[llasram]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Check out footage of a riot in any major city, and you'll usually see human nature assert itself in taking whatever people think thay can get away with carrying. That "innate sense of fairness" is a great concept which, unfortunately, has not been widely demonstrated in real life. That's why we have to have laws in the first place.

Psychology researcher Jonathan Haidt has done some fascinating work on uncovering the neurological and evolutionary underpinnings of morality. Here’s an article Haidt wrote for Edge magazine and a rather longer article Steven Pinker wrote for the New York Times.

I don’t think that morality exists by state imposition or is identical with the law. This seems to me the basic disagreement underlying our competing claims. If my Prohibition analogy doesn’t budge you here then I guess we should stop tilting at each other’s windmills .

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Your arguments seem to suggest your opinion is that as long as the author did not create the work you obtained for free, he is not impacted. I disagree.

I’m keeping to the separately-created-instance case in order to focus the discussion clearly on the issue of copyright and intellectual property. The fact that Moby Dick is in the public domain wouldn’t give me any justification for waltzing into Barnes & Noble and walking off with a copy. I wanted to make it clear that the author/publisher had not provided labor produce the e-book, and thus could claim only copyright on the content, not some moral right on the particular e-book form.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

You, the consumer, in fact do not have the right to reproduce another person's work without permission. When you do, you create another instance of that person's intellectual property, which, due to copyright law, is his to sell... not yours. When you make the decision for him, without his permission, you are violating his rights. That is both illegal AND immoral.

What does “another instance” mean? If I buy one of your books then scatter several copies of it around my hard drive am I guilty of immoral duplication? If I buy it to give as a gift, but keep a back-up copy, unread, because I know my friend accidentally deletes his files often, am I then guilty of immoral duplication?

I believe most of us share the notion that an author should receive compensation for their work in line with the number of people who read that work. Copyright was a remarkably effective system for achieving this during the reign of the printing press. In the era of the Internet there are many opportunities for copyright violations which do not interfere with the principle of popularity-linked compensation.

My point is that we should account for these case by modifying or replacing the copyright system, not by forcing consumers to treat digital media like physical media. And that until we do so there will be certain classes of “piracy” (not all – I am not saying that) which are not immoral, do not violate the popularity-linked compensation principle.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I hear this a lot: "An e-book isn't really an object to buy or sell... it's a bunch of electrons, nothing like a real, physical object that I can hold in my hand. Therefore it should, by rights, be free to create, trade, or give away."

I’m almost forced to conclude that you’re intentionally misunderstanding me here. I’ve never said or implied anything of the sort.

My point is that we have very solid intuitions concerning the value, sale, trade, and theft of physical things. Copyright worked so well for so long because it makes informational products into physical things. Copyright is presently failing because the average consumer increasingly has the ability to deal with informational products as information and our intuitions about physical things no longer apply. The hardback-and-paperback analogy is flawed because it applies our intuitions about two physical products to an informational product.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

What an e-book is, is an intellectual property. Whether you can physically hold it is immaterial... that is a rationalization which, in fact, does not hold water (because electrons are material objects... they are the basic matter that makes up material objects... and the fact that you can't actually see them doesn't mean they don't exist. I know an elephant named Horton who can tell you all about that concept). The intellectual property is considered valuable, whatever the medium, and laws are written to protect its creator/owner. Again, those laws may need to be revised to better encompass digital files, but they do cover them by intent already.

Cool, we’re in complete agreement here: information has value, and the laws designed to ensure compensation for information-producers need to be revised.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I don't mean to say that Joe can't rip the CD he owns to an MP3 for his own use. Almost every government on the planet gives an implicit okay to do this (even if it is just looking the other way). But Joe does not have the right to sell, or even give away, that MP3 to another, without the author's permission (in the U.S., and in some other countries). That is illegal (in the U.S., and in some other countries) and immoral (to anyone who believes that Thou Shalt Not Steal).

And we continue to agree! The distribution is illegal and indiscriminate distribution is immoral. My contention is that receiving the illegitimately-distributed content is not always immoral.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

This [library royalties] has been mentioned throughout this site, in many threads.

I searched mobileread for “library royalty” and didn’t see any likely-looking threads. I looked at a few of the search results and found only one relevant example, but which was claiming the opposite (that the author received their royalty for each copy sold, but that copy could be placed in a public library and read any number of times). Could you direct me to a specific reference?

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Strictly speaking, you are violating the law to do so. Practically speaking, as long as neither of you sell your copies... the law couldn't care less. (Unless they catch you. Then you'll be fined, and wished you never heard of e-books. That one's up to you.)

I agree it’s illegal – I was more curious about your take on the morality of this transaction.