Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
But that is just a technical issue. The real issue is sharing books with your friends and that sharing is not different in any relevant ways. That you might share ebooks at the same time really do not make it into a different category than sharing paper books.
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And I believe it is different in relevant ways.
1) Physical lending means loss of physical access. And this, affects how we think about the "harm" it may or may not do. Because digital copying is unlimited and physical books are limited to being in one place at one time.
2) It changes how we govern it legally. Copyright law as opposed to property law. If you want to preserve a similar set of rights/restrictions across both types of books it will require different kinds of laws to achieve the same result.
3) It changes whether or not we can practically stop or control unwanted behaviour. Physical books can be locked away to prevent theft and photocopiers are expensive and time-consuming to make unauthorised copies. Copying is easy for ebooks and DRM doesn't work.
Again, I'm not arguing this to take a "side" on whether something is wrong or should be illegal or whatever. I'm arguing it so we can actually talk sensibly at all.