Slashdot Mirror
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."
The most obviously moral/practical solution in my opinion would be to order the text used from Amazon and then read the pirated electronic version.
And if your conscious really bothers, send the author's estate a few bucks anonymously.
Fix the stupid laws that make this kind of thing ever come up. But this is rather impractical and takes forever, so in the meantime just do whatever.
Gen Y here, I think if you can't buy it new at all, then there is no reason not to read a "questionable" e-version. If you can buy it, even if you can't buy an e-version, then I say you should pay for a legit copy, but then you can read the e-version.
I don't understand here.
You're questioning the morality over paying Amazon to deliver an out of print book in paper form versus paying nothing for the same book in ebook format?
You do realize in both ways, the creator gets nothing. So where exactly is the problem?
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Given the life length of copyright in the US (thanks, Mickey Mouse!), the kind of book you describe is likely to be found at the Project Gutenberg archives.
To do list for Windows
GenX : read the pirated version and say 'fuck you' to the copyright police.
Not an interesring question here because both answers are right in a way, and here we all favour one of them. This is a question that would be more interesting in a survey, to see how different ages/professions/genders/etc correlate with the idea of copyright, or even the meaning of "the law" vs "the sensible thing to do". It'd be interesting to see such a survey...
Yours is a loaded question. I may be do the same thing as you, but not for the same reasons. If I want to sample an ebook, or just use it for reference, I'll download it for sure (I'll either pay for it, or barring that option I'll find it some place else). On the other hand, if I want to read a book in its entirety, I'll get a dead-tree version (new, used, or from the library, it doesn't really matter, I don't want to read a book in its entirety from a screen). I'm 33 years old, if that makes any difference.
of course, to go with the wishes of the copyright owner, that is, buy the work and use it the way they have published it. whether this is wise, smart, useful or economically efficient has no bearing on the logic of the law, which is that copyright holder has a monopoly on copying until the copyright expires.
the right question is not so much "is downloading an illegal copy of a book i purchased unethical", but "is the law that determines copy rights ethical", i.e. does the law deliver on its promise -- to increase creativity, and whether extending the laws in the same direction is really smart.
you are pointing out an obvious failure of the law -- given monopoly profits, the copyright holder may find little incentive to offer works in novel formats that would benefit the society.
so, maybe the law is the problem.
i think that all forms of the art's should be free to all so i would have no problem at all just getting the e-book
As a terminally broke college student, I don't see a serious ethical difference between "taking it out of the library, scanning a copy for personal use, and deleting it when I have to return the book, repeat every time I want to read the book" and "pirating it"... except that of course the first is far more work. Except that if nobody is selling the ebook legally, then I can't be said to be "stealing" that work *from* anyone.
I mean, you can make a pretty good argument that the work involved in making a digital readable copy of the book with nice type-setting and such means you're stealing an ebook even if you could get the book from the library (obviously it's worth *something* to you or you'd just go to the library). But when you're reading an OCR'd book full of misspelled or incorrect words with erratic formatting who's scanning someone knowingly donated to the public, and there's no "legal" version available you just can't really make that case. Especially since the book is out of print and most publishers probably consider re-selling books just as unethical as pirating an ebook.
So yea, I'd pirate it. This is assuming I had an ebook reader, I could never make it all the way through a book on my laptop. As things stands I'd just go to the library.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
I'm 50, so that makes me a punk rock era boomer. I say: if the book is out of print, and it's not available as an ebook, and you find it on line as text, go for it.
Feelin' guilty? Fuck da police. Let 'em "come and gitcha".
RS
Isn't it about time we stopped equating legality with morality? One need only look to corporate law to see that one's a slippery slope.
Also, can we get it through our collective skulls that piracy DOES NOT EQUAL theft? Piracy deprives no one physically or monetarily, though I agree it might be argued that it deprives them of the chance for a sale to whoever pirated the product. Nonetheless, the possibility of a sale does not equal a sale.
There is nothing more pleasurable than searching for old books in a second hand book store. Go and buy the printed version somewhere. Its environmentally friendly recycling of old books, and you can pass it on to someone afterwards, or back to the second hand book store. Printed books are a beautiful thing, and it makes me happy to think how many people have got pleasure from a single copy of a book. eBook readers are ugly things and use up heaps of resources - electronics, manufacture, batteries etc. Tradition is cool.
If a book is out of print and the publisher isn't going to ever publish it my feeling is that it is perfectly ethical to use the pirated eText that is found on the Internet. Legal? More than likely it is not. Is that right? More than likely it is not. You would think that in copyright law that if a publisher chooses to no longer publish a book than shouldn't that book fall into the Public Domain, assuming of course that the original author is dead, or has given up their copyright or copylefted it. I'm a 40 year old GenXer - who is currently a college student.
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
is what I used to do when I was a student and had limited finances.
I wouldn't download a pirated e-book - I hate the format to begin with, and despite the fact the used book sale doesn't make it back to the original author directly demand for used copies is used by publishers to determine when to reprint a book.
Seriously. Who cares? This is about an ethical question, which most of us care about rather than "is this illegal". Like most sane people they want the money they spend on the book to go to the author and to read it in an electronic format.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Ethically, I see no problem with copying it in whatever form you like if it's out of print or if it's older than 10-15 years. I consider copyrights lasting longer than 15 years and copyrights on out-of-print books to be unethical, but that's just me.
Legally, you are certainly completely in the clear if you buy a used copy and read it in paper form. You're probably in the clear if you scan the used copy yourself.
It's not clear what happens if you download a copy. The legality of that may depend more of who you copy from and where you live than whether you own a copy. Another possibility is that you borrow a copy and scan it yourself, or that you buy a copy, scan it, and then sell it again. I don't think any of those have been tested in court, and the legal situation may not agree with intuition.
My book is currently in print and available in both electronic and dead-tree versions, so this doesn't apply to me directly, but if it goes out of print I would have no problems putting the PDF version online. Quite a few authors have done the same thing - put the PDF copy online when the publisher has decided to stop distributing. Typically, all rights revert to the author at this point, so they can do whatever they want with it. If they think there's still a market for it, they can keep trying to sell it, or just put it online for anyone to read if that's too much effort for the return.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
buy the book and download the ebook version. I don't do this because of some moral / ethical reason. I do it because I like the book on my shelf, but prefer to read it digitally.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
In cases like this, the correct thing to do would have the book in question fall immediately into the Public Domain.
That is, if we had IP laws that were set up to promote the progress of the useful arts as opposed to being set up in a way so as to make a few wealthy companies even wealthier.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
pirate the book. The author is not losing any profit since there is no paid version available. The author can't sue because in order to do that they would have to prove that you are taking money away from them...but you wouldn't be buying it at all otherwise so there is no loss
The "copyright police" are irrelevant to the question. The question is, "What's the right thing to do?" For an out-of-print book, it seems like the right thing to do is buy it wherever possible, and make your own e-book as backup. If you can't buy it, there is no ethical problem with acquiring the book in what ever form you can find it. There is, however, an ethical question about whether you should enable the persons who created a "pirated" e-book to enjoy financial or psychological rewards for their un-ethical behavior. How about contacting the copyright holder and getting permission to create/publish the e-book ethically?
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
The right thing to do is to buy it in whatever medium is available, or don't use it at all. Whether the author is going to recieve royalties is irrelevant.
If all they offer the Model-T is in black, then you get to liking black or you do without. You don't steal one because it's not your "preferred method".
Actually, you would buy the Model-T, drive to the original designer, complain loudly that Ford can't design a spitoon let alone a car, take a dump in a box, wrap the box in a gift-wrap bow, write a nasty letter about not offering other colors besides black, and send it off to Ford. Then take the Model-T and paint it any goddamn color you like.
Your corporate facism is not appreciated. I really don't get a rat's ass what color it is, either you supply me with the product I want, or I will go to a competitor. If there is no competitor, then there is something terribly wrong isn't there?
the MPAA and RIAA and the other likes always complain about losing money to piracy. But, is this the right wording or is this a play on words?
For example. I download an album, which I would never consider buying. They claim they lost money. But, it's not like they had my 15$ and I took it back. How can you "lose" what you don't have?
And, how much did they really think? I mean, look at the recent case with the RIAA where the lady was ordered to pay ~220,000$ for downloading 24 songs?
Two albums = ~30$. I'm confused about the whole thing. But it really just seems of misusing words to get people on their side.
You don't steal one because it's not your "preferred method".
But do you build your own, using the original as a template?
Last post!
If all they offer the Model-T is in black, then you get to liking black or you do without. You don't steal one because it's not your "preferred method".
But once you have bought a black model T, you are free to paint the thing any bloody colour you like. And then re-sell it too.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
That's because younger generations believe in the free exchange of information.
'Impossible' is a word that humans use far too often. -- Seven of Nine
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
IANAL, but it seems to me that the key condition here is: 'To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts'. Once the copyright or patent holder ceases publishing, licensing, or producing the work or invention, progress has ceased. And so should the term of this right.
Have gnu, will travel.
If all they offer the Model-T is in black, then you get to liking black or you do without. You don't steal one because it's not your "preferred method".
That is one of the worst analogies even my /. standards. A more logical one would be, you want a model T in blue and there is an infinite stock of blue model Ts that never run out, however Ford doesn't get any revenue from these blue model Ts and you want to support Ford. However, Ford is bankrupt and the only way you can get the original model T is through third party sellers that you don't really want to support because you want a blue one.
There are two reasons stealing is wrong, A) someone doesn't get revenue from it and B) that person loses something. Pirating in this case doesn't affect A) because the original author doesn't get revenue from it either way, and B) there is an infinite supply of e-books that can never run out even if you download 435435436564575494390543905843905840 copies of it.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The answer to ethical questions is "What would be the result if everyone did this?"
In this case if everyone did this there are two obvious problems:
- There rarely be a second printings of a book. This deprives authors of (much needed and already rare) revenue.
- There would be no purpose to used book stores, putting them out of business and depriving their customers the ability to buy affordable books.
And probably a few more.
The "My preferred format" crap is just that. To use the oft abused car metaphor: If someone doesn't make a car I want in the color I want, I'm not allowed to steal it just so I can paint it the color I want.
What is this obsession with calling P2P "stealing"? Not every act of downloading files is stealing. Not a lawyer here, but surely stealing implies denying someone something, like an item or a sale. If no one is putting something on sale, then downloading shouldn't be stealing. Copyright infringement perhaps. Maybe ask the author for permission. Who knows, he might send you the text.
The Model T analogy is flawed on multiple levels. The question is more whether or not it's ok build one yourself using someone else's as a model, given they're no longer in production. (or if you have to resort to buying a used one... or if you have to buy a used one before you can build a copy yourself)
Oh and they were available in several colors from the beginning, so the whole "any color so long as it is black" line is a bit of a myth.
Out of print does not mean the copyright has expired. Selling a used book is of course permitted under the First-sale Doctrine exemption recognized by SCOTUS in 1908 and codified in the Copyright Act of 1975. If publisher's would digitize their complete copyright inventory this problem could be quickly rendered mute once that is done and an accounting system for it established. The more recent works are probably stored in digital format already.
Amazon could promote potential reprints by reporting used book sales figures by title to the publishers. Search requests for ebooks by title that don't have an existing ebook could have a similar effect. Where Amazon maintains such databases and queries them resulting in information they think would improve their sales they should make the appropriate requests to the publisher which would mean guaranteed sales of the requested numbers and thus have a greater chance of getting the publishers to react. If this information results in new reprint and ebook sales then the creators should gain royalties.
I've asked this same question myself about SNES Roms. For instance, I loved Final Fantasy 6 for the SNES (Released as FF3 in the USA), but there isn't a good place to buy it any more. I used this to justify playing the ROM. And then you have some roms like the sequel to Secret of Mana that was NEVER released in the USA, but some guys translated it and released the ROM. How can I feel guilty if Squaresoft wont release the game in the USA? The trick to these types of justifications is that if you do justify your actions based on these pretenses, you will have to make sure to pay attention to the situation to see if those pretenses change. For instance, if Square releases FF6 on Nintendo DS, I'll feel inclined to purchase a DS and FF6. In your example, if the publisher ever releases an eText version, you'll need to actually purchase it.
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?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This is one of those cases you might just contact the author and ask.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
There's a valid claim in that purchasing a used book does benefit the publisher...it reduces the copies of used books out there, and makes it more likely they will sell a new one.
You may think that's rather indirect, but not really. They sold every single copy of their book out there exactly once. Any behavior that results in more copies of their book out there is beneficial to them, and someone buying a used copy means someone else didn't buy that used copy and might buy a new copy. (Or might buy a different used copy, which might result in someone else buying a new one, and so on...)
In the end, every copy of a used book you buy, or even every copy of a new book you bought and then didn't resell, is, statistically, about 4/5ths of a new book sale eventually made somewhere out there when someone would have purchased that copy and instead purchased another one. Losing only the 1/5th extra when people bought a different book instead, because that one wasn't handy or they never even heard of it.
Of course, none of this applies if the work is out of print. I have no moral qualms about making any amount of copies of out-of-print works I want. I can't possibly increase their sales by buying used copies if they aren't selling it. All I'm going to do it make it harder for other people to get a hold of it.
No, I don't care that demand for an out-of-print product could, in theory, cause it to come back in print. It is not my fucking job to fix the stupidity of companies not having actually popular books in print.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Actually, I withdraw the "so long as it is black" line... it would appear that they were initially available in different colors, until the assembly line forced them to stick with one. Nevertheless, from that I guess there were Model-Ts in other colors around.
Seriously. Do both. Buy the used book thereby doing your little part to take it out of circulation and show increased demand for it so it might get reprinted. Then read the pirate version. As you already have a copy you've got a reasonable legal defense of format shifting, not that anyone is likely to go after you, traditional publishers aren't insane like the MAFIAA. If you really feel an extra ethical need send a few bucks to the author. While you're at it urge him to see if he contracted for etext rights with his original publisher and if not recommend your own preferred electronic publisher.
Some countries don't enforce copyrights especially when it profits them to ignore them. What nation is the Internet again?
God spoke to me.
In the late 90s, people began seriously digitizing old jazz and other music from ancient 33s and 78s and other discs.
Ancient 33s? You insensitive clod, I remember when 33s (with microgrooves !) were hot new tech. And intro computer books discussed accumulators and registers and explained binary, because not only was there no C++, but they hadn't even invented the beginning of the alphabet yet.
Frankly, if it's out of print I don't think there is any ethical or moral question at all. Fire up uTorrent or watch alt.binaries.ebooks and grab a copy, or xerox (don't give me no crap about the lowercase X) your elderly uncle's copy. The whole concept of Imaginary Property has been perverted by corporate swine (who will no doubt rationalize printing out this post and passing it around, in violation of my own copyright). But note that I Am Not Your Lawyer, and just because a law is stupid doesn't mean they can't hurt you if they catch you.
