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Originally Posted by pilotbob
Ah no... the difference is not the number or quality of books read.
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Originally Posted by Nate the great
Bob buys a book, and puts it in the library. A hundred people read it. This is good.
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There is no copyright violation here. A legal copy is purchased and no one has violated the copyright.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nate the great
Bob buys a book, and puts it on the darknet. A hundred people read it. This is bad.
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Ok, even if we accept your premis that the person that puts the ebook on the darknet buys it, there are still 100 copyright violations here. |
That's a legal statement, not ethical. But I can counter it.
If I buy one copy, but have a hundred copies on my hard disk is that a hundred copyright violations? (You'd have trouble winning the case in court.)
If I move those 100 copies to 100 backup servers I've leased space on, is that a hundred copyright violations? (Again, you'd have trouble winning the case in court.)
It looks like it would be a copyright violation when someone else opened the file. But that is a users issue, not copies issue.
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Originally Posted by Nate the great
I would argue that the two situations are functionally the same. Let's dissect the ways they might not be.
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Not the same. With the library example, only 1 person is able to read the book at a time. With the "dark net" 1 legal copy of the the book becomes 100 not-legal(legit whatever) copyies of the book. In the library, if 100 people want to read it the wait list becomes long... this generally indicates to the library they maybe should buy some more copies. They certainly wouldn't Xerox the book so they could lend more out at a time. Would everyone agree this is wrong?
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Ah, yes. Consecutive versus concurrent use might be a hole in my argument. But first you need to prove concurrent use is wrong but consecutive use is right.
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Now I will say your premise is wrong. Generally the person putting the book on the darknet scanned a book he got from a library. How is this ok if Xeroxing the books is not? So, Bob has violated copywright by doing this. Then every person that downloads it is violating the copywright.
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I'm going to have to disagree with you because I found anecdotal evidence in the other direction. Perhaps we could table this aspect.
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But, turns out lets say 100 libraries buy 1 copy of the book, and 1 copy is put on the darknet and 500,000 people read it. The author sold 101 copies and won't be writing another book because he is at Burger King trying to earn money to feed his family.
BOb
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This feeds back into my use argument. In using the library book without paying the author, each library patron is just as ethically wrong as any of the pirates who download it from the darknet.
P.S. I don't know about you, Bob, but I'm having a lot of fun.
