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Originally Posted by carld
Sorry, no. I don't agree with that at all. The publisher has every right to publish in whatever format they see fit, this does not justify stealing it.
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I would agree with you if the copyright & DRM laws did not exist. But those laws do exist, and they involve a tradeoff that I think of as "The Copyright Deal."
The Copyright Deal is that the law will give writers and publishers certain legal protections that would not otherwise exist, in exchange for certain benefits that are supposed to accrue to the public.
The legal protections were intended to protect writers and publishers against unfair competition from other publishers, who would legally "pirate" successful books, leaving the original publisher to take the economic risk of initial publication, but not gather the economic reward of taking the risk.
The idea was that the public - readers - would benefit by getting more books.
But now, the publishers are trying to control the readers' access to books. They want to benefit from the protection of the copyright law, but they don't want to let us all have access to the books that result. And it's not because it costs anything to offer the books in other formats. It's because they believe that they can make more money off of readers by segmenting the market.
In other words, they are trying to break The Deal. In fact, perversely, they are trying to use The Deal to
prevent readers from getting books. Not just pirated books, but the original books.
So The Deal is off.
Quote:
Originally Posted by carld
Edit: In fact, this thread is so annoying I think I'll buy a couple of their books and send them a glowing letter of praise for their obvious intelligence and marketing savvy in picking the Kindle.
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Not good enough. You have to buy books you don't want to read, or ones your reader won't support. Otherwise, you are just doing what you would do anyway.