Quote:
Originally Posted by Halk
The key difference here is impact. I'm no expert on your works (although I notice you do have a couple of short stories available free, they'll be snagged and if I like em I'll buy the whole lot for what seems to be a ludicrous price of $10). If you were to pass away, and your estate decided not to continue selling your works - i.e. it became unavailable to buy... Let's say I'd purchased book 1 in a series, and I wanted to read book 2... what do I do? In my head it's acceptable to go ahead and get it from the darknet, as I have not deprived someone of something. However, I do accept that by doing that I am participating in a system which would prevent a "glut" of consumers demanding (demand in an economic sense, not in a GIMME IT NOW sense) collecting, and your estate saying "Hmm, there's thousands of people itching to read Mr Jordan's books". If everybody was to say "It's not available, I'll pirate it" then that's not going to happen.
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I hate to say it, but you're still just rationalizing stealing: "He wouldn't give it to me, and I wanted it, so I took it." No, we're not talking about a physical object you've deprived the owner of, but we are talking about an intellectual property, which is still protected by law.
You might consider that there may be a reason the owner does not want to release a book that you might not be privy to (maybe they're planning on turning it into a movie, and by pirating it, you just ruined the surprise ending.
Bad boy!). Or maybe there is an emotional attachment with the work, and the owner does not want it released because they consider it a personal work. Either way, in a moral society, you can beg, and you can borrow... but you still can't steal.