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Originally Posted by speakingtohe
As to fair compensation I do not have any idea, and I doubt that it could be easily derived. Too much is subjective. For some it takes one hour to read 200 pages and for others it takes 12 hours. If we equate it to movies to see 2 hours in a cinema is maybe $16 (in Canada) on TV practically nothing. Buying the DVD may cost a bit, but multiple people can watch for that price.
As far as I can determine (mainly from Hennen's American Public Library Ratings) libraries pay approximately $0.78 per circulation for ebooks and around $0.75 for paper books per circulation. This is what is paid to the publisher. Many paper books are leased and I believe the cost is a bit higher then overall. Ebooks actually cost the libraries less per circulation though as there is little overhead for staff or property cost or building construction or maintenance or property rental, unbelievably high in the case of smaller libraries. Overhead for ebooks is generally what overdrive charges. Maybe I am being totally off topic here but it seems relevant.
Your guess is as good as mine, but a tax on CD's and hard drives etc. is unlikely to yield even a penny a copy to the authors IMO.
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But you should also consider that the majority of storage devices are not used to store pirated material. The tax doesn't just get collected on those used to store illegal copies, it gets collected on all of them.
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Originally Posted by HarryT
The term "piracy" to refer to unauthorised copying and distribution of literary works has been used for more than 400 years. It isn't a modern coinage, and there's certainly nothing in the least "romantic" in its meaning. When people used the term in the 16th century, piracy was a very real and decidedly unromantic reality.
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400 years ago it was used to refer to unauthorized copying and distribution of literary works
by publishers. The modern coinage is applying it to consumers.