll have to figure out how to make it seem wrong to the people who are doing it, because there is *no* level of internet interference that can crack down on that many people, in that many locations... you can drive it farther underground (make it *even more elite* for those who like to be involved), but that's about all.
To stop "the torrenting problems," you need to convince the people doing it that it's wrong. And you won't do that by calling it something it's not, by insisting that every download is a lost sale.
You know what's a lot more like real theft? It's when Congress took away thousands of works that belonged to us, the people, by declaring their copyrights were retroactively extended, despite the fact that, when they were published, it was under the agreement that they'd be monopolized for a maximum of 56 years. Everything published before 1954 should be in the public domain. Most things published before 1982--everything not registered with the US copyright office--should be in the public domain.
Return *those* items to us, the public, and we'll talk about respecting the new copyrights.
Because right now, we've got no reason to believe anything will *ever* enter the public domain.