If 3 people all borrow the same book sequentially then it's fine. If one person borrow it, photocopies it twice to share with two others, then they've broken the law. And yet nobody in either case has made more or less money.

I am in favor of copyright law that prevents profiting from another person's work, but not against copying. Once your idea is public knowledge, there is no reason for it not to spread freely given how easy it is to transmit information now.

This treads into territory I feel is grey. I imagine the complex case where I sell some creative content (e.g. a pdf, audio file or video). You pay me for access to this content and download it. I grant that you ought to be able to retain a local copy of that content for so long as you wish.

Then you create freecontent.com and publish it. You don't put ads on it, you don't sell it - you simply make it available for free at some URL without my express permission. In a world where that is legal, I feel it would materially harm my ability to earn from content I create. I have a hard time supporting that even though I am sympathetic to the idea that information ought to spread freely.

Got any data to back up this feeling? I've seen plenty of cases when content creators have had big breaks due to their content being made freely available. If people love the work, they'll support the creator. This modern trend of needing to pay before you even know if you love the work is an inversion of what has happened in history, to our detriment.

How modern do you mean? It seems to me that I pay for a movie ticket before I sit down in the theatre and watch it (trailer not withstanding). Same is true for plays and operas which preceded that. I would pay for a book before reading it (cover excerpt not withstanding). In fact, I'm trying to think of any media that I would consume before I paid.

> Got any data to back up this feeling?

Meh, we're only going to throw anecdotes back and forth. I recall bands like Radiohead and comedians like Luis C.K. experimenting with "pay what you want" ideas. I would suppose the fact that didn't catch on (outside of humble bundle charity type things) would be evidence that it didn't work for a large enough segment of creators.

Also, it isn't like RIAA members are allergic to money. I mean, if there was any reasonable evidence that free sharing of content resulted in profits that are equal or greater (or even viable) rationality suggests that they would embrace it.

But if I copy a film, what's actually happening? The distributor has already spent the money on making blurays and distributing to streaming platforms. If I photocopy a book, the publisher has already spent the time and material to produce the physical copy. The only argument here is that the author deserves a cut of revenue, because another copy of their (already publicly available idea) is in existence. I find this notion absurd. Why is an author entitled to money when an idea they have already disseminated is put onto a new piece of paper? I own the paper and the photocopier. The materials are mine. The author should not have a monopoly on how ideas are spread. Nobody can compel them to share their ideas, but once they are shared, they are out there. I could read a book to somebody and a partial copy exists in their mind. Should authors receive royalties for mental copies too? Why not? They lost nothing physical when I made a paper copy either.

Our copyright system is broken, and is based on completely flawed premises.

That’s a big problem with this whole debate. I think we’d be better off without copyright and that creators would find new, better ways to make a living. But it’s pretty difficult to see how this could be convincingly proved or disproved, so I guess we’re stuck with the status quo forever.

The books are priced in part based on assumptions about how many people can read them over time. A book at a library can probably only be read by ~20 people a year. If 200 people a year want to read it, the library needs ten books. But, if we were free to post the scans online, the price per book would need to be astronomically higher.

While the usual naive extrapolations of MSRP-times-pirated-copies is also wrong, allowing people to freely and at-will render others' work unprofitable is a subversion of the purpose of copyright: To ensure that the creation of works is be profitable enough to pursue.

If someone wanted their work to be in the public domain, they could so choose.

Can you support the claim that creative work becomes unprofitable when copies are made freely available, but the option to support the creator still exists?

If you're photocopying a library book in order to avoid buying your own copy, I don't feel great about that—we need to support authors. Yes, everyone's financial situation is different, and not every under-the-table photocopy is a lost sale, but there has to be some incentive to actually go to the bookstore.

But here’s the thing—for 99% of Youtube videos, there is no bookstore. There is no other way for me to acquire an unencumbered video file, regardless of how much I'm willing to pay.

And to stretch the photocopy analogy a bit, there are a lot of other reasons someone may want to photocopy a book:

• If the book has small print, you may want to enlarge the text.

• If you prefer listening over reading, you may want to OCR the pages and use text-to-speech.

• If you're doing research, you may want to OCR the pages so the text can be digitally indexed and searched.

• If you have an eReader, you may want to digitize the book so you don't have to carry around a paper copy.

And, sure, in some cases it may be possible to buy an official audiobook, or an eBook, or a large print edition. But in other cases, that might not be an option.

Downloading a Youtube video affords similar freedoms, allowing you to experience the content in the way that makes sense for you.

This is the big problem with the DMCA. It shortcuts the messy dirty work of dealing with IP violations, to the benefit of large corporations and the detriment of individuals. The former engage in rampant abuse of their powers under the DMCA, apparently without any fear of significant consequences. It's just another example of the degree to which large corporations own America.

Finally we have a way to preserve books in perfect form forever digitally yet people somehow try to shackle this new technology with paper book technology limitations. The same limitations that coat us so much ideas, knowledge and stories as books would burn, rot or turn to dust.

Frankly any form of technology trying to prevent digital book distribution and archiving really is a digital equivalent of the inquisition book burning (or helping make that happen again).

What is the fundamental difference between a book and a video that would make books a special case? Yes, they were around earlier, and yes, that history has shown what can happen if we start censoring expression. But that's not unique to books, and the exact same reasoning applies to video in the current world.

How many old movies have been lost, old TV shows that were live only, old software with source code lost for ever and even many games that no one can play anymore due to game servers and DRM servoces shut down.

Instead of breaking out of this vicious cycle when we finally have the technology to do that, there are people actively working against that, including sabotage of those who want to do the right thing...