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Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
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Weren't we talking about e-book piracy? How did we start examining government taxation?
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I introduced the example just to show how the Internet is changing the playing field in very disparate domains, makes things murky and so on.
Calling the tens of millions (possible hundreds of millions if you take into account Russia, China, India and other rising countries) of people that download music, books, music, software and what not, thieves is to me as ridiculous as the state governments calling all of the people that bought anything online and did not pay their state sales tax tax cheats.
It just inflames spirits, does not stop anyone doing it again, and it just gives ammunition to extremists on the other side that use the slogan "information wants to be free" to call for de facto abolition of copyright, patents and pretty much all intellectual property, without understanding that a balance needs to be struck between the rights of the creators and the rights of the public for interesting things to continue being created at the amazing rate of today.
So coming back to the original subject of HP7, and with the disclaimer that I never read any HP book in any form, my opinion is that while legally the posters were wrong, practically they did a service to society and even to Ms. Rowling and her publishers since I strongly believe that all the ensuing publicity sold more books than the minuscule sales lost due to potential piracy.
A new copyright balance is going to be struck whether people want it or not, the question is how it will get done to maximize societal benefit, and keeping to extremists views on whatever sides is not going to help.