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Originally Posted by Format C:
And that's the ethical difference between digital and analog world: you can sell the hardcopy you bought, and that's legal (*) and fair. But you can't sell the digital copy you bought. Not even if you made it from the paper copy you own in a destructive manner and manage to keep it unique.
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What makes you think you can't sell the digital copy?
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Another example is bookcrossing: you can drop a book on a bench to be taken and you're doing nothing wrong. But, if you create a web site where ebooks can be uploaded and downloaded only once (**), you are, at the least, a pirate and a copyright infringer.
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If the ebook can only be downloaded once and the original is destroyed in the process, then that's not piracy or copyright infringement. It's the same thing as giving away the physical book.
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IMHO, the used book market is permitted only because it's impossible to enforce a strict prohibtion, even in a USSR-like state. In the digital world, DRM makes it possibile, and that's happening.
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The used book market exists because of law, and the first sale doctrine. That has nothing to do with whether the media is physical or digital.
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That's hypotetical: imagine an ebook-crossing site, where the users ulpoad e-books deleting their original copy, and the server deletes every single file as soon as the first download is completed. Every book exists in a single "live" copy (misbehaving users do not exist by hypothesis). Guess what? It's not legal in my country, and I bet there are people who find it unethical...
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What makes you think that's not legal?