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> Is that a crime?

In many countries it is at least a copyright violation, although it should be noted that downloading (not sharing while torrenting) is legal in some places.

> Have either the author or publisher lost money?

On average, probably yes, because some people would buy the book, some libraries would get more budget or allocate more of the budget to that book, and most importantly, if you did re-borrow it in 3 months it'd further expand the waitlist, perhaps making someone go "screw that, I'm not waiting 4 months" and buy it.

OTOH, if you took all the money being spent on entertainment (books movies etc.), collected that as a tax, distributed it to the entertainment industry based on what people actually consume, and in exchange made everything available to everyone, there would be no loss of revenue and everyone would benefit from much higher, friction-free levels of access.

That's part of what made Netflix work. It extracted ~$120/year of revenue and gave access to everything. Now, with all the competing services, they probably still don't extract more than one service's yearly fee over the same population (because few people have more than 1-2 services, and the ones that just gave up and went back to piracy probably make up for the ones that now pay for 2 instead of 1 service) but people now have much less access.

Without a massive "media tax" which would have practical issues that don't make it feasible or desirable, some friction on free access is necessary or nobody would pay for content, and at the same time that friction harms society by limiting access. Piracy puts an upper bound on how much friction can be added before people go the yarrr way.

My layman's understanding of copyright law says you didn't commit a crime, but whoever sent you the book did commit a crime. My understanding is that it's not illegal to download a book, it's illegal to distribute a book. (Or other copyrighted work.)

No, it is illegal to download (make a copy of) the book. To be legal, you would have to merely view the book without making a copy. This is the operating principle behind all those video streaming sites. This isn't a comment on what OP should have done.

Doesn't this vary according to the location of the participants?

eg in some countries participation in some parts of it (uploading/downloading/etc) is legal, whereas in other countries it can be the other way around.

Yes. I assumed I was replying to Americans and shouldn't have.

Wouldn't the transmission over the network of the bits of the video count as an act of copying?

Legally, no. That question has come up regarding things like browser caching as well. But the precedent is that it is not illegal to merely view copyrighted material you haven't licensed or bought, even if you happened to seek out that viewing.

I stand corrected. Thanks!

You might find this interesting:

Reverse engineering yet another ebook format (Nemanja Mijailovic) https://mijailovic.net/2022/12/25/hkpropel/

I did read that. The format he had wasn't really locked down, it was just a regular epub behind a crappy web-based viewer. The library epub downloads really do have DRM locks.

With discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34125958

I think the central ethical question to piracy is that ultimately, buying a book someone wrote is fair to the author. The author is part of a society -- our planet, did something to contribute to society, and it's fair that we reward that person if we also benefit from their work. Therefore, whenever you benefit from someone else's work, how do we reward them.

Now, I think this question is nuanced. For example, let's take Harry Potter. That book has sold millions. In my mind, J.K. Rowling has already been rewarded by humanity for her work many times over, so if you were to pirate her book then I think that is a far lesser evil than pirating a book written by an author who has barely made any sales.

Basically, I view the question of piracy as follows: (a) have we rewarded the author enough for that specific work? and (b) if not, then it's not right to pirate their book, and I should buy it. I think everyone should ask themselves that question.

The same with movies. Marvel movies are a money-making machine and they have more than enough money to keep them going. An indie film much less so.

The question of whether an author has been rewarded enough is tricky. For example, if Elon Musk wrote a book, I would have no problem pirating it in a microsecond because society rewarded him enough. But maybe that's not so clear-cut because the editor might be poor. Thus, I think it's safer to go on the basis of sales rather than the wealth of the author, except of course if the author is self-published. In that case, if they are rich, then who cares. Of course, what is rich? Well it's hard to give exact numbers but if they have 10 million dollars that's definitely rich enough.

Not an answer to your question, but interesting context for how eBooks work with libraries. And how not checking out a second time effectively is a loss of one “use” that may have directed the library to spend more on this book, rather than another. Sounds like you’re aware. Loved this Planet Money podcast

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id2907834...

That link isn‘t working for me. Are you referring to this episode?

https://www.npr.org/2022/11/09/1135639385/libraries-publishe...

> Is that a crime?

You didn't say where you are. Copyright infringement tends not to be a criminal offence, unless you're doing it as part of a business (so if you print out copies of that ebook and sell them) or you do so much of it you distort the market (you distribute so many copies of that ebook you destroy the profits that publisher might have made).

The rights holder can sue for their losses, but this tends to be the cost of the item, so they tend not to do that.

That's really down to your personal ethics and how much you are willing to tolerate.

As you're not distributing it, the chance of someone coming after you for downloading a non-legal copy is almost non-existent, and pretty much 0 if you've taken some basic precautions.

It sounds like you've answered your own question there; that as you'd read the majority of the book, that there's no real loss to you finishing it for free.

Of the past twenty ebooks I've downloaded, 18 have dead authors and only one is alive.

Unless you focus on the very latest releases, most authors are already dead. If you round up just about any list of great works from the 20th century, you'll find that most of those authors are dead and have been for years. If you like 19th century books, all of those authors are dead.

Curious about the 20th guy who is neither dead nor alive.