Do you pirate books and why?

[dillsandwitch]

I answered yes to the question.

From all the different arguments i have been reading over the last 3 days (yes i read ever post of all 43 pages :S) to answer anything else would be a lie.

I have downloaded digital copies of books i own in paperback format to add to my e-reader as they are not available in eBook format. If they ever do come out in eBook i will happily purchase them.

The reason i have done this and laugh if you must is i have what others refer to as a phobia but is quite a serious problem. I cant touch paper. It freaks me out and I just cant do it. Even sitting here typing this i can feel that horrible moisture sucking feeling i get when i touch it.

I would love nothing more than to grab one of my books from the boxes they are in and shove my nose it in it and read to my hearts content but i just cant do it.

[MikeOxlittle]

Originally Posted by dillsandwitch

The reason i have done this and laugh if you must is i have what others refer to as a phobia but is quite a serious problem. I cant touch paper. It freaks me out and I just cant do it. Even sitting here typing this i can feel that horrible moisture sucking feeling i get when i touch it.

[dillsandwitch]

go on laugh. I'm fine with it. really

I used to work at a large newspaper and after spending a couple of years touching newsprint all day long everyday I just cant touch paper anymore. It just squicks me out and unfortunately paper back books paper is just way to similar to newsprint...

must go moisture hands now.... hahahaha

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Apache

One is stealing and the other is not.
Unless you can prove, that the person posting reviews, is doing so maliciously and with intent to harm then there is no laws being broken.
Apache

Sorry, Apache, you've slightly lost me. Who's talking about posting reviews? The poster to whom I was replying was claiming that no harm was done by illegally downloading books.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sorry, Apache, you've slightly lost me. Who's talking about posting reviews? The poster to whom I was replying was claiming that no harm was done by illegally downloading books.

A slight twist on the usual derail Harry, someone said that if it's harmful to illegally download books because it deprives the author of income then bad reviews are equally harmful to the author so whats the difference.

Frankly, I've given up - the people who want it for free are never going to agree that is it "using without permission" and therefore wrong.
You can compare it to :-
Using the train without paying
Sneaking into the cinema without paying
etc
It won't matter, the important thing to 1 side of this discussion here is the not paying part.

I'm still waiting for someone to suggest that stealing the book from the library is a great idea because then no one can read it for free and will have to buy it - as a justification for illegally downloading it

[Apache]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sorry, Apache, you've slightly lost me. Who's talking about posting reviews? The poster to whom I was replying was claiming that no harm was done by illegally downloading books.

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

A slight twist on the usual derail Harry, someone said that if it's harmful to illegally download books because it deprives the author of income then bad reviews are equally harmful to the author so whats the difference.

Frankly, I've given up - the people who want it for free are never going to agree that is it "using without permission" and therefore wrong.
You can compare it to :-
Using the train without paying
Sneaking into the cinema without paying
etc
It won't matter, the important thing to 1 side of this discussion here is the not paying part.

I'm still waiting for someone to suggest that stealing the book from the library is a great idea because then no one can read it for free and will have to buy it - as a justification for illegally downloading it

Sorry Harry, I was not as clear as I should have been. Mike explained what I meant.
Pirating is stealing.
Writing bad reviews is not and is not illegal unless there is malicious intent. And that is hard to prove.
Apache

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Apache

Sorry Harry, I was not as clear as I should have been. Mike explained what I meant.
Pirating is stealing.
Writing bad reviews is not and is not illegal unless there is malicious intent. And that is hard to prove.
Apache

I entirely agree with you. Thank you for the clarification!

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by HarryT

What makes it wrong is that it's not a free gift - it's a product that's being commercially sold. What gives you the right to take it without paying for it? The product only exists because there are honest people out there who are willing to pay for it; you're "freeloading" on the backs of those honest purchasers.

It's exactly like saying "what's the harm in riding on a train without buying a ticket? The train is making the journey anyway, and I'm not depriving anyone of anything." If everyone took the same approach, the train would not be operating. If everyone pirated books, there won't be any new books.

You ignored what I said about illicit distribution, and you spun my comment into a wholesale defense of pirating, which is not what I intended. I said:

I think the focus should be on stopping distribution to file-sharing sites--I think that's the problem, not my stripping DRM and making a backup copy and maybe providing a copy to a friend in the same way I might loan out a physical book.

Large-scale sharing is at least potentially harmful to the interests of the creator of the material. It is not the same as limited sharing with a friend. The two acts should not be painted with the same brush.

However, I think your transportation analogy is closer to the mark than any previous analogies. I would say limited sharing is more like carpooling, which certainly deprives the transportation company of income it would otherwise get.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Catlady

You ignored what I said about illicit distribution, and you spun my comment into a wholesale defense of pirating, which is not what I intended.

I was specifically responding to the following:

Simply copying something that is intended to be disseminated and is being disseminated (as opposed to copying some private/personal/secret document), though--if there is no quantifiable harm to the originator of the material, and if the person who copied the material is not attempting to make money selling copies, what exactly makes it wrong?

Perhaps I misunderstand you, but I'm sure you'll agree that this could be read as a blanket "what's the harm in illegal downloading?" idea. My apologies if I did misunderstand.