If you expect to get any useful information from /., you're sorely mistaken.
That said, I'm a Gen Yer and would be reasonably willing to download, but I'd be more willing to find a different book. If I knew of a particular out-of-print book that I wanted... I certainly wouldn't buy used books online. I'd prefer a reasonable quality used book to an ebook, but I'd not hesitate to download if the physical copy was not readily available.
You should work for the MPAA or RIAA.
Seriously mate, they would love you.
You can't take the sky from me.
A few years ago I was faced with a similar dilemma: a book on computer game creation, one which I wished for my students to read, was regrettably out of print.
I found a PDF of it online, being used at another university. I contacted the professor and asked how she had come by it; she gave me the author's email address.
I contacted the author, explained what I wanted to do, and he gave me authorization to freely use the PDF.
Disclaimer: I do not work for PayPal or eBay.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
How about contacting the copyright holder and getting permission to create/publish the e-book ethically?
Copyright is an entirely unnatural "right" to restrict others' freedom. I say it has no basis in rationality (it could have, except that it doesn't seem to have actually helped to promote any sort of useful progress), so the only link from copyright to ethics is the rather tenuous link between legality and ethics.
same thing with any other media. these guys can keep their content availiable 24/7/365/endless for the cost of two sales a month. if they don't want to, then AFAIAC they have abandoned the work, do what you want.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I agree with ya' completely - and I've done that very thing once already. I've also done that once with a book that was new, but there was no ebook version of it. I feel bit silly about buying a used copy and pirating an ebook - the only reason for doing it was the "tagable" copy on my shelf. The new one I bought, though, was to help support the author and the company that published the book.
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
The right thing to do is to get it in your non-preferred form and deal with the inconvenience of not having access to a "modern" format. The author was the original copyright holder and he or she probably assigned the copyright to a publisher. Whomever holds the copyright gets to control distribution of the work. If the copyright holder doesn't want to distribute in electronic form, it is their choice to make.
Did you even read the summery before you started trolling? The book is out of print, yes the copyrights still are with the publisher/author but with a used book neither of them are making a cent . So really, downloading the unofficial e-book is not going to harm the copyright holders at all. So really, whats the harm? Oh sure you are a bad person for breaking all the copyright crap that the USSA has created, but use some common sense, if it isn't hurting anyone it isn't stealing, if you extend the same logic to physical duplicators of things it would be a crime to duplicate your friend's new car.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
There are other benefits to the author for having a dead-tree book purchased, even when out-of-print.
That sale helps improve the overall rating for the book, and all other books the author has written. So, your purchase may actually trigger the purchase of other sales from the same author. This works electronically on sites like Amazon, and in the real world when statistics are tabulated in all sorts of ways.
An out-of-print book might also be sold directly by the author or publisher, or just some guy who doesn't want the book any more. Either way that purchase is helping other people, even if it helps Jeff Bezos's gigantic empire and the thousands of people who work for him.
I think the ethical thing to do is purchase the dead-tree book and then download the ilegal version so that you can enjoy it in the medium you intended. This might not be legal, but it's ethical in my eyes so long as you don't pass it on. If you later sold the dead-tree book, you could then delete the electronic version.
-David
I agree. Strictly speaking I think copyright is a good idea. It gives the creator (directly or by proxy) an incentive to create by allowing them to treat their creations as if they're physical property. Part of this power should allow them to control how many copies of their creative work are available during the time that they hold their monopoly. It could be that it's more valuable to them if they restrict the available copies, such as by declaring that only 2000 will ever be made available, and selling them at a high price. By deciding to infringe the copyright and make additional copies illegally before the copyright term has expired, it diminishes the ability of the author to use copyright law to its full potential.
The problem here, though, is that copyright is supposed to expire so that everyone finally gets the benefit of newly created works, yet it effectively never does! "Temporary" monopolistic rights to information should not be something that grandchildren or great grandchildren get to inherit.
If copyright terms were pulled back to something sane, such as 10 or 15 years, and required the author to demonstrate an active interest in maintaining the copyright (rather than anonymously disappearing and being unable to be tracked down), there would be far less incentive to make illegal copies because everyone would know they could simply wait. Members of society who saw the work being created and who supported the law that provided the incentive for it to be created would actually stand a chance of being around to fully benefit from it when it finally entered the public domain. Obviously it would reduce the ability for a creator (or content owner) to make extra money, but at least the whole thing would be above board and clear from the start. I'm sure that pulling back copyright terms in this day and age would spark complaints from some creators and it might even cause a few publishers to go out of business, but we'd actually have an opportunity to see if less content was actually being created, and I don't personally think there would be much change. As with everything else, the industry would adapt to the new conditions, and people would still figure out ways to keep making money. Even works that are well out of copyright still make money for publishing companies today.
As copyright terms are stupidly long today and showing no signs of being prevented from being extended further, I don't personally have an ethical problem with infringing copyright on certain works. This is especially the case if the works are no longer in print, and have been out of print for a reasonable length of time (at least several years), and which the creator or owner is unavailable for giving or denying permission to make more. (In cases where publishers own rights to massive amounts of IP, I also don't have much respect for standard template "no you can't because we can't be bothered with the admin" answers, either.
I am perhaps among the few who think that illegal does not necessarily equal immoral [actually, here on Slashdot, that does not apply as much]. Think back to the 50’s: What Rosa Parks did was illegal. No questions about it. Was it wrong? Few people now would be willing to argue that it was wrong to not give up her seat to a white person, however no one would deny that it was indeed illegal at the time. Similarly, I strongly believe it is not wrong to âoepirateâ information just because it is prohibited by our pathetically archaic copyright law.
If you bought the book used, who would get the money? Not the author. Not the publisher. The individual selling the book would be the only one who would benefit from you buying a used copy. The author would receive no compensation, therefore the argument of Russel Davis that you mentioned does not apply. By his reasoning, buying a used copy would be just as much âoetheftâ as downloading the book off the internet. Think about that one for a moment. Granted, if you had downloaded the book instead of buying it from the author or the publisher, that might be a different story, as you are not actively supporting the author so they can produce more works. However, in this instance, you have actively searched for the book in a form that you can use, and have been turned down by the publisher. They have no intention of making any more profit from the book and have abandoned all claims of interest in the matter.
Information wants to be unlimited and free. It is stubborn, neolithic individuals like the publisher you mentioned above that are impeding the spread of universal knowledge, knowledge that would often possibly result in the general betterment of mankind. Download the copy of the book, and then perhaps send a few dollars to the author along with a note explaining what you did and why. Be sure to thank her for writing such a great book, and encourage more to write more like it. There’s nothing more you can do.
There were a combination of reasons that the set rules of the past worked in the past, and a different combination of reasons will make some different set rules make sense in the future. But from here, reasons are all in flux. No set of rules could ever match this changing landscape. For the time being, we are bound to live amidst a fair amount of chaos.
Nobody can say you broke the law unless you have a conviction, so it's only illegal if you get caught. Lawyers may disagree, but if you need to speak to a lawyer you have gotten caught, thus my argument doesn't apply.
Is it unethical to steal a second hand book? The initial cost of a book should account for the possibility of selling it second hand, so you are stealing from the original book buyers. That's not a huge deal. Also, the dynamics of the book industry relies on second hand book sales being a little cumbersome, so you are messing with their well balanced system. Maybe their system needs to change though.
OT: nice sig. Slashdot *should* have a -1 disagree, that is secretly ignored.
you DO know that this violates copyright law, right ?
you have no right to reproduce a copyrighted work without reproduction rights from the author.
format shifting for personal use is legal.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
There is, however, an ethical question about whether you should enable the persons who created a "pirated" e-book to enjoy financial or psychological rewards for their un-ethical behavior.
Oh yes, because having them lose bandwidth is going to be financial and psychological rewards for it! I mean, the average /.er isn't going to click on ads and most have some sort of ad-blocking enabled and it isn't like I pay TPB $.99 for every song and e-book I pirate. So I don't see how that is a benefit to the pirates.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Early boomer here. You mean one of these big publishers who deliberately destroy perfectly good copies of books if they don't sell within x-period of time? Those guys? Running the old artificial scarcity consumer ripoff model? If it is one of those places, you can guess my reaction to the ethics of downloading a copy. Ask anyone who has worked in a bookstore about the sheer waste involved with selling books and why prices are high. And you have to remember, the industry as a whole fought tooth and nail to make lending libraries more or less illegal. They are spit swappers with the MAFIAA in their business tactics and alleged "ethics". And they don't discriminate, look at school textbooks for another example of their greed.
Why not find somebody who has the book (this Interweb thing may help), ask them to lend it to you and read the salient bits (or maybe get them to read it to you if they're hot - there's nothing nicer then an attractive person reading a book to you while you relax with your head on their lap!)
Then remember it.
Nobody ever got sued for recollecting, as far as I know.
You do know that it doesn't, right?
If he's not distributing the book or otherwise spreading around these copies, he is allowed under current fair use law to format shift his book in order to better suit his needs.
This is why the *AA types can't actually sue anyone who rips their music/dvd/whatever collection to a digital format, so long as there is no distribution (or intent to do so later) there is no legal recourse against someone who alters a work for their own personal convenience.
Nice try, though.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
During WWII, most of the best physics and math books around were written in Germany. Obviously, rather than stepping down and using "perceived" second rate books written in by Allied authors or worse, paying royalties to a government with which you are at war, the Allies decided to reprint German books in the Allied countries without paying royalties. If you look on the inside copyright notice, it is stated that the books were reprinted under the "War Time Publications Act" which made this perfectly legal and was encouraged. Even after the war, you can see vast collections of these books still held by libraries. After WWII, some countries, like France rewrote the subject matter authored under the collective pseudonym Bourbaki. When people in government offices give it the seal of approval, it is legal. If some poor peon does the same thing, it is illegal. Likewise, there are lots of herbal supplements whose medicinal value, the FDA is calling into question. Yet, pharmaceuticals are isolating and artificially manufacturing the same chemical ingredients and targeting them towards curing various aliments, supported with tax payer dollars. -We have the best form of government MONEY can BUY!
Should we then just buy one copy and pirate from there? What about the work of the publisher (proof-reading, editing, promoting), does it deserve any payments?
Yes, when the book is in print but this book is out of print meaning that any profit just goes to the store that is selling the used book.
BTW, I don't remember any contracts stating that the author receives no royalties after the book is out of print, and more prints are made.
But this book is out of print. Meaning, there are no more prints and the book will not be reprinted in the foreseeable future.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Buy the used book if it's cheap, and donate it to someone else that's needs it.
Then just go and get the pirated version.
Good karma from donation balanced bad karma from pirating :)
The saddest thing about big media is how they lock up our culture and refuse to let us have it, even when we are willing to pay them for it. Having said that, taking something which you have not paid for or earned, and which was not given to you, is still unethical. Write the publisher, asking them to issue the book electronically or release the work from copyright. Write your Congressmen and explain how the unreasonably long-term copyrights are keeping Americans from their culture, and ask them to lower the copyright duration and/or add a clause for abandoned works which are no longer being published.
The book is out of print, so obviously the publisher has no interest in commercial exploitation of the work. Why should a third party profit? In fact, if you were to buy a book on the used market just to satisfy your morals and pirate the ebook for practical reasons, the merchant is exploiting your needs without providing any value/service whatsoever.
If you feel like it, you can send a donation to the author/publisher.
Copyright was meant as an incentive for the creator of a work not to protect an arbitrary business model that has sprung up around those works.
Oh yeah, the disclosure part: Born in the early 80s and a hobbyist photographer with the goal to make that my primary business.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
guess you must be Gene XY.
The author usually gives the full distribution rights to the publisher so the author can't post on his website the books.
The contracts are partially responsible for this situation, but the author usually has no choice as usually all publishers impose the same conditions.
Buy the print book, convert to ebook yourself (but don't read it), send the eBook to the publisher along with $25, and ask them if it's OK to read it now.
I buy a lot of books. New, used, pdf, you name it. I can easily spend $600 per year just on computer books (and if it is a physical book I almost always (85%) buy it from Borders when they send out a 25-30% off coupon). Plus there's the rpg books I buy (it drives my wife nuts sometimes.) I personally would not have a problem downloading an ebook if I couldn't find a used copy at a bookstore (and I live near a large used bookstore so I usually can). I can see the value of the used book market (I don't really like ebooks all that much, but will buy them over a RL copy if the price is right), but I wouldn't deprive myself if I can't find such a copy. Life is too short to do such a thing. I would try to buy a copy, as one way or another that does help to promote the progress of the Arts (the whole point of copyright originally), but the actual progress of the arts is more important than the promotion of the progress, so since copyright has deviated from it's original purpose anytime I can personally promote it, I do. Sometimes that is paying for something, and sometimes that is gaining and sharing knowledge directly without anyone profiting monetarily.
it was a nice idea when it was limited and a gentleman's agreement amongst a handful of publishers
however, with every teenager with a cable modem having more reach than time warner in 1988, intellectual property is unenforceable and, more importantly, perverted to serve publishers, rather than content creators
as such, it is antiquated nonsense that must be ignored
for content creators, the internet is an adevertising outlet in which to distrubte their works. cash flow is from ancillary business. and distributors are defunct, along with the legal framework that propped them up before the internet
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Either download the BitTorrent version and claim "fair use" clause as a defense, optionally writing a check to the PO box of the publishing company for the retail price of the book to cover any legal problems (well I paid you $X and you cashed the check, so basically I bought the book, but in eBook format.) or another thing to do is check out rare book stores, usually book stores that deal in rare copies of the book.
But it can backfire. The Amiga Guru book was written in German and then English and someone scanned the book and made it an eBook on BitTorrent and made the author mad because it was a self-published book. So the original Amiga Guru book covered the AmigaOS 2.1 version and the new version would cover 3.1 and 4.0, but he got so mad he didn't publish the new book because of the piracy of the old book.
A pity because the Amiga Guru Book really helped developers by documenting the Amiga GUI and coding standards to follow to write commercial quality programs for the Amiga. It is a book that Amiga, Inc should have published themselves, hint hint to Amiga,Inc. publish a book like that to help promote the new Amiga systems and AmigaOS.
Now the Amiga Guru Book author claims he will only give a copy of the new Guru book to people who send him a copy of a rare Commodore 64 ROM Kernel book in German. Quid pro quo, help him find copies of another rare book and he will gladly give you a copy of his rare book.
By the way I'm looking for "101 BASIC Computer Games" and the sequel "More 101 BASIC Computer Games" but every place I check is sold out and it is out of print. In the early 1980's and late 1970's it wrote BASIC programs in the old version of BASIC that every 8 bit computer shared and had the source code to Eliza and Hunt the Wumps and some Zork clone written in BASIC called The Adventure or something. It isn't even in eBook format, a pity, as we lost an important piece of computer history. It even had typos and grammar and spelling errors in it when it was published. I think they typed up the whole thing on a typewriter or an early Word processor that lacked even spell check.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
"If there is no God, then all is permitted." - Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov.
