[wgrimm]

There are clear differences between digital and physical objects, which probably accounts for the lax attitudes of many regarding "piracy."

Software, movies, ebooks have one thing in common- most associated costs are sunk costs. One you have the product, it costs nothing or close to nothing to make as many copies of it as you want. This is not true of physical objects.

Back your pickup truck up to the publisher's warehouse and fill it up with hardback books, and you cause the publisher a definite loss. Not just a loss in terms of lost sales, but a loss in terms of the raw materials required to produce the books (which exist over and above ther sunk costs). To replace these books, the publisher must spend more money.

Now, if an individual steals an e-book from a publisher, what loss does that cause? Loss of a sale? Only if the thief would have otherwise bought that book. Any real dollar losses? No, because it took no raw materials to create the ebook. And the publisher can replace that ebook for free. Furthermore, the theft didn't affect sunk costs at all. So, we have a situation here where theft of an electronic object, at most, can cause loss of one sale. The3 "stolen" book is easily replaced- for free.

It would appear to me that lending libraries are doing far more damage to publishersw. So why does almost everyone respect public libraries? Aren't they evil, don't they cause publishers to lose money every time a book is lent? So why have publishers been able to remain going concerns over the years with this great library evil blocking their ability to earn profit? I mean, to be fair, shouldn't we close libraries? Shouldn't we force all of those evil citizens who are currently reading for free to fork over the full price for each book they read? This would be fair, wouldn't it? It would stop the libraries from inflicting needlesss agony and unethical loss on those poor publishers......