Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
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).
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That's a straw man argument if I ever heard one.
The book you are taking is the physical property of someone. Downloading a copy of an ebook illegally is more akin to borrowing the book from the library and photocopying it. You are not taking anyone else's physical property.
The thing about information is it now costs next to nothing to reproduce. The media it is on costs, but just copying costs next to nothing nothing. So the marginal cost of producing more is zero (or as close as makes no difference).
If I were to download a book illegally then I would not have actually taken anything away from the publisher or author. They would be no worse off than before hand.
Its a very difficult situation morally because it is nothing like stealing a physical copy of a book, yet we all intrinsically feel that authors should be compensated for the costs in writing the book...