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Originally Posted by HarryT
It's an interesting question, certainly.
The answer that I'd offer is that "legal" methods of sharing content do not (generally speaking, at least) involve creating additional copies of the book.
Let's say an authors sells 100 copies of a book. Perhaps some are bought by libraries, some are bought by one person, and then passed on to a friend. The point is that only 100 people can be reading that book at any given time. If a 101st person comes along and wants to read the book, he has to buy a new copy of it, because all the 100 copies that are currently in circulation are in use. That restriction does not apply once the book is pirated: a buyer can give a copy of the book to 1000 more people, and they can all read it at the same time.
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I get it.
I was thinking more from the reader's perspective, but I understand your point.
Even if you can't really tell how many copies of a book are actually being used. E.g. p-books just lie on a shelf for most of their lifetime, and e-books just stay in some kind of mass memory...
And between the "legal" methods there are some that actually multiply the copies, like group-listening audiobooks (here it's legal up to 6 people), reading aloud, and so on.
That's one of the reasons why I believe that the per-copy rewarding model is completely inefficient, unfair and obsolete...
Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
It's depriving the author's heirs of their income. An author's royalties are the legacy he leaves to his family after his death.
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And it brings the whole question about why authors should be entitled to such a privilege while every other worker in every other field is not.
I firmly believe that an author's heirs do not deserve nothing.
If dad was good at managing his assets, they will have a home and some money, if he wasn't, they'll be like all the other people of the world. (*)
Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
No, certainly not. I don't think that any reasonable person would consider format conversion to be unethical, for example, even though it's currently illegal under UK law. Even the music industry in the UK thinks that it's ridiculous that it's technically illegal to rip to your iPod a CD that you've legally bought.
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I'm totally with you, here.
(*) I know, there is always the same old "what if an author die youg the day before the book hits the shops?" story. Can someone name a couple of hunderds of such cases amongst the millions of writers of the last four centuries? And what if the construction worker dies young? It's sad, but people dies everyday. And I do not believe some orphans have to be treated in a special, less unfortunate way just because the parents were writers or musicians.