[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

If someone steals your car while you are on vacation, and when you have recovered it you discover that they have changed the oil and filled the tank, I don't see any moral issue with driving the car with those improvements. If you don't own anything, you don't gain any rights over it (moral or otherwise) by improving it.

Originally Posted by molman

I know I promised myself I'd step out of this thread but that's not a very good example Andrew. Not the same thing at all and I think highlights the confusion around this topic and peoples appreciation of the concepts surrounding. If you want a physical example one would be that you paint a picture (let's say a nice female nude or something), I then go and take a photo of said painting without permission (let’s say using a film camera) which I then develop into photos and give away these copies for free. You contend that I don't have a license/permission but instead of just having me destroy my photo (and me paying for any harm the court deems to have occurred) you then take my work (said photo) and start selling it.

It's probably not perfect, but it's closer to the situation being discussed.

(Sigh.) I promised myself I'd step out of the thread, too. But I suppose I should respond to this, and to the question.

Neither example is quite accurate, though I think Andrew's is closer. In this particular case, I feel more kindly toward the person who took my car than I might otherwise, because this person cared for the car, liked it enough to treat it properly, and also left it parked where someone would find it and return it to me. It's not exact, because in the real case, I wasn't deprived of the use of my property. But as Andrew said, I have no obligation to undo the work that was done on the car by the car-napper. And despite some mixed feelings, I can even offer a nod of thanks for the care he took with my car. It doesn't make what he did legal or ethical. But I can't be too angry, because it turns out all he wanted to do was show his thousand closest friends what a nice car it is.

I would restate the second example this way: you have taken a photo of my painting, which I have planned to release myself as photo prints, or perhaps as a poster--and you are giving prints away from a website on which you make a profit through subscriptions or advertising. Or conceivably even a site you run for no profit. Eventually some kind soul sends me a copy of the high-res jpg you're giving away, saying, here, I thought you might like a copy of your own work of art, which the other person is giving away. After fuming a bit, because it was the first I'd heard of it, I examine the jpg, see that it's a faithful rendering created by the same photo service I was going to use, and is pretty much indistinguishable from the photo I was going to pay the service to take. So I use that jpg as the starting point before applying my own digital enhancements for my own release. As for the guy and his offshore website, I think a little and decide life's too short to worry about it.

That's not exact, either. In the real case, what was handed to me (not by the "torrent specialist" who scanned and uploaded my book, but by a kindly fan) was a digital compilation of my own words, in the exact order in which I put them down. It was a surprisingly careful compilation. This person took the time to do it right. Why wouldn't I use that instead of paying someone to scan the book again in order to create the exact same digital compilation? I'm not exactly thrilled that this guy's giving away my book, but I shrug, give him a nod of thanks for his careful proofing (it would have been a lot nicer if he'd asked me), and move on.

If the original question was, what do I feel about book pirates (I think that was the word used), the answer is, I have mixed feelings. Some of them are clearly people who love books, and--legally or not--want to make them available to the masses. I don't condone the illegality, but I can't hate them, either, especially when they're trying to make long-out-of-print books available.

But as a general breed, I think the illegal uploaders are behaving like parasites feeding on the creative work of others, whether for profit or egoboo. I don't think they're all evil, but what they're doing is wrong. When I put my book Sunborn out for free for a time (with the help of folk here on MR), it carried notices asking people to respect the hard work and not post it on other websites, because it was a limited-time giveaway. Do you think that worked? Pffft.

Still, I'm probably not harmed, and I might even be helped, but I can't make that statement on behalf of other authors. Most writers I know tend to think of piracy as not a scourge so much as a new version of pilferage in a store. For the most part, you factor in the cost, and you shrug and move on to more important things.