[Enkidu of Abydos]

Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash

Tangibility is irrelevant, as is the ease with which the work could be duplicated.

It is absolutely relevant ! A chair takes time and materials to make, and if you steal it the owner has lost the time and materials it took to make it. And it takes time to make another chair. It also takes time to write a book, and therefore people should be compensated for doing it, but by volunteers who like it. It takes no time or effort to make another digital copy, and if someone copies a file from someone else over the Internet, the author isn't losing any money from his pocket, unless you're counting theoretical money, which doesn't legally count anwhere else ! By that logic you could sue the whole world for doing anything because you might have been rich otherwise ! I might have gone to the moon if not for who knows what ! Don't build that house there because I might be rich if you don't ! No one knows if anyone who copies a file from the Internet would have actually payed for it if he had had to. How can you put someone on trial for something they might have done ?

Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash

Do you honestly believe that the laws in place to protect the creators if intellectual property should not exist?

The best protection for any piece of "intellectual property" is to make it good enough or usefull enough so that people who use it will WANT to pay you money.

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I think widespread piracy would be as good for ebooks as it was for mp3 12 years ago. It will create a demand for hardware readers, that demand will drive prices down to a level that the mainstream readers will want to pay. Once those people buy their readers they will be looking for content to buy for it. Most likely they will get their content from the same place as their reader, or if they buy an independent reader they will go to sites they have heard of and trust.

Exactly, the sharing of information is good for business in the longterm. Media companies always complain about mp3 piracy as hurting their business but in truth it boosts their profits, because some people who otherwise wouldn't buy music listen to songs for free and then buy them because they really like them and want to reward the author.
I won't buy digital books because if I'm paying I'd rather have paper (and I don't have a huge storage problem yet) but if I read a book for free and really like it I will buy it on paper for my book collection and the author will have his due and everybody happy. All they have to do is be good enough to be worth it.

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I bought my reader to read books that don't exist in paper form or if they do they are too expensive on the second hand market to justify. Pros for buying ebooks rather than downloading them for free (to me) are:

1. more likely to read it.
2. I can buy it as soon as it comes out, I don't need to wait for someone to upload it.
3. At the price I pay it's not really worth spending time looking for a free one.

Those aren't true for me, book prices are higher here then in the US so it's definitely worth the time (and it takes very little time), I'm not more likely to read it because I won't buy or download anything I'm not planning to read, and I usually read books at least a couple of years old.