Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Libraries are entirely legal. Copying ebooks and handing them to strangers is not. However if the essential *moral* issue is, "someone is reading without paying the author," libraries and p2p sharing have the same ethical problems.
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I wasn't aware of the US specifics on libraries.
I agree morally the two can fall into a similar area. However, libraries operate within the law, they purchase books for lending with the agreement of the publishers under terms publishers accept. Pirates do not.
Any publisher who considers you lending a book to your mates as piracy I hope goes out of business. It's imo a question of scale. If someone buys a book, game, movie, cd and uses it then lends it to a mate and another mate and another, nobody really cares (except perhaps collection agency reps
. If you invite a group of friends over to watch the DVD you bought, nobody cares.
However, if someone shares that same item online with their "friends" it's a different matter, because online when people say friends, they tend to mean masses and masses of people. Or starts showing that DVD on a regular basis to random members of the public or filling out theatres without additional rights, then they do care. [1]
My original reason for picking up the library post, is that when Harry mentioned reading a book without paying for it is stealing (paraphrased), I think he would have included reading a book for free or otherwise as long as it's with the permission of the author/publisher as perfectly acceptable. Libraries fall into that category.
[1] There are stupid elements to this law too. A company near here was fined several hundred thousand pounds for copyright infringement, because they had a normal DVD playing in their demo room to show off their TV and speaker systems (Avatar, which has lots of explosions
). They'd never let a member of the public go in and sit and watch the whole film, it was for a short couple of minutes that people would watch the movie and see if the speakers are decent or not. That imo, is copyright laws been pushed too far. Had they proof the company was letting people watch the entire film in effect making it a theatre, then fair enough, but they didn't and they hadn't.
illegal, yes. Morally wrong, I doubt it.
That's the problem with may of these discussions though, different parties have different lines for what is morally right and usually the law when applied blindly in all cases is pure stupidity. I wouldn't be surprised to hear numerous people think the opposite to me on the [1] point above. Who's right, who's wrong? Who knows
