Book Piracy: A Non-Issue | TechCrunch

"I should emphasize at this point that, generally speaking, I’m not inclined to be soft on pirates. There’s probably no-one at TechCrunch who has argued more consistently against the notion that copyright laws need to soften in the digital age. People who illegally copy books on a large scale, for personal profit, should be buried up to their necks in sand until ants eat their lungs from the inside. On that I’m sure we can all agree. When it comes to peer-to-peer file sharing, however, I’m calm to the point of apathy. The reason: books have always been free to those who don’t want to pay for them. Since as far back as the 17th century, people too poor, or too cheap, to buy a book could walk into a public library and borrow it...."