[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Elfwreck wrote:

Oh, puhleeze. Please don't try to turn this discussion into an alleged argument about the "increased access to knowledge." The 'Net and digitization has opened up an entire world of knowledge for anyone who wants it. We're not talking about "knowledge," here; we're talking about entertainment. No one has a constitutional right to be entertained. And I hope that no one is desperate enough to come back with some nonsense about the pursuit of happiness.

Agreed: There is no moral right to entertainment. (Or at least, not to any specific bit of entertainment.)

Disagreed: Entertaining material does not enhance knowledge.

I own physical copies of all 8 of the Sime/Gen novels. (Science fiction. 80's. Midlist authors; obscure series.) They're all out of print. None of them are available as legit ebooks. If I shared digital copies with people (I haven't), it would (1) presumably entertain them and (2) increase their knowledge of:

• The particular science-fiction world in which those books take place,
• Science fiction literary tropes,
• Vampire literary tropes,
• 80's literary patterns,
• The range of literature considered publishable in the 80's,
• Those particular authors.

There's really no point in continuing the discussion, at least, not on my part. Everyone here who bootlegs or downloads ebooks, whether by copying, scanning, handwriting them out, or lifting epubs or mobis or what-have-you, is taking money from an author.

If I copy them for myself, how much money have I taken from the authors?
If I give those copies to a friend, how much money is the author out?

Serious, not-rhetorical questions here. What's the value of a "stolen" item that doesn't legally exist?

There are a very, very few of you here who are what I would call "conscientious objectors." You few "CO's" genuinely oppose copyright law, having a communistic or Marxist view of property belonging to "everyone."

I never said all property belongs to everyone. I said that IP, in accordance with the US constitution, belongs to everyone after a limited time. This includes my own writing as well as that of everyone else.

I am *sharply* aware that current copyright law means every email, every forum post, every blog entry & comment, belong to someone, and another person could, technically, sue someone else for crossposting or forwarding them.

The rest of you: the bottom line is that you steal these books because you can. If you knew that the courts would actually start prosecuting you, under Federal statutes, and you would do 3-5 years for infringement, as is allowed under those selfsame statutes, you would not do it.

There is no penalty of 3-5 years for copying less than a certain amount (by dollar value *and* number of copies) in a certain time period. Criminal charges only kick in when there the minimum dollar value is met.

What's the dollar value of a single copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in PDF form? Not the value of the hardcover or paperback--if I steal a paperback, I'm not prosecuted based on the value of the hardcover. What's the value of the PDF? Of the .txt version with no italics?

Go ahead, try to reconcile THOSE two positions--that it's okay for you to "take" a digital copy, but that you wouldn't take it in print. It all comes down to YOU being prosecuted; to YOU being CAUGHT, doesn't it?

When you make an additional digital copy, you're not *taking* anything. Nobody else is lacking their copy.

"Theft" does not mean "increasing the amount freely available until sales are unlikely to occur."