I agree that books are easier to get hold of in bulk via the net, legal or no as opposed to movies. A movie (legal download or not) is likely to be from several 100 to over a GB in size for just one file, where as you can aquire thousands of books in the same amount of space. Project Gutenberg for example has a legal torrent file that is around 4 GB in size and has some 20,000 books (not all in english) and some limited other media. There is also the fact that some authors works are out of print and in some cases the authors themselves are deceased so a search on the web might turn up titles that a potential reader has never heard of before. In a way sometimes a text file, pdf (or whatever format such a book is in online) might be the only way a person can find or learn of an author and his/her works. I'm not saying that piracy of a new book is right, just that for forgotten/obscure authors and their books it can lead to new interest in a given title. I'd love for some publisher to release ebook versions of the old Ellery Queen mystery novels for example. I have some in hard copy, but I know there are probably a lot more that I've never had the chance to read and that they are likely out of print.
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Originally Posted by jeffcobb
This leaves us with books. Books are interesting because for the a cost of a download of a single movie you can download almost a whole library of ebooks. It doesn't end there: say there is a series of books that you would love to read (or perhaps re-read if they are from your childhood); however these books are not deemed profitable therefore are not kept in any form by any reseller so they are by and large, unavailable at any price. You would need to be at the right place at the right time to find these gems and if not all are available at the same place/time, it would take years of search if they are ever all available at any price. Yet for the cost of a single search and download of a few hundred megabytes, Bobs your uncle and off you go to a corner by the fire to read something not available in dead-tree form at any price.It is right? No. Is it totally wrong? Not in my opinion; if an author/publisher who makes books for the sole purpose of them being read, no longer makes them available to anyone anywhere this is more like lending. Making the waters muddier yet is if you are like us, avid scifi and fantasy book readers and over a lifetime of living have bought and rebought many if not all of these volumes and lost them due to moves, divorces, etc and you come across something that you used to own, want to read again and could not give money to anyone to get an ebook version if you wanted to...
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