[Andurian]

I'm far from convinced that "would have bought otherwise" is the moral equivalent of theft.

I regularly read magazines at Barnes & Noble for free. I have rarely (three times, I think) read novels at Barnes & Noble for free. Doing both is legal as I understand it (and presumably as B&N understands it, given they provide comfy chairs to do it in).

Some percentage of those magazines would have been purchased by me - probably a small one (I usually read magazines there to kill time to make my lunch hour a full hour). I probably would have bought all the books I read there eventually (I read them there because I was flat broke at the time and they were by an author/in a series that I really wanted to read).

Now if what I did is the moral equivalent of theft it would shock the heck out of me. And yet I did deny the authors money that would have gone to them had I purchased the books. My gut tells me the only real difference is that one is corporate sponsored with comfy chairs and the other one is the unrepresented masses in the underground.

Interestingly, the closest I come to pirating books in the "traditional" sense *doesn't* involve me pirating books I would have bought otherwise. I feel free to DL stuff off the net that I already own as a pbook. And though I do in fact prefer to read it on my Reader (hence the DL), were that impossible (no "Dark Tents" as someone here happily called them) I'd just read the pbook rather than paying for it twice.

The biggest moral quandry I'm placed in is whether it is acceptible to buy the pbook that is cheaper than the ebook and then pirate the ebook rather than buying the (stupidly) more expensive and (stupidly) DRMed ebook in the first place. I haven't had my Reader long enough to reach a personal decision on that one. Probably will pay the extra for the ebook just to encourage the market.