Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I'm struggling to see any ethical difference between a long-term loan of one of my older Kindles with 5,000 books on it to a friend, and piracy. Wouldn't I effectively giving my friend a copy of my ebook library?
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I often loan a Kindle to a neighbor with a book on it he/she wants to read. I don't remove the other books. I normally have 30 or 40 books on each of my Kindles.
I suppose you can technically say that I'm loaning that number of books but they don't keep the Kindle that long. I'll usually get it back in a week. Sometimes 2 weeks. Occasionally 3 weeks. Any more than that and I would begin to worry although that hasn't happened.
I don't think Amazon cares about this. They allow a book on 6 devices in most cases. Nearly always when I lend a Kindle it's an older book that I've already read and mentioned to someone who said they want to read it so it's usually only on that one device.
No I can't see this as piracy. No more than lending a paper book. I do think there might be extreme situations where it could be thought of as piracy but it would take some careful thought to come up with such a situation. Lending a device to a neighbor with a book they want to read on it is simply an act of generosity and neighborliness. It's a nice thing to do. I live in a nice place where neighbors do such things for one another.
Barry