discuss Lending eBooks: Is It a Crime?

[Yama]

You can lend your paperbacks to someone for reading, or you can burrow it from someone and give it back after reading it. Just like a physical book, you can also lend ebooks to other people but when you give digital books you are just giving a copy, so when you share your ebooks to another person, both of you will have their own copy. The person who got from you did not pay for the book, so technically speaking he has the book without actually paying for it. Is this a crime?

Well, most ebook has a note that "the ebook cannot be transferred digitally, or distributed, etc. " Well, this basically indicates that you cannot sell it. What about sharing with friends and family?

 

[Alamson]

Most publishers prohibit the distribution, photocopying or sharing of their ebooks. This is to protect their intellectual property. But there are some authors that allow you to transfer to others if it is not for commercial purpose. As long as you don't intend to profit from it, sharing ebooks with family and friends is not a crime.

 

[Cpvr]

I’m not sure as some providers actually offer ebooks for free, especially the apple books store and the Google books store, so lending ebooks to friends might not be such a big deal. If they like the book, they’ll probably buy it and convince their friends to buy it.

 

[ActionAce]

I see your point and it is really true! It has not been set out explicitly that sharing with family and friends is prohibited, but I think there should be terms guiding the use of eBooks. I generally think it would be fine to share with loved ones, provided sharing is not widespread or commercialized, but it should respect the rights of the author and publisher.

 

[lens]

To me, sharing eBooks with family and friends is not a crime whatsoever. If I lend a hardcopy book to someone, it doesn't mean I'm depriving the author of that sale.. The same goes with eBooks.

Well, as long as I'm not distributing copyrighted material for large number of people or selling it, sharing eBooks with loved ones is justifiable.

 

[Jason]

It seems to be a crime that cannot be enforced or enforced via viruses etc. (like is done on illegal music sharing sites).

And if something can't be enforced, then maybe it should be thrown out.

 

[Demon_skeith]

It's kind of sad really, I work for a digital book company, and it really is all about the money and a lot of books these days don't get a physical copy option.

 

[Pete Griffin]

This brings up a wider issue, that of licensing. We have reached the point where we no longer own anything, we simply licence it's use. The increased prevalence of subscription services in movies, TV, music and games is a side effect of this.