Quote:
Originally Posted by nekokami
Here's a possible exception...
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If you'd ordered a book that turned out to be an ugly hardback, you wouldn't consider it okay to walk into the bookstore or library and just take a paperback copy for free. (And neither would the store or library. Ask them.) To balance out the cost, you'd return one and use the refund to buy the other. They are two distinct properties, and both have to be paid for (or returned, in the library's case).
I still hear an issue of believing that electronic versions of documents are essentially worth nothing, and therefore okay to just take at will. I think this attitude towards electronic files is a mistake. Yes, it opens up the illogical position of
seemingly creating something from nothing, but in fact, this is a fallacious logic, since electrons configured and energy used are still something, just something too small for you to see with the naked eye. As any doctor or physicist will tell you, being small doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I think the sooner we understand and accept the fact that electronic files really are definable entities with malleable but distinct characteristics, the sooner we can work out a way to deal with them legally, morally and ethically.