Hypothetical moral question....... e-books!

[Vesayen]

Was discussing this with someone today.

IF you illegaly download an ebook that is available in hard cover at the library, is it immoral-since you could go and read it for free from your library anyway?

[Pekka]

Of course it's not immoral. What is immoral is that you can't download it for free since you could just as well go to the library and read it

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by Pekka
Of course it's not immoral. What is immoral is that you can't download it for free since you could just as well go to the library and read it

You cant read a regular book on a laptop during a boring two hour lecture in college while pretending to be seriously taking notes.

[Tuberski]

Pekka's right.

Mods, you can close this thread now.



ACK!

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Vesayen


You cant read a regular book on a laptop during a boring two hour lecture in college while pretending to be seriously taking notes.

Why can't you?

I could do it in a small 30 person classroom in high school, why can't you do it in a large lecture hall.

ACK!

[Spiffor]

Vesayen:
If one follows your logic, it is not immoral to download music, because you can borrow the CD at the nearest audio-library. It is not immoral to download movies as well.

[St Leo]

Copyrights are an abomination.

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by Deathtongue


Why can't you?

I could do it in a small 30 person classroom in high school, why can't you do it in a large lecture hall.

ACK!

20 person class-cant.




This isnt actually aplicable in my case as e-books are cheap, but doing this made me think about the moral issue if I did pirate em.

Originally posted by Spiffor
Vesayen:
If one follows your logic, it is not immoral to download music, because you can borrow the CD at the nearest audio-library. It is not immoral to download movies as well.

If you pirate music you would listen to it often, on many occasions. USUALLY you take a book out of the library and read it once. You dont borrow a cd 400 times to listen to it 4 different times a day for 3 years.

Where can you get movies free?


The distinction is when you get a book for free(the library) you read it once and never again. When you buy a book, MOST of the time, you read it and never read it again....

When you buy a cd or a dvd, you intend to watch it multiple times for a long time-that is part of the purchase price-thats the distinction.

[TCO]

theft.

[Velociryx]

The interesting thing about e-books is that there's evidence that people who read an e-book (regardless of how it was acquired) are more likely to go out and purchase the bound version (this was discovered by a group who created both an electronic media version of their work, and a bound version. Gave the e-book version away, and attached a survey to their POS, discovering that some 30% of their buyers said they made the purchase BECAUSE they had read the e-book.

Is that applicable in all cases? I have no idea. I have an e-book copy of one of my novels....shall we put it up here and find out?

-=Vel=-

[Dinner]

Vesayen is going to burn in hell for breaking the digital millenium copy right act.