Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
Surely you lessened the probablility that the author could sell books to those you lent your book too.
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That assumption contradicts my experience. In the bookcase closest to me right now there are a dozen books I bought after borrowing them from friends or the library. I would not have bought them, probably not even have heard of them, if I had not read them for free first.
I also think your case against "lending" ebooks is a bit too black-and-white. Vendors and/or publishers for example could have come up with a DRM system that allowed lending analoguous to paper-book lending (AFAIK a VERY limited version is available for some Kindle ebooks), and that allowed transferring the license for an ebook to someone else (which would allow resale), but they chose a system that would instead even take access to a book away from the buyer after a few broken or otherwise replaced ebook readers.
For that, $2 might be a fair price, but not the same pricetag you see on print books.
Where is the moral/ethical difference between giving away a paper book, and sending ONE person an ebook one bought, and afterwards deleting all one's own copies?