They aren't though. Does every company that published any book have a responsibility to continue publishing them forever? Of course not.

I'm not beholden to the arguments they made.

The point is that the publisher and ebay choosing not to participate in commerce related to these books isn't telling you to do anything, and they don't have any obligation to participate in that commerce.

If the publisher was calling for the government to supervise the books that you read to your children, well then you'd have a point.

I was responding to someone else. No need to enter that conversation if you want to talk about something different.

My comment addresses the argument you made! It just does it without sticking to the comment you replied to.

It's a pretty dumb conversation if all comments have to follow a wrong premise in an initial comment.

So? Does ebay have a responsibility to host every listing that is submitted? Of course not.

According to what? A social contract? The written law? Some ethical/moral foundation?

The answer depends on what standard you're using.

In my opinion, yes they do have that responsibility. Once you attain a level of social and economic power on par with eBay, you have the responsibility to ensure that your actions do not limit free access to information.

If we were talking about a company that does 10k in sales a year -- they do not have that responsibility. But since we're talking about a company that does 4B in sales a year -- yes, according to my moral foundation, they do have that responsibility.

I value free speech and the freedom of expression pretty high on my list of important things though, while it seems like you value the ability of a billion dollar corporation to profit and maintain their brand image much higher than that.

Like I said, different moral foundations.

Probably good to start with 'legal responsibility' and then make the case that the law is morally wrong.

But in USA, they don't really have to list anything they don't like.

I don't think discussing the current state of US law is particularly interesting. My argument is from a moral standpoint.

Then make them public domain. Right now it is illegal to produce them but the publisher has no intent on publishing them.

I think your definition of the availability is excessively imprecise. A quick look shows lots of libraries that have the one I checked.

edit: I believe you had originally written "procure". Maybe I misread, but that's why my comment is phrased as such.

I think you might be correct, I tend to see copyright itself as censorious, but copyright on something you have no intent allowing access to seems downright unacceptable.