[Namekuseijin]

Originally Posted by Enlil.S.Enki

While the original post was largely an unrealisable utopian dream.

and yours is not? Let's see...

The majority of posts are all discussing a moral/ethical question as a legal one. We only have the ethos of not copying work because we are indoctrinated from birth with the law.

Wrong: it just turns out I believe it's ok to tip the author of a work of art for a job well done. I have moral in sight, not the law.

The law creates a market. Technology creates a way for the law to be easily and virtually undetectably circumvented. When the law can be circumvented and that circumvention goes largely undetected, we are back to ethics and morality. The law has failed. Our options are to enhance the law and strengthen the enforcement/detection capabilities of enforcers. Or to re-examine the situation from a moral perspective given what people will do anyway.

All very true. Keep going.

Consider a person lives in the third world, their average income is tiny by your rich first world standards, yet by local standards this person is well off. They save for a year and buy a second hand e-book reader on ebay. They can not buy e-books (even if they could afford them), because no one will sell them to them (their country is out of any supported zone). They can not afford to buy many printed books in their country, and the books they can buy are carefully censored by the repressive regime they live under. (It is the third world after all) Now it is illegal for this person to copy books, but they are left with two options (1, do not read many books or 2, read what they want, but it has to be pirated.)

wrong, wrong, wrong...

I'm brazilian, a third world country, no dictator nor repressive regime censoring information, heavy fees for imported hi-tech goodies, though. I've got a new smartphone. I believe I can buy ebooks from Amazon (not tried yet). I'm not the average low wage brazilian, though.

Here's the thing though: it's not related to money. I can say that because while I'm used to pay for my books, music or dvds, it's common practice here to copy or pay for cheap copies. My co-workers do it, my family members do it. Heck, president Lula was caught watching a private session of pirated copy of a national movie!

It's part of a culture. A culture that understands that digital copying is not theft and that artists are slaves for their pleasure. Why make a living when you can have the opportunity to entertain us for free, huh?

Best thing I've read about the phonomenon came from a girl in a forum about ebooks:

"The book thief" I downloaded from 4shared.

This is an actual quote and how fitting...

The world is a better place if they opt for 2, even though they copied someone elses work. Morality wins over law

Does it occur to you that your morality only works for consumers, not producers? It's ok as long as it rocks your bed, right?

just because something is illegal does not mean it is wrong, the two concepts are not the same. Regardless of how you have been indoctrinated to think so.

Or how you begin to value other people's work after you begin to get a wage.

Yet the copyright on a retelling of snow white will last for 70 years or more beyond the authors life.

Absurd copyright lifetimes are really, well, absurd. Yet you may wish the original tale if you find the retelling is not worth it.

The system is screwed up, is designed to reap maximum returns for publishers, not writers.

so, because it is unfair let's be unfair to authors, right? Like as if they are not screwed enough by publishers, let's screw them a bit more by handing pirates the money rather than authors... Sublime thought process at display here...

And is a method of controlling access to information for the poorest (the majority) of the earths peoples.

it's not information, just useless art. And the poor peoples are just a bunch of losers who think they got the right to be happy for free. Well, they certainly can have that, but it seems sunsets at the beach or sex is not enough. Their souls hunger for more and yet they deny soul bakers the money for their works...

If you live in the USA and do one years work, you are entitled to on average earn $50,233.00. (*Wikipedia stat for 2006). If an author takes a year to write a book, and works 40 hours a week doing it, they should expect to earn the same from selling that book. Its the same amount of endeavour. One author who earns US$23 million for a years work is by that standard over paid. Everyone else needs to work for 457 years to achieve the same result. That author has not put in 457 times the effort of the average american in the same year. Yet few authors are that fortunate, it would be better for the human race, to pay many many authors a reasonable yearly income than pay one a huge amount, and others next to nothing.

So, in the end it's all about this: a whinning comunist discourse mixed with no wage teen angst. Brilliant, dude.

If you think a work of art doesn't deserve your appreciation and that the author is an overpaid bastard you can simply not pay for it. And if you pirate it you're a lying bastard for dissing it as an excuse to be able to enjoy it for free. And it's your problem alone to be lying like that to yourself.

And if you think all men are equal and other comunist bs, you can do it better and work an year on an ebook, put it for free in some p2p and then come back here to tell how you've shown the world how overrated and creativeless Stephen King bastard is...