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Originally Posted by HarryT
Totally agree. It is pure sophistry to try to pretend that taking away an author's income is anything other than theft, regardless of what the law might choose to call it.
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Theft is taking away, that is very true. However when you are talking about an infinitely reproducible product, that is when the definition gets blurred. Let me explain:
- Earlier, someone mentioned that owning a copy of a book did not give them the right to go into a bookstore and take a paperback copy without paying for it. Very true. This would be theft, as they have taken a physical item from the store - it is no longer there. It now cannot be sold, and cannot be replaced without some cost.
- On the other hand, an ebook is infinitely reproducible. If I were to copy a book that a bookstore is selling, they still possess the original that they wish to sell. They take no direct physical or monetary loss from the copying of the book. After I have copied it, they would still be able to sell it as often as they wish (or more accurately, as often as people are willing to buy it).
- That leads us to what is the essence of both sides of the argument - lost sales. Moejoe has covered this pretty well here:
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Originally Posted by Moejoe
And we return to the argument of those who download and don't pay anything. Roughly divided into three camps of downloaders - Those who will never Pay, Those who can't pay, and those who will pay at some time in the future. Two out of those three can't be lost sales by definition, the third is a possible sale. Even the second might be a future sale when they have the money. Time and again we see that P2P sharing not only boosts recognition, but increases sales.
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In general, I agree with Moejoe - the author cannot lose sales he would not have had, and the ability to discover new authors for free can only help the author. Of course there will be people copying the books - but the vast majority would either not have purchased it in any case (no lost sale) or would enjoy it and purchase or purchase future books because they enjoy a new author.