Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Because there is all the difference in the world between borrowing, buying, or giving away an existing copy of a book, and creating an additional copy of a book and distributing that additionalal copy without the permission of the copyright holder.
The latter has been described as "piracy", and condemned by authors as such, for well over 400 years (you are, I'm sure, aware of Thomas Dekker's scathing attack on book piracy in his 1603 book "The Wonderfull Yeare"?). And that was in the days when people were extremely familiar with what acts of piracy really were.
It is not a new phenomenon, and not a new condemnation.
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One of the problems is that some copyright holders who are trying to come up with new and innovative ways to increase their cash flow will label anything that might not match their business model as piracy. Thus, Disney's CEO claims that not watching commercials is stealing from Disney and some copy right holders claim you need to buy a separate copy for each and every device that you use.
Ultimately, in the US, copyright is a privilege granted by the Constitution to encourage artists to produce art for the increased good of all. It's not a property, it's not a right. It's a limited grant of a monopoly. A social contract if you will. While the pendulum has swung far, far to the side of the copyright holder, that is not set in stone. As consumers demand the ability to do normal things with digital media, I think that pendulum will start to swing back.