> Anyone purchasing [...] any e-book editions of these books is violating the author’s rights

seems inflammatory to me; someone selling an e-book edition is certainly violating his rights, the purchaser is probably not.

Not really. If the seller does not have the rights to sell something than someone who purchases from them are in effect receiving stolen goods. They may not be intentionally violating those rights but they are still participating in an action which does just that.

The copyright is the right to restrict reproduction; formally, the purchaser isn't doing anything wrong.

Since an e-book is copied at the moment of purchase, the purchaser is the direct cause of the copy being made, so if they knew it was unlicensed, and they consider copyright violation to be wrong, then I would think they were doing wrong to cause it.

Are they civily or crimimaly liable? Probably not, but IANAL. Bigger pockets would say sue the store and the publisher, not the clients.

yeah, but intent matters, and someone purchasing an ebook is probably making a good faith attempt to obtain the media in a way that compensates the author - hence my elision in the passage i quoted, which seems to mean well, but is badly phrased. a downloader pirating the book is directly violating the author's rights wheras the purchaser is really also a victim along with the author - they are being deprived of money for something the seller has no legal right to provide. ianal and all that applies, of course!

i think the humor is in the juxtaposition of the abstract nature of chinese philosophy against the abstract nature of copyright law, not that the author of one should be somehow immune to the effects of the other