So what's your take on God's existence?
Copyright is codified as a law. From the moment something is codified as a law, it really does not matter whether it is ethical or not. The only thing that matters is whether you wish to remain legal or not, and before taking the stupid decision to not follow the law you must consider your power in relation with your government. They have an army and a police force to enforce their laws. If you are their citizen, then chances are that you could be liquidated quickly in case they get angry with you.
Copyright sets a way to copy legally. You just have to ask permission from the copyright holder. So, in theory everything is easy, you just email the copyright holder and depending on the anwer you know what you can do. But in practice it's extremely hard, because a copyrighted work may be orphaned or its copyright holder may be too stubbornly risk-averse to allow distribution even though such distribution would not damage their income.
Therefore, the copyright law seems to create some practical difficulties in using orphaned works or in getting permission from irrational copyright holders. This means that the law should be fixed.
In democratic societies your government is elected by you, so you have an easy way to change the law. Just find a politician that agrees to change the laws according to your liking and vote for them. If there is no such politician, just set up yourself as an independent candidate or start your own political party.
Of course, doing all that may not sound easy, but who told you that life is easy?
But just because changing the law is hard does not mean that you should not follow it, because such an action would mean that you would be considered a criminal by the legal system. So, it really is much better to fight this through politics and elections rather than through a cat-and-mouse game that could cost you your life or your freedom. Even if you consider the law unethical, you must still follow it because you are a citizen and bound by the laws of your jurisdiction.
exactly. we need to shape our laws to conform with our sense of ethics, not shape our ethics to conform with our existing laws.
i think this is a very interesting moral dilemma.
since the book is out of print, there's really no way of paying the author/publisher for a copy of the text. even if you buy a book used, the copyright holder doesn't see a cent of it. it's not like if the used book store sells out of their stock they'll order another shipment of that text from the publisher.
legally you'd be violating the author or publisher's copyright. but your decision won't make a difference to anyone except you and the used book salesman if you decide to buy a used copy. however, there's no ethical obligation for you to purchase your copy of the text from the used books salesman on Amazon.
personally, i don't see anything wrong with downloading a pirated copy in this situation, just seed the torrent until you have at least a 1:1 ratio. you're not hurting anyone financially or otherwise. but if you really want to support the author, you can look up his address or PO Box and mail him some money.
I have a friend who always tries to do the right thing and it drives everybody ape-shit crazy because he stresses over right and wrong so much that he can't function in life and doesn't do anything. At 36 he can't move out from his parent's home, change jobs, etc. etc. All he can do is turn everything into an ethical and moral problem because that's where's he's happiest.... now about that eBook thing ... just read the damn thing however you want and choose a method that lets you do it.
That said, one line in the original post struck me. "You can buy it from Amazon as a used book, but that isn't your preferred medium." What if a book you wanted or needed were only available as a hard copy, and is currently produced? For the sake of argument, let's say it's brand new, hot off the press--only Stallman might argue that the author doesn't have a right to a copyright. It's not your preferred medium, but it is legitimately available. There is a pirated copy available. Would you take the pirated copy? Would you argue that, since they aren't making it in your preferred format, it's fair game?
Take it to the next level: say, a year or two from now, your book is released--brand new printing. Perhaps even expanded! Alas, no etext. Would you buy a copy, just to bring you back to good standing, or would you rationalize it by saying there is no etext (your preferred medium, after all)?
(I'll grant this: in any scenario, while perhaps not legally correct, I would see no ethical problem obtaining a legitimate copy of the book, and grabbing the etext. My comments are more around just going out and grabbing the etext.
So, everyone on here always says format shifting is fine, whether it's DL'd or home brew.
Say someone buys a dead tree version of a book and DL's same ebook from piratebay, or someone has a vinyl album of rolling stones and DL's a mp3 copy of said album, and both are DL'd by bit-torrent. Is that still kosher? BT involves uploading.
I'm not saying one way or another by asking, this is a discussion. If I did such a thing, I wasn't intending to distribute, but it's the nature of the protocol.
(And don't say my hypothetical is flawed because someone who owns vinyl wouldn't be caught dead with an mp3, LOL, I can see it now)
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
The problem with the moral high ground is that so few people actually stand on it. For all you in the "download it and send the author a check" crowd, let me ask you a question: How many pieces of Shareware lay unpaid on your computer right now? Not Crippleware. Not Nagware. True download and use it Shareware. I remember reading a blog by a shareware author (I wish I could remember what the software was). He did an experiment. He released some versions of his very popular software as true Shareware, some versions with a nag screen and some versions with features disabled until a user paid. The results were, of course, predictable. Not exactly what the ./ crowd wants to hear but one side does not have the monopoly on dishonorable behaviour.
With a used book, the copyright holder has already been compensated - when the copy of the work was first sold. At that point, the copyright holder's ability to control further distribution of that exact copy has been exhausted. HOWEVER, the copyright holder can still prevent additional copies, in any format, from being made from that first copy.
Did you read my post? If you did, you should have picked up on the fact that it is wholly up to the copyright holder whether to commercialize a copyrighted work. The copyright holder is completely within its rights to withhold the work from the world until the copyright term expires. You don't have to like it, but that is the way it is.
Whether you think there has been a "harm" is not the issue - the copyright holder is harmed in a legal and moral sense because its absolute right to govern the copying of the work has been violated. This is not simply the law in the US but also in every country that is a party to the Berne Convention.
If cars could be duplicated as easily as copyrighted works, they would be licensed, not sold. In spite of the difficulty, you cannot simply duplicate your friend's car without dealing with someone's copyrights and design patents - all major auto makers use and enforce them.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Duplication for personal use is a recognized fair use right that the author has no exclusive right to prevent you from doing.
>Nobody can say you broke the law unless you have a conviction, so it's only illegal if you get caught.
so i can kill you and provided i dont get caught its not illegal ? uuh ?
>Is it unethical to steal a second hand book? The initial cost of a book should account for the possibility of selling it second hand, so you are stealing from the original book >buyers. That's not a huge deal.
uuh ? so every book should cost $1000 to account for the possibility of second hand sales ?
I think he was implying that the publishers should sell electronic versions.
Ultimately, yes, I think that's what the courts should (and probably eventually will) end up concluding. It may take several iterations for them to see reason in this regard, but it is pretty clear, at least in my mind, that downloading content in electronic form that you legally own a copy of in another form is no different than doing the format shifting yourself, and thus is protected fair use even if downloading ends up causing you to push out copies of fragments of the content as a side effect of the protocol used (seeding). Creating the torrent, on the other hand....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
If the book is out of print it means the author/publisher isn't willing to sell it, they are through with it.
I.E. They would anticipate such a small profit from continued sales that they are no longer willing to undergo the expense of printing the book.
Obtaining a copy of the book from third-party publisher-unauthorized sources does no harm in that case, as (a) the author/publisher loses no revenue, since they aren't making units, they have no sales or revenue, in any case,
ALSO, (b) There is no additional cost to the author/publisher of you obtaining that copy.
And (c) By obtaining a copy, you are actually preserving information for the good of humanity.
I.E. When a book goes out of print, the number of copies eventually diminishes as people throw out old books, or the remaining copies are lost.
In this case, piracy may actually help keep the work existing.
It does the public a service in that it keeps copies of works around, so that when the copyright eventually expires, it will be available to everyone, rather than lost to time.
It also keeps the information in the public.
Although the piracy may actually be illegal; in this peculiar case, it may in fact be that the more legal thing to do is not more ethical.
"No harm-no foul is not a rule of ethics."
Actually it's the most fundamental rule of ethics there is, I'd say.
"The copyright holder is completely within its rights to withhold the work from the world until the copyright term expires."
No. I can potentially recognize some values in monopolies, but I don't recognize value in enforced deprivations. If these copyright holders hold the exclusive right to provide a certain good (aka the copyright) then I consider them simultaneously obliged to actually provide it.
I would say that if you would normally pay for then do so otherwise don't. If you really want to ease your moral conscious you could buy the dead-tree version and pirate the etext.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
Wait, I am pretty sure that you're wrong.
You can't photocopy books, whether or not it's for private use. You certainly can't format shift them.
How about contacting the copyright holder and getting permission to create/publish the e-book ethically?
The more rational thing would be for the copyright owner to have to explain why they weren't printing the book and still wished to exercise their copyright.
Upon a proper challenge, the copyright should expire after a few years if they are failing to actually print or offer the copyrighted material for sale.
The laws don't define ethics, and they are irrational,they provide undue favor to authors, and undue discrimination against the consumers.
versus someone who can remember a time when the Internet did not exist."
Dude, most people have only been using the Internet a mere 15 years or less so the majority of people remember a time before the Internet. Don't make it sound like we were born during the Great Depression.
I can potentially recognize some values in monopolies, but I don't recognize value in enforced deprivations. If these copyright holders hold the exclusive right to provide a certain good (aka the copyright) then I consider them simultaneously obliged to actually provide it.
That is a valid position. It just isn't the law. Also, I'd ask you to question the proposition you just made - is it right to force someone to provide a good even if it means they incur a cost (loss) to do so?
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Least moral option is buying the print version for the simple reason that it's a waste of earth's resources: Lots of the cost of the print version is about aspects of the book you don't actually need or want -- its paper, its actual printing, its distribution and packaging. Wasteful.
The ideal moral solution is if the company allowed you to buy an e-text version of the book for a reduced price (a price that excluded all the aspects you don't need or want)
Next in line is if you download the pirated version for free. That has the advantage of benefitting you AND not rewarding the evil company who's trying to cheat you of your money. Unfortunately it doesn't reward the original authors.
Least moral solution is if you encourage all the waste in resources and wealth by giving money for a wasteful print version that doesn't actually satisfy you. Bad for you, bad for the planet. Save your labor-earned money for something you actually want to have, not something that they're guilting you into having but you don't really want.
Gen-Y - What if you went to the library and borrowed the book, and then downloaded the e-version. Once you finish reading the book delete the e-book and return the library book?
I don't see an ethical problem here, not sure about the legal ramifications. Knowing copyright holders it's probably completely illegal.
Why? A book that's out of print is only available on the secondary market (unless it just went out of print yesterday or something); the author gets nothing when I buy a used copy. The author gets infinitely more out of the deal if I copy the e-book and send him or her a crisp one dollar bill in the mail, than if I spend five dollars on a used copy of the dead trees version.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
"electronic infringement is theft". From a legal perspective, I suppose that is true.
WTF?
And given that as an Open Source programmer, I depend on Copyright Law to assure that my wishes as an author are upheld, it would be hypocritical for me assume that I should be able to ignore Copyright Law just because it is inconvenient.
And given that I'm a farmer who depends on firearms to keep my chickens free of wolves, it would be hypocritical for me to assume that I should not lie down for an invading army.
Copyright Law is a power.. people need to use it ethically. Persecuting people for using their own common sense as to when it is in their interest to honour copyright is not ethical.
Grow a spine and do what serves you best and leave the author to deal with their own interests, preferably without using force.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You can't photocopy books, whether or not it's for private use.
Yes, you can photocopy books, even in their entirety, if you own the original.
What you can't do is distribute the copies.
This still leaves grey areas, as making copies of a book and having all the people in your immediate household reading copies at the same time may or may not be "distribution".
By pirating it, though, you're reducing the value of all physical copies already printed. If I own a copy of a book, and it is widely pirated, I will not be able to resell it for as much. The value to the original author and publisher is not the only consideration; you're indirectly, although in a minor way, hurting everyone that bought a copy of the book legally.
Let's see, there are terrorists killing people in hotels in Bombay, actual Pirates stealing actual Ships on the high seas, American and NATO soldiers and NGO workers and civilians getting killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, homeless hungry people in your own cities, murders, robberies and rapes down the street from where you live and you guys are the Monks in the Middle Ages arguing about how many Angels can dance on the head of a pin rather than worrying or thinking or talking or doing anything about real problems, instead you play the game of how many copyright infringements are 'ethical' enough for you to deal with. Is it ethical to pick up and read a discarded newspaper? How many pages of a book can I read in the Barnes and Noble before I'm ethically required to purchase the book/mag? We really are trying to head back to the Middle Ages where information was locked down to the privileged few and you Dingleberries are leading the way or like sheep to slaughter - being led there. Jeez.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Format shifting for personal use, for digital audio recordings, has been found to be legal. The reasons had to due with the laws in effect as they related to digital audio recordings.
While one could argue from analogy that therefore format shifting from dead trees to ebook is legal, that's uncharted territory. It is unlikely to prevail in a court of law unless a good fair-use argument could be made.
You're also on much shakier legal ground if you buy a copy of the work in one format, and then download a copy in a different format. There one could easily argue that you didn't format shift the work at all, but rather engaged in two separate acts, which means the second one might well not be legal at all.
The trouble with copyright law is that there's too many special cases. Some things are OK in one format, but are expressly forbidden in other formats. Things you can do with digital audio recordings have a longer list of dos and don'ts than things you can do with a printed book or a digitial CD (which differ one from the other if the latter has an effective copy protection scheme employed). The real, underlying problem here is that the copyright law not only encouraged people to write books, but also created entrenched interests that have hindered the law changing to keep with the technology and the like.
When I buy someting, I don't buy a format. I buy the content. I'll put that content into any format I damn well please. If I'm not sharing it, it's nobody's business.
What you say is completely reasonable, ought to be true, used to be true in the U.S., and still partly is, but unfortunately the DMCA screwed it up. Circumventing a technological measure meant to prevent copying is now illegal in and of itself, even if your use of the copy is completely innocent under copyright law. Commercial DVDs and most proprietary ebook formats have encryption measures that invoke this legal "protection". (I am not a lawyer and this may be an oversimplification. The DMCA does provide some exemptions to the anti-circumvention clauses but overall the consumer seems to get screwed over pretty well.)
You have a physical library that contains 5 books. You allow people to view online versions up to 5 viewers at a time. Why would this be illegal?
God spoke to me.
Exactly, whatever copyright law says, it's morally ethical to purchase a printed or DRM'd version of a book and read it on an electronic device. In both cases, one person read the book in exchange for a purchase. Obeying the law and acting ethically are often very different things.
unless you think so. I would have no problem downloading the book, so I would, & I know it would be the right thing to do. If you think it is wrong, then don't do it. I would giggle at your action but respect your choice. If you came after me for downloading, then I would say you have crossed the line. I don't agree with your moral views so don't dump them on me. Or else you are introducing a new moral topic. ..and your wrong on that one too. ;)
Okay, I'm 48. I invariably find most of the Slashdot crowds arguments regarding copyright and piracy forced at best, and generally specious and self-serving. No surprises there - I just figured I had karma to burn.
