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Reading and participating in this thread has gotten me thinking about my own attitude toward ebooks, and I've realized that I don't really think of them as "true" books at all. I realize that I think of a "book" as being a physical object that takes up physical space in my living environment and has the potential to remain in existence for decades.
I don't view ebooks the same way. I think it's because I realize, from experience, how easy it is to lose data on a computer due to hard drive failure or computer infection or DRM restrictions. Ebooks just seem to be ephemeral objects to me, merely a data file and not on par with a paper book. I know where all of my paper books are, and can usually pinpoint the bookshelf or box from memory. I don't know precisely where a particular ebook is - it can be on one of two computers, on one of the multiple external drives I have, or it can be burned off with multiple files to a CD or DVD and stashed in a drawer or in an album somewhere here. I find that if there is an ebook I particularly like, I'll subsequently buy it in paper so that I have a "real" copy of the book.
So perhaps that's why my attitude toward the Dark Net is much less rigid than that of others here. I might be part of a cusp generation that thinks for something to be real and of value, you have to be able to actually hold it in your hands and I'm not able to place the same monetary value or importance on a data file as on a physical object.
I know people enjoy portraying their choice of not participating in the Dark Net in the guise of a superior moral or ethical choice (witness the earlier "scum" name-calling), but that sort of holier-than-thou attitude just makes me smile. Very, very few of us can say that we are morally and ethically pure in all aspects of our lives; we all draw our lines in the sand in different places based upon our understanding of our world.
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