I saw a poll a few years back designed to find out where people stopped thinking of making digital copies or using file-sharing for copyrighted material as immoral. The poll used music and movies but it's just as applicable for any digital media. Put into the context of ebooks: Is it OK to make a digital copy of your book for personal use? What if your physical copy is destroyed? Is it OK to keep your digital copy? What if your physical copy is sold? Is it OK to keep the digital copy? If you own a book and you would like a digital back-up, is it OK to download a copy from a file-sharing network?
There are other questions along similar lines and the morality of digital copying seems to blur. I believe there were also questions concerning breaking DRM to make a copy. I think it highlights the problem with thinking of IP as traditional property. In the modern digital age, IP law is consistently at odds with personal physical property. It involves people regulating what you can and can't do with your personal copy of a book or a CD or DVD, whether you bought it as a digital copy or bought the physical copy. If it's OK to scan your own book, why isn't it OK to download a book you already own off a file-sharing network? Then there's comparisons like the following:
Quote:
Originally Posted by doreenjoy
I have mass-market books I've bought; that doesn't entitle me to hardback versions or large print editions of the same books.
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I think many people on this site have made the distinction between digital formats and physical copies. Obviously, if you purchase another physical copy of a book, you've purchased the paper, ink, and glue that makes the copy of that book possible. If you buy a second digital copy in a different DRM crippled format, what have you gained? It's the same exact thing you originally bought in a different file format. Without DRM, you could have made your own copy of that second file you downloaded with little to no effort and at no cost to the content creator. Who have you hurt? So the comparison between physical copies and digital copies is completely illogical to me. People on this forum recognize the difference when they advocate stripping DRM or books without DRM so as to allow format shifting and keeping their digital copies forever.
So if it's OK to strip DRM or format-shift books that came without DRM, why is it ridiculous to request Amazon make it easier/cheaper to get digital copies with physical books? What differentiates it from DVDs that now come with a "Digital Copy" inside? I understand the issue with past books. Amazon can't tell if you still have the book just like iTunes can't tell if you own any given CD. And Amazon couldn't just give the digital copies away for free without losing money on bandwidth and the cost of any effort that went into making the ebook. So I think the "nominal fee" suggestion was reasonable and the accusations of a sense of entitlement are off the mark. If you're going to make that accusation, then why are you entitled to the right to convert your own ebooks into different formats? Why are you entitled to scan your own physical books and make ebooks out of them?