Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
But you simply can't equate the theft of a physical object with the copying of a file.
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Sure I can
Thinking about it, there are two reasons why book shoplifting might be worse than piracy:
1. The physicality thing. And this I deny. Because printing a book is so cheap, publishers tend to print too many. The last one standing, if not shoplifted, has a good chance of being remaindered and then pulped. So from a physical standpoint, the shoplift, as likely as not, helped the book industry. One less return!
2. The harming the shopkeeper thing. This does make shoplifting worse. But, as a thought experiment, does anyone remember when Doubleday was a major publisher with a large chain of Doubleday bookstores? Suppose that you shoplifted a Doubleday book from a Doubleday bookstore. This seems to me just like book piracy. And most of us will sense that shoplifting a Doubleday book from a Doubleday bookstore isn't really much better than shoplifting a Random House book from Barnes and Noble.
I should emphasize that neither piracy nor shoplifting are major offenses. Almost everyone has done worse. So this is not about one person being better than another, although it is about one deed being better than another.