Quote:
Originally Posted by Maggie Leung
I do not need to live in an ideal world to respect other people's choices. If I use a book without an author's permission, I'm actively violating his choice. It comes down to each user choosing whether to violate an author's choice.
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It also comes down to whether you believe that the author has a right to impose his/her "choice" on something you've purchased after the fact. I'm not talking about "you shouldn't do that because the copyright laws don't allow it" but because you think that your purchase of an item give you the "choice" of what to do with that item that supersedes the author's. For many, I think, it is a form of civil disobedience protest - they don't recognize the right of an author or a publisher to direct the future of their particular purchase. They don't see the author's choice as something more important than theirs. It doesn't matter what the law may say; they view it as a special-interest law. They don't see it as an issue of depriving authors of income at all, or even a morality issue.
That is why, perhaps, the moral condemnations posted here and in other places doesn't sway them. And that is why those of you (speaking generally here) who use that argument are not getting amount of affirmations of your argument that you might have expected, and why, when you start making comparisons to people breaking into your home or people stealing cars, you get quizzical looks. You think you're comparing apples with apples and see the lack of universal agreement as a moral failing, while others see your examples as comparing apples with oranges and irrelevant to the topic.