If the book is available in any form, regardless of whether it's available in your "preferred" format - I think you should purchase it if you intend to read it. Having said that, I wouldn't lose any sleep if you then immediately donated the print book to a library and chose to "pirate" the electronic version (yes, I agree piracy is a silly word in this context, but we all understand what we're talking about). It'd be hard to get too worked up about that from a moral perspective.
#DeleteChrome
If you buy a used out-of-print book, the author and publisher don't receive any money. What's the difference if you download an e-text of an out-of-print book? None that I can think of. As long as you are distributing it for profit, they shouldn't have a grip.
This discussion is strictly for ranting about copyrights, ethical dilemmas, the inequity of intellectual property (IP) and IP laws, etc. How dare you provide a perfectly legal and legitimate answer to the problem at hand. Obviously, the person who posted the original article just wanted slashdotters to give him permission to snag a copy of a book and still feel good about not paying for it. If he had wanted a way to actually pay for the book, he wouldn't have posted his question here; he would have researched possibilities such as you mentioned.
Cheers,
Dave (also a boomer)
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Can you not think of a situation in which I can kill you, and it would be legal? This is why convictions are required for proof of illegality.
Of course, morality is absolute, regardless of being observed, but we aren't talking about morality.
--why?
In a court of law, reading the pirated version may be interpreted as a violation of copyright. Your defense attorney would have to discuss intent, and the degree of your "good faith effort".
Why are ebooks so much better than paper books? Did you look around for the paper book new, did you look for it locally used, did you only look at Amazon, did you write to the author, etc. This can easily become a very gray area, although my understanding of "fair use" interpretations of copyright would suggest that if you bought the dead tree version, scanned it, then read the scan, that would be fine. I personally don't believe substituting someone else's scan (or transcribing) would materially affect the ethical question.
Of course, in my opinion, discussing morality and legality are two different questions, but they must both be asked at the same time often. For example, what if you bought it from a local seller, scanned it, then resold it in the same condition? The book's value does not change, you don't net any positive or negative money, so why bother buying and selling the book anyway?
Are you stealing if you make a sandwich during commercials for your favorite TV show? If you read a paper someone left behind at the coffee shop?
Yes, but those people have the ability to be hurt, in a much much much larger way, at random by the book publisher, who can print ten times as many copies as currently exist.
People don't have the 'right' to have their copies of out-of-print books be expensive. It is an artificial scarcity which can completely and instantly be destroyed by the actions of a single company on a whim.
And, in fact, their actions of purchasing the book make it slightly more likely there will be another printing thus totally destroying their 'investment'.
Slightly more relevantly, this is a moot point, as very few books actually increase in price because they are out of print. They get incredibly hard to find, but still generally sell for less then their price when new.
Normal out-of-print books do not have a demand/supply imbalance...when they were in print, approximately the correct amount got printed in total. Unless the demand shot up (And they were never brought back into print for some reason), it is extremely unlikely they'd be valued more than they were originally. (Certain versions of the printing might get valued more, like first editions or limited collector runs, but that's not the same thing, and there's no way a ebook could reduce the value of one of those.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Next time, try reading the posts.
Person 1: When I buy a book, I print it out.
Person 2: You know that's illegal, right?
Person 3: Format shifting for personal use is legal.
Person 4 (you): OMGZORZ THATZ ILLEGALS CUZ YOU NO OWN PERSONAL COPY
Person 5 (me): He owns a copy--he said so in his post.
Thread starts here:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1045741&cid=25929271
Your comment reminded me of a lecture by Stallman on the history of copyright. He favors a much shorter copyright period, initally suggesting 10 years. Stallman related participating in a panel discussion with several authors. Expecting to get hammered by the authors, Stallman was surprised that many favored even shorter copyright periods. Turns out their publishers own the rights, sit on them when out of prints and it limits the ability to adapt for derivative works. I favor shorter, non-renewable copyright periods and a "use it or lose it" approach. If a book is out of print, copying should be fair game. I think all scientific journals should revert to the public domain after five years. Sadly, this will never happens beacuse the big publishing houses have highly paid lobbyists, and subsidize all the campaigns. Special interests trump the public interest every time...
I'm an early Gen-Xer. I've been around computers and the internet for many years.
My first source for material, answers, research, and entertainment is the internet. If an original copy is available online I'll buy it. If it's not available online I'll download it. I generally pass on 'used' anything. I absolutely hate having to actually 'go to the store'.
I don't think that the music, movie, newsprint, magazine, and publishing industries are quite ready for the Internet to be the first place people like me go. We don't see their billboards, we don't get drawn in by the shiny displays, we buzz past their commercials on our DVR's. We learn online, and we know how to research. Marketing is wasted on us.
Because of people like me, the 2ndary businesses like used bookstores, music stores, video stores are dead/dying. I won't be sad to see them go.
The used market affects the market for in-print books. If there is enough demand for the book, the used price will rise. If it rises enough, there will likely be another printing of the book, and the author will benefit.
Personally, I don't think that the copyright term should be longer than twenty years, so if the work is older than that, I see no ethical problem with obtaining a copy by any otherwise legal method (so bit torrent is fine, but stealing a library copy isn't).
If the price for a used copy is exceedingly high, and there aren't plans for a new print run, then in my view, freedom of information triumphs, and it is again ethical to obtain your copy via bit torrent. So if the used copies are being sold for $100 each, and the originals were sold for $25, then I again have no ethical problem with using bit torrent.
Of course, legal and ethical are two entirely different things.
The question this raised in my mind is: how much is that effect worth? If I decide that my moral course of action in the case of an out-of-print book is to send the author some money, are we talking pocket change or a few dollars?
It seems like the monetary value for this effect from one copy couldn't possibly exceed the monetary value of said copy in reprinted tree form. Perhaps an equation is in order?
x(value of effect for single copy) = 1/2(to name a multiple. Pick your own based on your moral predilections!) * y(value of reprinted tree copy)
Therefore - in this case - in buying a used book whose reprint value would be $10, one should send the author $5 in order to satisfy one's moral code.
[/ramble]
He's not distributing. I can photograph a painting I own and hang the pic on the wall. No problem. I cannot give it away or sell it.
If it's out of print then it hurts no one. Why should someone miss out on knowledge and information just because it is no longer printed?
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Getting something for free like that.
That's the whole point I think. With the internet and the whole electronic age we are looking at new mediums and saying wow, if I have one copy of something, I can have a million - like ripples in a wave.
The copyright was supposed to protect the author, not the publisher.
This essentially is not about the rights of the author - it's about the right to copy something that the publisher doesn't want you to copy AND so the author doesn't republish.
It's about money.
Royalties only go so far and when they're done those works should be put into the public domain.
---
WIAA is looking for you.
ummm...
The legality of a specific action is determined prior to you doing the act. You are only LEGALLY GUILTY of doing something illegal if you are convicted but not being convicted doesn't make you innocent. Actual guilt or innocence is determined by your actions not a jury of your peers.
The legality of any action is determined by the elected officials
With all of that said, I wouldn't find any problem with downloading the e-book after purchasing a legitimate copy of the work. To me that constitutes fair use.
Well, in some countries, it is perfectly legal. (And no, I am not talking about Sealand.) BTW, "piracy"...I am surprised how many people are accused of misusing armed ships nowadays. :-)
Ezekiel 23:20
It is an outrage that either music or the printed word be held back from any person for any reason. I am not only referring to books and recordings but to sheet music as well.
What i want to see is something a lot more complete than the Library of Congress, also including music, that is electronically wide open to the world without fees.
If a person need ask why just try to get your paws on the poetry of Richard Savage and you will quickly find out just how difficult it is to locate and purchase this major poet. And in regard to music it gets even worse. Most music is forever lost to us.
The yardstick involves getting the most good to the most people over vast periods of time. The ability of a few to earn a living is dwarfed by the cultural imperative of keeping words and music alive. The rights of the monkeys in the middle who make a living off of authors and artists is of no concern to me at all.
Piracy would have to be an unethical practice to begin with.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
If you didn't pirate it, would you buy it?
If you answered no, it's all right to pirate it.
If you can't buy it even if you wanted to, that's the same thing.
No harm, no foul.
Says who?
The poster asserts that he bought an e-book. I have no reason to believe that he didn't.
By downloading the pirated ebook, aren't you reducing the general market for the used book? So even though you're not necessarily going to purchase a specific copy from a specific used bookseller, in principle you're weakening his market. Why is that any less wrong than diluting the original creator/publisher's market by illegally duplicating a book that's still in print? Used bookstores are extremely valuable parts of our commercial landscape, IMO.
(not judging/flaming you, I agree: it's an interesting moral dilemma).
Please explain how sharing knowledge could be un-ethical. Piracy is the RIGHT thing to do, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Easy to see why you post AC.
From Amazon's site:
Buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute.
It's obvious Amazon feels you are buying the book and if they say you are, you are.
I find it amazing that society does not have a problem going to a public library and checking out a book, reading it, and then perhaps thousands of other people read the book, but it is somehow wrong to download the book from the internet and read it. how about loaning a book to a friend? Or a book exchange with someone you do not know?
Living in Chile
I don't really like the idea of E-books to start with -- and by the way I resent you calling them "dead tree versions". Buy the paper copy, even if it's used. Download the pirated electronic version if you must.
...
No, you can't always get what you want.
But if you try some time,
you just might find
you get what you need...
Suck it up and either pay for the treeware book or don't read it. If you have to buy it used, that's a message to the publisher that they should consider a reprint or an electronic edition (yes, publishers watch the used book market for out of print books to determine if it's economically viable to do a new printing). If you have to pay more for an unused copy, that's because (as your question implies you also feel) people prefer new over used. You're paying extra for a copy that no one else has written in, torn, etc.
If that isn't good enough, do without. Just because you want it doesn't mean *anyone* is under any obligation to make it available to you. It isn't ethics; it's the free market, stupid. There are lots of books from those in current publication to those written by authors long dead that aren't available as an eBook. Just because you want one of those in an eBook format doesn't somehow justify pirating a copy; nor does it justify pirating the book in question.
Grow up and quit whining that the world doesn't give you everything you want.
Cheers,
Dave
BTW, the above lyrics sample is from memory which should be a hint as to which generation I fall into.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I was with you until you implied that stealing was 'wrong' without defining what 'wrong' means.
Maybe I'm wrong, but in the file-share arena (excepting wholesale commercial piracy, for instance) I don't think there has been much, if any, prosecution or effort put toward prosecuting consumers of pirated content. Only people providing content get dinged.
If you're a downloader, even though downloading pirate content is illegal, it's all too easy to say "Well, how was I to know the person on the other end wasn't authorized to distribute that?". However, if you're an uploader, it can be quite much more easily proven that you were knowingly distributing content without the consent of the creator.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
It's not theft. The original question refers to an ebook that's available for free. Nobody's stealing anything!
so you are stealing from the original book buyers. That's not a huge deal.
Like hell. You come to my yard sale and try that, you leave missing an arm.*
* This message sponsored by the International Association of Internet Tough Guys. All talk, no Action: ITG.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
thus is protected fair use even if downloading ends up causing you to push out copies of fragments of the content as a side effect of the protocol used (seeding)
Sorry, I don't think the courts will ever condone this under current copyright law. You can't just break copyright because a protocol demands it.
It's theft. There's no further quibble about the ethics.
I see you are at stage 4 of Kohlberg's stages of moral development
Stupidly enough, you have to do the format shifting yourself for it to count. Downloading a pirated e-book from the internet does not count as format shifting even if you own a physical copy, same as downloading a DS rom is still illegal even if you own the original game.
I wouldn't let it stop me, though.
Mr. Period: Nine is the one that's right by ten!
Nine: One day I will kill him. Then, I will be Ten.
Whether it's on sale or not, downloading a free digital copy isn't stealing. It may be breach of copyright, but it's not stealing. They're two totally different things and should never be confused.
I think this position misses one critical question: What is copyright a right to?
Those wanting copyrights dependent upon market availability seem to take the stance that copyright is a right to profit, especially monetary profit on the open market. While this is certainly an arguable point, it's not the be-all end-all.
This argument falters if copyright is framed, not as a right to monetary profit, but as a basic right to control. Although many creators will use the standard avenues of for-profit publishing, with the same aims of wide dissemination and agreed-upon compensation, there may be edge cases, both known and unknown, where the right of control, currently granted by copyright, is more valuable to the creator than the right to profit.
A creator may wish to exercise the right to only be publish through certain outlets, or only through publishers with certain standards, either quality or ideological. The public does not, and should not, have immediate right to override the wishes of the creator, simply because the technological means are readily available. In a capitalist society that values individual means fairly gained by individual achievement, the gains of copy-rights should be upheld.
(Of course, this is not to trample on consumers' first sale rights, fair use rights, or personal use rights such as personal format-shifting. The flip-side of the coin is that when the author releases a copy of a work into the world, that transaction was a legitimate trade of some degree of control for some degree of profit.)
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Bertrand R. Brinley's 'Rocket Manual For Amateurs'.
Published in 1960, it has long been something of the Holy Grail for modern amateur rocketeers.
Chock full of technical details, design specs, and rocket fuel recipes. And that's the reason why it's been out of print for decades.
Rocket Fuel. There are some seriously dangerous formulas in this book. You could easily kill yourself if you did something stupid.
And of course, in this post 9/11, "BE AFRAID!" day and age, as well as the irrational fear of anything that might possibly hurt someone, no one is going to take on the potential liability for republishing this book.
However, getting back to the subject of this posting.
The book is on the Net as a PDF scan of the pages. I downloaded it myself. Not that I'm planning to brew up rocket fuel in my apartment or launch rockets from the roof of the building.
No, I downloaded it because I'm now one more person that has the PDF, making it just slightly more difficult for this book to be lost and forgotten.
While I'd love to have a genuine hardcopy of the book, the cheapest version I have seen recently was US$50.00 via eBay. Maybe someday I'll be able to spend that kind of money on a 40+ year old paperback book.
Oh, the URL?
Sure. Here you go: http://www.filestube.com/1144a11ae0e8381203ea/details.html
You'll have to download three separate files, though, via Rapidshare, which will take you about 45 minutes to get all of them, and then use some manner of file decompression utility to expand the .rar files.
Oh, and then there's the matter of the file password.
It's Brinley.
DISCLAIMER!!! I am not responsible for ANYTHING that YOU DO with this book. Don't be stupid! If you have a "Here, hold my beer" moment and wind up getting a Darwin Award, that's not MY FAULT. No way, no how.
Got that? Good.
Similarly, the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments is similarly WAY OOP and will never, ever see the light of day as a reprint, again, liability issues.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
What is the right thing to do? And why?
With all the shit going down in this world, this is what people consider an ethical quandary?
