[deviant]

Originally Posted by sanders

If a country is developed enough that you can access the internet and download a copy of an ebook, then surely it is developed enough to order a book? Also, do you seriously feel that you need to be compensated for waiting?

Country? Yes. The whole country? Well no. Should I pay the travel expenses so that I can order a book? I'm not asking to be compensated for waiting. I am however, pointing out that piracy is providing readers what the legitimate industry fails to because it puts itself and its profit before the customer. There'd be no need for me to download pirated copies if they were available over the internet for a fair fee, now would I?

Wouldn't you argue that this is up to the author though? If an author signs a contract with a publisher in which the publisher trades an author advance, the costs for editing and proofreading etc., in exchange for a percentage of the proceeds? Why do you feel that you have the right to bypass both the author and the publisher?

Of course, I'm all for free will. However, I also feel that all consequences of that choice should be accepted - in this case piracy. Why do I feel what I have the right to bypass both? Because I feel that neither the publisher nor the author have my best interest in mind - hence, their personal interest do not concern me just as my own plights don't concern them.

Piracy didn't spring up out of the blue for no reason what-so-ever. It emerged to fill the needs and wants legitimate publishers failed to address. There wouldn't be piracy if these issues were addressed but it seems ever so easier to complain and lobby than to improve upon these shortcomings.

Let's go with the PayPal example. On a $5 ebook, PayPal will take $0.30 + 2.9% - that's $0.45, or almost 9%. Fair?

Compared to the 92% publishers take? You tell me.

And this whole thread (I thought ) was about the morality of that. I'm not arguing piracy doesn't exist. I'm not arguing that you can't get a pirated copy. Neither am I arguing that you can't buy clothes which are sewn together by 6-year-olds in damp basements in 3rd world countries for significantly less money than union-organized workers in my own country. (I feel that I can make this comparison if people can say that not having free books is equal to starving.)

It's a changing market and the sooner sellers adapt the better for them. It's like the Industrial revolution and the huge layoffs - this is the Information age and the Information Revolution so adapt or go extinct.