regarding side-1: I started out as a windows user using pirated copies in india... this discouraged me from using linux for quite some time, as we used to have phone modems and bandwidth was pathetic... one day i got a mandrake linux cd with a magazine... it was great fun using it, but gnome sucked then, but now i prefer linux over windows. so for windows at least, side-1 did not have any benefits. in fact, windows helped me start using computers and i 'converted' to linux!

i had another question: suppose a person cannot check out a book from a library (copy is out), so he downloads an ebook off the net and reads it, then deletes the copy as soon as he obtains the copy from the library.... so what effect did this 'piracy' have on the book producer? the book is quite old and i doubt whether the author (hint: amoeba) would be getting any big royalties on the book....