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Downloading music, movies, games, books or other intellectual properties without paying the respective royalties is considered a crime in most countries. Nevertheless, many people do it regularly.
I have heard it many times, pirates arguing that they see no difference in downloading a song or recording it from, say, a radio station. I truly doubt recording songs from the radio using a cassette tape was ever considered a crime. How about recording a movie from TV instead of downloading it?
But what struck me the other day was about the books. Why are there no digital libraries available? It is so hard to find a free study book or free examples of term papers. Meanwhile, I could just take a short walk and find all these items available to me in the nearest library.
What is bothering me is that while movies, music and games are generally not in the best interest of the producers to be in the public domain, I strongly find that books are. Wouldn't it be so beneficial for any country to have top notch books easily accessible? Maybe local government could buy the right to distribute them online to individuals who live within the same area (given that they find a way to control).
How about educational videos, classes and podcast? I see there are several universities in the U.S. already leaving these items at the public disposal. Here in Brazil, some universities are following these footsteps but they are still in a very immature state.
What are your thoughts on piracy, protectionism and intellectual property?
 
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I'm buying one or two 1tb hard drives soon, I think you know my thoughts on piracy.
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Personally, I use piracy as a means to justify a purchase. If there's a band coming out with a new cd who I enjoy, I will generally download the album beforehand to see if it's actually worth the stupid price of a CD. In a very simple case, I was a very big Linkin Park fan back in the days of Hybrid Theory, however their last two releases have been absolute garbage and not what I'm looking for in music, so I was elated I downloaded them beforehand to listen to, realize it was terribad, and promptly delete it. The same thing goes with video games. If it doesn't have multiplayer, and I can't find a demo, I'm going to try and find it online before I waste my money on something, especially considering I don't trust game review sites too much anymore.
I think a lot of my issue has to do with pricing, especially being in college and having approximately no money. I'm not going to pay for a DVD I'm only going to watch once, I generally hate watching the same movie more then once...and I would never if I wasn't viewing with someone who hasn't already seen it. I see DVD sales and the like going down the tubes as Netflix spreads to more types of outlets, it's way too convenient.
On the topics of books, I do find it a bit strange that it's harder to find an online text version of a book you could easily go pickup at your local library for no charge, although I suppose getting the text digitized is the major hurdle with this. In any event, there are some great places with free ebooks, one particular one I know about is project gutenburg HERE. It has over 100,000 free ebooks for download on all sorts of platforms, might be a good place to start if you're looking to find a source for stuff like that
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Books are probably harder to find online because the publishers don't want pirated copies running around, and they're the ones who have the digital copy.
Also older books were printed back when there was no computer (or at least no word processing) and so there's no digital copy available.
Lastly it takes someone with dedication to scan each and every page so I doubt pirates would do it unless it was really popular (ie not study books).
Anyways, I think RIAA and stuff like that is ridiculous, but I still buy books and buy CDs, but I also download when I just want one song or if I want to see if the CD's worth buying.
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In the UK at least, I'm almost positive it is illegal to record from the radio.
The fact that there aren't many digital libraries is probably due to the fact that books are not easily uploadable to the internet. You first have to put the book into a digital format which is harder to do than with sound/video. Google books is the best source of free books I've found.
The problem I have with intellectual property and copyright laws is that the enforcement of them often stifles creativity while the offender is not hurting the original work. Take for example youtube videos using a copyrighted song or that one clip of Hitler in his bunker from the movie Der Untergang. The user that is uploading these videos is not profiting at all and is actually helping the film/song get exposure. It's mindless protection.
I still think piracy is morally wrong, but that doesn't stop me from doing it. I have enough reasons to justify it to myself that it doesn't bother me.
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There are a lot of pirated books online, also textbooks.
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EPT
