[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by 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.

I did not intend to imply that either list was complete, just that I can think of many, many more ways to legitimately experience a book's contents without paying for it, than to experience a nightclub without paying for it.

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.

A club's guest list is a limited number of people per night. A book's potential readership is perhaps limited by "how many times can these pages be turned before they start falling out," but that's a potentially huge number--and unlike a nightclub's attendance, isn't trackable by the people hoping to make money from the book.

A nightclub can decide it's gotten popular enough to cut down the guest list. An author can't decide a book has gotten popular enough to disallow loaned or resold books.

You also make the mistake of assuming that an analogy must be parallel in every way to be true in a particular way.

No, but I did present the argument as if that were the case. I don't assume the situations are exactly analogous, nor that perfect parallelism is required for a metaphor to be valid or useful.

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 cannot address the "wrongness" of download-via-torrent (or similar method) without context. Which part is wrong: experiencing the book without payment? Without authorization? Making an unauthorized copy? Distributing that copy? Does it become less "wrong" if it takes place in a setting where it's legal? Is it less wrong if it's illegal, but done with the author's blessing--which, perhaps due to contracts--he can't publicly grant?

There are both legal and ethical issues involved, and conflating them doesn't help anyone sort out how to change people's behavior in the future.

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.

No, I've claimed that insisting "authors should be paid" does not lead directly to "therefore, torrents are wrong."

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.

I do understand this. I don't see any simple solutions; pleading that authors need to get paid doesn't actually get them paid.

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.

Ah! I wasn't think of *any* party being at a loss; I was thinking of Bookcrossing, or something similar, where one person deliberately left a book somewhere public, in the hopes that someone else would find it and enjoy it. The finder doesn't know the person who bought the book; there's no relationship between them. (In my apartment building, people often leave boxes of books & other items near the mailboxes. I'm not going to feel guilty for picking up & reading some of those books.)

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?

Do you believe the person is morally obligated to buy a copy later?

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.

Do you have any proposed solutions? Any methods for regulating very troublesome distributions without infringing on people's basic ability to share cultural experiences with those closest to them? More author-directed: Any way for authors to build a solid fanbase, a large collection of potential-future-readers, with the strong restrictions on legitimate ways of sharing books?