Quote:
Originally Posted by bingle
When you say "stole it", what does that mean to you? That they walked out the door of the shop with it? Or just that they digitized it on their own, and put it on the Internet?
If it's the second, then how is that different than digitizing it yourself? The end result is the same...
I also think that this constant repetition of "theft", "stolen", etc, is unhelpful. There's a huge difference between stealing something and violating copyright - the biggest being that stealing deprives someone else of their copy, while violating copyright does not.
Obviously, both are illegal. But they're not the same thing. At the very least, conflating the two confuses people like me, when you make statements like the above :-)
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To answer your question, these seem equivalent to me. Walking out the door without paying for it and digitizing it so that others can take it without paying for it seem the same to me. Actually, the latter is worse since presumably there will be many people who will end up with the item without paying for it. Although the words theft may not sound right, it sounds perfectly good to me. I just have to think about the author and publisher who worked hard to provide a product which they are not be paid for. If I need to think of that as something other than theft, I'll need some help.
How am I different if I digitize my pbook? Because I paid for the pbook that is still sitting on my shelf and I intend to use the digital copy for me alone - no one will ever see it. Should I pay the author and publisher a second time for the ebook? At the moment, I'm not convinced either way. I think it's an interesting question to think about more. I should be clear though in saying that if the ebook is available, I'm buying it. I'm only interested in converting the pbooks that I have which I can't find digital copies of. Not sure that should make a difference, though.