Piracy Experiment

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Hmm.. OK, so someone's eating affects their health such that on average they will live one hour less than another person who eats more healthily. Is that gluttony?

How about if the difference in life expectancy a day? A month? A year? five years? Thirty Years?

There is a continuum here too.

No, not to the extent you're trying to make it seem. There are relatively objective standards for weight and calorie intake and BMI. There are measures of obesity. Yes, there's a continuum, but at least there are specific signposts. Where are there ANY markers that indicate when one has passed the line in sharing files?

Quantity doesn't matter for some acts. Murder is wrong whether you do it just once or hundreds of times.

Quantity doesn't matter for MOST acts, except in terms of how severely they should be punished. This is what I said at the beginning. The act itself is wrong; it doesn't morph from right to wrong based on number of times committed.

Other acts are moral or immoral depending on permission. Having sex isn't immoral, unless it's without permission.

Your example is not entirely true--for example, the participants may be consenting adults, but married to other people. I would say they are acting immorally in breaking their vows.

And for some acts, quantity plays a role in morality, and sometimes even in legality.

And the example would be?

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by wvcherrybomb

Wait...so, if I have 42,000 grains of sand in one pocket and eat 8 pieces of chocolate while watching a rented movie I borrowed from my neighbor's ex son-in-law's friend and read an ebook on on my son's friend's mother's best friend's ereader that she bought from Amazon but stripped the DRM from is that illegal?

Originally Posted by jhempel24

So if an eBook is traveling in a Nook at 30MPH down I75, and another one on a Kindle is Going north on I75 at 50MPH, at what point to the meet and become a Nindle? And is this moral?

[SleepyBob]

Originally Posted by Catlady

No, not to the extent you're trying to make it seem. There are relatively objective standards for weight and calorie intake and BMI. There are measures of obesity. Yes, there's a continuum, but at least there are specific signposts. Where are there ANY markers that indicate when one has passed the line in sharing files?

I think the publishers have clearly marked that signpost at 1.

Yes, there are objective standards fro weight and calorie intake and BMI, but these still can only be applied generally. I train for marathons - my calorie intake is sometimes twice that of your average joe, and rightly so. Appropriate weight varies by height - 180 lbs is very different if you are 6'6" and not 5'2". BMI, you say? Yes, someone with a 35 BMI is fat. But a BMI of 25 is "defined" as overweight, yet there are very fit, muscular people with BMI above 25. But even if BMI were a perfect indicator, it is still only relative. You might be able to say, "Your BMI is over 25, you need to lose weight", but that doesn't mean that 24.9 or 24 would be fine.

Your example is not entirely true--for example, the participants may be consenting adults, but married to other people. I would say they are acting immorally in breaking their vows.

What if they got married by a justice of the peace? What vows did they make that they are breaking? What if they have an open marriage?

And the example would be?

Isn't that exactly part of what we are discussing?

How about:
Photocopying a page out of a book because it got ripped out of your copy is legal and moral.
Photocopying an entire book so I don't have to spend as much as buying my own copy, is immoral (IMO) and it is also illegal.

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Quantity doesn't matter for some acts. Murder is wrong whether you do it just once or hundreds of times.

Even that is not clear-cut. You would have to belong to a religious/philosophical group that views it as such for it to be considered "wrong" in the first place. Then there would be the question of why it was committed. Was it done in defense of one's life? Did it involve an abused wife killing her husband, an abused child killing his/her parent? Was it state-sanctioned in a time of war? A state-authorized sentence?

If you agree with the action because of the situation involved, then you are viewing murder as being "right" not "wrong". As I said, nothing in life is just black-or-white, and to start drawing parallels between ebook piracy and things like murder in order to establish degrees of immorality is - to me anyway - silly.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

A lot of eBooks have things like * * * instead of the space for a section break just because that was in the pBook to mark a section break that fell at the end of a printed page. That and the generic covers are the most annoying things that are left in from the pBook.

Actually those are more useful than spaces in ebooks because you don't know where the end of the page will be. And in epub, some readers will just strip out any extra space anyway.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

OK, that might sound like I am a lawyer, but really, IANAL![/SIZE]

Originally Posted by Belle2Be

*snickers*
Worst acronym ever

I thought he was just confessing something.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by rhari79

I am not all that sure that Video renting is fully legal, at least as per my understanding of the arcane copyrights written on the cover of the DVD.
I do remember reading in many film DVDs that rental is not allowed.

