Quote:
Originally Posted by acidzebra
But this is side-tracking - I would be interested in your ideas on the piracy vs obscurity argument, the attention is worth something argument, and the abstinence vs piracy argument.
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Certainly free distribution serves to bring authors to the attention of the buying public but, with the greatest respect, the decision to do that should be (and is, in the eyes of the law) vested in the author and/or publisher. Baen, for example, have used this technique to great effect with their "Free Library". I honestly do not believe, though, that this can be used as an excuse to "legitimize" piracy by saying that you're "helping" the author.
I'm afraid that, in my view, the argument that "I think a book is too expensive so I'm just going to take it anyway" is immoral in the extreme, and strikes me as just being a rather weak excuse for legitimizing piracy. As I've said before, it's not the act of downloading that I object to as much as the act of not compensating the author. I can accept the legitimacy of downloading an eBook if you've bought the paper book and there isn't a "legit" eBook commercially available. What I can't accept is the morality of downloading without appropriate compensation for the author.