The Danger of E-Books

Re:The Danger of E-Books by JoeAltmaier on Friday October 16, 2015 @11:36AM (#10399992)

At bottom, its not about respecting 'copyright'. Its about respecting authors. There's a system in place so they can dedicate some part of their lives to creation, and get compensated for that. To flout that system because complex moralizing disrespects authors, right at home where it hurts - their compensation.

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Re:The Danger of E-Books by klibertp on Friday October 16, 2015 @12:06PM (#10400215)

I'd say the blame is on their editors for not caring enough for the authors to try selling their work wherever possible. If I can't buy their work, I won't, so they won't see any money from me. Whether I saw their work - from the authors' point of view - is irrelevant.

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Re:The Danger of E-Books by JoeAltmaier on Friday October 16, 2015 @12:32PM (#10400417)

I'd say that might go under 'complex moralizing'. Their work is available; it may take more than a google or a click to obtain. Too much work to walk down to the store? That is what I meant by disrespecting the author.

I suspect much pirating is rooted in entitlement, and the moralizing comes after.

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Re:The Danger of E-Books by klibertp on Friday October 16, 2015 @01:08PM (#10400657)

> Their work is available

Sometimes no, it's not.

Just this morning I was talking with TeMPOraL and we were recalling how the software market looked like in Poland in the nineties (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10397694). My "walk down to the store" then would have to be to another country, a thousand kilometers or so; through two or three national borders. It's not that I didn't want to pay with what little money I had, it's just that there was no one who wanted to take my money (besides "pirates", of course).

This is the context for my statement above. Of course, it's rarely that bad nowadays, but it still happens. And how hard getting the content has to be for you to consider it not available? There being physically not one "legal" copy of Windows in the entire country (been there)? Is it enough for the nearest place offering content to be a thousand kilometers away? 500km? 200km? (and no, nobody wanted to even ship it via snail mail, because uncertain laws and such).

As for entitlement... well, that's trickier and I don't want to go there. I can only say that both sides of this argument have interesting and convincing arguments.

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Re:The Danger of E-Books by Lawtonfogle on Friday October 16, 2015 @01:00PM (#10400595)

That is probably true in most cases, not just of pirating, but of all interactions. We act, we feel, then we justify why we acted and felt such.

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Re:The Danger of E-Books by alextgordon on Friday October 16, 2015 @01:05PM (#10400639)

Where is this magical store where you can get (say) American TV in non-potato resolution, the day after it comes out?

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