An Ethical Question Regarding Ebooks

tytso writes "Suppose there is a book that you want to read on your ebook reader, but it is out of print (so even if you purchase the dead-tree version of the book used, the author won't receive any royalties) and the publisher has refused to make it available as an ebook. You can buy it from Amazon as a used book, but that isn't your preferred medium. It is available on the internet as a pirated etext, however. This blog post outlines a few possibilities, and then asks, 'What is the right thing to do? And why?' I'm also curious if the answers change depending on whether you are a Baby Boomer, or a Gen X, Gen Y, etc. — I've noticed that attitudes around copyright seem to change depending on whether someone is a college student or a recent college graduate, versus someone who can remember a time when the Internet did not exist."

Comments

Out of Print Means Out of the Money

[Nom du Keyboard]

If a book is out of print and unavailable new then the publisher clearly has relinquished any intent of marketing the book for money. With Print On Demand so easily available they have to seriously not want to sell any more copies of this book for profit. To me that has thrown it into the Public Domain unless the author can wrest the copyright back to market it him/herself. Of course if the author is marketing it then it's not out of print any longer. Downloading a pirate copy beats stealing it from the library to keep or copy.

Of course, if it's available as an e-book then it was likely marketed that way initially (lot of effort to convert print to e-book just to give it away afterwards) so do e-books actually go out of print?