Quote:
Originally Posted by blt50203
If someone takes the time and effort to scan a book they purchased to share it, how is this wrong? And how is it different from giving it (the physical copy) to someone else to read. After all, the person you are giving it to didn't pay for it.
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The difference is that when you lend out your paper book it entirely leaves your possession. If the person you lent it to then lends it to yet another person the same is true.
On the other hand if you scan the paper book to make a digital e-book file and lend that out both people now have a copy. Further 'lending' could lead to an unlimited number of people with a copies all sourced from the purchase of a single copy.
I know that a number of people here seem to disagree with any concept of intellectual property rights, but it would be a barren world if this idea found broad moral and legal acceptance. How much new creative material would be produced in not just books, but all media, and even extending to inventions if one could only look on it as a hobby, not something to produce an income?
To take a reductio ad absurdum approach to one argument that has been expressed here about how obtaining free copies of copyrighted material does harm the copyright holder:
A new author writes a book and decides to publish it directly as an e-book for a price of say $7.00. We will keep it simple and say he does not bother with any DRM. One person actually pays to download the file and then uploads it to a web site for 'sharing' e-books; say darkwiiiingduckbooks.com. Anyone out there who pays $7.00 to download a copy from the original site is just being foolish when it is available for free at this site. If say 1,000 people download the e-book from darkwiiiingduckbooks.com the author has no legitimate cause for complaint as that $7,000 was only ever potential income.