Quote:
Originally Posted by Rbneader
Pretty sure NinjaLawyer is being sarcastic with the 'morally reprehensible' bits.
My take?
'Format shifting' is just a fancy new term for what has always been done.
Old clothes become potholders, quilts, old rags and rugs. Cardboard boxes become pet beds. Packing materials get used to wrap presents. Grocery store bags line trashcans. And stories in paper get turned into other formats, read aloud to friends, digitized, enacted by LARPers. This kind of use is utterly acceptable, an integral part of the concept of exchanging items of value (i.e. paying money for something), and companies trying to prevent it are grossly overreaching acceptable behavior.
TL;DR I consider commercial entities trying to limit my ownership rights morally reprehensible.
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No, I am sure that NinjaLawyer knows exactly that illegally downloading pirated ebooks is not right even when the pbook is owned. He is trying to make it morally excusable by hiding under format shifting a pbook into a ebook. That mere act may be legal for you to do for own personal usage. Now the excuse is to download a format shifted ebook from the darknet is ok morally, because you could have done it yourself anyway with your own pbook
Your examples of format shifting is more like recycling and has not a lot to do with what is usually called format shifting here on MR.
Yes, I agree, ebooks is not a property to buy if you want ownership. Most copyrighted ebooks you don't own, but you purchased a non-transferable license to read. Is it a consumer friendly concept? Probably not, but it is what it is. You can chose to not buy and read ebooks if the current system is too prohibitive. Even buying drm free ebooks does not gurantee that you own them and can do with them as you please.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
There's a rather fundamental difference between using a cardboard box as a pet bed, and thinking that it's OK to download pirated books merely because you've bought the paper book.
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+1
Well and this - thank you for saying it a lot more efficient.