Reply #171: And keeping a copy at the same time?

[Spike89]

A huge difference is corpreal instances, i.e., is the pirate creating quantity (yes) and does that affect value (yes). Your analogy only sort of works when you are talking about something semi-trivial or very time-sensitive. A textbook, a reference work, poetry, classics, and many other types of publications are often used repeatedly, and on-demand.

If 100 people are using the book simultaneously, the author/publisher/bookseller deserves to receive payment for 100 units. In your buy, read, pass it along, scenario, no problem, it is one simultaneous use. To be accurate, what pirate's do is akin to running the book through a copy machine--something long acknowledged to be stealing.

In e-books, pricing has been dropped NOT because they are cheaper to produce, but because they are single-use/one reader publications. You can crack the DRM and pirate them, but you're stealing. It is simple as that.

Ironically, the "info is free" folk can't seem to get it through their heads that authors and publishers aren't selling info at all. They are selling the labor and expertise involved in getting that info into a format you can access and digest. Refusing to support the labor of the people trying to educate, illuminate, inspire, entertain, and inform you isn't just incredibly stupid, it is totally counter to what you profess to be doing, which is encouraging the dissemmination of knowledge.