Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
If I steal, it is immoral. If you steal, it is immoral. It matters not whether you or I steal. Stealing is immoral. If either of us are hypocrites for saying “stealing books is immoral”....it would not change the truth that stealing is immoral.
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I think it also depends on the reason though. I mean no one has to steal a car for example. A car makes it easier to get around from place to place but you don't usually suffer greatly if you don't have one. On the other hand what if a person has no $ and they can't get help for some reason with things like food? Is it more immoral to starve a child or to steal food in order to feed said child? Granted usually it's more likely to be a 'want' rather than a 'need' situation but it's also easy to talk about it being wrong to steal when you have your basic necessities provided for. As for the OP's mentioning of how people wouldn't steal a book from a store so why is it acceptable to steal the ebook, the parallel isn't exact. I mean the store isn't likely to come to your home and take back paper books that you have bought. In theory at least Amazon, Sony, etc. could reclaim the ebooks that a buyer has purchased without warning because they are considered to be licensed not sold. And that leads me to a question, "Is it
Moral or
Immoral to sell a ebook to someone and then (for some reason) nullify said sale for any or no reason?" That's what the sellers could do at any time should they so desire. Or what if they decided that books which the average customer has purchased should be treated like those sold to libraries? They can be read a certain # of times or within a given time span and then the license ends. Something like that has happened to me in the past. I put a ebook on hold to read and before it got to my turn to borrow it the book was withdrawn because the licence expired. Is that moral?