[Hitch]

Originally Posted by BookCat

The guy in my example stole money: the income of the library owner, who could equate to an author or publishing house.

Why would the library owner bother establishing another library; why would the author who is not being paid royalties bother to write another book (except for love of writing)?

The thing which has been stolen is not the a physical item, like a book, but money and the means of earning it.

Seems to me that the law hasn't caught up with technology.

I agree. (When I say "you" In this post, BC, I'm not speaking to you, I'm speaking generally to anyone arguing that infringement is not "theft" or "stealing.")

The person who scanned the books has most certainly "stolen" something in the wider use of vernacular; he has stolen the Library owner's livelihood. Assuming that the library owner was possibly paying the authors a wee fee, each time the book was borrowed, in our fantasy library, the authors, too, are being deprived of income. (This scenario obviously is more relevant to self-pubbed authors selling online whose books are pirated...)

Arguably, the person who scanned the books might not be 'stealing.' He was violating copyright, by agreeing to solely BORROW a printed book from our Fantasy Library, but instead, helping himself to the book, via scanning. He has produced a second copy of the book, sans payment. You can wrap that up in all the nice legalities (like "copyright infringement") that you wish, but now, he can lend his copy of a book to a 3rd party, and not be deprived of his version, himself, unlike anyone who has a physical copy, or someone who has an ebook purchased through Amazon, etc. No matter how you slice it, another copy of each scanned book has come to exist, sans proper payment to the originators/publishers/authors. For each instance of the scanned book.

It really isn't more complicated than that. Another copy exists, and the publisher wasn't paid. It's worsened when that illicit 2nd copy then goes on to have another life of its own, all unpaid, whether it's one copy "to a friend" or 500 copies to your closest and best friends on Kim Dotcomm's latest file-sharing service.

If the Scanning-borrower had "only" kept the scanned copies for himself, it's unlikely that anyone would care. Still wrong, but...not remotely damaging to the publisher, in that instance.

But the moment that he offers them to others, either for free or very cheaply, he's depriving those who published those books of their rightful shekels.

Yes, I'm aware of the (endless) arguments that the downloader "wouldn't have bought the book anyway," thus, the author is being deprived of nothing. Fine--then the downloader should not get the VALUE of the book, the reading of it, because he didn't pay. It's that simple.

I do not understand the shruggery-argument that "oh, well, he wouldn't have paid anyway," as if that makes it okay. I mean, how is that different than, "well, this person would never have made enough money to buy a BMW, so it's okay that he stole it instead, and has the use of it"? Sure, you can argue that in the case of the books, the Fantasy Library still has their physical copies, whilst the victim in the stolen car case doesn't, but, morally, what's the difference? Why should the downloader be rewarded with getting the VALUE of the book, without paying for it?

To me, really, it's that simple. People get their knickers in a twist, because it's digital. Nobody would even blink at the "stealing" word, if instead of scanning books, the borrower simply KEPT the physical books. We'd all agree that was theft, and if he, in turn, scanned that book in print, produced his OWN print books, and sold them online for $1 each, instead of $14.99 or whatever, there'd be no argument. It would be infringement and more.

But, because a "book" is now a digital file, there's this greywater mindset that somehow, it's NOT a book. It doesn't have the same "value." It's something less than a book. But of course, it does have value. The value of a book, really, is in the reading of it. Yes, print books can be resold--an unavoidable difference, that gives them "more" value than an ebook--but hte value doesn't dissapear, just because the words are pixels, and not paper.

Perhaps the answer is to agree that print books have a resale value, that digital doesn't, and all agree to that. But that does not change a single thing, in terms of the idea that if you download a book from a pirate site, you're getting value for which you are quite simply not paying. It's not manna from heaven--when you don't pay, you are taking money from the author's pockets. Want to say that you wouldn't have paid, anyway? Fine--then don't read the book. Like anything else in life, you get what you pay for.
Don't pay? Don't read. Anything else is simply rationalization.

Spoiler:

Sorry, but this "oh, it's only a digital file" s**t really gets up my nose. It's the same mindset that people {authors} used, to STEAL from me, the first two years I was open, and stupidly allowed people to pay upon completion.

We had thefts of $10K and $12K, the first two years, because, hey, it's JUST a computer file, right? Nobody thinks about all the time, and work, and sweat that went into it, and feel perfectly justified in walking away with it unpaid-for. I put a stop to that, but I know all too well, first-hand, that when you TAKE a digital file, for which you have not paid, someone, somewhere, is paying for that, FOR YOU. You want to quibble about whether or not that's legally "theft," quibble on, but morally, there's no goddamned difference. Every single one of those a***oles thought it was just fine to put it up on Amazon, and sell it--to benefit, from OUR work, sans payment. Now...they were in for a rude surprise, when I informed Amazon that it was our work product--but the author of a pirated book doesn't have that remedy.

Hitch