Pirates of the Hogwarts

My room-mate has been reading Harry Potter series during the last week. He is reading from a pdf version which comprises of the first four releases. Currently he is reading the fourth book, "Goblet of Fire". He went to Oxford Book Shop in Park Street and opened the "Goblet of Fire", astonishingly he opened the exact page where he stopped reading his e-book. There has been a Potter effect which magically transformed the electronic bookmark into reality. I thought it was a co-incidence enough for him to purchase the print version of the book.

"Rs.475 for one book, I am reading the entire book for free". He has a point, but isn't this piracy and isn't ethics going for a toss. Essentially one is 'cheating' the creator, one is cheating one's own self - that he is honest. At the same time, it is only extremely pragmatic to continue with the e-book, if he is comfortable in reading from the computer monitor.

Of course, ethics and honesty come at a cost. Every one I know is indulging in some sort of unethical practices. So, we need to bring in some statistical concepts like hypothesis testing to evaluate whether the amount of "ethicity" of a person is significant at a particular confidence interval!