Quote:
Originally Posted by PKFFW
In this way we can lump those ignoble and sullied artists in with the evil publishers and wont have to deal with any issues about whether we should be paying a fair and equitable price for their creative works. Not to mention dealing with the idea that it is ok to leech off the creative efforts of others simply because they enjoy creating and would continue to create even if no one paid them.
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But we're allowed to "leech" off their creativity with paper books. We can lend them to friends, or pick them up for a dollar at a yard sale--or get them for free at bus stops or through
bookcrossing. Book appreciation has always included a lot of not-paying-the-author activity.
The argument, "if you wanted to read it, the author should be paid" says that libraries are unethical, that you should never borrow a friend's book, that dollar-a-bag book sales shouldn't be allowed. That universities shouldn't allow last year's books to be read for class credit; grammar schools shouldn't re-use books from year to year. Doctor's offices shouldn't have magazines in their lobbies.
If it's "leeching" to read without paying, then every book, every magazine, should have exactly *one* reader, and then be destroyed.
AFAIK, nobody's arguing for that. So... why are they claiming that's how ebooks should work? Why try to force people to follow a set of ethics that don't apply anywhere else?
I'm not saying it's a fine idea to send ebooks out on the torrentwebs to be copied into hundreds of machines. I'm saying that the reason that's a bad idea, is
not "because people should pay for what they read."
People have never paid for everything they read. It's never been considered reasonable to destroy every book after a single person has read it.