> My comment was specifically about the use of tens of thousands of copyrighted books which had been pirated and distributed illegally, for which the authors - most of whom receive quite a small amount of money for their work as it is - received nothing and weren’t asked for permission.

I'm sorry, while true you've made to much of a heart warming story from it. It is an ongoing conflict between sharing and not sharing books, published papers, video, audio and perhaps patents should also be part of the scope. On both sides we have both small and large efforts that range from deserving to not deserving our sympathy.

The main beneficiary of not sharing the content of books are the publishers. For the most part they have proven not to care about authors. Much like the recording industry. They will not stop pushing for more and more control if it benefits them.

They really want (and have) my government adopting/creating/preserving/copying(lol?) laws that cant realistically be implemented. They wont be satisfied even if they can get a scheme like the TV license circus with random assholes searching peoples homes looking for a radio or TV (while even the police has no such rights) You already cant play music in public places without paying various kinds of protection money.

They are already scanning your uploads in various places looking for anything that vaguely resembles something else. When they think they've found it you will be punished. They don't care what life will be like after losing your proverbial google account over a false positive. Oh and Google has to pay for it which means you ultimately have to pay for your own investigation and persecution.

People got enormous fines for tiny offenses. There are efforts to filter out websites at the ISP level. Bittorrent is portrayed as a tool for pirates while it is simply a much superior sharing technology.

Many enormous data centers had to be build just so that we can use inferior means of distribution. You ultimately have to pay for that. You got asymmetric internet connections because hey, you don't need to be uploading anything now do you? We are retooling the entire civilization to protect Harry Potter, Shakin that Ass and Plan 9 from outer space and you get to pay for it.

The industries want to sell new works. That agenda also opposes the distribution of existing works. We have a rich history of book burning so that the old may make room for the new.

Personally, the most worrying part is the desire/agenda to breed a population of illiterate consumers who can barely tie their own shoes but should some how run a democracy.

It should be that if anyone shows an ever so slight interest in a topic we ram all the relevant books, published papers, patents, documentaries and tools in their hands and shout: HERE, READ THIS, WATCH THIS AND HERE IS YOUR FISHING ROD.

This is worth twice the military budget. We can find a way to pay authors. It doesn't seem a very hard problem. I'm not sure there really is a need but plenty of people want this so lets make it.

> There is a very big difference between knowingly downloading and using illegally distributed copyrighted works vs scraping the internet in general.

Not really, you cant look inside peoples head. If I buy something knowing it was stolen or pretending not to know it is still a crime.