Large-scale sharing is at least potentially harmful to the interests of the creator of the material. It is not the same as limited sharing with a friend. The two acts should not be painted with the same brush.

Pretty much all devices provide a perfectly legitimate mechanism for "sharing with a friend". You don't have to pirate books in order to do this.

[Duiker]

I'm sure I'll get a lot of flak for this but I do if A) the book is not available in ebook format or B) the stores are selling the E version for more then the paperback or hardcover.
I see no reason for the an ebook to be priced higher then the real thing.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Duiker

I'm sure I'll get a lot of flak for this but I do if A) the book is not available in ebook format or B) the stores are selling the E version for more then the paperback or hardcover.
I see no reason for the an ebook to be priced higher then the real thing.

Why don't you simply buy the paper book in that case? Do you think that the fact that the eBook is more expensive than the paper book makes it legitimate to simply take the book without paying for it at all?

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

[...] it's harmful to illegally download books because it deprives the author of income [...]

To this (almost) no one can really object.
Even if only 1 out of 1000 downloaders would have bought the book if he wasn't able to find it in the darknet, it's still a few dollars that the author doesn't get.

And in most countries such download is illegal.

Bu I'm more concerned about the ethical aspect of it: why to get a torrent is to blame, while all the mentioned legal methods to access the book contents wthout rewarding the author are not?
What do you think? Do you consider borrowing books immoral because the author is deprived of his income?
And how downloading a dead author's book is depriving him of his income?

Do you go by the equation legal = ethical?

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Y[...]
Large-scale sharing is at least potentially harmful to the interests of the creator of the material. It is not the same as limited sharing with a friend. The two acts should not be painted with the same brush.
[...]

And, exactly, what is the number of downloads that configure it as "large-scale"?
How many "friend borrowings" should one be allowed to before he becomes harmful or criminal?

If you were to write a law, where would you put the threshold?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Format C:

Bu I'm more concerned about the ethical aspect of it: why to get a torrent is to blame, while all the mentioned legal methods to access the book contents wthout rewarding the author are not?
What do you think? Do you consider borrowing books immoral because the author is deprived of his income?

It's an interesting question, certainly.

The answer that I'd offer is that "legal" methods of sharing content do not (generally speaking, at least) involve creating additional copies of the book.

Let's say an authors sells 100 copies of a book. Perhaps some are bought by libraries, some are bought by one person, and then passed on to a friend. The point is that only 100 people can be reading that book at any given time. If a 101st person comes along and wants to read the book, he has to buy a new copy of it, because all the 100 copies that are currently in circulation are in use. That restriction does not apply once the book is pirated: a buyer can give a copy of the book to 1000 more people, and they can all read it at the same time.

And how downloading a dead author's book is depriving him of his income?

It's depriving the author's heirs of their income. An author's royalties are the legacy he leaves to his family after his death.

Do you go by the equation legal = ethical?

No, certainly not. I don't think that any reasonable person would consider format conversion to be unethical, for example, even though it's currently illegal under UK law. Even the music industry in the UK thinks that it's ridiculous that it's technically illegal to rip to your iPod a CD that you've legally bought.

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's an interesting question, certainly.

The answer that I'd offer is that "legal" methods of sharing content do not (generally speaking, at least) involve creating additional copies of the book.

Let's say an authors sells 100 copies of a book. Perhaps some are bought by libraries, some are bought by one person, and then passed on to a friend. The point is that only 100 people can be reading that book at any given time. If a 101st person comes along and wants to read the book, he has to buy a new copy of it, because all the 100 copies that are currently in circulation are in use. That restriction does not apply once the book is pirated: a buyer can give a copy of the book to 1000 more people, and they can all read it at the same time.

I get it.
I was thinking more from the reader's perspective, but I understand your point.
Even if you can't really tell how many copies of a book are actually being used. E.g. p-books just lie on a shelf for most of their lifetime, and e-books just stay in some kind of mass memory...
And between the "legal" methods there are some that actually multiply the copies, like group-listening audiobooks (here it's legal up to 6 people), reading aloud, and so on.

That's one of the reasons why I believe that the per-copy rewarding model is completely inefficient, unfair and obsolete...

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's depriving the author's heirs of their income. An author's royalties are the legacy he leaves to his family after his death.

And it brings the whole question about why authors should be entitled to such a privilege while every other worker in every other field is not.
I firmly believe that an author's heirs do not deserve nothing.
If dad was good at managing his assets, they will have a home and some money, if he wasn't, they'll be like all the other people of the world. (*)

Originally Posted by HarryT

No, certainly not. I don't think that any reasonable person would consider format conversion to be unethical, for example, even though it's currently illegal under UK law. Even the music industry in the UK thinks that it's ridiculous that it's technically illegal to rip to your iPod a CD that you've legally bought.

I'm totally with you, here.




(*) I know, there is always the same old "what if an author die youg the day before the book hits the shops?" story. Can someone name a couple of hunderds of such cases amongst the millions of writers of the last four centuries? And what if the construction worker dies young? It's sad, but people dies everyday. And I do not believe some orphans have to be treated in a special, less unfortunate way just because the parents were writers or musicians.