From a publisher's point of view, you're infringing on their intellectual property. To them, it's no different than simply pirating the book out of piratebay since they'll never see the revenue from it.

I think "case based reasoning" is going on. We have no problems loaning books out to friends because we always have. But pirating a copy is considered unethical, even though the net effect on the publisher is the same. One can argue that the former is slightly better because the both of us can't read it at the same time, but in my view we're just rationalizing.

BAN PUBLIC LIBRARIES NOW!!! ;)

The loan view was just an extension of private property. We can loan a chair because we lose access to it while loaned. With immaterial things like ebooks, we do not lose access while on loan.

That has always been the reasoning. Ebooks are not considered property. You are licensed a nontransferable copy of the book.

Yeah, I covered this:

> One can argue that the former is slightly better because the both of us can't read it at the same time, but in my view we're just rationalizing.

With books, most of us just lend books when we're done reading them. It's rare where both need to read at the same time, although (I guess) that can happen.

My greater point is that we, as a society, are perfectly comfortable lending books out to friends or having public libraries simply because we've grown up doing it that way. In an alternative universe, if public libraries or paper books were invented today, most people (especially intellectual property lawyers) would view it as a form of intelletual property theft and consider those things "morally wrong". Not that I'm saying that's right or wrong, it's just that people have a tendency to understand the present in terms of the past (case-based reasoning).