Craftybonds said:
I don't understand your logic here. books are free through the library, and books are free to pirate. what's the difference? the library doesn't profit off of me renting the book; their budgets are determined by population size, not the rate at which the community rents them. Also, it's called an amazon kindle. you can't exactly rent books for those.
Libraries have long historic roots, libraries where kept by many institutions before there where public libraries, it's about the pursuit of knowledge. Public libraries have the intention of keeping the populations skills up, and enabling them to further their own education. The books are not free. The books are paid for by tax dollars, or donated by the community, and as they wear out they are replaced by tax dollars. It's a community pool for the community.
bojac6 said:
Oh that makes sense. Yeah, old RPG rule books are a pain and super expensive. Especially ones that were never that popular. I spent years trying to find the core rule book for the original Crimson Skies. Ending up getting it of eBay for $40 bucks. Saw another copy a few days later for $150. Really glad it happened in that order, because I would have been so tempted.
Quite a few of those are still available in a digital format, if it isn't then you might want to give whoever currently owns the rights to the book a ring and ask if it is okay for you to obtain a digital copy. Chances are they won't object if they have no more plans with the material. You might note that many game developers have offered old versions of their games that they no longer have plans for as a free download when they are part of a long standing series, or they offer them as cheap downloads through a digital service if demand is high enough to offset the cost of offering it for sale. While you are never going to get a yes from Wizards of the Coast because they want you to buy the current editions, some companies and private holders might not be so strict with source books for games that have all but died out. You could even offer compensation. None of those things are illegal, making a copy of it without permission is illegal.
ChelseaChris said:
however 75% of my film library i have already seen in cinema, or had on dvd before losing it or breaking it. i dont feel theres anything wrong with downloading something you have paid for in a roundabout way before. i know its not ideal but what can you do?
While I don't personally object to people having the ability to change formats of media they buy it is currently illegal to do so without the permission of the copy right holder. They tend to look the other way with CD's and moving the files onto a computer and from there a portable media player, so I can understand the confusion, but it is still up to the copyright holder to say to some extent what you are allowed to do with the media.
OT: For the last time people. Stealing a shirt and downloading a game/CD/movie/etc are not the same. A shirt has an intrinsic value, each unit cost the same to make. A game costs $10 million for that first copy but each copy after that cost 10 cents to stamp on a disc.
No it doesn't make it right, yes a copyright holder should be paid back for the work they did in creating it, but it is not the same as stealing. It's just as bad in it's own way, but not the same as walking down to a store and stealing a shirt. It's copyright violation, illegally making a copy of a copyrighted work. You can have the same violation even if the copyright holder never charged for their product in the first place.