Quote:
Originally Posted by mgmueller
I only was -and am- interested in the piracy aspect.
That was my entire intention behind this poll.
There doesn't seem to be a distinct consensus about the meaning of "sideloading":
Does sideloading mean, circumventing the system, for example installing Google Play on a Kindle tablet?
Or does "sideloading" simply mean, transferring data from PC to mobile device via USB?
This ambiguity (which isn't mine, you simply find different definitions of "sideloading" online) alone already generates some confusion.
But, whatever the correct or most widely spread definition of sideloading ever might be, my simple assumption was:
Most pirates sideload. Depending on the definition described above, one even might say, by the very definition every single pirate has to sideload.
Of course, this doesn't mean that each sideloader is a pirate.
But how big is the ratio between the 2 groups?
(Obviously smaller in MR than in the none-enthusiast general public, but you have to start somewhere).
So, my idea behind the poll was, what kind of content mostly is sideloaded.
Of course I simply could have asked: How many of you have illegal content?
But for one, this wouldn't be allowed by the MR regulations. There are no legal consequences to fear, but still lots of users might have worried about giving a potentially incriminating answer.
And second of all, it wouldn't have linked to the sideloading aspect, that interests me.
So again, I could have asked: How many of you are sideloading illegal content?
But again: MR regulations and admitting to shady actions.
So I intentionally phrased it ambiguously.
Thus eliminating any risk or fear of legal consequences.
And giving the MR moderators enough room, to let it pass.
I thought, by first explicitly asking about buying stuff and then by putting "from somewhere else" as the alternative option in quotation marks, my intentions would be clear enough for a discussion, but at the same time ambiguous enough for the reasons described above.
Again:
"From somewhere else" can (and most of the time will) be totally legit.
But I wasn't interested in the whole picture of eBooks.
I was interested in the small fragment around sideloading.
By being ambiguous, the open poll shouldn't be a problem.
Of course, some users might lie to keep face and might have told the truth when being able to hide. But my guess would be, the impact of an open poll is another one: Less participants, because some will hesitate to give their real standpoint. But will some really go so far to still vote, but lie to appear differently?
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No.
Sideloading just means 'not downloading from the cloud' (nor uploading to the cloud), but loading the file from a computer or a card (or whatever) onto your device. So nothing illegal about that.