Only to a select few? For $40? The book costs less than most console video games.
This is in the western world... imagine how many people in the world can’t afford this book. On a global scale... very few people could afford this book (or a 40USD video game).
It makes me kind of sad that you’d so casually suggest that this is not the case. Makes me think that perhaps people in the tech world don’t have a great understanding of how poor many people are...
To those who cannot afford it, here’s 2.5 years of my side work for free http://billsix.github.io/bug
What you said is more than a select few could afford a $40 book.
The topic being discussed is, the morality of charging so much/piracy.
Good work plugging your github though!
Maybe 10%, 5%? Other than repeating this obviously wrong statement, would you like to provide some evidence that >20% of the world population can afford this book?
Pirate away dude. The piracy of JSTOR repos didn’t help the global poor population, nor will piracy of this book.
Most people, at any income level, would not find value in this book. The fraction of people who find value in the book maybe correlated with income.
There are a large number of people who might benefit from access to this book (or similar books) would can not afford to legitimately purchase it.
Given that only a small fraction of the world population can afford this book (I estimated 5%, happy entertain other estimates) it seems likely that the majority of people that could benefit from access to this book, could not afford to buy it.
I find that unfortunate.
Also if you were to somehow poll everyone reading this and ask "Did you buy this book?" you'd get some number, x. But if the book were priced at $5, then $5y would be much greater than $40x.
I bought a bamboo fineline pencil for $50 the other day. It's a tool that will serve me for at least a year. It's unclear whether this book would.
I want work like this to exist, and for the author to be rewarded for it. But ultimately, in an era when words are infinitely and instantaneously copyable, the economic value of words seems to drop.
Given the choice between stealing knowledge and not stealing knowledge, when you wouldn't have paid for it anyway, where's the harm?
As a working adult, time spent reading a book is both more limited and more valuable than $40. If you wouldn't have bought it anyways, why is it worth your time stealing and reading it?
Although it was an unpopular opinion at the time, I agree with Metallica's outspoken moral opposition to Napster circa 2000.
Libraries “steal” money from authors by making books more freely available, in largely the same way that piracy does.
They also make books available to people who otherwise couldn’t afford them.
This is literally the same thing as getting a book from a library. The exact same argument applies.
Throwing Latin around doesn’t progress a discussion.
To me you pretty much typify what’s wrong with modern tech culture, a total lack of empathy or understanding that there is a world outside of that which you live.
I think you could've made the same sort of argument against movies or music before netflix and napster, but here we are, and the markets still seem thirsty for new content.
Because reasonable adults are paying for content which they want, directly via movie tickets, indirectly via e.g. Netflix and Spotify.