EPTStealing ebooks is no different than any other media. Stealing academic texts is even advisable, seeing as the mark up on those texts is completely outrageous. If I was able to download every textbook I needed, I'd save over a grand a year.
Paid eBooks\Stealing Books - Page 7
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Offhand
United States1869 Posts
Stealing ebooks is no different than any other media. Stealing academic texts is even advisable, seeing as the mark up on those texts is completely outrageous. If I was able to download every textbook I needed, I'd save over a grand a year. | ||
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emythrel
United Kingdom2599 Posts
Give me a physical book and I'll read it... anything... literally, I'll read it. Give me a kindle, I'll stop reading after 1 page or so. Even if its a book I really enjoy reading, such as Harry Potter.... It's just not the same! I do love books, and I love the idea of them being available to more people via the internet, but digital books just aren't for me. Audio books, awesome... give me MP3 audiobooks all day long... I just don't want to read one from a screen. As for paying vs stealing, I've been "lent" books all my life.... I didn't pay for those, the person who bought it finished with it and passed it along to me. So I just see torrenting as an extension of that, though on a much huger scale. If you are willing to pay for something then pay for it, if you wouldn't have paid for it in the first place then no one is losing money and so everyone is happy anyway. | ||
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aebriol
Norway2066 Posts
Otherwise, I wouldn't. | ||
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redeux
United States148 Posts
You are pirating books, not stealing them. Stealing implies you take the original and deprive it of the original author. | ||
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Asymmetric
Scotland1309 Posts
That said I have nothing but contempt for the concept of "intellectual property" laws outside of national sercuity, so be my guest. | ||
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darkscream
Canada2310 Posts
I would never steal a book from a bookstore (The paper has value, the labour to put it there has value). But once something is online.. Essentially nobody is hurt, I would never buy what I download unless I like it so much I need a hard copy to be with me when I'm not at my computer. For example, I downloaded the starcraft2 beta and played against the AI a lot before deciding to buy the game. The game was so good, I wanted the box and the disc, and the battle.net connection of course. On the flip side, I downloaded an enormous amount of Dungeons and Dragons books, ranging from those long out of print, to current 4th edition stuff. I think 4E sucks dick, but my friends wanted to play it so I had the resources at home to prepare for game day. The "Buy before you try" mentality is just crazy considering the price of these books/softwares, i would much rather try before I buy. | ||
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aebriol
Norway2066 Posts
On January 14 2012 05:01 darkscream wrote: Essentially nobody is hurt, I would never buy what I download unless I like it so much I need a hard copy to be with me when I'm not at my computer. The "Buy before you try" mentality is just crazy considering the price of these books/softwares, i would much rather try before I buy. I hope you realize these two statements are in conflict with each other. 'Try before I buy' means that if you like it, you buy it. "I would never buy what I download unless .... I need a hard copy to be with me" ... that isn't 'try before I buy', that is saying, if you like it, you would buy it only if you had to have it with you in a form that wasn't readily available for pirating. | ||
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Zren89
United States131 Posts
Zren 89 "The new(er) books should be paid for, at least the ones where the author is still alive, its hard work writing anything, fiction or non-, and they should be compensated for their efforts! " -Should there be 'fair use' for paying for books, some sort of system where you don't have to pay as much/anything if the author is not really needing it (their decision). Yes, authors can make their material free to access but (see next bit). Also, once they're dead, should they get royalties (I dunno how the law works here). A nice example is the Tolkein foundation, where his nephew, the heir, is a conaisseur of different types of marijhuna and just lives off the royalties of his uncle... Does he deserve it!? Zren 89 "But seriously everyone should know that MANY of the books that you need for lit classes at uni and other things like that are readily available FOR FREE off of legal sites and even through Amazon. They fall under Fair Use, and are generally considered to be educational in nature and written before 1950's... there are alot of options for self-improvement, self-education that are not illegal, I think it would definitely be a good idea to look into those before "pirating" them." I believe that If an author chooses to publish a book with their own hard-earned money then they can in fact give it out for free, after all they wrote it and published it themselves, they are well within their rights to distribute it for free. The problem arises, as many people have pointed out in this thread, when there is a middle man such as a publisher (who understandably wants to get a cut of the profits for the work of publishing the book) and the same goes for recording companies (who want a cut for recording the content of the cd/mp3) independent musical artists and authors have more leeway with what they can and cannot get away with. But if someone is just starting out it is VERY VERY difficult to amass enough capital to distribute your product/work on any kind of large scale (with hard copies that is, although burning a cd of your work is cheap as hell compared to just 10 years ago). This is becoming less and