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by trenians logic, it's also "work" (and pays the artist once) if I go to the CD shop, buy a CD for $10 (I have no idea what CD's cost, I'm just guessing), buy CD manufacturing equipment, print up thousands of copies, and sell them across the country outside CD shops for 3$ each. Do you really think this won't cost the artist any money? (maybe we have to change the time setting to like 10 years ago since people don't actually go to CD stores nowadays anyways do they?)
In terms of legality, It's obviously and blatantly illegal, there's no question about that. The only difference is it's easier to enforce, and so isn't an issue.
Sure there's the difference of me making a profit, but by your analogy why does that matter? I still paid the artist once, .. and I still did work, right? :-)
It really doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. The money has to come from somewhere. If a thousand people want a book, and get it from one pirated copy, the author gets paid once. If everyone who wants the book pays, then the author gets paid a thousand times. If authors gets paid once instead of a thousand times, their's going to be less inclined to invest time and energy writing books. This isn't rocket science. It DOES make a difference to the author. Maybe not so much today since most people aren't willing to read off an LCD (thus the free-advertising affect some people mention), but the issue will grow as e-ink becomes more popular. I'd rather live in a world where there was financial motivation for people to produce intellectual works. I'm not going to volunteer the money out of the kindness of my heart any more than you are, so the systems in place need to be reevaluated. I think everyone agrees we need a new system. Instead of calling each other irrational thieves and scumbags, maybe we can think about how we can build a system that gets money to authors?
People currently paying for digital media are doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, or, rarely, for convenience. Much of the time the convenience is lost because they are getting screwed by DRM. I'm not as foolish, but I'd like it if there was a reasonable way to force me (and everyone else) to pay the artists.
In terms of where the money goes, .. if most of the money goes to a book store or a publisher or the author wipes his @ss with it, it's none of your damn business. The author made a deal with the publisher/book store using a share of the revenue to pay for what he valued, so all of you wining about it have no ground to stand on there. grocery store markup isn't a viable excuse to steal food is it? I know some lazy hippies who would use it as an excuse, but they're just lazy hippies. They don't *really* care about the 2% grocery store markup, they just want to justify their actions. Maybe if I was sleeping in golden gate park, the risk/reward benefit would be good enough for me too, but I wouldn't try to pretend it was some moral prerogative.
Honestly, I have no qualms about "stealing" a book or anything else, and pretty much no-one else will either. The system needs to be fixed, but no amount of arguing about what is "right" is going to change anything. You can argue all day about who's a scumbag and how much money publishing companies make or who deserves what. It doesn't matter what convoluted analogies people use to justify their actions, in the end, people will take the path of least resistance. If people are to pay for books, paying has to be the path of least resistance. The "crime" of pirating on the college-kid level is not an enforceable crime. Prosecuting a few downloaders or even uploaders for obscene amounts of money will never be a sufficient deterrent to stop people from file sharing, and no-one wants to live in a society where everyone is considered a criminal.
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