Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
Of those, counterfeit comes closest... though, since there is at heart no difference between a legal and illegally-copied ebook file, and counterfeit usually denotes an inferior or good-but-worthless copy, that might be a stretch.
Better to call them "wrongly-copied" or "wrongly-distributed" ebooks than counterfeit.
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Actually counterfeit ebooks is probably the best suggestion so far. Or maybe bootleg ebooks to make it more generally understandable. But it's definitely a hard concept to sell for something that basically has no intrinsic value.
A counterfeit handbag would be understood to be a bad thing, but not a counterfeit computer file that is exactly the same as the real one. I don't think many people care whether the handbag manufacturer gets paid or not, they just want a good handbag.
Something that appeals to people's natural greed and selfishness would work better. A bit like your Bob Cratchet, but instead of having him stuff his face with food at the readers' expense you could have him be able to afford to write another book instead. Then the readers know there is something in it for them if they give him some money instead of reading it for free.
Get something like that boiled down to a couple of paragraphs and maybe we could all start putting it at the beginning of our books?