Joe Navarro book, Nov 7th

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I'm not talking about law, I'm talking about ethics and morality. If you read a book in a bookstore, the author is not being fairly compensated for his work. If you read a book in a library, the author was compensated, and you are paying through your taxes that bought the book and support the library.

Granted, intellectual property law is a mess, and nearly impossible to enforce. That doesn't make it right to take an author's ideas without paying him. It is a matter of principle. He did the work, and he is offering it to the public for a price. If you make use of his work, you have an obligation to pay what he asks for using his work. If you don't want to pay what he is asking, don't use his work. If you can't afford it, you can't afford to play poker.

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This discussion has the potential to tangent off into a protracted debate (probably better suited to a different forum) that I have no interest in getting involved with at the present time, so I'll just say this and be done with it:

I have no ethical issues with reading a book in its entirety in a bookstore and then deciding whether or not to buy it. In my view it is neither immoral nor unethical. Whether I read a book in a library, in a bookstore, buy a copy and take it home, or borrow a friend's copy, it's all the same to me.