A used copy would not be a "preferred medium"? Oh, gee whiz, sorry, your techno-highness. We wouldn't want you to sully your precious fingers on "dead tree" matter.
well, is it still the creator/publisher's market if the book is no longer in print? if their book is in print and you chose to pirate rather than buy used, then yes, you are depreciating the market value of the used book, which has a direct influence on the market value & demand of the new book.
however, if the book is out of print, then the publisher/author have already sold their entire stock of books. the market value of the used books are of no consequence to the copyright holders. they have already made all the money that they can (or are willing to) make on that IP.
in this case, i think the question would be, whether or not piracy impinges on the rights of non-copyright-holders. in other words, do you have a moral obligation to compensate a used book salesman for enjoying a book that they happen to be selling a used copy of. personally i think the answer is "no."
What I see happening is authors and artists will increasingly rely on donations rather than getting paid for a copy of their work. You pay what you think the artist/author deserves. Sure you could still sell physical copies of books, CDs or DVDs but in the future when environmental concerns really start dominating the collective psyche these things will be looked at more as collector's items rather than the mass-produced objects we have now.
There are already quite a few authors and artists around that release material online that accept donations for their work through Paypal.
// The fastest Alt-Tab in the West
In all reality, it seems more that the laws that give corporations the same rights as individuals are the ones that are at fault. It is through those laws that copywrite laws don't expire with the author. Sell your patent/copyright (I know, they're different, but they're the same in this argument) to a corporation? It's like selling to a potentially-immortal person, with laws based on the lifetime of the "creator" (with those "creation rights" sold to this immortal being). There's no, "I'm just doing this to keep the money in the family, to give my grandchildren a college education." On a side note, for those of you who want to feel more justified in your hatred of big business, check out "The Corporation" on Google Video. It's a three hour documentary on the corporate system. Obviously, it's changed my viewpoint on things, and it's been six months since I've seen it.
You should find the author and beat him until he agrees to sell you a copy of the book in the format of your choosing! I didn't spend my childhood fighting the Reds so lollygaggers like him could clog up our economy! That's just Unamerican!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It's theft. There's no further quibble about the ethics.
I see you are at stage 4 of Kohlberg's stages of moral development
That had some stages missing
Level 1 (Pre-Conventional)
1. Obedience and punishment orientation
(How can I avoid punishment?)
2. Self-interest orientation
(What's in it for me?)
Level 2 (Conventional)
3. Interpersonal accord and conformity
(Social norms)
(The good boy/good girl attitude)
4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation
(Law and order morality)
Level 3 (Post-Conventional)
5. Social contract orientation
6. Universal ethical principles
(Principled conscience)
Level 4 (Internets morality)
7. Search for essays on the Internet to rationalise stealing shit.
8. Write your own mashups of the essays and make cash of AdWords.
9. Profit + free shit + Karma on slashdot + sex with Xeni Jardin.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
If it is a book for pleasure, well I usually read in bed before going to sleep and don't have a Kindle or similar device so I'll go with the used book (or the library book).
If it is for research, then I'll take the ebook any way I can find it (as long as it is DRM free or can easily be made so). I prefer scholarly books in electronic form so much that I will scan in books if I can't find an electronic version.
If it is a new book in my field then there probably isn't a pirated copy out there so I'll have to buy it or get it from the library. If there's a pirated version out there, I'll take it.
I'm GenX if that actually does have any relevance.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Because they may want to reprint it later as demand rises? Demand has to be high enough to justify the minimum bulk manufacturing run.
Out-of-print doesn't mean the book isn't available, only that the supply comes from a retailer's warehouse, rather than from the publisher's warehouse. If people pirate out-of-print copies, under the assumption that the authors won't get royalties anyway, all that does it reduce retail sales, which reduces the manufacturing runs, which then reduces royalties.
People need to stop comparing out-of-print with out-of-stock. Most anti-DRM and anti-piracy arguments I hear involve only the authors and publishers. A proper anti-piracy argument should include the whole distribution infrastructure, no matter how many middle-men are involved or how inefficient it may be.
Complain about the middle-men and the inefficiencies in the distribution methods. Complain about DRM. Don't complain about copyrights. If a copyright allows me to copy my purchase however I like for my own use, then there's no problem.
IAAL and i know he is marked as a troll but he is perfectly correct.
The original post stated that he used a kindle book to print. This is disallowed :
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200144530
QUOTE:
The Kindle Store enables you to download, display and use on your Device a variety of digitized electronic content, such as books, subscriptions to magazines, newspapers, journals and other periodicals, blogs, RSS feeds, and other digital content, as determined by Amazon from time to time (individually and collectively, "Digital Content").
and
Use of Digital Content. ... Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.
So unless express rights to print and store were provided with the ebook, printing an ebook from a kindle is illegal, even for non commercial personal use.
In short, no ebooks are sold by amazon, only licensed. You do not have the rights that you think you have.
ATTENTION: This is a posting on an internet forum and as such cannot be construed as legal advice. Contact an attorney licensed in your state for legal advice. This posting is not confidential and not covered under any form of confidentiality and cannot be construed as forming an attorney-client relationship in any form whatsoever.
I still love the fact that an "effective" protection measure means nothing more than "one that exists".
This is a bit of 'if a tree falls , and there is no one around to hear it , does it make a sound'
In law ,if no-one knows you killed someone , then you didn't.Until someone finds out you did.
(Innocent until prooven guilty).
Slipping shoelaces ?
You are a moral moron.
Corporates don't think of ethics when they charge you $210 for a textbook that costs only $10 to produce and out of which less than 20 cents goes to the author, while another 3 cents is thrown to the shareholders. The rest is eaten by the "management" for funding their latest villa in SF City.
I don't think of ethics when i download and read books that i didn't pay for.
I think of it as a service to myself.
Hey, if the copyright holder objects, i delete it.
No harm done.
Legally, it is defensible. I borrow something from the author without his permission. Once he finds out, i return it to him: intact. Where does the question of illegality enter into this equation?
Oh, you mean i *read* the book. Well then sue me to undo the knowledge i gained and unless you can prove that this specific knowledge was used by me to make a million dollars, then i ain't paying a penny to any corporate.
I pay taxes. That money is not used to benefit me. Instead it is used to fund the retirement funds and bonuses of the Rich and Infamous.
If that is not piracy, then what am doing is not piracy too.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
lol , apparently ( by the example) , i am at stage six. I wouldn't consider myself that moralist (is that even a word ? ).
Slipping shoelaces ?
Nobody's stealing anything!
Exactly. Everybody's here to "steal" everything. Let's not pussy pretend play otherwise. What once was not is now Ours. But don't let me force comprehension upon your petty words.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
The idea that authorship is a tangible thing has been around for at least 1500 years. The concept that the right to control copying is also a tangible thing came somewhat later when technology intervened to make large-scale duplication at little cost somewhat accessible to the masses - but even that was over 500 years ago with Gutenberg.
To the Internet generation this somehow seems newly quaint. A book can be copied in a click, and carried in essentially no physical space, so does that change the rules?
It can't, because ease of copying and carrying wasn't the principle in the first place. The principle is that the author and publisher are in control of their works. If we're willing to take that away based on convenience, because the publisher or the author hasn't done what we wanted them to do, that's no different from downloading a current best seller or an expensive limited edition.
As to what I'd do given my own morals and ethics: if I'm going to violate the principle, I'm not going to rationalize it to anyone else because I'm not going to TELL anyone else.
Sorry to nitpick, but you are not stealing a second hand book. The book is still in the store while you read your electronic version. I'm sure there are many people who like their library the way it is: physical, not subject to reformatting your hard drive. By making your choice though, you are diminishing the demand for the article. Which will diminish its price. But that's not a huge deal either.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Heads I break the Law. Tails I make a Law against Tails.
Pfft. ... A web of victims is set. Glory be to your slowness, Judges, Lawyers, Persons of Persuasion.
What if you are Commanded to break the Law by the Law? Still want some? :P
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
Born 1953, college degrees in Economics and Electronics.
In a situation like this, the wise and honorable thing to do is get the text any way possible, copy it, and pass it along ... freely... to any one else who may be interested in it.
We must never forget, and we must have as our prime consideration here, that the media corporations have adopted a de-facto legal state of endless and permanent copyright for themselves by constantly extending the copyright period. Since they are are doing this, they are preventing any new material from entering the public domain. They have effectively stolen the public domain from us and future generations.
Having done this, they have absolved us from any ethical and moral obligation to recognize the authority of any copyright law.
To protect our culture, which includes books, movies, television shows, and software, we can, will, and should copy and distribute any copyrighted materials as widely and as freely as we can.
When they restore the public domain, and allow the materials that passed through the period of copyright that was in legal effect when the material was created to enter public domain, then, and only then, should we listen to any arguments regarding legitimate copyright considerations.
Until then, to hell with them, their copyright laws, and the politicians that they have bribed into passing these laws.
Future generations will understand and appreciate what we are doing with our P2P networks and underground distribution systems.
All financial considerations involved are private business contracts between the authors and publishers. They don't concern us. Our networks and distribution systems were operating before they signed these contracts, so they knew of our existence and our effect on their royalties. They signed up anyway.
Bravo! I appreciate the attempt at primitive economic theory. Supply and demand says you nevertheless had an opinion about the outcome.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
you're not hurting anyone financially or otherwise
And you'll stop being a victim when you realize you're helping.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
In the UK at least, this is not the case. Format shifting is not a Fair Dealing enumerated right, and making complete copies, even for your own use, is expressly reserved for the copyright owner. Distribution is not required. Every time someone rips their own CD to MP3 in the UK, they are breaking the law and could be sued. However, the BPI (the British RIAA) has said explicitly they have no intention of doing so.
That said, taping TV programmes was in the exact same legal situation, and it wasn't until it went to court than an enumerated right to 'timeshift' was effectively addded to your rights. Technically, you're only allowed to record it, watch it once, then you're supposed to delete it. The timeshift right does not extend to making an archive of recordings.
Since the BPI don't intend to sue over a case they know they'd lose, the most likely way it'll change is specific copyright legislation that would enumerate a specific right to format shift - the UK government has recently been looking at changes to the law.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Hmmph. Good job. Go don one of those Hawaiian straw skirts. So close ... (watch how you should've better answered)
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
Illegal? Seriously, is there anybody besides you and the RIAA and you who cares around here? Yes, developers/writers/whatever should be paid for their work, but only if they a) deserve it and b) their work isn't full of DRM (in case of software). If nobody involved in distributing the book, even if it's great, receive any money from someone who buys the book, how does it matter? Why should I pay Amazon or some guy on eBay, when they don't provide me with what I want and also weren't even involved in the process of creating the book?
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
"Upon a proper challenge, the copyright should expire after a few years if they are failing to actually print or offer the copyrighted material for sale. "
At which point, every book gets published at a price which would allow the publisher to pay for a print run of 1 (and make a profit).
What's happening with books is no different to what happened with records in the past where they got "deleted". If demand is too low, holding stock costs a lot of money and the costs of the runs to produce the records for the demand gets so high that it becomes uneconomic.
Or it would have been read. I'm sure rational individuals are completely capable of determining matters of compensation in a rational fashion. But whatever, and beg the gods to turn a blind eye to your illegal breaths of their air.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
If you know how to contact her, why not just ask the author. She might be able to send you a copy in your prefered form.
There is never any trade transaction that is not a mutual 100% pure profit DONATION for both sides. Speak now, or forever hold your peace.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
Haha. You borrow your words liberally. And I, for one, salute you! :P
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
format shifting for personal use is legal.
So is taking a dump.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
No more shared bedtime stories. Stop being such a fucking pussy. Repeat any lines from any works you've read one way or another at any time you so wish to.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
The public does not, and should not, have immediate right to override the wishes of the creator, simply because the technological means are readily available. In a capitalist society that values individual means fairly gained by individual achievement, the gains of copy-rights should be upheld.
Actually no, the public should have the right to override the wishes of the creator of the copyright. Copyright is granted by the Government and the only reason content creators have copyright is through the support of the public through Government enforcement. Copyright is not a God Given right, it is an artificial construct that is supposed to benefit society in the long run and the copyright holders in the short term. In a truly capitalistic society, copyright wouldn't exist because it is not the free market, it is a Government granted monopoly on your work. Nothing about copyright is free market.
Copyright is not supposed to be a one sided deal where someone creates a work and profits off of it forever and ever. It is (was?) meant to be a contract between content creators and the public. You profit off of your work and the Government will enforce your copyright through laws/courts in exchange for the work being available to the public sometime in the future. These days copyright holders are not holding up their end of the bargain. As a matter of fact it seems that copyright holders believe that a creation of these should belong to them for ever and that the tax payers should forever guarantee they profit off of it until the end of time. Sounds like a bum rap to me, especially in the case of abandonware/out of print books where the copyright holder still has enforcement rights over something they seem not to have an interest in anymore.
Judging by your sig you seem cynical about people benefiting from copyrighted works by "being cheap" and "wanting things for free" but it was never free for us. Every day we foot the bill for copyright enforcement and the amount of money gets higher and higher. Look at criminal enforcement of protecting copyrights, that is a lot of salaries to pay to make sure Company X, Y, & Z profit. Perhaps you should look at piracy as a market force rather than "a bunch of cheap fucks" because there will always be the latter but when a whole bunch of society does it, it is time to change your business model, not try to force society to conform to an outdated business model.
I've posted on the used book business before. We specialize in a subject that has, maybe, 5000 relevant titles and we have multiple copies of many of the same title. The vast majority are out of print and of those most of the authors and publishing houses are dead or defunct. Their heirs might possibly hold the copyright but I haven't gone that deep into the research for most of them. When my current project is finished I am going to scan copies of the oldest titles I have in the worst condition(so I can break them). The earliest are about 1890-1920. I am going to give them away for free via a pdf link. I see this as a way to market my intact, very good condition copies to collectors who are sitting on the fence about spending a lot of money on a first edition as well as giving my niche's community access to the text (while vising my website) which is scholastically dubious but historically important. Assuming the books are out of copyright I feel this is totally ethical. There are a plethora of OOP Print-on-Demand titles available for sale at used book sites like Amazon Marketplace, ABEbooks.com and Alibris.com Maybe I should charge $.99 a copy like iTunes does for Beethoven or Scott Joplin.
Well, then I declare a law against personal masturbation! Impure thoughts = Sin. Still selling ignorance for the enemy?
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
I don't think they like your question.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
Isn't that just the old "buggy and whip" argument, all wrapped in a different packaging?
By this argument, Project Gutenberg is a bad thing as well, as you should just go and find a used book store that has the books you're downloading from there.
Copyright is intended to encourage the production of work for the benefit of society as a whole. It is not intended to protect second hand sales of copyright protected works. Any one selling second hand copyrighted works takes on the risk that the work may devalue before they sell it. This risk is paid for by the profit margin they add to the sale price.
Right, and that stupidity is why no one cares about copyright laws. If they even tried to be fair or reasonable I'm sure a lot more people would pay attention to them.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Reminds me of the defence of the stainless steel rat who explained that robbing banks was good for everybody. First the banks had an insurance, so they did not realy loose any money. The insurance company did get their fees, so also they did not loose anything. The police got to do aomething importand. The newspapers could write something interesting. The people like that something happend and the money was spend and got back into the economy instead if just sitting there.
