Quote:
Originally Posted by SimonSays
I agree with that, but authors still lose money whether someone steals an ebook or paperback and they aren't happy when profits go down (less profits may end up not writing anymore). That's all I was trying to say
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Yep it's different to theft, so we can just call it something else like piracy and make it a misdemeanor.
We'll eventually get to a point where there are few if any physical products in many categories decades down the road when you can't buy paper books, or CDs or dvds/blurays etc.
The criminal laws will have to update to cover that fact that these products can't be stolen in the traditional sense of theft anymore as there's no tangible, physical product to be stolen. So companies, content creators etc. main concern is people downloading or other wise obtaining a copy of their content without paying for it.
If the law doesn't adapt, and we don't find ways to reduce piracy we'll end up 50 or 100 years down the road with a system where we can't even have DIGITAL copies of content to own ourselves.
But rather we'll all be hooked up to superfast, always up internet service and just pay for licenses to access the content remotely, and have access to it from any machine that we long into with our account info etc. And I don't think many of us want that vs. buying and really owning content that's not DRMed, has clear fair use laws attached to it etc.
But if we keep acting like piracy isn't some major moral wrong, and isn't a major loss of revenue to publishers, authors, musicians, movie studios etc. which should be treated as a minor criminal issue (major if it's thousands of dollars worth of content) we'll head to a system where they control all the content themselves and you either pay to access it or do without IMO. Somethings got to give on the rampant piracy front as we move further and further into the digital age.