Reverse engineering yet another ebook format (Nemanja Mijailovic) https://mijailovic.net/2022/12/25/hkpropel/
eg in some countries participation in some parts of it (uploading/downloading/etc) is legal, whereas in other countries it can be the other way around.
As you're not distributing it, the chance of someone coming after you for downloading a non-legal copy is almost non-existent, and pretty much 0 if you've taken some basic precautions.
It sounds like you've answered your own question there; that as you'd read the majority of the book, that there's no real loss to you finishing it for free.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id2907834...
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/09/1135639385/libraries-publishe...
Now, I think this question is nuanced. For example, let's take Harry Potter. That book has sold millions. In my mind, J.K. Rowling has already been rewarded by humanity for her work many times over, so if you were to pirate her book then I think that is a far lesser evil than pirating a book written by an author who has barely made any sales.
Basically, I view the question of piracy as follows: (a) have we rewarded the author enough for that specific work? and (b) if not, then it's not right to pirate their book, and I should buy it. I think everyone should ask themselves that question.
The same with movies. Marvel movies are a money-making machine and they have more than enough money to keep them going. An indie film much less so.
The question of whether an author has been rewarded enough is tricky. For example, if Elon Musk wrote a book, I would have no problem pirating it in a microsecond because society rewarded him enough. But maybe that's not so clear-cut because the editor might be poor. Thus, I think it's safer to go on the basis of sales rather than the wealth of the author, except of course if the author is self-published. In that case, if they are rich, then who cares. Of course, what is rich? Well it's hard to give exact numbers but if they have 10 million dollars that's definitely rich enough.
You didn't say where you are. Copyright infringement tends not to be a criminal offence, unless you're doing it as part of a business (so if you print out copies of that ebook and sell them) or you do so much of it you distort the market (you distribute so many copies of that ebook you destroy the profits that publisher might have made).
The rights holder can sue for their losses, but this tends to be the cost of the item, so they tend not to do that.
In many countries it is at least a copyright violation, although it should be noted that downloading (not sharing while torrenting) is legal in some places.
> Have either the author or publisher lost money?
On average, probably yes, because some people would buy the book, some libraries would get more budget or allocate more of the budget to that book, and most importantly, if you did re-borrow it in 3 months it'd further expand the waitlist, perhaps making someone go "screw that, I'm not waiting 4 months" and buy it.
OTOH, if you took all the money being spent on entertainment (books movies etc.), collected that as a tax, distributed it to the entertainment industry based on what people actually consume, and in exchange made everything available to everyone, there would be no loss of revenue and everyone would benefit from much higher, friction-free levels of access.
That's part of what made Netflix work. It extracted ~$120/year of revenue and gave access to everything. Now, with all the competing services, they probably still don't extract more than one service's yearly fee over the same population (because few people have more than 1-2 services, and the ones that just gave up and went back to piracy probably make up for the ones that now pay for 2 instead of 1 service) but people now have much less access.
Without a massive "media tax" which would have practical issues that don't make it feasible or desirable, some friction on free access is necessary or nobody would pay for content, and at the same time that friction harms society by limiting access. Piracy puts an upper bound on how much friction can be added before people go the yarrr way.
Unless you focus on the very latest releases, most authors are already dead. If you round up just about any list of great works from the 20th century, you'll find that most of those authors are dead and have been for years. If you like 19th century books, all of those authors are dead.
Suppose I check an e-book out of my local library. Because Reasons, the library doesn't "own" unlimited "copies" of the book, so each "copy" can only be checked out to one patron at a time and if there are enough holds then a patron can't renew a checked out book. In short, ebooks in libraries are just like regular paper books, except to you don't have leave your house.
I had this ebook on hold for three months because it's very popular, but finally have it on my device, but I only have 3 weeks before I can no longer read it because of holds. I get about 2/3rds the way through before lock closes on the bits on my device. It's a very popular book, it will be 3 months before I can read it again.
I go online, use some service, find the exact same book, down to all but the locking bits, and download it, finish reading it a few days later, and then forget about it. I might delete it later if I need room.
Is that a crime? Have either the author or publisher lost money? On the one hand, I can say yes because if the libraries purchased more "copies", the waiting list wouldn't be so long, I might have been able to renew it and finish it. On the other hand, I wasn't going to buy the book myself, and the library has to balance budget and demand, so they probably wouldn't purchase additional "copies".
What ethical questions do authors and readers see here?