...which then results in a few people reading the library copy rather than buying their own, so that he effectively stole a book for personal use and discouraged multiple sales by other people who would have otherwise bought copies. His attempt to pay back the publisher for the book just cost that same publisher $50.
Our systems of morals assume a scarcity of goods which is increasingly not the case when the goods in question can be represented as bits of information. Sooner or later society will have to decide on a new set of moral rules to account for that, but for now things are fuzzy and a simple application of the traditional answers (goodwill and charity in this case) don't always give the best solution in a modern context.
(Note that I'm not necessarily disagreeing with this solution - I just like playing devil's advocate.)
>> by that logic, you should never donate books to a library, since it is effectively costing the author sales.
Precisely. Should authors and publishers be paid by everyone that wants to read their work, or should the books be available freely to all that want them? (And yes, they would get paid for the number of books the library owns, but the system is set up to minimize that amount and it should certainly be less than the number of people reading them.)
What is the moral difference between pirating a book and paying no money to the author, or borrowing a copy that had been donated to a library and paying no money to the author? The borrowed copy prevents another patron from borrowing at the same time, but this feels more like a physical limitation (and legal loophole) than a morally relevent distinction.
People try to place value on making sure that authors get paid, and on making books freely available to all (that live near a library?), while neglecting that these are mostly incompatible with each other.
Oh, and the "I later bought my own copies" argument is also commonly used in favor of piracy.
It's reasons like this that I don't claim any strong opinions on these issues myself. Things are complicated. There are too many factors at play - especially when you toss in greedy corporations and all that - to make clear distinctions between right and wrong that hold up from all angles.
It's fine to play devil's advocate, but I would advise against making that depend on a secondary argument that society disagrees with, that being libraries as a negative thing.
Our systems of morals assume a scarcity of goods which is increasingly not the case when the goods in question can be represented as bits of information. Sooner or later society will have to decide on a new set of moral rules to account for that, but for now things are fuzzy and a simple application of the traditional answers (goodwill and charity in this case) don't always give the best solution in a modern context.
(Note that I'm not necessarily disagreeing with this solution - I just like playing devil's advocate.)