Yeah, I think of it as listening to a theater performance more than “reading.”

The only time I can really follow an audiobook is if I’ve read the print version first; otherwise, like you, my mind just wanders off.

When I do long, laborious home projects like refinishing floors or painting walls/fences, I listen to some classic science fiction like Snow Crash, The Forever War, or The Doomsday Book.

Aside from the Dresden Files audiobooks, the only time I’ve listened to the audio as my first time through was last year with Finnegans Wake. I had the audio going in my headphones while I actively read along. It really helped having the Irish pronunciations. Next time I read The Wake, I’m going without the audio now that I have a feel for it.

It's less letting Reddit decide and more asking for a broader range of opinions. Like I said most of my friends are pro piracy. I got the vibe this space would be both against it and not aggressive about that point. This is just me looking at all sides of the debate.

"I occasionally do that and don't see anything wrong with it, but obviously its still technically against the law." I'm glad I'm not the only one!

The first paragraph spoils the entire story - but only gives the broad details of a man's unremarkable life. And then immediately flashes back to how William Stoner grew up and lived this life that we're supposed to experience.

Sums it up very well.

I haven't had a library card in years but hoopla does seem to have my area (or at least the area I last had a library card at). I'll have to pull myself together on the weekend when the library is open. Thank you very much for the suggestion!

Such a great start to the book, and the proceeding lines.

The issue of "what is owning something in the modern day?" Or "whether the second hand book market is ethical?" are not quite the issues I expected to come from this question. I suppose however, that the vast interconnectedness of the world, is part of what makes ethics fun to discuss in the first place.

Remembering to properly delete any digital copies if I ever give up, sell, lose, or otherwise damage the original book. Thus maintaining that as my "book access pass" is basically the take I've gotten from this?

Is it stealing to pirate a book, or is it abelist and classist to prevent someone who needs it, from getting the kind of book they need.(a bit of an exaggeration of those terms I know.) To have the right to a service, someone else must be obliged to provide it. If making and maintaining a book in brail is more labour intensive, then you should charge more to compensate the labourer. If being born blind makes books more expensive then isn't that injust?

I'd say it's both which is why I asked for further insight. I believe that authors should be properly compensated for their work, and that I shouldn't have to pay for secondary copies of books I already own to correct a health issue. These are conflicting beliefs and thus both buying E versions and pirating the books will cause cognitive dissonance.

Same here. It's particularly hard for me to imagine Irish and Australian accents without cringing so hard at how bad it sounds in my head that I just switch back to imagining a British accent. Maybe watching something like Peaky Blinders would help.

>In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The same here.

I was there the day Horus slew the Emperor.

That's definitely a way of looking at it. I did photo copy a book I couldn't read about a year ago when this all started. It was a short book and still took long enough that I'm not game to go again. I did not feel any moral issue in that action.

Don't just focus on your eyes.

I've a weird allergy to old, dusty paper so I'm like you. Any old book,.if I read more than an hour, I get stuffy and my eyes get itchy so might also be an allergic reaction.

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U win some, you lose some.

Nothing unless it's been a while since I read (like I put down the book for a month and am trying to remember what last happened without having to start all over).

Am trying on the eyes front, thank you for your concern.

That's an amazing resource! Thank you! Two of the very books I frustratingly cannot read, are on there. I will definitely take advantage of that before looking any further into piracy.

I have heard that of Amazon. The world sure is a magical and generous place.

>Ahh, but that is the beauty of law. I'm certain I could register as an archive or library if I had a certain number of books, allowed public access, etc. With the small scale here i'd say it could be arguable.

You wouldn't have to allow public access, there are plenty of private archives. I used to work at a university library that had one. But there is definitely a difference between an archive and a random private collection of books. The issue is not the number of books nor the degree of public access but rather the question of the historical nature of those books and the methods you use to preserve them (and the methods you make others use to read them. At the archive in the library where I worked, for example, everyone had to have gloves on at all times and no one was allowed to have a pen or any other kind of ink-containing device anywhere near a book while reading it). Also you can't just like, put a book on a normal shelf and call it an archive. Books age, paper yellows and gets brittle, etc. and archives are often specifically designed to counter or slow the effects of this aging. There's a whole science to it. (and fwiw you can't just "register as a library" either. You have to go to school and get a degree in library science to become a librarian, it's not trivial and it's certainly not the same thing as just being a person who owns a bunch of books and lets others borrow them)

Also, you'd have to have set all that stuff up *in advance* of making whatever extra copies you are entitled to as an archivist. The OP didn't mention anything about doing any of that stuff and has not indicated that they are an archivist of any kind.

