Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
I agree with you that DRM is effective against casual sharing, not piracy.Most people on this forum continue to miss that distinction.
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You've been asked before, and not answered: What's the difference?
Neither term is part of copyright law; there is no rule against "sharing" or "piracy." There are rules against "copying." The penalties are bigger if more than a handful of copies are involved, but legally there's no difference between copies distributed to a closed book club and copies distributed to thousands of strangers. And while I can have thoughts about what the moral or ethical differences are, that doesn't mean we agree on where the lines are.
Where do you draw the line between "casual sharing" and "piracy?" Is it based on number of copies? On whether the recipients are personally known to the giver? (In which case, what do you count as "personally known"--do online friends count?) Is it based on whether the copies are findable by easy public search?
And why do you think it's *helpful* to publishers to discourage the option of the kind of sharing that's helped push book sales for the last hundred years?