Quote:
Originally Posted by mrkai
Now you get into a whole other thing, Jon.
You see...some people feel that the book in and of itself is worth nothing without the words...the words are the "book" as it were. So I think folks here would say you were a cretin because you have 2 copies of the words, tho you've paid for only one 
Oddly enough, many of these same people feel that if you actually retype the book it isn't a problem as long as you don't give a copy of what you retyped away...ala personal use.
If you already have the book, and someone re-typed it and you wished to acquire this as a convenience to save you the trouble...violator
Even as the one YOU (would have) retyped, and the one you acquired that someone else retyped would be a match of the one you bought printed
Makes *perfect* sense doesn't it?  |
I woke up, and my ears were burning.
But I do NOT consider Jon a cretin. I didn't even know he was from Crete.
Yah, I know, the "e-book as personal copy" thing is hard to work out. Jon, your analogy would be okay if it were akin to your walking down the street with your hardback book, and discovering a paperback copy of the same book lying there on the street, nobody laying claim to it. Go ahead, take it. Ethically, it would be nice if you spoke up and said aloud, "Hey, does this belong to anybody?" And receiving no response, pocket the book and walk away.
However, what you are suggesting is really more like your taking a copy of a paperback printed by a bootlegger, without due compensation to the creator. Even if you steal that bootleg copy, the fact is you are still profiting off of the losses of the creator. At the very least, you are doing nothing to stop the illegal distribution of content, which is also hurting the creator... and two wrongs don't make a right.
It's easy to say that if a digital copy "didn't exist a second ago," then taking it doesn't deprive the creator of any profit. This is actually wrong. You would be depriving them of MORE profit, because their profit is lessened by the cost of publishing, and if they produce digitally, their publishing cost is very low.
(If you made the copy for distribution... well, you weren't legally supposed to, remember?)
So, producing the digital copy is wrong, for anyone but the creator and their authorized resellers (or you, for personal use only). Your obtaining an unauthorized copy, free or otherwise, is violating the creator's rights, and denying them the profit from a legitimate purchase. The only way you are not "hurting" them is to not take the e-book.
And in this world, you're still expected to pay for things you get... even if you get two of them.