Quote:
Originally Posted by nursedude
I collect certain authors because I enjoy their work. I believe in supporting them by buying their product.
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I do the same borrowing books in a library and buying only the ones I really care/support and I think that "piracy" could work like that as well.
Talking about music, I see that my behaviour
became pretty much the same but it was a process that started with "illegal/unmoral" piracy.
When p2p was something new I remember downloading lot of songs... it was too alluring... I didn't have the time to think if it was legal or not, I practically had immediate access to all the songs I could imagine by turning my pc on and so I did (I don't want to imply this is legit, I'm only telling that's what happened).
Thanks to that huge impact, the marked was forced to change, and now we have many more ways to buy music that are
more ethical even from a seller point of view. I don't need anymore to
waste my money on a cd that maybe has 2 good songs and 6 poor ones. I can buy a single song for a reasonable price (0.99€ and not 6€ for a single) and now that on iTunes they are DRM free I am more willing to support the artists that I think deserve it to be by buying their songs or CDs. I don't even need to download for preview anymore because I can listen the majority of new albums by streaming on Youtube (which has also some copyright issues but nobody cares because they know that advertising pays so for many labels Youtube was
good even when it was illegal...).
I think something like that is starting right now for books... now when an author becomes famous with a book that is not his/her 1st one, editors are publishing his/her previous books (already available in paperback editions) as they were new and if people besides complaining about that would be able to get a copy for free (legal or not) they we'll be forced to rethink their selling policy. And let's not talk about translations quality which is an even more delicate question... (at least in my country).
Sure that's how the market works: more demand means a higher price, but since we're also talking about ethic I think we should also talk about that from a seller point of view.
So, I think we could really discuss about the ethic of downloading a copy of a book only when the market will be adapted to the new course. Now it's only a transitional phase and nothing is really ethical or unethical, it's only really confusing
