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Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
I've already made the point that the physical act is copying rather than stealing. But as in the case of the patron who sneaks into an almost-empty bar with a cover charge, what's being stolen is the paid experience and the repercussions are in the precedent and the collective result.
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In the case of a nightclub, the experience is only available to:
1) Paying customers,
2) Friends of paying customers who paid double,
2) Staff members,
3) Liars or cheats who have disguised themselves as one of the other categories.
In the case of a book, the experience of reading the content is available to:
1) Paying customers,
2) Various staff in the publishing house,
3) Some friends etc. of the author,
4) Some reviewers,
5) People who visit a library that bought a copy,
6) People whose friends bought a copy and loaned or gave it to them,
7) People who bought a used copy at a yard sale or used book store,
8) People who visited a bookstore and read it while standing between the shelves (this is more acceptable in some areas, and some stores, than others),
9) Grade-school children who were handed a copy purchased by the school (said copy might have been new or used at time of purchase)
10) People who bought a copy, used, from Amazon, and paid $0.01 for the book and $3.99 for shipping,
11) People who bought or were given the review ARC after the reviewer was done,
12) People who share an Amazon or ADE account with a friend or relative,
13) People who were loaned a copy through the Kindle or B&N loan option,
14) People who downloaded it from an unauthorized source, which is probably copyright infringement. (Some nations have different rules about this).
The experience of reading the book is available, legitimately, to a great many people who have never paid for it.
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I'm not arguing about the mindset of the person who downloads a torrent of a book -- I'm not interested in Boolean ideas about their morality. I'm only talking about possible pragmatic repercussions -- financial and artistic -- for the person who created the work.
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What's the difference between the pragmatic repercussions of someone who downloaded from Megaupload and someone who read the copy they found at a bus stop?
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But don't assume that anyone who makes the argument that authors should be paid is in favor of the actions of the RIAA or the excessive litigation and retaliation of huge publishers and music labels. The same companies that favor threats and stiff penalties for piracy often steal from the original artists as well. No point in framing either side as inherently pure or corrupt.
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This is true. It's just that there's a big difference between "authors should be paid for their efforts" (presuming their efforts are judged to be of sufficient quality to entertain readers) and "authors should be paid for
the experience of reading the book.
First option: Yes.
Second option: No, and it's never worked that way.
And a lot of the back-and-forth arguing is attempting to find a solution, some kind of middle ground between "it's okay to distribute all new works on the torrent networks so 10,000 people can download and read if they want" (hell no) and "it's illegal to hand your best friend your ereader for the weekend" (also hell no).
Right now, both of those are being promoted as "the real solution" to the tangle of problems of copyright in a digital world. (Ebookstores promote the latter; all their TOS's say that books cannot be lent *in any way.*) Finding a way to phrase rules so that common-sense usage is allowed and mass distribution is not, is complicated. If it were simple, we'd've done it years ago.