Quote:
Originally Posted by nekokami
No. Really. There's a major difference between borrowing a book from the library and downloading one that has been scanned or cracked. When you borrow from a library, not only did the library pay for the book (and the library is physically local, so that implies something about how many copies of the book were paid for), but the library keeps track of how many times a given book is checked out, and uses those statistics to decide what to buy next. If you and ten friends check a book out from your local library by Author X, and Author X puts out a new book, the library will probably buy a copy of that book, too.
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If the library is a gov't supported institution, that's about how it works. If the library is my friend Kathy's house, and the books are a wall full of paperbacks (some bought new, many bought used), there's no record-keeping, no new purchases from publishers, no indication of the difference between a book that's been read by 40 people and one that's been read by 2 people who keep borrowing it so they can check the details of their fanfic.
The books on the filesharing sites? Were all purchased at some point. *Someone* bought a new copy of that book; the author was paid for one reader.
The moral issue of "reading without paying the author" is the same whether the book is borrowed from a friend, bought at a yard sale, or picked up from a free box set in a park somewhere. Putting it on filesharing sites is a just a change of scale.
If authors & the publishing industry want to stop the *damaging* forms of filesharing--and there very likely is some (as opposed to the kind that works as advertising)--they need to find a legal, simple way for people (end-user readers, not companies) to have lending libraries of ebooks like they do for pbooks, and ways to sell off the ones they don't care for anymore at half the price they paid for them.
The idea that every book that's read should be bought new at full price, has never been how most people read books.