Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
OK, how do you feel about downloading a commercial eBook rather than a "home made" scan?
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I'm assuming you mean, "downloading a commercial ebook" without paying for it, i.e., a pirated copy, perhaps with DRM removed.
This is a very interesting question. Most of the darknet books I know of have been scanned/ocr'd or typed, rather than decrypted, perhaps because they predate commercial ebooks. One would hope that the commercial versions would be higher quality, with fewer typos, etc., and hence worth paying for, but based on comments about the type quality at the Connect store from Sony customers, this may not be the case.
In the case of audio formats, if one had a vinyl recording and wanted a CD of the same work, it might be reasonable to expect to have to pay for the new format, as the sound quality might be expected to be better (perhaps digitally remastered). But with ebooks, there is less of a clear advantage. Even so, the publisher has invested some effort into converting and formatting an ebook, and as we know from discussions here, that's a non-trivial effort if you want to do a good job.
I guess I'd rather not (knowingly) download a decrypted commercial book from the darknet, even if I owned the paper copy. I'd prefer to get it from someone who volunteered their time to scan the book. (Perhaps there is honor among "thieves" after all.)