Quote:
Originally Posted by Harper Kingsley
Thank you for once again calling me stupid (my bad, you're not calling me stupid, you're just calling the things I believe in stupid. So I'm sure that's very different.). I'm just glad that your opinion has no bearing on my views whatsoever.
I would just like to point out, that all I've said is a person-to-person transfer probably won't get anyone in trouble, but you can't resell an ebook as things currently stand. My reasoning? Because while a physical object can transfer from me to you, a license is ephemeral and cannot be transferred. So if I stripped the DRM off of a book so you could load it on your ereader, I would be the one that could get in trouble for whatever you do with that book.
You are free to do whatever you please with your life as I am free to do whatever I wish with mine. So if you feel no remorse whatsoever for taking someone's hard work and not even offering them a "Thank you, I really enjoyed your story" in recompense, then that is entirely up to you. But don't tell me I'm wrong if I don't want to be like you.
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I'm sorry, I don't know how to make this any clearer, and you appear to be suffering from persistent misapprehension. The comment I made had nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with piracy, maintaining two copies of a book, or not compensating an author
on original sale. It was addressed to the idea that if once read that book is given to someone else in it's entirety, no retained copies, no opportunity to download it again, that that transaction should still result in compensation for the author. That kind of transaction has been going on for centuries with physical books, ranging from donations to family members, donations to hospitals/charities or reselling it as a secondhand book. In none of those cases would another payment be generated to the author. Until recently the idea wouldn't even have occurred to anyone. I see no reason to treat ebooks differently in those circumstances than physical books, and I consider the growing body of thought that they should be to be, yes - stupid, pernicious and dangerous.
It has nothing to do with appreciating an author, if they weren't the book probably wouldn't be passed on, it has nothing to do with piracy. It does have to do with the concept that one no longer buys a book but only a restrictive license, very often for more than the cost of an actual physical book. If you think that's reasonable then you're entitled to your opinion. I don't, and I'm entitled to express mine. Fortunately it would appear that the EU Court of Justice, at least, appears to be leaning in the direction I favour.
One can, and I have tried to, attack an idea without attacking the proponent. I would point you back to the early days of the net and an institution called Fidonet whose motto was - "Do not offend, and do not be too easily offended".