[Prestidigitweeze]

Elfwreck:

Your argument has the appearance of specificity (what with your lists) but the method of boolean exclusion. You assume categories have been ignored which are in fact entirely different categories.

The number of people who might borrow a book is accounted for, just as the guest list of a club might include a number of people who were invited for purposes of promotion. The same is often true with discounts on books, etc., etc. In fact, a ridiculous number of your exceptions are reducible to the club's guest list.

You also make the mistake of assuming that an analogy must be parallel in every way to be true in a particular way. But even to disqualify it in a particular way, you have to have understood its point and scope. You seem to be trying to draw sweeping conclusions, perhaps of a legal nature, from the idea that the club goes under unless we choose to support it. Whereas my point is entirely personal and addresses others' claims not only to be justified in downloading torrents of work by living writers who do expect to be paid, but to have taken the moral high ground in the process.

You've also inferred the assumption, nowhere made or even entertained by me, that an experience which is expected to be paid for in one situation must always be paid for in every other.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

The experience of reading the book is available, legitimately, to a great many people who have never paid for it.

It's available in many of the examples you've listed, to which I have never objected specifically or even in the abstract.

I do, however, object to cases in which the book is not available legitimately, specifically in cases where the purchase supports the author.

Usually, the guest list is intended to support the club or to populate it with desirable people who will attract others, much as free downloads of books or music offered by publishers and artists can help to create or sustain a following for the work and for a body of work.

The other factor is that, if publishers lose money, the effect will often be felt not on their A-list but in their more hard-won titles, and it is that sort of title which I and others tend to read more than their A-list. The author of The Hunger Games is not in trouble, but a future Harry Matthews without a trust fund very well could be.

Me: 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.

You: 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?

The difference, to the extent we can rule on a situation that vague, is what's done with the book found at the bus stop, and the party who ends up potentially operating at a loss is different. The book is already paid for, but the investment was made by someone else. Does the person who found the book take it to the driver of the next bus that stops it, so that it ends up in the bus company's lost and found? Ideally, but probably not, and even then, you have to wonder whether the person who lost that book in a physical place will think of the step of calling the bus company.

If the person takes home the book, the non-legal question becomes the same: Is the author now or recently alive and do they and/or their family members deserve support? If so, why shouldn't the person who found the book buy a copy later?

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.

It has always worked that way. What seem to be differences are matters of promotion and exception. You can suggest that permanent digital copies = borrowing, but that's only true if the original bought copy is protected and uncracked (and I hate copy protection as much as I expect you do) or the borrower decides to support the creator.

I'm not suggesting people pay because I think they should be slapped down otherwise. I'm suggesting they do it as a gesture of support.

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).

But those polarities are precisely what I've avoided talking about. Too often, arguments for one side lead to the dehumanization of the other, and I'm not interested in assassinating the character of a person I do know, let alone, someone I've never met.