Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
And you're guessing this because...?
One of the reasons people get into torrenting, especially of ebooks, is to find content that's out of print, often with deceased authors and an out-of-business publisher, books of unknown copyright status stuck in legal limbo.
Conflating all forms of unauthorized copying as "stealing" bothers me. Why not call it "murder," after all, the pirates are "murdering the author's career?"
Different laws. Different penalties. Accurate labels are not incidental to the issue; one of the essential problems is sorting out exactly what's going on, from a legal standpoint.
Whether the pirate buys *that author's* next four books on the basis of getting one for free, is directly relevant. Or would the author prefer to not make any sales as a result of free reads? Or, somehow, they think fans who downloaded a free book are inferior to those who got it from the breakroom at work where people drop off books they don't want to keep.
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Perhaps I am guessing as I don't know many ebook pirates personally.
I personally don't buy into the anecdotal evidence that a person pirating a book is likely to buy the next four. But I also do not know for a fact that none of them will.
My opinion is that if an author wants someone to download their books they will make that clear. If in doubt email and ask for permission.
And stealing is perhaps a murky area. People take things with all kinds of justifications, "it was just sitting there", "they left the keys in it", "the window was already smashed and someone else would have got it so why not", "they were asking for it".
Maybe this is all okay in today's world and I am totally behind the times. Still I think it is wrong to take a service, commodity etc. that is not clearly labeled as free without paying for it. If one thinks it is too expensive possibly there are alternatives. If one thinks it is worthless why bother.
Helen