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Old 09-01-2011, 12:16 AM   #70
Sydney's Mom
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Sydney's Mom ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sydney's Mom ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sydney's Mom ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sydney's Mom ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sydney's Mom ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sydney's Mom ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sydney's Mom ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sydney's Mom ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sydney's Mom ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sydney's Mom ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Sydney's Mom ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
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Posts: 2,899
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Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Idaho, on the side of a mountain
Device: Kindle Oasis, Fire 3d Gen and 5th Gen and Samsung Tab S
Well, I guess I will take a contrary view (when has that ever happened). I check-out library books, and remove the DRM. I do not upload those books anywhere, and even refused to give the Sookie Stackhouse books to my neice (but I would have told her how to get the books from her library).

Having just paid my property tax, I see I am paying over $800/year for the privilege of using the library. That is a lot of books. Luckily for the library, I do patronize it, and so I don't mind paying the tax. I still check out the odd pbook that hasn't been released digitally, but otherwise I am all digital. For a pbook, the longest wait time I have had is 3 weeks, as they pull from all the libraries in the DuPage system - usually in excess of 150 copies for a mildly popular book. However, if I want a digital book, there will be at most 3 copies for the entire system. I saw a book I had checked out in early August, which today has 28 holds on 2 copies. That could take a year. I have been waiting for a book where I was #8 for over 4 months (1 copy). I am currently #3. And I can only put holds on 5 ebooks at time (I can put an unlimited number of holds on pbooks - I have checked 15 out at once before I went on vacation).

All of the books I check out, ebooks or pbooks, are returned before the end of the borrowing period. I am not depriving anyone else of the use of the book, and I have not deprived the author of any revenue - if I hadn't borrowed the book, I would not have bought it.

I'm not saying this is morally right for you. But I judge morality based on harm/inconvenience/respect for others. So if you give me too much change, I tell you. I obey traffic rules (otherwise it inconveniences others). I wait my turn, and I return my library books on time. I do delete the books when I have read them (but this is mostly because I am running out of Dropbox space, although I will never reread a book - there are too many I want to read and will never have time to read). But I feel no moral obligation to read this book, which I currently have checked out, rather than a book I checked out and returned 6 months ago. Frankly, the library system is happier the more books I check out, as that looks better on their records.

Just answering the question. I have never downloaded a movie or song illegally, and the one time I downloaded an ebook illegally, I bought it as soon as it was available (it was a windowed Steven King book, and I still haven't read it). If I saw some harm to someone else by my stockpiling library books, I would reconsider. But frankly, I can't see it.
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