> The trade-off is that a lot of poor people will never hear about your book
Is this meant to be bad for poor people or for me, as a creator?
If for poor people - all of the information required to live a relatively good live is available on the internet, free of charge. The vast majority of copyrighted content is entertainment. Nobody is entitled to entertainment.
If for me - I'm ok with that. If someone else isn't - they can reduce the price of their work, self-publish, or release the work (or even an excerpted section of it) as public domain/creative commons.
> I've seen official torrents from the owners of the copyright, simply for quality control purposes.
...which is extremely rare, and not really relevant to the discussion.
You're on a throwaway, so correct me if I am wrong, but this is your first comment in this discussion? How is it irrelevant enough for you to insist such a thing? Distributing in such a way that illegitimate copies disappear but your margins are affected as if the piracy were there all the same is useful to think about in this discussion, because it has happened and you can study it somewhat.
To your point on copyright, unaffordable things aren't always entertainment, though it would be nice if that were the case. Feeling that the majority of content is frivolous entertainment is just a feeling; a feel-good feeling that trivializes any drawbacks to the copyright system.
Is this meant to be bad for poor people or for me, as a creator?
If for poor people - all of the information required to live a relatively good live is available on the internet, free of charge. The vast majority of copyrighted content is entertainment. Nobody is entitled to entertainment.
If for me - I'm ok with that. If someone else isn't - they can reduce the price of their work, self-publish, or release the work (or even an excerpted section of it) as public domain/creative commons.
> I've seen official torrents from the owners of the copyright, simply for quality control purposes.
...which is extremely rare, and not really relevant to the discussion.