Everybody wins.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
See, if you rephrase the question a bit, this is the kind of thing we could be having polls about, instead of the lame joke polls we have.
"Good news, everyone!"
I don't know about USC 17, but down here you _can_ do a copy for backup purpose. Period. You can't distribute it, but you can have it.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I can't figure out if this is an ironic post or not. The excessive use of caps and name calling point to a flaming 13 year old but the "1"s with the exclamation marks points to some one trying to make this post look, artificially, like the above description. Someone please help me here and tell me the reality of the situation so I can properly critique this.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
...just like Good Old Games have done with old, possibly out-of-print, games.
In other words, create an ebook of the original treeware version and make a deal with the publisher or author of the original to sell the ebooks.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
It depends on how you define "knowledge". I agree that manuals, scientific papers and college textbooks should be accessible to everyone. However, do you think that a novel that was created purely for entertainment purposes can be considered "knowledge" that everybody has a right to have?
Because it was created to be sold, and your "information wants to be free, as does entertainment, and anything else I want" bullshit deprives the people who make the stuff that you warez of an income?
"I don't want to pay, it should have been free in the first place" doesn't cut it as an argument. You could use that for anything to wheedle out of paying for anything - it's yet another shitty argument foisted by pirates so they can justify (to themselves) the fact that they're cheap.
I write bullshit
Commerce is founded on supply and demand. Piracy has become a leading indicator of what people demand before it is available through legal channels. Downloading movies illegally was a precursor to Netflix, and was instrumental in it's creation. If there is something you want, be it the object itself or the method most convenient for you to digest it, that you cannot pay someone to obtain and poses no threat to anyone at all really, by all means go for it. If nothing else maybe you'll convince a publisher to reprint the book and sell an electronic version. It is their loss for not seeing the opportunity.
That's what I and my 20 friends said when we raped that girl.
They would have the right to buy the texts, and then you could have used them as a beta-tester.
One way to look at it is that when you buy a book "new", you're paying for the production costs of the physical medium, the distribution costs etc. as well as reimbursing the author for their work. When you buy a used book, you're arguably just paying someone for the transfer of ownership of a stack of paper, since they went to some trouble to obtain a copy of the book you bought.If you look at it this way, for someone who doesn't want a paper copy of a book, buying a used copy makes no sense at all if an e-book, whether authorized or not, is available.
Of course, the flipside here is that if viewed under this light, the sale of used books is just as "unethical" as distribution of unauthorized digital copies.
As I understand it, morality is far from absolute, it's culturally defined. Which is why ethics exist, it's supposed to be some kind of logic layer below morality that defines what's generally accepted behaviour independent of cultural background. Doesn't seem to work quite that well yet, but it's a solid concept.
Or maybe I didn't pay enough attention in philosophy class, in which case I'd welcome any enlightenment.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
Judging by his fragrant use of punctuation, capitalisation and the complete lack of any understanding of the basic concepts involved: you are arguing with a complete idiot. You can never beat him. He'll just drag you down to his level and use all of his experience against you.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
That is a valid position. It just isn't the law.
I understand that.
Also, I'd ask you to question the proposition you just made - is it right to force someone to provide a good even if it means they incur a cost (loss) to do so?
No, nobody should force them to provide anything -- but if they don't do so, they should lose the exclusive rights to so providing it: either by selling these rights to someone who *will* be able to provide it or by simply making the whole thing public domain so that *anyone* can.
As I said, I don't recognize anyone's right to take a thing out of circulation altogether because of "copyright". Even if we accept monopoly, deprivation is one thing further yet.
In my own country some companies that supposedly have the right to subtitle several TV series shut down some fan-subtitle sites. Even when these companies haven't actually subtitled the series in question, they supposedly hold the exclusive right to do so. And so they try to stop fans' efforts to provide the service even when the companies don't actually provide the service themselves.
I don't believe they have the moral right, even if the law is on their side.
Since it's out of print, the most ethical thing is to support your economy by purchasing the used copy from a locally owned, independent bookstore. Only go to Amazon.com or some other national chain as a last resort.
After that, you're justified in downloading the electronic version--although, personally, I find hard copy much easier to read than e-text.
its called obvious, when people purchase an ebook , that is analagous to buying it. Any random person would believe they are buying the book, that is the word they would use. The sellers make it seems like they are selling it and therefore that 'contract' is null
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel
copyright applies to the work, not the format. they has been clear even since quality printing was invented and rights to a painting were extended to its printing representation. The way in which the copyrighted work is conveyed is irreverent, except for that on must have rights to copy it into any source. (these rights may be granted by fair use) If you have a right to the first copy, AND fair use allows you to make a copy, it doesn't matter what format the copy is in.
There are only two ways to deny this, wither you rule that fair use does not apply, or you rule that copyright does not fallow formats. Not allowing fair use would be an unthinkable thing, and disallowing copyrights to extend beyond formats in unthinkable. The thing is that content creators want both sides of that coin.
Either we rule that content is integral to format which would mean that no copyrighted content could be moved to new formats until it lapsed into the public domain, or you rule that format is unrelated to content, and therefore fair use applies to all formats now and in the future.
What this ultimately comes down to is that the content owners (not necessarily the creators) believe that Fair-use is a scam and wish to wipe it out whatever it takes, however they will not admit that. This is mainly because it lifts the fog of bullshit that the keep laying.
exactly. we need to shape our laws to conform with our sense of ethics, not shape our ethics to conform with our existing laws...
Given the general state of affairs in society today regarding what's left of the moral and ethical ladder, there's only two rungs left, and you can't even climb high enough to change a light bulb.
This is at least according to my view, which is the problem of laws influenced by ethics. We all try and find a place on the ladder at different levels.
You know, there are these things called libraries.
Copyright exists to ensure that an author retains the rights to a work that he or she doesn't sell to a pubisher. The typical deal is obvious: A publisher produces, markets and sells the book and the author gets a cut.
Buying a used book isn't unethical, certainly not because the author won't make a penny on the deal. The author's deal is with a publisher, not with individuals who buy the book, used or new.
Reproducing and distributing a published book without the copyright holders permission is unethical. It's as unethical as producing and distributing a manuscript that hasn't yet been offered for publication by an author.
The technology used to reproduce and distribute a work is irrelevant. From an ethical point of view, duplicating a book without the copyright holder's permission and making the file available on the Internet is equivalent to a publisher printing and marketing books by authors under contract to rival publishers.
Copyright is the legal recognition of an undeniable ethical reality: I retain all rights to something I create until I decide to transfer all, or some, of those rights to someone else. To believe that members of society can somehow acquire rights to my work that I do not transfer to them is, frankly, to believe in fantasy.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The laws don't define ethics, and they are irrational,they provide undue favor to big content, and undue discrimination against the consumers.
fixed
It can't, because ease of copying and carrying wasn't the principle in the first place. The principle is that the author and publisher are in control of their works.
I thought the original principle was censorship ("An Act for preventing the frequent Abuses in printing seditious treasonable and unlicensed Bookes and Pamphlets and for regulating of Printing and Printing Presses").
Piracy is stealing. Stealing is unethical. End of Debate.
Piracy is more "armed robbery" than "stealing", but has nothing to do with copyright violation which is an entirely different set of laws.
I do not see the acquisition or reading of electronic copies to be unethical - either for in print or out-of-print books. In fact, one of the best pre-cursors to my opting to buy a physical book (my preferred format) is my acquisition of an electronic copy which I treat as a 'proof'.
I consider acquiring an electronic copy to be remarkably similar to borrowing a copy from a library - all be it at a lower cost to the state... and more convenient.
The entire approach to copyright is completely broken - a new business model is required. It is preposterous to be buying expensive books with zero evidence of applicability or quality; it is preposterous that access to published work today should be more restricted than in an era where lending libraries were used actively.
I recognise that authors might feel to have lost out should I read an unauthorised electronic copy - but not buy a dead-tree version... but this is a misunderstanding... If it weren't for a freely available electronic copy, I'd likely never have considered their work at all. A new business model is needed.
I'd love to see a commercial ebook library which would allow me access to an electronic copy of any published work (for a minimal fee)... and for the establishment of print-and-bind shops at which any books I want to buy can be printed and bound for my 'library'... and authors to be compensated at today's prices. I find it difficult to believe that we can't overcome the engineering problems which in years gone by left bulk printing and distribution far cheaper than bespoke production. It would be wonderful to walk into a small shop in a small town and be able to buy a bound copy of any book.
If you really want to be legal you must contact the entity/ies with ownership rights to decide whether you can use a different format of the book for your own personal use.
Doing it en masse, you might get sued. For example, if you were to buy tons of the actual used books and then sell the corresponding ebook you downloaded instead of those you bought (even if you disposed of the physical books). The owner of the rights to the book would probably not like that and could argue you were selling a derivative product and violating copyright.
However, there would be little to no repercussion for just using a different format of the the book provided it was done in sufficently small quantity.
Go over to the Baen Free Library http://www.baen.com/library/ and read Eric Flint's take on book piracy and free books. Quite interesting and well thought out. His idea is that what little book piracy there is actually creates a bigger audience for the author's work - from which he will profit. For this reason they give away free electronic versions of many of their books, hoping to tempt you to buy more.
It's worked on me! I now look specifically for Baen books when I shop my local bookstores.
"Straddling the sword of technology..."
Go read the fair use clause of copyright law. You are dead wrong. You can make backup for yourself, for private use, and you can change medium if you like.
You really aren't making copies of the copyrighted material. You are merely brokering copies on behalf of the original torrent creator in the same way that a web proxy cache brokers copies of web pages. Thus, you should be no more liable for copyright violation than an ISP who gets a takedown notice. One could even reasonably argue that the DMCA protects you in this case, though that's a little bit twisted. The point is that the DMCA ISP exemption was put in precisely to deal with cases like this in which the protocol makes it necessary for a third party to make copies on behalf of an infringer, and BitTorrent is, IMHO, not demonstrably different in this regard except insofar as the number of "ISPs" involved is exploded by orders of magnitude.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Even better, tell the publisher...you paid the author because the publisher is not distributing the work. Publisher then has a choice: They can sue you and the author, and try to make the case that what you're doing is illegal... (how do they prove harm? they don't publish it?) my guess about that option is: Striesand Effect. They widely publicize an arrangement that undermines their business model. Not too smart...
Or publisher can consider it marketing data, and try to figure out how to make nothing go "out of print" (have everything available.)
Depending on the details of the author's deal, the last option might be to cut the publisher out completely, and he might be able to sell copies from a web site. You might be able to convince him to sell them on, lulu, E-bay or something.
If the book is out of print, the publisher must not think it's profitable. If they decided not to port their catalog to etext, they are doing two things to harm the market. First, they are artificially keeping consumer choices low. Second they are forcing would-be consumers to voilate copyright law by forcing no other choice. The issue is, if they offered all their catalog in etext, they would have to pay royalties. This is why authors with out of print titles should take steps to publish their own etexts. Sinmce they most likely still retain rights to an electronic publication of their work. They could sell it directly on amazon without the publisher.
They're using their grammar skills there.
If the publisher refuses to care about an excellent work that has gone out of print for decades, say 2 or 3, and the author might be dead and will not receive a penny, like you said, then it is totally ethical to make an ebook.
It's much more important that the book be shared in electronic form and, therefore, be brought again to life, instead of be rotting away in some shelf.
It's called civil disobedience. In this case, the human need for knowledge takes precendece over stupid copyright laws. We must also press legislators to become aware of this "new" reality of the internet. When knowledge is shared, everyone benefits.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
So what's the point of these laws that no one will abide by? Terrorize people?
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Consider the idea that part of owning something, in this case the copyright, is having the right NOT to sell it. This brings to mind the not so long ago eminant domain property issues. Even though in this case you are not giving up the property, does the current owner have the right to restrict its distribution? I think ownership implies that right. Many of the agruments rationalize taking the bootleg copy by saying that there is no harm done to the owner. You can't say that because we have no idea why the owner refuses to distribute it electronically.
"Corporations create nothing" seems to be the recurring theme here. If corporations created nothing, why would you go looking for the book on a corporate web server? Seems like they created an electronic marketplace so we can find things. Hence, you are paying for a service. Authors are much better off in a world with such corporations. As for the original question, would you steal a blue car because the only cars for sale are red? That is the moral issue. Obviously, very few people would buy the book and scan it. But morally (and legally), downloading pirated stuff is stealing. Consider, also, that you would then support an "infrastructure of piracy", which will directly harm all authors.
Download the book and send a cheque directly to the author with a note explaining what you did and why.
Just because a book is out of print does not mean one cannot track the author down and send money/gift/etc. If that can be done, then downloading a pirated copy might be absolved from any ethical issues.
Also, from an obtaining standpoint, what is the difference between borrowing a book from a library or friend and obtaining a pirated copy? Either way, the copyright holder does not get a cut, but they main gain a fan, and thus buy and/or share more of their works in the future.
I am not saying I have the answers, just more questions to ponder.
Does it matter what copyright was intended to do, or how it is legislated and enforced today?
I'll tell you exactly why. Because your assumption - that is hurts no one, is incorrect.
Let's back up to 2003. Let's say I'm Nintendo. And I want to publish The Legend of Zelda Collector's Edition. It's nothing more than a compilation of games that have been out of print from 5-10 years. From the origional Zelda through Majora's Mask.
Under the system you propose, my ability to monetize this would be greatly diminished, simply because it became public domain during the years that I had stopped publishing. Now the market is flooded with copies of my games because I was no longer publishing them. How do I sell them now?
Now Nintendo basically made this game a give-away with Wind Waker, but my point still stands. And you can see how it would basically make endeavors like the Virtual Console worthless.
Let's take a second scenario: What about art? If I'm a famous artist, and I create one copy of a work that fetches an obscene value at auction, should I loose control over the ability to copy that work? Should anybody be able to make prints, or duplicate my work in any way that they choose just because I am no longer producing this work, and therefore no longer benefiting directly monetarily from it? I would imagine that under this system, originals would loose some of their value, because the purchaser would not have any expectation of exclusivity. You are basically opening the gates to as many legal knock-offs as the market will sustain. Values will plummet.
Both these arguments essentially rely on supply and demand factors limiting copies of a work in the market place to keep that work relatively valuable. One can make dozens of non-profit driven arguments as to why a copyright holder would wish to limit distribution of a work for non-profit driven reasons as well.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
As a terminally broke college student, I don't see a serious ethical difference between "taking it out of the library, scanning a copy for personal use, and deleting it when I have to return the book, repeat every time I want to read the book" and "pirating it"...
