Quote:
Originally Posted by jbjb
I can see why enforcement is of interest to the copyright holder, and why it can be argued that it's required for a generally workable system, but when discussing an individual's ethical position when lending a book surely the thing that really matters is that the lender doesn't actually read the book during the loan, and that the borrower doesn't read it after its returned, not whether or not those restrictions were actually enforced by the system.
You are comfortable with stripping DRM from your books because you trust yourself not do do anything with the stripped books which damages the author. Is it not also ethically acceptable for me to trust myself not to read a book when lending it to a friend whom I trust to delete it when they've finished it? That's why I wouldn't personally be comfortable with giving a copy of a book to someone else.
/JB
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The difference, as I see it (and please feel free to disagree!) is that I see a significant difference between judging the ethics of my own actions and those of someone else. I know that I'm not going to upload a DRM-stripped book to a torrent site. I have no way of knowing what someone else is or isn't going to do, regardless of how well I think I know them. If I gave a copy of a book to someone, and they then in turn gave it to other people, uploaded it to the internet, etc, I'd feel morally responsible for that piracy, because it would be my actions which led to it. Because of this, I prefer not to take the chance. I should add that I also don't lend paper books to people because they don't look after them the way that I do. If I can't trust my friends to look after my paper books, I'm not going to trust them to look after my ebooks.