Do you pirate books and why?

[Ravensknight]

I pirate when I want to make my own copy of a book that is not available in ebook format.

Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series is the perfect illustration of this. I have bought 7-10 hardcover omnibus editions of the books I like the most.
But I don't want to have to hold those big books. I want them on my ereader, but they don't exist.

So I download a copy, clean it up and make it a duplicate of my hardcover. Voila, I have a nice e-version of the book I want. And I don't go out and share it.

Now tell me how THAT is somehow immoral?

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by tompe

Why do you insult heathens saying the have no moral?

Empirical studies have actually shown that people belonging to big religions are more likely to behave imorally.

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[Mistress]

On second thoughts, I'd rather not share my opinion on this subject.

[maxiart]

Originally Posted by Mistress

On second thoughts, I'd rather not share my opinion on this subject.

Awn, why not?

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Catlady

What does "pirate books" mean?

Stripping DRM for personal use? Format shifting for personal use? Keeping library books past the deadline? Sharing with a friend or family member? Downloading from file sharing sites? Uploading to file sharing sites?

I can't answer when I don't know what the question means.

Exactly. "Pirating" is a nonsense term. I assumed the poll really meant to ask about committing copyright infringement (unauthorized distribution), but who knows.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

From what I saw of the pirated ebooks on Usenet from a few years ago, the pirate ebook versions of books without an official ebook edition were terrible, filled with OCR errors, formatting errors, missing author emphasis (italics, bold, font changes, etc.), and not worth reading or collecting. I suppose that might have changed for ebooks with official ebook editions since it's so easy to strip DRM, but it's too much bother for me to find out whether it's "good" or not.

If it makes you feel any better, many official ebook editions are terrible too, with the same sorts of errors.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Here's the thing. Some of us believe that authors deserve to be paid for their work. We don't deprive authors of their livelihood because we aren't technically capable of stealing their books, but because we like to read, and so we like to reward authors for their hard work in writing the books that we read. It's a concept called "honesty".

Giving your money to a Publisher just means the Publisher gets to steal from the author instead of you. There's still not much honesty involved.

If you're really interested in rewarding authors, how about we get rid of the middlemen content industry and figure out a system that actually pays authors/musicians/etc what they deserve.

This whole "pirates" vs authors argument is ridiculous when the copyright cartel is sitting in the middle laughing at both sides. Until you're able to see that's where the real problem lies, you're just wasting your time.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Certainly nobody is 100% honest, I agree, but it saddens me to see people who profess a love of reading seeming to have a "blind spot" to the fact that eBook piracy is depriving authors of their livelihood.

Which is complete nonsense.

[Quexos]

And I have to agree with you.
reminds me of that say I heard somewhere:
Kill a person and they will call you a murderer, kill a million and they'll call you a conqueror, go figure ...

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Giving your money to a Publisher just means the Publisher gets to steal from the author instead of you. There's still not much honesty involved.

If you're really interested in rewarding authors, how about we get rid of the middlemen content industry and figure out a system that actually pays authors/musicians/etc what they deserve.

This whole "pirates" vs authors argument is ridiculous when the copyright cartel is sitting in the middle laughing at both sides. Until you're able to see that's where the real problem lies, you're just wasting your time.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Exactly. "Pirating" is a nonsense term. I assumed the poll really meant to ask about committing copyright infringement (unauthorized distribution), but who knows.

Regardless of your views on the term, the word "piracy" has been used to describe the unauthorised copying of books for more than 400 years.

[JoHunt]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Regardless of your views on the term, the word "piracy" has been used to describe the unauthorised copying of books for more than 400 years.

This definition means that even those who only format shift (thereby creating an unauthorized copy of a book) are pirates

[History]

Sometimes I spent hours at (brick and mortar) book-stores reading (in many cases the whole) books with no intention of buying them - totally legal I think. IMHO, the action causes much more damage than downloading pirated copies

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Which is complete nonsense.

Can you explain why it is "nonsense" to say that illegally downloading a book, rather than buying it, is depriving the author of income? It appears to be something which is self-evidently true to me.

[Kirtai]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Can you explain why it is "nonsense" to say that illegally downloading a book, rather than buying it, is depriving the author of income? It appears to be something which is self-evidently true to me.

You're assuming the author is still alive

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Can you explain why it is "nonsense" to say that illegally downloading a book, rather than buying it, is depriving the author of income? It appears to be something which is self-evidently true to me.

The point is that you're depriving the author of his income when you actually access the content of the book, not by just making a copy of it.

Like I said, there are several ways of legally deprieve the author of said income, without breaking any law.
So, I suppose we have to blame as ethically wrong things like borrowing books, buying used paperbacks, in-shop browsing, in-library reading (which is free in my country), having someone read aloud, peeking a reader's shoulder, and so on (*).

Unless we say that everithing legal is also ethical.
In such a case, it's enough to change the law to make piracy ethically right.


(*) I ruled out Wikipedia, because you already said you don't consider reading plot summaries a deprivation of income for the author, despite the fact lots of people do that instead of buying and reading the whole book.