ASK HN: Illegal Book/Mp3/* Downloads.
Tichy: What are your reasons for considering it wrong? Not saying it is not wrong, but all the laws are man made. There is no absolute way to decide. Personally I like to think at the possible outcomes of policies. and decide which outcome I would like best.Free books could lead to more reading, but less books being written. On the other hand, they could even lead to more reading and MORE books being written (because authors would have more readers, which might matter more than the paltry income they get from book sales). Who knows, they could even lead to LESS reading, because the perceived value of books could go down. It is not so clear cut to decide...One thing I am 100% sure about: libraries and the "free" books they provide are very important for a society. At least for me, being technical minded and entrepreneurial minded, they can make the difference for me between being able to create a viable business or not. Also I am quite certain that for technical books the motivation to write them is not the money - it is very hard to make any money with technical books, so I think they would mostly be written to boost reputation.For fiction books I don't know. Clearly a lot of them were written regardless of the income they might generate, but probably hoping for riches and fame motivates at least some authors.