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Entitled, eh? Some assumptions being made about people's ability to afford and access the physical books.

I've got cash, plenty of people around me don't and I don't begrudge their piracy. I pay, see below, when I was young and broke I pirated everything. I'm surrounded by people for whom a US minimum wage would be a stonking income, why shouldn't they pirate?

The big issue for me personally is shipping. I live outside the US and EU, and it's a real problem getting books out. I often pay more for shipping than I do for the books themselves, and I have to wait up to a month, and there's the ridiculousness of getting a book shipped across the US/EU, then to my third country.

My approach is that I pirate freely and happily, without a shred of guilt. Most of the books on my reader only get read up through the first few chapters, some I'll finish completely.

I do however like books, real books. If I'm getting into an author I've pirated, I'll then buy some of their other stuff, and I buy frequently.

This comes back to the old thing with music pirates being the biggest spenders on music. A classic case, I think.

So please, leave your moralizing out of this. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to pirate, much of it ending up with money in author and publishers pockets.



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