less true as mediums like youtube and soundcloud become more prevalent and see more use worldwide, sharing your talents with others has become easier than ever and that is why the music "industry" and the publishers rail so hard against piracy and illegal copies of books and music videos on media sites, because it becomes harder to extract as much profit as they have been able to for so long, they see the way of life that they have been so heavily invested in for so long, coming to and end and they are fighting it tooth and nail. Also as an occasional connoisseur (what a French fucking word!) of the sweet mary jane I can't say as I really blame the guy for enjoying the money that roles in :/ But whether or not he actually deserves the proceeds from the sales of the books and other media is a legal question that I am not really qualified to answer in any meaningful way. But my opinion is that everyone should have a purpose outside of just indulging one's self and enjoying the work of their fore-fathers, but perhaps he does something else with a portion of the proceeds, a charity organization and what-not? Tl;DR middle-man organizations in all media industries as they have worked in the past are going to radically change with the advent of the technology that myself and my peers (you guys!) now take for granted youtube, soundcloud, amazon etc. Tolkien's nephew smokes pot, tha'ts no big deal, but I don't know if he really deserves the money he gets from the sale of his ancestor's work(s). | ||
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Ryndika
1489 Posts
On January 13 2012 04:47 TheQforce wrote: because not paying for literature means that you aren't supporting the writers and if everyone done it , it would cause becoming a writer to be impossible to do for a livving, and a lack of literature would hurt society in the long run If I'm not reading it I'm still not supporting the author... If I read it I can recommend it AND support author. If you really like the book most people probably buy it in hardcovers (assuming from my experiences from other people in this thread and real life). Lack of literature just can't happen but too expensive literature and culture SURE can happen and may happen with these SOPA and ACTA laws. That will definitely hurt society. e: What about authors that are dead? | ||
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Seraphone
United Kingdom1219 Posts
On January 14 2012 00:04 Nizaris wrote: They have to change because they have to adapt to the digital age. It has NOTHING to do with thieves. Copying is not stealing FYI. when i copy it the original remains untouched, unlike when i steal something, see the difference? i also hate opinions like this. No, it's still stealing. | ||
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Angel_
United States1617 Posts
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KwarK
United States42694 Posts
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shinosai
United States1577 Posts
I don't really like reading stuff on my computer, but it is quite enjoyable on the kindle. It doesn't bother my eyes in the same way that the computer does. E-books are the future. | ||
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NoodleFish
South Africa198 Posts
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jeremycafe
United States354 Posts
On January 14 2012 00:04 Nizaris wrote: They have to change because they have to adapt to the digital age. It has NOTHING to do with thieves. Copying is not stealing FYI. when i copy it the original remains untouched, unlike when i steal something, see the difference? i also hate opinions like this. I hate people like you. You are still committing a crime. You are still a P.O.S.. Grow up and pay for the crap you use. Just because the e-nerds of the world decided to create a new term to make themselves feel better about committing a crime, you are still taking something you do not deserve to have. Whether it be bits or paper, you did not pay for it. and to add, YOU are not copying anything. To do so YOU would need to original copy. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain17992 Posts
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jeremycafe
United States354 Posts
On January 15 2012 08:44 Acrofales wrote: I am currently reading an illegal e-copy of the Wheel of Time series. However, I have all the hard copies, they just happen to be in another country (at my parents' place). I consider my action both legal and ethically correct: I just don't feel like lugging 11 1000-page books around, but I do own them. I consider this the same as downloading songs rather than ripping the CD myself (except that creating a decent e-book without the source text is a lot harder than ripping a CD) Hopefully books will follow the way of DVDs/Blu-rays and come with a digital copy code so you can get one via regular avenues. | ||
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diophan
United States1018 Posts
There are a fair number of studies that state that reading in print is faster than on a screen. Here's one random thing I googled: http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~adillon/Journals/Reading.htm For me personally, I get super distracted while reading on a computer. For instance, I'm supposed to be reading a paper which I have a .pdf of right now but I'm posting on TL  There's something to be said for being able to put your own notes in the margins. If you don't do this to books I guess it doesn't matter to you but I have yet to find a really nice solution to marking up digital books in djvu/pdf. I read mostly math books for my research and writing quick notes on the side to why something is true in a proof can save me 2 hours when I go look at it 6 months later and don't remember why an argument works. Morality: I don't really think there's much of a point in discussing this since it's exactly like pirating music. If you're okay stealing music you're probably okay stealing books and vice versa. | ||
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