Is it ethically wrong to pirate books that you own?
If you own a CD and an MP3 player then you can legally and ethically rip the CD onto your PC, then put it on your MP3 player.
If you own a book and an eBook reader like a Kindle then you can not simply/easily copy the book and put it onto your reader.
For books that you already own, do you think it is morally wrong to download a pirate version of the ebook file?
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
No.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
Maybe a smidge but not all that much. Some/most publishers contract out the electronic versions and frequently part of the compensation for their work will be some percentage of the profits from the sale of those e-verions.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
With music, this is definitely legal by Dutch law. Probably for eBooks as well, not sure. One issue is that with most ways to download, you also upload - which is illegal.
I don't call it morally wrong, though.
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I think it probably falls under fair use, RB. There is the small marginal cost of digitizing the book, but I'd imagine it's miniscule. Even better would be if you were using a privately OCRed copy.
I'm not quite sure where I stand, but some ethicists would argue that most of those e-book purchases are actually purchases of licenses to use the files as is. Thus, the argument goes, the buyer isn't entitled to break a contract for the sake of convenience. Especially when there are options out there to permanently own a book (albeit not digitally).
We're talking about if you already own a book.
Explanation with a personal example. Last year we went on holiday, I took quite a few books but they made our cases quite heavy when travelling. Amanda got me for Christmas a Kindle as that way we don't need to carry all the books. Not knowing she was getting me that, a few weeks before Christmas I bought all the GRR Martin books I didn't own yet. About to go on holiday which is the perfect time for me to read, want to take the books I've bought - but not have it heavy by using the Kindle Amanda got me. If I packed the whole series of books it'd be very heavy again, which is the job of the Kindle. Is it ethically reasonable then to download the books that I already own?
I'm of the school of thought that when you purchase a work of art (whether it be music, film, or book), you are buying a license to use the IP for personal use as much as you want, in any form you want.
IMO the only ethical issue here is the marginal cost of the new format. In the case of directly pirating a digital work (say, making a copy of your DVD so your kids won't destroy it, or ripping your CD to MP3s for easier hard drive storage) I think there's no violation of fair use copyright law at all. On the other hand, I wouldn't suggest that one who buys a Kindle book should feel like they can go steal the hardcover from a bricks and mortar store. That's because there's a significant marginal cost involved - printings, shipping, and stocking the book. In the case of zero marginal cost, it's not an issue.
Now, one could argue my interpretation of buying digital media is wrong. But given the pricing I think that I'm right. Digital books cost more than a mass market paperback, which implies to me that it at least accrues the same rights about IP - you should be able to lend it, copy it for personal use, and own it in perpetuity. Ditto with music - a CD is much higher fidelity than MP3s, but the pricing is very similar. There's some non-marginal increase in bandwidth costs (far more than a book), but it's still almost certainly less than the cost of physically shipping a CD and stocking it in a bricks and mortar store.
Ethically, at this time, I would say no, and I don't see any moral conundrum here.
When an e-book becomes something more than a digital word-for-word copy of a physical book, I might change my mind.
For instance, let's say Apple develops mass-market smellevision* technology, and you can now smell the morning dew on one page (where there's a forest)... and a dragon's breath on another (where there's a dragon). Then, I would say it would be ethically wrong to pirate an e-book for a book that you already own, because of the significant additional content added -- say, one appropriate smell per paragraph.
*: http://smellevision.com/ is taken
..and when you illegally download it, you're not using their bandwidth, so it costs them nothing.
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It's hard for me to find serious moral fault with this, even though it's illegal. However, I think a better question is whether it's ethical to help spread the ebook to people who probably never had any rights to it.
Is that actually a better question? Isn't the answer... no?
I do believe that lending should work the same for e-books as for real books, but assuming you just mean copies, then it would seem to be a clear cut case of IP theft.
Then doesn't it become unethical to torrent it by extension? What are the implications for downloading directly from an ad-supported site? Aren't you aiding the further illegal distribution of these ebooks through most methods of procurement?
Yeah, I think seeding a torrent of IP is a definite ethical problem.
I'm not so sure about ad-supported sites - it probably covers their bandwidth costs for the most part, but yeah, any profit you're giving them is an issue.
In a vacuum there isn't a problem - a peer-to-peer gift of IP you already have rights to in a different form isn't at issue. It's more of a problem when either you are further distributing said IP, or that your actions might in other ways encourage the theft of IP.
So if somebody was to be a torrent "leech"* only then you'd have no problem with it?
* I love the pejorative term used for what is in general an illegal activity anyway.
You can't really torrent without uploading to somebody, generally the term leeching is reserved for downloading more than you upload.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
So don't use a torrent for copyrighted works. There are other ways.
Not too many. Download sites, you in effect pay them for being pirates with the ad revenue. Stuff like DC++ could work, but they generally require you to share stuff too I think?
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Take the e-book out of the library and crack it?
Why does that not sound ethical?
I don't understand why it would be unethical. You already own IP on the book, and the library is not losing at all by your breaking the copy protection.
Illegal, definitely, under the DMCA. But unethical?
Unethical if you agreed to the licensing terms or the terms of the copyright. Of course that may make it more ethical to download books you HAVEN'T boughthowever that would perhaps fail the "what if everyone did that" test.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
I don't sign an explicit license when I buy a book, or when I get an ebook from the library. There are no 'terms' to a copyright, they are regulated by law. Under copyright law 'fair use' is allowed, which generally would include any number of different personal uses. DMCA aside, I don't think this is a violation of copyright law or some implicit license.
