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Why do we never say 'Hey, I read this book - it was interesting - so I scanned it and uploaded it to bit torrent'?

What makes music different?

Because a music clip lasts 3 minutes but the book takes 3 hours or 3 days or 3 weeks to read.

And because we don't have the tools to copy and splice video and audio files like we do have a keyboard and cut-and-paste. Not everyone has a scanner, and scanning a book is a lot of work anyway. Everyone has a CD player on their computer, and software to rip it and convert it.

If people don't have to scan the book but actually have the audiobook or a PDF e-book they are more likely to just upload it to a bit torrent.

So it is not the same, not by a long shot.

Oye, vatos, dees English sink todos mi ships, chinga sus madres, so escuche: el fleet es ahora refloated, OK? — The War Nerd

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Sep 25th, 2007 at 02:07:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]
That doesn't apply to 'fair use' of articles that could be copied in their entirety from a web site.

You're also confusing the cost required to copy something with the value of the content, and saying - in  effect - that just because something is hard to copy, it becomes more valuable.

Oddly enough, this is exactly the argument used by the RIAA and others to support DRM.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Sep 25th, 2007 at 06:09:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]
What I'm saying is it's much easier to do "fair use" with text than with other media. DRM doesn't enable fair use anyway.

Oye, vatos, dees English sink todos mi ships, chinga sus madres, so escuche: el fleet es ahora refloated, OK? — The War Nerd
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Sep 25th, 2007 at 06:18:56 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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