Ethics don't depend on income level. If something is unethical, it's unethical when you're poor and it's unethical when you're wealthy.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
By the same logic, you don't "buy" software, yet the courts have ruled that making a backup copy of the software is fair use. So making a backup copy of the ebook by printing it is legal. Just because he chooses to read his backup copy rather than his original doesn't mean he is breaking the law.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
This is about an ethical question, which most of us care about rather than "is this illegal".
Especially when your odds of getting caught and prosecuted for breaking the law are virtually zero.
As a published author, I would prefer that people read my book than that they pay for it.
In the long run, this builds me an audience, which may also be monetarily worth more than a one-time payment.
If the book is not available... pirate it.
Death metal, a tiny musical genre that thrived from 1985-1995, has many classics out of print. Our solution at the metal site for which I write (the Dark Legions Archive, I'm a blogger) is to make FLACs available of out of print classics.
The reason is simple: it's better that the artists have a new listener, than that the potential listener is thwarted by the chaos of record publishing.
Technically, it is against the law. However, from artists, we have heard nothing but encouragement. There are now new generations, new fans and new life for their art. I don't think anyone can reasonably complain about that.
Futurist Traditionalism
Pirate it. Long live the information superhighway. I am of course from the generation where Napster and Kazaa were new things in my teen years. I didn't see anything wrong with it then, and I definitely see nothing wrong with it now.
Indeed. Thanks for talking sense into me :) I now realize that he's either a complete idiot or a troll, and will ignore him either way.
The ethical way to do something that you know is illegal but think should be legal is to do it, report yourself to the proper authority, accept the punishment and use the experience to try to change the law that you think is wrong. Too many people think civil disobedience is a legal defense. It isn't.
How is this any different than mp3s? I want to listen to a song that I cannot find on Amazon/local Record stores or via legal download. But I do find it on ThePirateBay in 500_Greatest_Rock_Anthems.torrent.
I would bet that the amount of eBook piracy is nothing compared to the amount of music piracy going on. So if you're looking for a financial compensation problem, go after music. In a few years when the Wii/PS3/XBOX360 generation grows up, we won't have to worry about eBook piracy, as this 'instant gratification' generation won't be able to sit still long enough to read a book. Maybe we'll all get lucky and they'll pirate (I mean legally download) an eBook and have it read to them.
It is simple.
Is it ethical to violate someone else's legal rights?
No, it is not. It is as simple as that.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
If one looks at the history of copyright and its intentions, then I believe that a failure of the copyright holder to make a work available effectively puts the work in the public domain. Copyright is supposed to provide a balance between the rights of the owner of a work and of society as a whole. Copyright clearly does not give the owner the right to purposefully withhold a protected work from society. Let us not forget that at one time a copyright was obtained through the act of giving one copy to the national library.
Over time our congress has repeatedly eroded society's rights in favor of the copyright holder, but they have not yet revoked the original principles on which copyright was based. With the advent of the internet, I would even go so far as to say if you fail to release an out of print book in at least some electronic form (it doesn't have to be free) then you have relinqished any reasonable claim to copyright protections. You have simply not held up your end of the bargain and your work should be considered to be in the public domain.
Oh, common. You title your post "A non slashdot answer" and then you use car analogy.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
The difference from an ISP is that you know you don't have rights to redistribute. You are not just hosting generic files. Now, there are other protocols that allow you to share anonymous information, and that would be more like an ISP, but that's not BitTorrent.
I second that. Just read the pirated ebook. The only person with a right to your money is the author, so if you can find her/him, send a check. To answer your demographic questions: I'm a Baby Boomer, who's been working with computers since the early 80s, and the internet since it's early Bitnet, Lynx, etc., beginnings, and who's also a published author. So, no, I'm not just advocating "ripping off" other people's work.
You really need to understand what 'moral' is. If you did this wouldn't need any answers from others.
Their definition would differ from yours so they would come up with unacceptable answers for you anyway.
If the object here is to ensure content producers are rewarded then obviously there's no benefit to paying for it.
There will be no royalties and the publisher will receive nothing for a used book sale. Buying it will only
benefit Amazon and the seller, not the content producers. The money you don't spend on that could be better used
for something positive.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
True, provided that noone gets physically harmed or killed in the process, which was also in his ideology. That book helped me develop critical thinking when I was young.
They're about risk.
Regardless of whether it's right to download pirated material, there is a law against it and there are fines which can be levied. The risks of getting caught and fined are on par with those related to jaywalking.
Now, watch a busy downtown intersection with a lot of young people in the area; I live near a downtown which is between a high school and a university, so this is a common scene. The students blithely jaywalk in any situation which will not lead to death. Granny in a compact? Jaywalk. Bus? Don't jaywalk. Bike cop sitting at the corner? Jaywalk, s/he won't do anything, because everyone knows that you can't pay the $400 ticket. Now, witness the cop's reaction if an adult wearing a suit joins the crowd of jaywalkers...
People with careers, houses, families and cars are less likely to risk their material well-being for a few dollars worth of entertainment.
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
If you transport a book in a paper wrapping, it gets wet and an imprint of the cover art is left on the wrapping paper. That is the same level of distribution ingrained in the delivery of the work to you as the redistribution of file parts is in a P2P network file delivery process.
IMHO the theory that you are distributing when you download a file via P2P was already defeated in a court in US in one of those RIAA court cases, but IANAL.
Are relative anyway.
The question isn't how WE feel about it, its what YOU feel is ok to do.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Reading this discussion is sad for me...most of the comments here are from people who have absolutely no idea of how the world of publishing actually works. So, time for a reality check.
(By the way, I've been dealing with the world of publishing since 1998, and since 2007 I've owned a small publishing company of my own - and I just put out a second book under its name, this one an amazing Star Wars book by Michael Kaminski.)
1. Book availability vs. copyright length. Contrary to belief here, one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. In fact, the thing that has the most power when it comes to determining if a book will be available is the free market.
Book availability works like this: when it comes to major publishers, the publisher figures out how many books the author is likely to sell, and prints that many. Then the publisher watches the sales figures. If the printing sells out, the book is printed again for a second printing. If that printing sells out, there's a third printing, and so on. But if the first printing doesn't sell out, and just peters out after a year or two, the publisher knows the market isn't there, and pulls the book out of print.
The one technology that is changing this a bit is print on demand technology, which is allowing books with very low sales demand to be kept in print. Interestingly enough, it's not e-books that have had this impact - e-books have a very small market, compared to print books. They're an interesting complement to the printed book, particularly useful for travellers, but they don't tend to be worth a lot economically.
2. Copyright and greedy authors limiting books published. How many copies of a book get published is not up to the author, it's up to the publisher. The author has very little say in the matter. For that matter, it's every author's dream for a copy of their book to be in every household in the world - there isn't an author in the world who has ever stated that this new novel should have only 2,000 copies published, and that's it. There are, however, publishers who have done that, but that's with a special edition, and if the special edition sells well, you can bet there's a regular edition following.
3. Copyright and books. Copyright is not the right to profit, although it does give an author the right to try. It is barely the right to control. It is, however, a very important legal framework that governs the relationship between the author and the publisher. What the public sees is the barest tip of the iceberg when it comes to copyright - they see the author being able to dictate how a book is distributed in a very broad sense. What they don't see is the protection given to the book from the publisher in the submission phase, the protection given to the publisher from the author after the contract is signed, the contract negotiations themselves, etc. It's hardly surprising that most people wouldn't recognize what copyright actually is and does if it came up and bit them - almost all of the important functions of copyright take place behind closed doors, and the public never sees it.
4. Publisher business models. While the RIAA may be dying a long-overdue death, publishing is very realistic field, with business models based in reality. It is also a field that has no difficulties trying out new business models - the people who might call publishers Neanderthals for not giving e-books massive support right now are forgetting that the reason that support is lacking is because back around 2000-2002 the big publishing companies tried to make the e-book work, and failed miserably. Even Stephen King couldn't make it work, and he tried hard to do it. The first e-book revolution fell flat on its face. I know - I was there, with one of those e-books that "couldn't fail." Turns out that it could fail quite nicely, along with the rest of the e-book market.
(I've also kept my eyes on e-books, just as a matter of course. A recent discussion with my agent had her commenting that e-books "just
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Its easy: Get both if you really like it very much.
Use the electronic version when you are reading it. Keep the hard copy as a limited edition collection, and as support for the author that you like it very much. This is what fans do, they buy the things because they love it, not because they need it.
My friend paid a very high price to buy the 1934 first edition of Security Analysis, even though he read through several chapters in pirated electronic version and there are latest edition available. He bought it because he love the book so much and is so impressed by Benjamin Graham's insight. This what true value of those out of print books in Amazon are.
Like so many of my fellow Gen Ys, as it seems, I attain almost everything I own via the internet. I haven't done much research on the subject, but my theory is that we've grown up in isolation of the rest of the world, and as the internet became more prominent we realized that we could get what we wanted, any time we wanted it. Personally, I don't think that's a bad thing but a rather large step in humanity. I can easily envision a future where analog stores are considered exotic specialty shops, and a future where there are little limitations to development. I also haven't done much research on copyright laws, but I can understand the essential concept behind it - that paying the creator pays them for their time and effort, as well as supports them and their further works. That being said, if the book is out of print, and thus the author wouldn't receive loyalties for it, then I don't understand why going out of your way to pay for a used book is an ethical decision. Yes, I understand that buying a used book would, in some small way, aid the economy, but if the original point of the payment was to support the creator then paying for a used book has completely lost its point. I think that most people here see the word "pirated" and instantly reject everything associated with it. "Abandonware" is commonly thought of as acceptable for download, since paying for it no longer does anything. Certain rules and laws should be seen as temporary, and this is one of them. In the digital age, there can be near-infinite copies of a single document. Before, copies of text were finite to the amount of resources they had enough money to pay for. As it seems, all the physical copies were sold, the author/publisher got the money they wanted, and now the circulation of money is over with. This is a confusing transition. In my opinion, the age of the finite deadtree books is over, and the authors and publishers got their money when they wanted it. Let those texts fade away and restructure copyright (or more preferably, creative commons) for the age of the infinite resource. I apologize for the semi-rant. I probably should have taken the time to write out a well-written, well-thought-out reply, but I didn't. I hope there are some strands of wisdom to be found here.
Moral is to share cultural media items with your peers, because that is how culture is formed and how it has worked for millennia. It has absolutely nothing to do with behaving like a good little consumer in order to conveniently line the pockets of producers; that's merely the position of a slave or a farm animal, and is neither moral nor ethical.
What a load of hogwash. Feel free to write out copies of books by hand, or pass on stories orally if you want to make the millienia argument.
We have a contract in our society. You do work, I pay you for that work. I don't just take that work and all of its benefits for free - that is enslaving you. Or treating you like a farm animal.
You have it backwards, and you're an idiot.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Having worked as a bookstore manager, I can tell you people in the 'legit' book business do not look very highly on the used book business. The two really have nothing to do with each other at all, which is why you will never find stores selling both. The only reason the used book business exists is because books were around long before all our current license shenanigans, and the only reason the major media publishers have not managed to make selling a used book as illegal as selling a used mp3 is that the practice has long historical precedent. If they could, they would.
So speaking *ethically* ( not legally ), if you are concerned about giving to the author, don't imagine that a used copy from Amazon is any better at all. The extra demand does nothing as those sales are not tracked. Maybe writing to the publication house to say you wished it was back in print might make a difference, but it's doubtful. The author would no doubt rather you pirate the book and sent them a fiver. It would be more than they got in royalties anyway.
Iain
Nobody can say you broke the law unless you have a conviction, so it's only illegal if you get caught.
Actually, anyone can say you broke the law, regardless. If you're going to argue you can sue them for slander if they do, then by your own logic it follows that anyone can say you broke the law unless you sue them.
Criminal... :p
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I take the view that by downloading a copy someone else has made available, you are not personally infringing copyright. The person who makes it available has done that. Your action in downloading seems to me to be entirely equivalent to finding a copy that someone has left on the bus.
So I say download the e-text and read it, but under no circumstances should you re-distribute the copy you downloaded, because that would clearly be infringing on someone's legal copyright.
If you wish, you can write to the author and say you enjoyed it (if you did) -- that's just normal respectful behaviour and no different to what you might do if you had bought a first edition in hardback.
Under the circumstances I see no need to make any payment to the author, since neither she nor her original publisher seem to be motivated to earn further payment for the work.
FWIW I'm in my mid '50s.
Morality may vary wildly from person to person, or from culture to culture. However, I was talking about the effect of observation upon morality. If you think an action is wrong, it matters not whether you have been observed doing it. You will still have violated your own moral code.
--why?
Wrong as in, most people believe it to be something that you should not do.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
and thus any means of avoiding thesharing of information (the basis of our species) is just plain stupid ! Just imagine ,caveman A eats ad berrys,caveman B sees it but cant tell caveman C beacuse of a tribal NDA !
bah
When referring to baby boomers, this means Wall Street and housing bubbles. When to GenY this refers to anything in ht digital domain.
Too many are stealing; just in different places.
Congress implements this as an economic right. By no longer distributing said book, the Author/distributor has given up their interest in the work. It no longer promotes the useful Art if it is no longer distributed. You're in the clear ethically.
Legally on the other hand -- others have addressed that, but let me just say that congress and the courts don't pay much attention to the quoted document.
IANAL.
Born in the 60s, after the landing.
I think you're looking at the extremes, though. I would agree that the infinity-minus-a-day copyright that Disney and the like seem to want is far too much, and the heavy-handed tactics that the RIAA and others use is overkill. Copyright, in its current "stock" form (un-altered by permissive licenses) does suffer from damaging overkill. This is a problem to be solved, but the complete disrespect of copyrights is not the solution. The solution of tying copyright to market utilization is debatable, but to debate tomorrow's evolution of copyright based upon completely separate abuses of today's implementation is irrelevant and antagonistic. If you treat it as a war, you're likely to lose. If you treat it as a problem, there's more chance of solving it.
While you may trot out the "I pay my taxes" line in regards to pirated content not being "free", that's a weak connection. Boycott is always an option. Political activism is always an option. My signature comes from people who, all too often, espouse piracy as some sort of legitimate civil disobedience, when, for most, the true motive lies in acquiring the product through the cheapest means necessary. These activists could have just as much of an effect on sales through boycott or political action, without the doubt as to their motives.
I'll admit that, practically, there may be no way to put piracy back in its box, but to let this lead to nothing more than the argument of "oh well, it's done, deal with it" is lazy, and is an insult to intelligence. Just as a flimsy lock doesn't justify a break-in, the abstract and unenforcable nature of copyright doesn't necessarily justify disregarding it.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Yeah, go ahead and download the stolen copy. Here's a simple breakdown: If the book is in print, then it and it's content are a product you can buy from it's manufacturer... and you should do so. If the book is not in it print, then the used book itself is a historical artifact, while it's contents are historical information. Historical information should be freely available to the public, so, if you're just after the information, there's nothing morally gray about downloading the digital version. If you want the actual physical artifact, the used book, you should buy that, and not steal it. But when the book is out of print, it's purely a matter of preference, not morality, whether you choose that you want the artifact or the information.