More broadly, one might argue that a distinction needs to be made between 'legal' and 'ethical'. It's obviously illegal to do what I'm suggesting, but I think it's tough to think it's unethical. You have already compensated the creator of the work for their IP, and your use of the IP in a different form has no marginal costs to anyone. Where's the ethical issue?
I don't think it's even illegal here.
So, is it ethical to download a movie you were going to record from tv, but forgot to? Or if you recorded it but it was delayed you missed recording the last 10 minutes?
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Heh, interesting question Flixy. So I recently had this issue - as many of you (at least in the UK, maybe the US) know, there's this great BBC series called Sherlock, which is a modern-day retelling of Sherlock Holmes stories. They play in the BBC a number of months before they are rebroadcast on PBS in the US, and it is challenging to get free access to the BBC Player from a non-UK IP address. So you're stuck waiting and having to record the damned thing. My wife has a similar problem with Downton Abbey, another popular UK television show in the US.
We have a particular oddity, though, that my wife's sister lives in London and has electronic copies of these two shows from when they were shown in the UK. When my wife flies to the UK for work every month or two, she fills up a memory stick and brings it back. So here's the kicker: can we (a) watch them at all ethically, and (b) watch them before they are broadcast in the US?
My general approach has been to wait until they are shown on PBS before I watch each episode. I figure that I'm being a bit naughty by avoiding the hassle of recording the show from the broadcast, but that overall no harm has been done. Am I deluding myself? My wife, on the other hand, reasons that if it was broadcast somewhere for free then it's reasonable to watch it as soon as she gets her hands on it.
We've had similar problems with Israeli TV shows, but for the most part they never make it to the US, so we're stuck either buying the seasons on DVD a year or two after they are shown (at either an exorbitant markup as an import or on our annual trip there), or downloading/streaming them as they are broadcast over there. It's a much more challenging case to suggest this is ethical, though, so I generally insist we buy the DVDs (though I'll sometimes watch the downloaded shows before the DVDs come out and only purchase them once available).
I've got hulu & netflix to deal with this. Since there's a legal alternative that compensates the content producers in some way (either through ads or direct subscription fees), I think that yes, it is.
I was just riffing off of your previous post about purchasing a license to use the work however you wish
While most works are released under protection of "all rights reserved" copyright, that's not the only available option. For obvious reasons publishers and writers etc. choose the regular old copyright, and for obvious reasons we agree to buy their stuff anyway. Wrt "fair use", from what I can tell, wholesale copying of a work can fall under "fair use" if you only do it with works you already own, for personal use, and possibly if you also do the copying yourself without anyone else benefiting from it. If you download pirated ebooks--copies of books you already own--then the person providing the pirated ebooks is the major bad guy... but we seem to have established that if you get them via bittorrent you're in an ethical grey area, and if you pay someone else besides the author for them--directly or indirectly through ads--you may also be in an ethical grey area, given that you absolutely have the option of buying the books directly from the source. Piracy may not be theft, but if those who engage in the mass provision of pirated ebooks are engaging in something dodgy then I'd be supporting/enabling that dodginess by downloading ebooks, regardless of whether or not I own them. It's the non-thieving but nevertheless dodgy equivalent of knowingly buying stolen goods.
That being said I don't actually have a problem with this practice, I'm just trying to see the other side for a change. I think we're ready for a subscription-based model here, and I also think all physical books should come with a code that grants access to a digital copy
Apart from the potential dodginess of aiding people who profit from piracy, I don't see any problems. And, for the sake of full disclosure, I must admit that I have a damaged ethical lobe and so I tend to ignore most piracy-related ethical problems in these discussions.More broadly, one might argue that a distinction needs to be made between 'legal' and 'ethical'. It's obviously illegal to do what I'm suggesting, but I think it's tough to think it's unethical. You have already compensated the creator of the work for their IP, and your use of the IP in a different form has no marginal costs to anyone. Where's the ethical issue?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Er... I was actually talking about the specific option of cracking DRM on a library ebook. There's no nefarious actor there, then. I agree that supporting those who illegally and unethically distribute IP is a bad idea.I was just riffing off of your previous post about purchasing a license to use the work however you wish
While most works are released under protection of "all rights reserved" copyright, that's not the only available option. For obvious reasons publishers and writers etc. choose the regular old copyright, and for obvious reasons we agree to buy their stuff anyway. Wrt "fair use", from what I can tell, wholesale copying of a work can fall under "fair use" if you only do it with works you already own, for personal use, and possibly if you also do the copying yourself without anyone else benefiting from it. If you download pirated ebooks--copies of books you already own--then the person providing the pirated ebooks is the major bad guy... but we seem to have established that if you get them via bittorrent you're in an ethical grey area, and if you pay someone else besides the author for them--directly or indirectly through ads--you may also be in an ethical grey area, given that you absolutely have the option of buying the books directly from the source. Piracy may not be theft, but if those who engage in the mass provision of pirated ebooks are engaging in something dodgy then I'd be supporting/enabling that dodginess by downloading ebooks, regardless of whether or not I own them. It's the non-thieving but nevertheless dodgy equivalent of knowingly buying stolen goods.
That being said I don't actually have a problem with this practice, I'm just trying to see the other side for a change. I think we're ready for a subscription-based model here, and I also think all physical books should come with a code that grants access to a digital copy
In socialist Finland, the local version of the, umm, MPAA/RIAA gets a small 'tax' from every purchased VCR tape, empty CD, DVD, etc to take your dilemma into account. In a surprising spark of sanity, they're thinking of removing this bloated monstrosity.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Same here.
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