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Pirating abandoned content?

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CWuestefeld:
How do you feel about downloading copies of things that simply can't be purchased any other way?

One recent thread refers to attempts to purchase an out-of-print video (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=13353.0); another to old-games-gone-freeware (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=13356.msg113055#msg113055). TechSupportAlert's latest newsletter refers to "abandonware" (http://techsupportalert.com/issues/al_current.htm#Section_1.3).

I'm a big fan of e-books. Especially for fiction, I don't read paper anymore; my PDA is just too convenient. But most books still aren't available in this format. Where possible, I've purchased books that are sold this way (Baen books is good for this).

Morally speaking (legalities aside for the moment), where do you think I stand in downloading scanned books if they can't be purchased? In most cases, the books are available as paper, so I'm probably not justified.

But what about books that are completely out of print, so that I can't buy it even if I want to (unless I can find it used)? In this case, I'm not taking away anyone's potential income if I download an unauthorized scanned copy.

If the owner of intellectual property refuses to sell it, do they forfeit the right to protect their commercial interest in it?

mouser:
I'm actually quite fond of these kinds of ethical/moral questions.. they make you think.

Let me start with what i consider one of the easiest cases:

Let's say you buy a physical book.  But no ebook form of it exists, and you wish you had an ebook copy.  Then you find that someone has scanned the book and posted it on the web, for free but against publisher's wishes.  Is it immoral to download that (unofficial/potentially illegal) ebook?  My inclination is no -- you've lived up to your responsibilities by buying the book.

There is one wrinkle in all of these abandonware type questions that I do think needs contemplating.  In the very long view of things, one needs to consider the chicken-and-egg interactions that can occur in terms of economic incentives. 

For example -- let's say a book is out of print and no one is selling any used copies, and so no one can buy it.  So you might say to yourself, well then what's the harm in me grabbing a pirated copy.  And my tendency is to agree with you.  But what if the mere existence of these "pirated" copies, is what keeps the demand for a new edition being published from ever reaching critical mass.  In other words, perhaps if the underground copy did not exist, there would have been enough demand for the book that the publisher would have decided to put it back in print.

Having said that.. I think it's probably mostly a facetious theoretical argument, and that the much more likely outcome of a popular underground pirated copy would be larger readership, more fans, and even more demand for it to go back in print.  So in general i don't think such things hurt the publishers, and so i wouldn't lose sleep over it.  But it is important to consider such consequences when wrestling with moral issues.

superboyac:
I did this for a math textbook recently.  I ordered the text book online, but there were unexpected problems with shipping and inventory.  So, the book got delayed by several weeks.  But I needed it because the class had already started!  So, I found a scanned version of it online and I used that for a couple of weeks until the book arrived.

Renegade:
Ooooooh~! This is an interesting one!

I suppose one question to ask is, "Is there a victim?"

For abandoned software (or eBooks or whatever) where there is no way to aquire it through legitimate means, I'd have to say that most of the time, no there isn't a victim.

For the chicken and egg thing mouser brought up, I'm inclined to believe that piracy of abandoned products is more likely to drive a second generation if there is enough demand. The problem there is that piracy is hard to gauge. e.g. I burn a CD of pirated stuff and give it to two people, who do the same, and so on... How many people does it reach? How do you judge market demand? Can I now write an uber-Pacman game? Will it fly? Do people want it?

For the, "I already bought it," argument, I feel that this is legit. Unless there is a specific marketing difference between the paper and electronic version, getting an electronic version of a book really is only augmenting your use of the paper version at zero cost to anyone. I would not say the same in reverse, i.e. That buying an eBook version entitles you to rip a paper one off of the shelves of the local bookstore.

However, this goes to the "fair use" issue. The RIAA is against this entirely. If you buy a CD, you do not have the right to transfer it to another device. (But they're complete idiots too.) So what is "fair use" there?

If a product's revenue model is structured so that the physical and electronic versions both play an important part of the product's profitability, then it may not be fair to get the e-version for free. e.g.:

Product on physical media: $20.00
Product via download (e-version): $15.00
Product on physical media + download (e-version): $25.00

In that case above, the product's marketing is targetting different market segments in an intelligent and fair way. But to buy the first option, then pirate the download is taking money out of the producer's pockets and isn't really a fair thing to do. Very few products are marketed this way though. ("Very few" is probably a massive understatement at that.)

I'm sure some would scream at me for advocating "theft," but that's not my intent. My intent is to find out if there is some harm being done, then go from there and choose the most reasonable option. (Which as we're talking about, is piracy in the strict sense.)

Interesting topic. I'd like to hear other's opinions here.

mouser:
I like the idea of starting out with the question: "Who's the Victim?" or perhaps more generally "Who Suffers?"

As with many things in life, one is often faced with having to balance interests that may be in some competition.

I find the economic disparity in the world almost unfathomable, and I think for some people this has to be taken into consideration.  No one is going to be able to convince me that the harm done by some kid in an impoverished shanty who gets his hand on a bootleg scan of a math textbook so that he can learn, can ever outweigh the harm done to a big textbook publisher from that act of piracy.

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