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I'd like to keep things civil, too. So I will discuss my own behavior and motives, rather than making assumptions about anyone else.
Regarding uploading content, this is something I'm still thinking through, but I'm not convinced (yet) of the black-and-white immorality of it. (Sorry, HarryT.) I accept that it's illegal in many jurisdictions, and for some people, that's enough. But to equate it bluntly with "theft" assumes a lot about how the content will be used that I'm not sure really holds up among book readers. I know there are people out there who just take without paying, and perhaps I'm being far too optimistic here, but I honestly think that most people who read (as opposed to people who watch TV or listen to pop music) know enough and care enough about where books come from to make sure they're paying back in some form, no matter how they get the book. And there are an awful lot of books out there that simply aren't available as ebooks in any other way, not because the author doesn't want them to be available as ebooks, but because the books are older and out of print, and no publishers are acting to make them available. (In some cases, the publishers themselves are out of business.) I base this theory on the observation that most books on the darknet are scanned and OCR'd, not cracked DRM books.
I honestly don't think this is sophistry or "making excuses" on my part. I could be wrong about how others behave, but I know how I behave, I know my own motivations, and I know my own morals. I would not download to steal; I might download because I own a book in paper and it's a lot of work to scan and OCR (which would likely be considered "fair use" in my jurisdiction). I would not upload to steal or to encourage others to steal; I might upload because I'd done a lot of work to scan and OCR, or clean up an existing scan/OCR, and wanted to spare someone else in my situation that work, and to share in the effort of preserving older works.
Those of you who insist on condemning the behavior of others when it doesn't match your own will doubtless castigate me regardless of my explanations. But I stand by my statements of my own behavior and motives.
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