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Comment by izzydata | Hacker News Reader

I don't disagree, but it seems weird to treat physical media and digital media of a similar type exactly the same when they are simply aren't the same. The truth is you can make infinite copies of an e-book.

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You can make infinite copies of a physical book. It just costs more to do so - both in terms of currency and time to copy. But that's where copyright law steps in. You can sell your copy, but you cannot duplicate the content (bar some caveats).

How do you re-sell an e-book without duplicating it, unless you sell your e-reader device with the e-book on it?

When you read it your also copying it into cache. We could argue the technicalities but really it's about copyright law not the colour of bits. Or if you prefer we can just say it's legal to copy the ebook to a new owner if you remove your own copies (which is one process the above poster refereed to by writing "bar some caveats").

Well, e-book vendors ought to either use a shared format or provide a mechanism for transferring ownership. They are unlikely to do so unless a right to resell is established. I am pessimistic about the likelihood, but it would be a very good thing for the world.

You can also make near 0-cost copies of physical books. Only thing stopping you is copyright law.

Ok, i'll bite. How do yo do that? Let's say I have an 800 page Neal Stephenson hardback. I don't want to destroy the book, but I want to copy it. How do I copy that at 0-cost?

Even with a borrowed laser printer/copier with free toner and paper I imagine I have to open the book 400 times and push it onto the copier glass and make a copy. That will take me 5 sec per spread, so say 10 spreads per minute. If I am done just under an hour, then I will have lost $100 of invoicable time. So, that wasn't 0-cost. You must have another way?

The marginal cost is 0. Since, once you have made your digital copy, you can make infinite copies, your amortized cost per copy approaches 0.

And what would the marginal cost be if paper and ink were not free? Not the full price of a new book, but I'm guessing a significant portion.

The marginal cost of a physical copy does not approach 0, true.

That's just because your opportunity cost is high. Compare it to a person who makes $100 in a month (there are countries where $100 is close to the median income) and you will understand why there are people who do actually copy or scan books instead of buying them.

Yeah, I am quite familiar with people who make less than we do. But, I just think it is a bit much to say that copying books is nearly free. It isn't.

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