: Re: What is the difference between giving away my only print copy or my only electronic copy of a book? The question If a book doesn't have DRM does that mean it is OK to give a copy to

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A print book is a physical object, if I give it to you, I will be left without any book.

An ebook is a file, not a physical object, and if I give it to you, I still can keep it for myself as well; to copy a file does not require to delete the original one, unless I explicitly want to do so.

It is easy to see that if I buy a printed book and give it to you, there is no need for a law that says that I can't still keep it for myself, since it's impossible (of course there are other ways to copy it, i.e. photocopying it, but it will be an analogical copy, I will end with a totally different physical object).
But with a file, if the legislators want to prevent me to share digital copies of it (perfectly identical to the original in every single byte, so in a certain sense they ARE the original file), they must make some legal constraints to my ability to copy it, since in this case I won't have any physical one.

P.S. Please note that I'm only stating some factual considerations, and that I'm not making any argument both in favour or against file-sharing, copyright laws, DRMs, and so on.

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