Quote:
Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel
i hesitated also for that question ; in the end i answered no (it's not immoral) thinking of sharing a copy with friends / family. i hadn't read all the replies to this thread before answering and i wasn't sure what the intention was of the question (large-scale vs. small-scale) and i see no reason i shouldn't continue to share books with friends (once they get reading devices...  ) just as i do with paper books. |
The problem with "sharing with friends" is that sharing ebooks is different from sharing a physical book. A physical book has but a single copy, and travels 'linearly' through friends (and if it travels very far, will eventually wear out, thus self-limiting the amount of sharing). Surely you've heard of "six degrees of difference", or the Kevin Bacon game (where EVERY person on the planet can be connected with ANY other person on the planet in no more than SIX steps)? I have my circle of friends. Each of them has their own circle of friends, and so on. If I share a book with MY friends, and they share it with THEIR friends... well, I'm sure you see where I'm going. If you don't want DRM (I don't either), then the social standard HAS to be NO sharing of ebooks, period. But, if the price is lowered to something reasonable, then it becomes far less of an issue. There is NO reason (other than publisher greed) why an ebook should cost more than $2-3, which would cover the author royalties and a profit for the 'publisher'. Most folks wouldn't hesitate to spend $3 for a book. Piracy explodes when the price is perceived as being ridiculously high. Lower the price to a reasonable level and piracy becomes a minor issue.
Most of this has been well covered in several other threads regarding DRM and piracy, so I'm not trying to restart the discussion here. Merely pointing out that the "sharing with friends should be okay" argument has a big fallacy built into it.