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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 1410982" data-attributes="member: 158">That's just as inaccurate, because a photo of a newspaper is not the article in question, either - it is a flawed copy with ostensibly no value (you could read the heeadline, and maybe some of the first page, but that's it) - it's not the equivalent product that they are selling.But the stuff you can get from file sharing IS equivalent product - in many cases (like downloadable PDF's), it's the SAME product that the vendor is offering, byte for byte.The physical inventory in my example WAS taken, and needs to be written off.At this point, a vendor of an electronic product cannot legally write off illegally copied inventory  because the only protection he has is copyright law, enforced through the publisher - but the revenue of the license he distributes is deprived of him just the same. "Never would have bought it anyway" does not make sense to me, because if he never would have bought it, he wouldn't have the product then, would he? Yet here our hypothetical downloader is, complete with his copy of the work!It's still a loss by the vendor of said product, no matter what specific laws it falls under. I was referring to Amal Shukup's point that it should not be counted as a loss, because the downloader wouldn't have purchased anyway. Something WAS taken, even if it's not a tangible product - it was a license to use said product, taken without just compensation.Fine, copyright infringement it is, to be accurate. Legally, it's infringement. Ethically, it's theft. Personally, i'd be a very happy camper if many publishers offered their text products in PDF format, because an electronic copy would be handy to me for reference. But if they don't, they don't, and I have to live with it.</blockquote>

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