...but what have the Romans ever done for US?
Seriously - part of the reason this is so passionately disputed is because we are in a unique situation here. Comparing software or ebook piracy to
stealing is logically flawed, since digital goods are reproducible without a loss of quality. The bicycle and scrap metal analogy sounds good, but when you take someone's bike, someone doesn't have a bike any more.
And digitizing a book you own might be legal, but the moment you upload it, you're contributing to its illegal distribution. Another issue altogether...
Again - we're in a new kind of territory here that, as far as I'm concerned, requires us to rethink the structure of distribution (i.e. cut out the publisher/record company influence) and deliver compensation as directly to the producer as possible (in the case of ebooks, the author gets the cash and not the publisher, distributor, and retailer).
Personally, I'm always skeptical of people who proclaim the infinite wisdom of the invisible hand of the marketplace, but I think in a decentralized medium like the Internet, ebooks distributed independently would survive and generate revenue only if they are of a certain high standard. This would likely be determined by market-like forces in the networked media: I write my book on my laptop. I convert it into various formats and offer it through a number of online marketplaces. If it's good, people send me a few shekels and if it's crap, I better write something else. Web forums like mobileread will then inform interested readers
about what's good reading and what isn't.
MP3 Pirates will tell you that they're doing the art form a favor. When the profitability for record companies is reduced, the only people who will make music will be those who are passionate about it. I'm not saying that's true or desirable, but in the print medium, in which we're talking about the dissemination of cultural memory and literary heritage, we need some new models.