If you transport a book in a paper wrapping, it gets wet and an imprint of the cover art is left on the wrapping paper.
I don't understand your analogy at all. You download a file, and you redistribute the file to peers. What does a poor analog copy of a book cover have to do with sharing exact copies of the file? Maybe you do it in chunks, but significant and exact copies of the file are being redistributed.
IMHO the theory that you are distributing when you download a file via P2P was already defeated in a court in US in one of those RIAA court cases, but IANAL.
You are mistaken.
The law has nothing to do with it, as others have said. This is a morality question. I would question the morality that a copyright holder has to withhold access to previously published information.
The quid pro quo for reaping publication royalties should be that the publishers actually make the content reasonably available permanently. If they lack the resources to do so, there are others who will make the resources available. Perhaps this was the original intent of the library of congress.
If this were to become a requirement, then the ability to pay a publisher would, for sure, somehow emerge.
Sounds like another job for digital signatures...
My son has a "pop up medieval castle" book. Good luck getting that in plucker.
Nullius in verba
Suppose somebody cannot afford to buy a certain book. So I give them one for free, they know have access to that knowledge that they would not have otherwise.
It will cost you nothing for me to reproduce electronic copies of your book any cost that is incurred will be mine.
Artists lose control over their art as soon as it's sold, they are paid just once and it is gone.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
With a novel such as "Harry Potter" or "Lord of the rings" it may be a little harder to justify piracy.
But anything produced as "non-fiction" should be up for grabs. We already have libraries for this so I think copyright on books is purely to protect them and their outdated model of obtaining information.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Gen Y here:
Most books I've purchased only after I've stolen and read the PDF version.
IMHO the benefits of freely available information far outweighs the negatives of not compensating the author.
Writers who do so for love not money write better books; and will continue to do so if they are pirated.
Apparently 63% of Gen Y think it's okay to steal music & movies -- and the solution is "education" of young people.
As a member of that 63% my opinion is that IP laws need to be changed to reflect the new world order.
I'm told, if we do great artists like Britney Spears and Metallica would stop singing because they're not rewarded... I ask, would we really be worse off?
Yes, and no. While copyright is a right to control as opposed to a right to profit, it is also supposed to be a limited monopoly which gives creators an incentive to create before turning their creation over to the public domain. The question that must be asked is, "What is the purpose of allowing this control, and under what circumstances is it ethical to ignore a valid copyright?"
To my understanding, there are three fundamental rights (beyond the pragmatic benefits) which justify the existence of copyright:
1) The right to attempt to benefit from one's work
2) The right to not have others unfairly benefit from one's work
3) The right not to suffer from a misappropriation of one's work. (e.g., if someone is making shoddy knockoffs of your creation and attributing it to you, or if someone takes and shares a work that you did not want to publish because you felt it was sub par.)
If a book is no longer in print, it is reasonable to assume that the first right has been exercised. To proceed ethically, one must make sure not to violate the other rights. Buying or selling pirated copies of the book would be in violation, but merely obtaining a pirated copy for personal use would not. Redistributing the pirated copy without charging for it may be viewed as a violation, but merely using the book would not.
To be ethical with piracy, one must understand the spirit of the law. Copyright is a simple codification of an agreement between creators and the public. If the spirit of the agreement is upheld, the rest is just details.
Actually, sometimes I do just take the fruits of someone's work without paying them. I do this when I use works that are in the public domain.
We have a contract in our society that says that creators of works are entitled to a limited monopoly over the distribution of their works. They are given this limited monopoly to encourage the creation of works so that, when the copyright covering a work expires, the public domain will be enhanced and all will benefit. This enhancement of the public domain is the underlying justification for all intellectual property law.
If you take the limited monopoly and make it a permanent monopoly, as is currently the case in the US, the benefit to the public is eliminated. The content creators have broken their side of the contract, and as such I am no longer under any obligation to respect my side.
Preemptive rebuttals to probable arguments, please disregard if you do not agree with the argument stated in quotes:
(1)"But the law is the law and if you don't like it you should get it changed, but don't just break it!"
legal != moral. The law used to require that anyone discovering an escaped slave turn him in to the authorities. Are you suggesting that you would not break this law if it were still in force? How about a more modern example. Currently according to the letter of the law, if two consenting 17 year-olds have sex with each other they are both rapists and should be branded as sex offenders for life. Would you suggest that all sexually active minors be imprisoned and registered as sex offenders because "its's the law"? If not, please explain why "the law is the law" applies in some cases and not others.
(2)"Congress extended copyright terms, not authors! Don't punish content creators for laws that they did not create!"
Authors willingly enter into contracts with the publishing companies that pay lobbyists to get copyright terms extended. By supporting the publishers that pay the lobbyists, they are supporting the extension of copyright terms. I do consider it morally correct to pay independent creators for their work for this reason, though I would still pirate a work by an independent creator if the creator refused to sell it to me for whatever reason.
(3)"You are just a cheap mom's-basement-dwelling pirate trying to justify your illegal and illicit actions as you cry yourself to sleep every night! (also you're probably a virgin!)"
This is an ad-hominem attack, even if you drop the parts about me being a virgin and crying myself to sleep every night. Please address the merits of the argument instead of attacking me personally.
Book publishers in Australia receive payments for books that are in libraries. This money is often passed onto the author. Not sure about elsewhere in the world.
It is a problem just like this that makes me wonder why the wonderful things for the DIY micro-label indie music scene have not happened yet for old-fashioned flattened tree corpse authors.
There's lots of competitively priced options for bashing out 500 CDs or 50 vinyl complete with covers and inserts.
The web has never been a better for putting your little basement label up for all to see.
Lots of options for handling payment and some even throw in the shipping and handling on behalf of the vendor.
I know there is that whole self-publishing thing like Lulu.com and Print-On-Demand services but the publishing houses dominate the marketing and shelf space. Nor can I think of a modern example of success through this path. Let's face it, there isn't exactly a MySpace for budding authors out there.
In the end, the authors need to be aware, informed and most of all, possess a desire to continue making it easy for them to be paid or just thanked for their work long after the publishing deal expired.
I understand reading pdf's on a computer. The concept of ebook, however, seems very recherche to me. Why in the world would buy a reader just to peruse a freely available OUT OF PRINT pdf, ps, or textfile? Or are you talking about something academic and utterly recondite, like Rolf Singer's Agaricales, which retailed at $169, brand new, in 1972 or so and hasn't been seen since, not even gathering dust, except on my bookshelf? I doubt you could pay anyone to scan that one, let along prooofread it, in rny hurnble op1nicri.
There is, of course, a difference between out of print and public domain. Public domain is fair game, provided anything value-added (like correct spelling, modern punctuation, etc.) is your own work if you re-copyright it. I'm not a lawyer, of course, or I'd have drowned myself long ago.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
You're not guilty. You did it, but you're innocent until proven guilty (in many nations).
Everyone wants to make a buck. If we start with arguments like this about non-copyright holders not worth the cash, we will start to see the creep of legislation to "protect the retailers" from "unscrupulous pirates who would deny legitimate holders of copyrighted inventory their right to profit from that stock." Ridiculous? Outlandish? Wait for it, I'm sure it'll pop up somewhere eventually.
In the mean time, stay off the radar.
Well, you're also stealing from the publisher - though indirectly. The price and availability of used copies of books may spark re-prints (i.e. if a book is becoming more and more popular again, the publisher is becoming more likely to issue a new print run). With pirated copies, it's less obvious how popular a book actually is.
The problem I see with this is that a lot of people have been complaining about the Game Industry trying to stop second-hand selling of games because they see no money from said games.
Even if the author was still in business and the publisher still had this book in print, paying for a used copy still gives no money to them. It's irrelevant that it's out of print. If your argument is that because it's out of print makes no difference. It's funny that all these people bring this up when so many condemn the games industry for the same thing.
We have the right to sell what we own; be it a book or a game. This question is more about the ethical/legal issues of downloading the eBook over buying used. As I stated before, commenting on another thread, Fair Use would dictate that he has the legal right to buy the used copy and scan it in himself. Ethically, I see no issue with buying the used book and downloading the eBook version, but the law has been upheld before that you must make the backup personally for it to fall under fair use. I disagree with this, but that's the legal side of it.
-SaNo
He has the right as long as he creates the format-shifted version personally. Downloading it would still be considered illegal. However, ethically, I see no problem with it as long as he owns a dead tree version.
-SaNo
Not quite. If there is strong demand for the book on the second-hand market, the publisher might find out about it (they do track these things) and decide to reprint the book, which would lead to royalties for the author. Pirated/electronic copies would not have this effect.
.sig withheld by request
Except that the existence a robust market for the used product could create demand for the new product, and spur the publisher to (a) reprint the book or (b) print the author's more latest book. Publisher do pay attention to the used market, and not purchasing the used copy destroys that market signal.
.sig withheld by request
so you are stealing from the original book buyers. That's not a huge deal.
Like hell. You come to my yard sale and try that, you leave missing an arm.*
* This message sponsored by the International Association of Internet Tough Guys. All talk, no Action: ITG.
So you get the 2nd hand book, and scan it into your computer. What's the big deal? Only in the USA it's a big deal. Neither the publishers nor the author are receiving royalties the 2nd time around.
Read the pirated copy.
Save a tree.
If you feel guilty, send some money to the author.
-1980
I would download the book. Then if I thought it was worth my money. I would buy it used on Amazon. To support the author and their writing.
It is almost impossible to legally obtain a copy of the Eyes On The Prize video series.
Of course, it's available through various torrent sites in part through Downhill Battle's efforts and a protest called Eyes On The Screen.
Many, including creator Henry Hampton's family, argue against this form of protest and the Eyes On The Screen protest specifically.
Meanwhile, the Eyes on the Screen campaign was endorsed by groups such as the Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, who wrote: "Therefore, in the spirit of the Southern Freedom Movement, we who once defied the laws and customs that denied people of color their human rights and dignity, we whose faces are seen in "Eyes on the Prize," we who helped produce it, tonight defy the media giants who have buried our story in their vaults by publicly sharing episodes of this forbidden knowledge with all who wish to see it."
We grant copyright monopoly in order to create additional incentive for authors to bring their works to market.
If the author doesn't bring it to market, copyright serves no useful purpose.
If they're not selling, you shouldn't feel bad about not buying.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
1.- The author will not receive royalties whatever you do. It's part of the contract she signed with the publishing company. 2.- The publishing company has ceased printing the book, thereby implicitly ceasing their business of cashing dollars for selling the book. They do not want to continue doing business with the book. 3.- You want to read the book for personal use and not to make money with it. I would not have moral problems getting hold of a copy of the book, be it electronically or physically photocopying it.
There's a flaw in your argument: the reason the used book market is a social benefit is because of the stranglehold that exists on out-of-print copyrighted works as a consequence of copyright being effectively permanent. In fact the Internet is a much more efficient way of distributing out-of-print copyrighted material; the only reason it isn't the preferred mechanism is that it's illegal.
This is not to say that I think used bookstores are a bad thing - I think they are a good thing. But there is *huge* value in free exchange of information, and that is a natural application for the Internet.
Quit stealing my oxygen.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Isn't the making of a new technology a reduction in the general market for the old technology? Development of the HD-DVD / Blu-ray reduced the market for the DVD which, in turn, had reduced the market for the VHS tape. Why is that any less wrong than diluting the original creation of the technology? Or, alternatively, one could look at these acts as economic progress.
Does it matter what copyright was intended to do, or how it is legislated and enforced today?
Depends, morally or legally? The original question was one of the moral (or ethical if you prefer) thing to do, not a question of the legal thing to do. It's entirely possible to be ethically correct, but legally wrong, and in fact that happens quite often. It's one of the reason why judges and juries are allowed some leeway in sentencing and conviction. There's an expression which goes "no jury would convict you" often used such as "He was so annoying you could beat him to death and no jury would convict you."
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Again, what you are doing diminishes the value of the product according to the law of supply and demand.
That person may not be able to afford the book, but may scrimp and save, or may wait for the price to come down, or may do any of a thousand other things. But when you reproduce it, it has the same diminishing value that counterfeiting does.
I will admit that to a lesser extent, loaning can do the same thing. If I have a book, and I loan it to you, or a game, or a movie, that may diminish demand for the same., Because once you've read / played / watched it, you may no longer want to purchase it. But One is considered within the bounds of "the rules" and one is generally considered to be outside "the rules".
That said, in western society, where even the poorest among us routinely spend money on fast food and cable TV, and used books are so under-valued, it's difficult for me to envision the scenario you are positing as realistic. If someone truly wants info, they generally can get it cheap enough if they look through used book stores. I'm amazed what I find every time I visit one.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
I think that if a work isn't available in an electronic form that is open and priced at fair market value; then it deserves no copyright protection. I only pay for media that's in an open electronic form and priced at fair market value; everything else I pirate.
No, I will not work for your startup
This assumes that you as the user know that you are making the content available. This also assumes that the user consciously made a choice to go ahead and seed parts of a particular file while downloading it. Because that decision is made as a general preference and not on a per-file basis, one could argue that if you have a legal right to download the file, you can't reasonably be expected to go in and change this preference (and get near-unusable download performance) merely on the assumption that perhaps some of the other people who might get the file proxied through you do not have the legal right to download the file.
Further, there's the question of quantity. Fair use generally allows excerpts of copyrighted works to be used for various purposes without the copyright holder's permission. This exception may well apply here.
Finally, there's the question of usability. If the individual packets you send are not really usable without receiving the whole file (and I think that this is pretty much the case), one could argue that creating a partial copy is not actually making a copy in much the same way that sending out an encrypted copy of a movie to a thousand people but providing the key to only one person is effectively only making a single copy of the movie. Therefore, the person responsible for all of the copies is the person who originally provided it, and nobody else should reasonably be held liable for redistribution unless he/she is the sole person who provides an entire copy to another person (which could be trivially disallowed by the protocol).
Ultimately, the original person who produced the torrent is responsible for the copies, not the downloaders. To claim otherwise really seems like a stretch to me (at least in a court of reason, if not a court of law). If that's not the way a court decides, it is our responsibility as citizens to push for laws that fix this flaw in the legal system....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
What gives any seller the right to a strong market?
There's no right to a strong market, but copyright law itself says that a creator doesn't have to compete against his own work.
It's a little less clear for a used market, but I think there's a good argument that owners of used bookstores went into business in part because there was a limited supply of what they planned to sell. While I can certainly see the argument that it's better for society to have the content of out-of-print books freely available digitally, you have to be careful because that is going to have a big impact on used booksellers. I feel that they provide a valuable service, so it's not entirely clear that just dropping copyright is the ultimately best solution. It might be inevitable, but it's something that should be thought through carefully.