Moral and Ethical Norms Regarding Book Sharing

[Thrasher]

I am not sure if this has been discussed before, but I have few questions about the morality of sharing books.
I assume that we can all agree that lending a paper book to a friend is morally acceptable. How about lending your e-reader with a book loaded on to a friend? Is that OK? And if it is, how would this differ from removing DRM from the book and sending your friend an ePub copy of the book to read?

[cromag]

If you lend your ereader to a friend with the book there is only one copy of the book, and you lose access to it while your friend has it.

If you strip DRM and give a copy to your friend there are two copies of the book. You both have access.

[Thrasher]

Originally Posted by cromag

If you lend your ereader to a friend with the book there is only one copy of the book, and you lose access to it while your friend has it.

If you strip DRM and give a copy to your friend there are two copies of the book. You both have access.

Good point.

[Thrasher]

How about lending an ePub from the library and stripping the DRM because you were not able to finish it in 21 days and you want to finish it?

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by cromag

If you lend your ereader to a friend with the book there is only one copy of the book, and you lose access to it while your friend has it.

Not necessarily true. If you own multiple eReaders and lend one then you both can have access to the book. For example on the Kindle platform all of the devices registered to an account have access to all of the books simultaneously. This includes PC, iOS, and Android apps.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by cromag

If you lend your ereader to a friend with the book there is only one copy of the book, and you lose access to it while your friend has it.

If you strip DRM and give a copy to your friend there are two copies of the book. You both have access.

Well, you can keep multiple copies of the book yourself on several devices and/or apps. So, you don't necessarily lose access to an ebook when you lend a friend an ereader. All you lose is access to that ereader.

Edit: Oops! @ jhowell beat me to it while I was fussing over phrasing.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Thrasher

How about lending an ePub from the library and stripping the DRM because you were not able to finish it in 21 days and you want to finish it?

That seems unethical to me. Either wait to borrow it again or buy a copy.

[Thrasher]

Originally Posted by jhowell

That seems unethical to me. Either wait to borrow it again or buy a copy.

Is there a limit on how many times you can borrow the same book on Overdrive?

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Thrasher

Is there a limit on how many times you can borrow the same book on Overdrive?

No. But you may have a wait if others have already requested the same book.

Added: Actually there is a limit in that the library may have purchased the book with a limited number of borrows. Once you and others use them up the library needs to buy the book again before it can continue to be borrowed.

[Thrasher]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Not necessarily true. If you own multiple eReaders and lend one then you both can have access to the book. For example on the Kindle platform all of the devices registered to an account have access to all of the books simultaneously. This includes PC, iOS, and Android apps.

Interesting. Do you know if it is against Amazon Kindle Terms and Conditions if you lend your e-reader to someone else?

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Thrasher

Interesting. Do you know if it is against Amazon Kindle Terms and Conditions if you lend your e-reader to someone else?

If you loan your ereader, you are essentially giving the lendee permission to use your entire Amazon account.
Since it is a physical device, I don't think there are any restrictions.
You will be liable if they run up a digital bill.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Thrasher

Interesting. Do you know if it is against Amazon Kindle Terms and Conditions if you lend your e-reader to someone else?

I don’t know. Hopefully someone else can find a link to answer this.

One issue is that lending the ereader gives the recipient access to your Amazon account. You have to trust them to not make purchases in your name. (As Cinisajoy already mentioned.)

The kindle platform does allow lending of some books between accounts. You lose access to the book during the loan and a book can only be lent once as far as I know. Not all books are lendable.

There is also Family Library for sharing books within a household.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I don’t know. Hopefully someone else can find a link to answer this.

One issue is that lending the ereader gives the recipient access to your Amazon account. You have to trust them to not make purchases in your name. (As Cinisajoy already mentioned.)

The kindle platform does allow lending of some books between accounts. You lose access to the book during the loan and a book can only be lent once as far as I know. Not all books are lendable.

There is also Family Library for sharing books within a household.

Last time I loaned a book, it was two weeks, I had no access to the book and it couldn't be loaned again.

[Deskisamess]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

If you loan your ereader, you are essentially giving the lendee permission to use your entire Amazon account.
Since it is a physical device, I don't think there are any restrictions.
You will be liable if they run up a digital bill.

You could turn on Parental Controls which would prevent them from shopping.

[barryem]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

If you loan your ereader, you are essentially giving the lendee permission to use your entire Amazon account.
Since it is a physical device, I don't think there are any restrictions.
You will be liable if they run up a digital bill.

You can require a password on a Kindle to purchase a book so that if you lend your spare Kindle to a friend with a book for him to read on it he can't use it for anything except reading books. It's perfectly safe.

I don't know if that's against Amazon's TOS but I have seen it discussed a few times in Amazon's Kindle forum and I've never seen Amazon complain. That's no guarantee they wouldn't care, of course.

Personally I doubt that Amazon would care. They probably have something like that in their TOS in case there's abuse, so they'll have a way to deal with it, but I doubt they'd care if I lent my neighbor a Kindle to read a book.

I buy books from Amazon and remove DRM and send them back to my Kindle as documents so I don't have to worry about having it on too many devices. About 3 or 4 years ago I called Amazon and asked them if this is okay, since I do value my relationship with them and depend on them. The guy I talked with asked around and said not only did no-one there see any difficulty, a lot of them do similar things at times.

A year later when Amazon had cracked down on a lot of stuff I called again and got a similar response.

This isn't related to sharing a Kindle with a book on it but I think it does show that Amazon isn't interested in hampering it's customers in normal activities.

I was brought up with the idea that sharing things like books with friends and family is something good people do. I still think that. I suspect most of the people at Amazon think so too.

I think most people who would want to do this would only do it after they've read the book and been impressed by it, and if so the principle that only one copy at a time is being read is maintained. Probably not always true. Probably mostly true.

Barry