Quote:
Originally Posted by meraxes
No-one's denying your right to have an opinion. And in my case the author has been paid, cause I own six of his books in paperback. I just wanted to have one of those in electronic format so as not to lug the volumes around when I'm travelling. But his publishers said they don't want my money, so what can I do...
As for equating piracy with stealing - that is a simplistic argument designed to engage emotions rather than logic. Proper stealing is when you take something from the owner, and as a result he doesn't have this thing any more, ending up poorer than he was. Piracy is merely a lost opportunity for profit, based on an imperfect business model. Now, if that opportunity was lost because the pirate deliberately chooses not to reward the author for his work, that's clearly wrong. Not quite stealing, but freeriding at the very least, and denying the author his just rewards out of greed. But if that opportunity was never created by the publishers in the first place, if the pirate wanted to pay his money like everyone else but was rejected due to idiotic business practices, whose fault is that? No-one's ended up poorer than they were. The author has not of course become richer, but only because his publishers have wasted an opportunity to make a profit for themselves and for the author. But instead of fixing their broken business model they are trying to shift the blame for lost profit on their potential customers and send them on a guilt trip through emotionally loaded verbiage.
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I could not have said it better myself. It is sad when you are able and willing to buy an ebook but are declined on the basis of your geographic location - despite you being able to buy internationally the paperback from the same publisher and have it shipped to your home without question.