Re: Dragon Ball GT download options?

The Wanderer <inverseparadox@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
In light of this, I'd be interested in your opinion of a bit of
reasoning I once came up with in support of something potentially
questionable I wound up doing. (The matter is somewhat moot by this
point, but the reasoning I think remains interesting.)

<snip example of stolen game replaced by download>

Ethically, it doesn't bother me a lot, but it still bugs me, enough
that I'd still think that you ought to either get your copy back from
the guy who stole it (hah!), claim it on your insurance (double hah!),
or just buy a new one (boo!). Basically, no matter what you do, life
sucks when something gets stolen; the ethics of replacing stuff like
that are pretty bad.

Here's a similar example: I get audiobooks out from the library, and
rip them to my ipod, because my car CD player is in such bad shape
that I can't actually listen to a library CD on it. Also, all my
"real" CD players are in storage, so I can't really play it anywhere,
except perhaps my laptop.

I always delete the books when I'm done listening to them (this is, I
feel, implied by the agreement I made with the library to return the
media when I'm done). Now here's the fun bit, ethically: should I
return the CDs before I've finished listening to it on my ipod? That
makes the audiobook more available to more people, but there would be
an interval between when I return the media and when I've deleted it.
In itself, that doesn't bother me, but it does open up a
slippery-slope argument (not that I'm a fan of that particular mode of
argumentation anyway) to where I could end up not deleting it at all.

I'm less concerned with myself, anyway-- I know I'd end up deleting it
when I was done, simply to save space if nothing else. But I'm
getting married in August, and I'm thinking about what kind of example
I want to set for my children. I don't want them thinking it's okay
to download stuff and keep it without paying someone. I don't want
them copying CDs or whatever comes next and then returning the media,
while keeping the copies, and so on.

-=Eric
.

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