From a publisher&#x27;s point of view, you&#x27;re infringing on their intellectual property. To them, it&#x27;s no different than simply pirating the book out of piratebay since they&#x27;ll never see the revenue from it.<p>I think &quot;case based reasoning&quot; is going on. We have no problems loaning books out to friends because we always have. But pirating a copy is considered unethical, even though the net effect on the publisher is the same. One can argue that the former is slightly better because the both of us can&#x27;t read it at the same time, but in my view we&#x27;re just rationalizing.