When I had a video shop, rental videos cost £70 each, compared with £10 for sellthrough videos. I'd guess it will be the same with DVD. They are both identical but one is licensed for rental and the other will get you a big fine if you're caught renting it. On a similar theme, Nintendo also used to put pressure on games rental, so we had to switch to "selling" them and then buying them back the next day for £2 less.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by SleepyBob

I think the publishers have clearly marked that signpost at 1.

Yes, there are objective standards fro weight and calorie intake and BMI, but these still can only be applied generally. I train for marathons - my calorie intake is sometimes twice that of your average joe, and rightly so. Appropriate weight varies by height - 180 lbs is very different if you are 6'6" and not 5'2". BMI, you say? Yes, someone with a 35 BMI is fat. But a BMI of 25 is "defined" as overweight, yet there are very fit, muscular people with BMI above 25. But even if BMI were a perfect indicator, it is still only relative. You might be able to say, "Your BMI is over 25, you need to lose weight", but that doesn't mean that 24.9 or 24 would be fine.

You missed the part where I hedged by using the word RELATIVELY, and where I said, yes, it it still a continuum, but one where the parameters of the gray area are quite a bit clearer.

What if they got married by a justice of the peace? What vows did they make that they are breaking? What if they have an open marriage?

A vow is a vow is a vow. My point was that the original example was flawed, that consent was not the only factor.

Isn't that exactly part of what we are discussing?

How about:
Photocopying a page out of a book because it got ripped out of your copy is legal and moral.
Photocopying an entire book so I don't have to spend as much as buying my own copy, is immoral (IMO) and it is also illegal.

So ... motive determines morality? Suppose the motive for sharing files is to allow people who otherwise don't have access (lack of funds, geographical restrictions, etc.) to certain books to read those books? Suppose the motive for downloading files is to sample certain authors whose books I might buy in the future? Suppose the book in question is out of print?

You think it's legal and moral to photocopy a page out of a book to replace said page in the book one owns. Well, I have paperbacks I duly paid for that have pages falling out and cracked bindings and torn and missing pages. Shouldn't it be moral for me to get a digital replacement?

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

It has occurred to me that I have no idea how many downloads of a pirate copy are typical.

I have said elsewhere that I have written to the publishers to encourage them to publish eBooks of old Mr. & Mrs. North and Mike Shayne stories. I wonder if anyone in the world besides me wants to read them!

James Patterson, 100,000? Sure. Mr. & Mrs. North? Not so much.

I looked on the most popular tracker for ebooks, and his books range from 550 for the Michael Bennett series to 1,650 for the Alex Cross series. Obviously they will be downloaded from other places too, but that would be the first port of call for most people seeking them out specifically.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

Even that is not clear-cut. You would have to belong to a religious/philosophical group that views it as such for it to be considered "wrong" in the first place. Then there would be the question of why it was committed. Was it done in defense of one's life? Did it involve an abused wife killing her husband, an abused child killing his/her parent? Was it state-sanctioned in a time of war? A state-authorized sentence?

If you agree with the action because of the situation involved, then you are viewing murder as being "right" not "wrong". As I said, nothing in life is just black-or-white, and to start drawing parallels between ebook piracy and things like murder in order to establish degrees of immorality is - to me anyway - silly.

If it's self-defense or otherwise justifiable, it's not murder. Murder by definition is unlawful killing.

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I looked on the most popular tracker for ebooks, and his books range from 550 for the Michael Bennett series to 1,650 for the Alex Cross series. Obviously they will be downloaded from other places too, but that would be the first port of call for most people seeking them out specifically.

ploppy, what was the time frame that 1,650 Alex Cross titles were downloaded?

[AndrewH]

Originally Posted by John F

Sorry to sidetrack but...


This doesn't sound right to me? I thought that video stores may get discount pricing if they agree to certain conditions (like waiting to rent 30 days after the DVD release), or they can pay whatever normal consumers pay.

About fifteen years ago when I worked for Blockbuster each copy cost the store (if I remember correctly) around $130.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

ploppy, what was the time frame that 1,650 Alex Cross titles were downloaded?

3 months.

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

3 months.

Considering how popular James Patterson is, are you suggesting that the amount of piracy is nothing like what we speculate here? 500 James Pattersons a month on the "worldwide" web sounds to me like a drop in the bucket.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Considering how popular James Patterson is, are you suggesting that the amount of piracy is nothing like what we speculate here? 500 James Pattersons a month on the "worldwide" web sounds to me like a drop in the bucket.

They will be downloaded in other places as well, but I don't think all those other downloads put together will double those figures. What you also need to consider is how many of those people who downloaded them actually read them. Impossible to guess, but in percentage terms it is likely to be in single figures.

The only one I could find that was anywhere near 100,000 downloads was the Harry Potter books, and that has been up since 2006.