Re: NY Times Ethicist Condones Ripping Off E-books

joseph harris wrote:
> The moment you exampled DVDs I realised you were trying to apply the
> situation in one industry to another. Books are not comparable in
> that way at all. Few people read a book twice. For that reason any
> distribution against the contract of purchase is a loss to the
> author; it is also straight breach of contract.

What?  If anything, the way in which movies and books are different
suggests that copying books should be *more* OK.

If I am only going to read a book once, and I have bought one copy of
the book, does it matter what other copies I make in order to complete
my project of reading it?  If I want a paperbook for the bedside, a
Kindle copy for the beach, a printout of a single chapter for the tub?
I am going to buy one copy and read it once; how do the copies affect
the author’s income?  Conversely, in the old world, if I wanted to see a
movie twice, I would have to pay admission twice.  The experiential
billing there suggests that I ought to pay for every new format or
experience in which I want to consume the movie.

I completely agree with you about the breach of contract issue.  This is
why I mostly use Free or Open Source Software; I try to abide by
contracts to which I am a party, and choose not to enter into contracts
I find unacceptable.

However, increasingly, it seems to me that your arguments devolve to:
This is against the law, and is therefore wrong.  The law has itself
been wrong in the past, and will likely be wrong in the future.  An
assertion that the law is currently correct must be backed up by more
than repetition that it is the law.

I am put in mind of a delightful incident at the SanFranMusicTech summit
a few years ago, at which a speaker, defending historical copyright,
came *this* close to calling Mike Godwin a Nazi.  The speaker did
compare him to slaveowners, but not actually godwin Godwin.  Ah, well.

~Chris
-- 
Chris Maden, text nerd  <URL: http://crism.maden.org/ >
“Four freedom boxes: / Soap, ballot, jury, ammo. /
 Use in that order.” — haiku after Ed Howdershelt
GnuPG Fingerprint: C6E4 E2A9 C9F8 71AC 9724 CAA3 19F8 6677 0077 C319


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