I think it's reasonable to both agree with your core premise, and to have a problem with the actions of the reader and the NYT ethics column. Would it be a good idea for a publisher to bundle an electronic copy of the book with the hardcover? Yeah, I think it would. Is it ethically wrong for the buyer to encourage piracy by downloading an illegally scanned version? Yes, I think it is, and I think the ethics column got that wrong in a huge way. Convenience, good business, and even reasonable compensation are not the core of ethics
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I think it's a stretch to suggest that the individual's actions described here "encourage piracy," and will prove quite difficult to build a serious and self-consistent ethics around the idea that things that "encourage piracy" in such an indirect fashion are ethically wrong above and beyond their direct impact. If the user gets his friend who bought the PDF version to copy it for him based on his (well-demonstrated) physical ownership of the book, is he guilty of this same nebulous sin?
Ultimately, if you're going to run full-bore with the idea that paying the price for a piece of content involves buying the content within, publishing entities are purveyors of far more manifest wrongs against this principle (like the use of legal force and intense lobbying to remove their own customers' fair-use rights) than a user following a slightly shady path to what ought to be a legitimate endpoint (a PDF version of the content he purchased).
Yes, Mike could borrow Bob's scanner. Yes, Bob could scan Mike's book for Mike. No, Bob could notscan his own copy and give it to Mike, since Bobn is then -NOT- media shifting. Your original claim is justifiable, if problematic. If you think that interfacing with someone who is actively distributing something in contravention of the law is morally problematic it's certainly possible to support that in various ways
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Ultimately, if you're going to run full-bore with the idea that paying the price for a piece of content involves buying the content within, publishing entities are purveyors of far more manifest wrongs against this principle (like the use of legal force and intense lobbying to remove their own customers' fair-use rights) than a user following a slightly shady path to what ought to be a legitimate endpoint (a PDF version of the content he purchased).
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