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04-07-2010, 03:16 PM | #31 |
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04-07-2010, 03:28 PM | #32 | |
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04-07-2010, 03:54 PM | #33 |
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I think the ethicist is right.
Publisher got paid, author got paid; no harm no foul. John Scalzi appears to feel the same. Last edited by catsittingstill; 04-07-2010 at 03:55 PM. Reason: fix link |
04-07-2010, 03:57 PM | #34 | |
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04-07-2010, 06:51 PM | #35 |
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The first example never mentioned uploading, only downloading. Yes, for torrents and some other varieties of p2p, downloading implies uploading (or at least 'making available'), but for usenet, or RapidShare, or other ways of getting a file, no uploading is necessary, so it doesn't have to enter into ethical consideration.
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04-08-2010, 03:17 AM | #36 | |
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04-08-2010, 10:06 AM | #37 | |
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That the author and publisher are not being paid is the first and most used argument against ebook piracy. And that's the ethical difference between digital and analog world: you can sell the hardcopy you bought, and that's legal (*) and fair. But you can't sell the digital copy you bought. Not even if you made it from the paper copy you own in a destructive manner and manage to keep it unique. Another example is bookcrossing: you can drop a book on a bench to be taken and you're doing nothing wrong. But, if you create a web site where ebooks can be uploaded and downloaded only once (**), you are, at the least, a pirate and a copyright infringer. [OFF TOPIC] Another topic, with its own threads in this forum, is when you said that author and publisher are paid "for that particular copy", which have completely no sense in digital: which copy do you actually refer to? The one in the server? The one created by the web app when you download it? The one in your ISP cache? The one mirrored in some remote router? The one you got in your RAM while downloading it? The one in your disk drive? The back up one? and so on.... While paper copies of a book can be precisely accounted for, it's a nonsense to try to do the same for a digital file... [/OFF TOPIC] I know people who consider taping a 33rpm on a cassette and give it away an offence less serious than ripping a CD and give it away in a USB bar! Personally I really don't know. I've suspended my judgement on the matter, and I try to understand what's behind every opinion to make my own. As for now, I've bought lots of books, sold or given away most of the paper copies, kept the digital ones for myself (after a DRM-stripping and format shifting process) and I feel good. ________________ (*) IMHO, the used book market is permitted only because it's impossible to enforce a strict prohibtion, even in a USSR-like state. In the digital world, DRM makes it possibile, and that's happening. (**) That's hypotetical: imagine an ebook-crossing site, where the users ulpoad e-books deleting their original copy, and the server deletes every single file as soon as the first download is completed. Every book exists in a single "live" copy (misbehaving users do not exist by hypothesis). Guess what? It's not legal in my country, and I bet there are people who find it unethical... |
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04-08-2010, 10:45 AM | #38 |
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Format C: --
I'd have to disagree with your position on both of your two footnotes. For the first, the used book market exists exactly because of the "First Sale Doctrine" (U.S.) or the doctrine of "Exhaustion" (European Union). In this sense buying and selling used books is exactly the same as buying and selling used-generic-physical-objects. So the impossibility of enforcing a strict prohibition is not relevant. For the hypothetical in your second, I think that the proprietors of such a site would likely end up in court (at least here in the U.S). I also fully expect that they'd win! Because (in this hypothetical case) there are no misbehaving users, the site would be conforming perfectly with First Sale Doctrine -- no harm, no foul. DRM issues might well make those single copies useless to the downloader, but that's not part of the hypothetical case. I also suspect that the EU doctrine of exhaustion would make it legal in Italy -- doesn't EU law take precedence? As always, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice! Xenophon |
04-08-2010, 10:52 AM | #39 |
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04-08-2010, 10:57 AM | #40 | ||||
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04-08-2010, 11:09 AM | #41 |
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04-08-2010, 01:25 PM | #42 |
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I assume what we're talking about here is
Downloading an eBook for a pBook that you already own. vs Uploading copies of an eBook to anybody that wants one. Is that what you're talking about, or were you referring to uploading copies only to other people that already own the pBook? |
04-08-2010, 02:01 PM | #43 | |
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*Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the book in question is in-print as a book and available as an ebook. **Let's also assume for the sake of argument that the uploader has made it available to anyone who finds it. |
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04-08-2010, 03:20 PM | #44 | |
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In the second case (downloading an ebook), it's not a matter of whether the uploader has paid for it, but whether the downloader has. If the downloader has paid for the pBook, then it's an entirely different ethical matter. |
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04-08-2010, 03:54 PM | #45 | |
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I'm not expressing a view on what the ethical value of those act might be, I simply suggesting that, whatever value they have is pretty similar. I'm not of course talking about those cases where the downloader "doesn't know" that this thing they are downloading isn't in the public domain, but where it's quite plain because of what they are downloading and where they are downloading it from that this is an "unauthorized" download. And of course, whether anyone knows about it or can prove it doesn't really change the ethical value of the act. |
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