Ethics and E-books-Specificaly the New Harry Potter Book
I would like, no love, to stir the ethical pot on e-books, bootlegging and right and wrong in regards to the whole issue of E-books and sharing.
I have access to the New Book, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I am not asking if it’s right or wrong for me personally to have this access but to just present the situation for discussion. My daughter and I have already placed our reserved copy order in at a local bookseller so we will be buying the book the first day it is issued and it will join our collection of other Harry Potter books as well as a large collection of other hardbacks and autographed editions of some of our favorite authors. So really, what is the problem with my downloading and converting the book to a MS Lit format to read on my Axim?
I understand that the person that has posted the book has violated the confidence of their position and betrayed the Author and Publisher, but from one view point the Author and Publisher will not be harmed in any manner by my reading the book ahead of its release date. They will get their sells from me. Of course I am sure that there will be many others that will either try to make a profit on the e-book version or will try to spread it through out the net. But is this so different from my family buying one book and then sharing it with other family members or even trading it at the local book exchange? Most of these arguments have been bandied about on this site and others but it’s always interesting to get other peoples views. And I do love to start a good debate.
Cheers.
I would think that the difference is paying for your copy. If you were to make copies of you physical book and give it to your family/friend that would be the illegal part. Letting people borrow your copy is just like the library. If you had an electronic version and did not make copies but rather let your family/friends use the original that would be fine. I all stats with the "copying" issue. If it cost just as much or more to make a copy of an electronic version nobody would do that. Just like you are not going to copy the physical book. Cost prohibitive.
It's the a similar argument to the LOTR series. I own at least two paper copies of the series but there is no legally disseminated e-book version. Supposing that I had a soft copy of the books, would I feel guilty? I'm sure I wouldn't.
But on the other side of the coin - we cannot disregard copyright laws just because we do not agree with them.
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I would agree that distrubution is a problem before the release data. And you as one individual are not going to necesarily stop the distribution by not sharing. But I agree with the basic sentiment that if I paid for the hardback I don't have a problem reading a hacked version of the book.
I find it fairly black and white. If you're planning on buying the book anyway and having this electronic copy will NOT stop you from buying the book, then I see no reason why you shouldn't convert it for your own use. I personally have e-versions of the other 5 HP books as well as LotR and the all 10 of the Wheel of Time and I don't feel the least bit guilty or unethical about it.
It is easy to justify anything. I have some pirate software, music ect. and it easy to say I am not going to pay $450 for a program so they are not lossing anything. For ppc I use these as extended demos and pay for any I keep on my unit. Since they are a reasonable price I pay. It doesn't make it right legally but like I said it is pretty easy to justify piracy.
Now that music is available for a reasonable price at a high quality I am buying music online I have already downloaded. If software/cd's had been priced more fairly I don't think we would have the piracy culture we have now.
I have to say that even though I have electronic copy's of books I still prefer to have a paper copy, the electronic is only for convenience when travelling etc. I think the easiest way to slow down the spread of unauthorised ebooks is to release the ebook at the same time as the paper book and for those who buy the paper copy supply a use once discount code for purchasing the ebook. It won't stop copies appearing all over the place but it will at least give those of us who want both versions the incentive to purchase a copy at a preferential rate in recognition of our purchase of the paper copy.
the whole issue of copying a book is a bit different than music or software.
It has always been relatively easy to make a 'backup' copy of software and music, as as such, there are "paper" laws written to take that into account. I'm not aware of any such exception made for a book (or magazine) to have a backup copy... probably due to the lack of any convenient method of doing so for the average person.
Like the Music industy, the print industry will have the same concerns with regards to electronic 'backups' or electronic versions of their product. There has been many attempts to break into this medium, but there isn't as much demand for it... apparently the few of us left that actually read, prefer hardcopy. As such there isn't as much corporate frenzy about the issue.
This will probably become an issue once the tabletPC or some such device gets more popular and saturates the home markets... We PDA users are probably still viewed as a fringe market of Ubergeeks and toy mongers... but one day...
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If this technology becomes viable, then I think electronic books and papers will get the boost that it needs. Right now devices are too "clunky". While I do read ebooks on my AXIM... a newspaper? NEVER! Well, electronic paper might change my mind. Especially if it passes the "throne" test. :approve:
One thing I have noticed over the years about copyright and ethics. The easier it is to copy... the more lax our ethics become. Yeah, its a sweeping generalization and probably not true. But it sure seems that way sometimes.
The electronic paper is cool, but almost two years old without much more notice.
I agree that the easier things are to do the more people think about doing them. That is why so many crimes are really crimes of opportunity as much as crimes of planing. So ethically, is it right to have a copy of something in a format that you didn't pay for? Probably not.
I have access to the New Book, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.
The version of the book you found is a fake. It's actually written by a fan with too much on his/her hands. I had a look on irc(undernet - #bookz) just to confirm. It's not out yet, how would someone scan a book that's not out yet.
About ethics, personaly I've read plenty of e-books that I don't own. Unfortunatly, I don't have access to many English books here in Israel. I mean sure most of the popular books are available but there are plenty of great books that I have no way of getting my hands on. If you live in the US or England you can buy pretty much any book ever made through Amazon, in that case you have no exuse downloading books you do not own. On the other hand if you do own them I think it's perfectly exeptable to download electoric versions of the books. I mean think of it this way, you could have scanned it yourself, you're only downloading it to save time.
I found out it was fake after two sentences and it was pretty obvious. But the point about it being scaned prior to publication is worth discussion. I have just come into possession through a friend, of a digitaly formated and imaged copy of a brand new cook book that will be published this summer. Now before anyone goes off thinking I am some sort of devious SOB this one was perfectly innocent. It appears that many authors are now using software that transmits their writting directly to the publishers and then the publishers use various means of electronic transfer to send it to either Graphic and other persons that may put the finishing touch ona book prior to it being sent to the printers. So I think it is more likely that a scanned or at least digitaly formated work will be available if there is a brak down in ethics by an employee at one of these firms.From what I understand the employee got "SACKED" that is a hint as to where the cook book comes from LOl.
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When this thread came out, I started looking and found 4 different "files" calling itself the Half blood prince...
They were all the same 'story' or portion thereof, AND it was fanfiction, not the real story.
go to the very end of it and there is a footnote by the 'writer'
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