" I'm sending a message to publishers that physical books are in demand (not the case)"
Bullshit. While I agree with your point of view otherwise, this attitude is indefensible. To validate your "piracy," you have the simple option of paying for the physical book in order to provide the author at least a pittance. But your objection to that is that you might imply demand for physical books? Are you fucking kidding? Supporting physical books is A PUBLIC SERVICE. Because the fact is that many people DO prefer physical books, for the very reasons that you're railing against. They can't be taken away. If people don't demand them, they will disappear and we'll all be subject to yet another rental scam. That includes YOU.
WTF dude. You lost a lot of us right there, and need to re-think your value system.
Authors either need to sell something people want or get pirated.
It seems very obvious there is no moral or ethical justification for copyright/DRM or any other way of giving control over the replication of information. The author has at best only a legal right to money, and often bad law needs to be fought with civil disobedience (which is perfectly morally justifiable).
If an author/creator wants to get paid by people who disagree with DRM and the "licensing" of books/content they need to offer something for the money that those people want, or accept and attract donations.
Exactly. I hate it when people pretend the question is not on the table. The author+publisher chimaera has made a conscious decision to give me the finger. Well, fsck you too!
I haven't pirated lately because there's enough great content I can get on reasonable terms. But if I'm put in a situation where the publisher says "my way or the highway", I'm gonna go option C every single time, and feel no remorse whatsoever.
How is piracy not proof that people want the product?
You’re complaining about the terms they offer, not the product. If you’re not clear on that point, it’s no wonder the position is so garbled.
Maybe the author doesn’t want to get paid by people who dislike DRM. That doesn’t give anyone the right to take their content without paying. The principled answer is to refuse to read works from these authors.
The product is the totality of what you pay for, not just the content of the book unless the terms of the transaction give you full rights to the content of the book with no strings.
> Maybe the author doesn’t want to get paid by people who dislike DRM.
That’s fine and as I stated those people shouldn’t / won’t pay them.
> That doesn’t give anyone the right to take their content without paying.
This is exactly what my original comment addressed and you ignored:
I contend that there is absolutely no moral or ethical problem with copying information and no valid moral or ethical basis for giving creators exclusive rights or “ownership” of their creations, when they can be copied without depriving existing holders of the information, or giving anyone special/exclusive rights to profit from information.
I can see an argument for preventing corporate entities from profiting from any information or content they didn’t create, but not when it comes to people’s ability to freely copy and share.
The principled answer is to support and fund people and tools that enable piracy and free information sharing, to the detriment of “rights holders”.
Fair enough. It’s an extremist view but more principled than I gave you credit for.
But it’s also totally disconnected from DRM. Presumably you wouldn’t pay for non-DRM ebooks either, or at least see no “moral or ethical” issue with someone so declines to do so.
And I hope you’re also on the side of AI training as fair use that does not require permission or payment?
The only time I wanted physical books obsolete was in college, because I hated carrying 10lb of textbooks in my bag. I've had a full bookshelf for a decade since then and can't imagine a world where I have thumb through a stupid Kindle menu to see my collection.
I have the reverse. I used to have around 2000 physical books. Every time I moved (and I moved a lot) I'd pack them all up into boxes, move those stupidly heavy boxes, unpack them all. I'd almost never read them. They were just expensive wallpaper. Now I have thousands of ebooks on my hard drive and I carry them all with me when I wander the planet.
That's like saying bicycles are obsolete and we can move on.
Furthermore, it doesn't matter if they're "obsolete." In the case we're replying to, they provide a non-revokable mechanism to reward the author if you decide to "pirate" the E-book. Complaining that it sends a misleading signal that physical books are still in demand is a weak, ridiculous excuse for stealing.
Bullshit. While I agree with your point of view otherwise, this attitude is indefensible. To validate your "piracy," you have the simple option of paying for the physical book in order to provide the author at least a pittance. But your objection to that is that you might imply demand for physical books? Are you fucking kidding? Supporting physical books is A PUBLIC SERVICE. Because the fact is that many people DO prefer physical books, for the very reasons that you're railing against. They can't be taken away. If people don't demand them, they will disappear and we'll all be subject to yet another rental scam. That includes YOU.
WTF dude. You lost a lot of us right there, and need to re-think your value system.