[kazbates]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

In the UK it's quite common these days to see parents giving their children food off the shelves in supermarkets without paying for it. The children eat the stuff as they wander round, and the supermarkets don't seem to care.

'Stealing' is a part of our culture now.

I've seen that happen, too. It didn't used to be that way and if that is the trend, I believe it shows how much our society has digressed.

When I was young, our local grocery store had big bins of candy that you could bag up and have weighed at the cash register at check-out. When my mother's back was turned, my brothers and I each took a piece of candy and ate it. When my mother realized what we had done. She marched us to the store manager and made us apologize. She added 3 pieces of candy to the bag, had the cashier weigh it and then removed them from the original bag and gave them back to the cashier. When we got home, we had to pay for the candy from our piggy banks and then were punished for the transgression.

I thank my mother every day for instilling good values in me and I hope I've done the same with my own children. Laws and moral values are important to sustain a functioning society.

Originally Posted by GhostHawk

You want an honest answer Kazbates, I'll give you one.

<SNIP>

It seems to me that you have a lot of anger towards your current situation which you are using to justify illegal behaviour. I'm truly sorry for your troubles and hope that things will improve for you.

Originally Posted by Jack Tingle

What part of "illegal" is giving people problems?

You can work towards changing a law. You can militate for publishers to change the way they do business. You can even start your own business and run it your way. Breaking the law is still wrong. You may do like Thoreau and Ghandi, and break it, go to jail, pay the penalty and use that as a bully pulpit, but it's still wrong, even in a good cause.

Now, where the law is currently unclear is what is "illegal". If you get an ebook and put it into a torrent for all the world to read, that's clearly illegal. It's less clearly illegal if you sell an ebook you paid for to someone and erase all of your copies. It's very unclear whether you're allowed to format shift a book you paid for.

Don't you love simple answers?

Regards,
Jack Tingle

Very well said.

It seems to me many of the posters have a problem with the words "theft" and "stealing". I tried not to use them in my posting but I can only assume they were derived from my statement. Don't get hung up on the semantics. Look at the laws. Whether you agree with them or not, they are still there. The problem is that, as I stated before, they are not clearly defined for our digital age. I also already explained that the same arguments you find here are those that were made for copying music and movies. If you make a copy it is not "gone" as a candy bar would be that's obvious. However, you still now own something that the law required you to make compensation to the seller for your right to own. Making a illegal copy is no different than walking into BestBuy, taking a DVD of the shelf and walking out without paying. You might not like the comparison, but it is accurate.

If you don't like the current copyright infringement laws, work to change them.

Originally Posted by Pardoz

Ask yourself that next time you buy a used book, check a book out of the library (in many countries), borrow a book from a friend, or even read a newspaper somebody discarded on a park bench, as in every case you are "taking it without giving compensation to the true owners". I'll be curious to hear your answer.

I've already brought up the question of a second-hand book in a previous posting so won't address that here. I pay property taxes in my country which are used to support our local library. The library purchases the books and (although I honestly don't know how it works) makes some compensation to the publishing company and thus the author. I don't borrow books, I purchase them because I am a pack rat and like to have my own things, but if I did, it is legal to do so in the US. I don't pick up discarded newspapers and read them. With the exception of your last "newspaper" point, the law clearly defines legal usage.

I follow the law. That's my answer.