Reaction from publishers to a column defending the ethics of downloading books you own. NY Times writer Randy Cohen argues that downloading a copy of a book you already own is likely illegal, but not unethical. The fury has been relentless, the arguments mostly miss the point. "It's really a question of whether or not you should be allowed to format change the works you've purchased, and there are many reasonable arguments in favor of that -- especially in situations where there is no loss in the system." But of course everybody knows that downloading books you don't own is increasing in popularity, and publishers are making the same mistakes now the music industry made a few years ago. PDF has become the MP3 of the internet age; don't expect proprietary formats to last longer than the proprietary music formats.
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