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  • I'm fine with the whole concept. I've always lent books I've owned, and libraries have always existed. Why wouldn't you want to share books? Mankind needs more readers.

    Only in the last 100 years have authors primarily made money from publishers through direct sales to consumers. Prior to that authors were either sufficiently wealthy to be able to afford to write, or wrote anyway and then relied upon commission to pay them.

    In these days with people not needing to work on the farm for 16 hours a day, we have more time than ever to write if we wanted, and technology allows for crowd-sourced commissions.

    My view is very strongly that I couldn't give a hoot for the publishing industry, and that as many people who want to read books should be able to. Everything that people could do to remove barriers to people reading and give them more to read is a good thing, and I believe the economic and technological setup allows for the authors to be paid more than ever (with the exception of people like JK Rowling) whilst having more reach than ever.

    Bring on book sharing in all forms, legal or illegal.

    However... I really hope that the shared book retains high quality content structure and layout (ToC, index, search, diagrams and images as applicable, and any specific typesetting required). Basically, that the shared format isn't a TXT file.

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