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Originally Posted by vivaldirules
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.
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OK, I'm not arguing that there is no harm to others with copyright infringement. But it's not the *same* harm as with theft. People are harmed when you stab someone with a knife, but we don't call copyright infringement "assault" or "murder". Calling it theft is just as inaccurate.
You would no doubt be confused if I said "Well, when you download a book, that's murder". Even disregarding the accuracy, using loaded terms like that will simply harm the argument.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vivaldirules
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.
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So if someone digitizes a book, and puts it on the Internet and no one downloads it, is it still theft? What if the only people who download it are people who already own the book, like you?
I'm not saying that happens, I'm just trying to probe the borders of this strange linguistic anomaly you've constructed :-)