Again, one person downloading (or making) one copy of one book is unlikely to end up in a courtroom at all, not because of what the law says but because it's incredibly unlikely any authority figure will ever know about it, so the question of whether it's legal is purely academic anyway, but I do think it's an interesting discussion. My issue is less with the OP's actions and more with your claim about the level of "access" that one purchase entitles you to.

This joke didn’t go over well at all did it?

No, out isn't

Ahh, but that is the beauty of law. I'm certain I could register as an archive or library if I had a certain number of books, allowed public access, etc. With the small scale here i'd say it could be arguable.

Whether or not this all would hopd up? Iunno. That'd be for courts to decide. It's merely how I judge this. Not saying I'm right!

Fair enough.

My understanding of "archival law" is that it applies specifically to libraries and other kinds of professional archives, not just any private person who happens to own books, and thus wasn't particularly relevant to the conversation.

I don’t re-read in the way you specified. But generally when I’m reading, my concentration shifts a lot, and I’ll find my ‘eyes’ reading faster than my brain. Then by the time I’ve re-read the last paragraph or so, I think ‘yes I’ve definitely already read this’. It’s a problem.

Oh this has been on my list!! I finally read Dune a couple weeks ago so now I’m on a sci-fi kick again. I’m at 5 books so far this month, so I’ll definitely have some duplicate decades anyway!

No. That is different. Making one's own larger copy does not equal walking into a store and taking a second copy that happens to be larger. Someone else made that for sale. That a twist of fate made it so a paying customer suddenly cannot read the copy they already purchased should not remove their access and allows exception in this case and in this manner. Any other "whatabouts" you can come up with do not argue that point.

Walking in to a store and taking a premade copy is far different from digitizing a copy for personal use or -in this specific case - downloading a digital copy. Assuming there are no large print copies - especially on release - is only so bood. Large print is only so marketable.

Further, the store theft... You would be stealing the materials and work done on that individual book regardless of access. The supply chain and etcetera that went into producing a number of access points to the story. That is removing one paid for access ticket from the pool of tickets, if you will. That is another entirely transferrable copy. They could, for instance, buy thebigger print one and happily gove away the other copy because it is a legally distributable cooy.

Stealing a published copy is not making your own copy of something you already paid for for your personal use. That is stealing a publically sold and published copy. To make one's own copy for a very good, personal use reason causes no commercial strain on anyone in that chain as the book was already purchased by one person once. You can only ever ask for that first purchase, really. Especially of a book. The hope is that many will like it and the sheer volume of sales make it worth it... But if you have 10,000 copies and all 10,000 sell and someone makes their own personal pdf on a phone somewhrlere, never distributes it, never even tells anyone... Then there is no impact. Maybe on the... Falsified rarity of making only 10,000 copies, but since we started with ethics... That's hardly ethical to me. Art is to be shared. Fairly compensated for, but made freely available.

The skirting here is downloading of a digital copy rather than making one's own copy. What you are describing is not the same as what I am describing. It is not having a single digital copy of the physical work already purchased. This is a false equivalance.

I got the amount of copies from the law. The archival section. I said it was arguable under either, but you stuck on fair use.

Archival allows archives or employee of archives to make no more than one copy for archival purposes. If she were to argue that it was being stored for personal archival purposes, it could likely be arguable under this. Bit again as stated multiple times, I am not a laywer. I am a person giving an asked for opinion on the internet.

It also allows up to three reproductions for the purposes of replacing damaged works.

And an archive is an archive. As long as they follow certain rules, even a personal archive would be an archive.

Law is flexible. What works in one situation does not fit another. In this situation no law is broken in my eyes. That's it. You aren't going to convince me otherwise, I'm not going to convince you otherwise. We both stated our opinions, neither of us are lawyers (i assume) and i'm certain we are merely going to disagree on this interpretation of the law. Shall we merely agree to disagree and move on?

Catcher in the rye has a great first sentence

​

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.