Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe
Katsunami does not as far as I know attain ebooks illegally, and in this thread and others seems to feel it is not quite right and stupid in many cases to boot. but justifying others doing it based on the fact that taxes levied on CD's which retail for around 15 to 30 cents and can store approximately 1000 ebook, well anyone with a lick of sense should know that the money to be distributed at say 10 cents a DVD would cost a whole lot more to distribute than the amount itself. Probably by a factor of 100 at least. And same goes for hard drives. Of course in Canada AFAIK the tax is only levied on CDs and not many use them anymore  Perhaps it is different in Europe. |
Indeed, I don't download ebooks, mainly because my reading habits don't require 300 books a year. I also don't have a TBR-pile that's a 1000 books high. I read 30-50 books or so in a year (if I stick to it, and depending on the size), and paying $2.99-$5.99 for a good ebook is much cheaper than trying to find a good, unmangeled retail version online, if I compare the money to the time I'd spend to "find" the book.
I've created an ebook once, using a scanned, illegal version I found online, of a book of which there isn't an ebook version. That cost me so much time that I probably could have read the 1000 page paper copy that is in my book case, with time to spare.
I won't spend any time anymore on fixing ebooks, except for the occasional recurring spelling mistake or bad/missing covers, and putting in the tags that Calibre requires. It's even worse than trying to find a retail version with regard to cost in time.
With regard to taxes, I don't know if it's the same in The Netherlands. I don't condone downloading of media; I'm only always pointing out that, at this point in time, it is NOT illegal. Probably the taxes won't cover all the downloads, but that is not my problem. If someone is downloading ebooks of music by the terabytes, he's doing something he shouldn't be doing, in *MY* view, but it's perfectly fine in the *LAW'S* view, at least right now.
To be honest, I think the law is right. Downloading copyrighted works should not be illegal. You know why not? Because you can do that without actually knowing it. I've had instances (more than once, actually) where I was contemplating to buy a book. So, I wanted to find some reviews, maybe a sample or two.
After searching with google, the first link was a file. The file wasn't a sample; it actually was the entire book, linked *directly by Google*. I downloaded a complete, copyrighted work in PDF-format without even realising it until I opened it.
And it happened more than once.
Luckily for the publisher and author, I don't read novels in PDF-format.