Re: What kind of pirate am I?

> The Seven Types Of Pirate
> Posted by: "joseph harris" [email protected]   joe9438
> Wed Oct 6, 2010 8:01 pm (PDT)
> 
> [A handy listing, and a link worth saving to send to any who take one of those views.]

"3. The Customer

These are people who paid for one version of a book and feel entitled to acquire other versions without paying for them. A good example is the case of a consumer who buys a hardcover edition of a bestselling novel and feels justified in downloading a pirated e-book because the publisher’s legitimate e-book version has not yet been released. No less a personage than the New York Times’s own ethical arbiter felt that a customer has the right to do this. (See NY Times Ethicist Condones Ripping Off E-Books). In other cases, consumers impatient with DRM restrictions will download a ripped off version of a file instead of paying for it and dealing with customer support."

You betcha. That's exactly the kind of "pirate" I am. 

And what I have reproduced above, which is _everything_ that the article says about it, gives me no reason to change my mind.

When I buy a book, the author gets paid. Once. I can read that book as many times as I like, and other people can go on reading it for a hundred years or more. I can read it directly with my unaided eyeballs, or I can read it through a pair of eyeglasses, or I can have someone read it to me. The fact that I've received the content in three slightly different ways doesn't mean I need to pay three times. The author gets paid once. That's the deal. Books are durable. Books are purchased, not rented.

If I already own a printed copy, _the author has been paid._ There's no reason I need to pay him again to read the same content again. He gets paid for his creative effort, not for ink on paper.

If I already own a printed copy, _the publisher has been paid_ for their marketing, the risk they took in acquiring the book, the cost of having a jacket designed, and so forth. If I already own the printed copy, there is no ethical reason why I should have to pay any more for an e-copy beyond the actual cost of production and a markup on that cost. If the book was, in fact, put into electronic form as part of the production process, the cost of the e-copy should be practically zero. If pirates have done the actual production, it didn't cost the publisher a thing and I don't owe the publisher a thing.

There may be a legal problem here--unfair, artificial law which protects unjust practices--assuming it does, and I say that because nobody seems sure of anything when it comes to intellectual property, and publishers habitually claim rights that they do not really have--but we are not talking about any ethical or moral problem.

Do Richard Curtis and Anthony Damasco think they are going to _dissuade_ me by mentioning that the New York Times thinks so, too?






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