Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
Because this is coming from you, I'm trying to understand the disconnect here.
I am not being deliberately obtuse. I think you know my posting style well enough to believe that I would not do that unless I was trying to make some sort of point, not just to stonewall.
Certainly there are MYRIAD differences, but none that pertain to why one of them would be wrong and the other not, and that's what I thought we were talking about.
So what is this difference that should be apparent? Maybe I'm not acknowledging it because I think we're talking about something else?
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I'm not even certain I care about some kind of perceived notion of a back/white "wrong/right" distinction with regard to this lending-is-piracy issue—in fact I'm
certain I don't. We don't live in a world where such a delineation is possible; and even more rarely ... useful. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but it seems crystal clear to me as a reader and a lover of books that there is an inherent and
vast difference in someone (hypothetically) loaning a close friend an ebook by an author they hoped to inspire an appreciation of, and someone uploading an ebook to a website so hundreds or thousands of people could steal it for free.
I mean sure, if someone were coming at it as an exercise in legal terminology, or letter-of-the-law mental exercises, perhaps there is no difference, but why would a reader be coming at it from that perspective? Or at the very least, why wouldn't someone acknowledge their particular vantage point from which they judge right/wrong isn't the only valid vantage point there is?
Is involuntary manslaughter different from murder, or are they both just flat-assed "wrong" and that's that? End of story?
I don't really care if someone thinks loaning Aunt Jane an ebook is "wrong." I care that someone thinks it's "wrong-
er" than their own rationalized and self-excused violation of rules based on some definition of "harm" that they've cherry-picked.