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Comment by yonatron | Hacker News Reader

I haven't seen one commenter here concerned with copyright violation or piracy. You're ok with that? Have you never created content of your own, made of your own blood, sweat and tears, and then had it pirated and given away free? Do you condone this? Is this not thievery in your eyes?

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I have made content and I condone this wholeheartedly. Hell, I consider it to be such a net positive that in my ideal world one of society’s primary mandates would be maintaining a universal “library of everything”

I think it’s a downright silly concept to pitch spending public money on cops to hunt down archivists rather than spending money on archivists. I think only the most embarrassingly naive folks would advocate for the world to work that way.

Imagine being so terrified of an imaginary John Galt scenario that you actually put people in jail to avoid the very thought of it.

$5.25 per month for a typical U.S. household, or an 0.01% income tax basis, would provide compensation equal to all current book sales, and avoid both the deadweight losses of information access denial of the present system as well as the Federal Crime of Giving People Books.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33647625>

Criminalisation of digital distribution was only legislated in 2008 (again in the U.S.):

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33643398>

Correction: that should be 0.1% (1/1000th of income), on an annualised basis.

I have written a book that ended up on Z-Library (and some other shadow libraries). It did bother me a little bit at first yes. I had spent hours of my spare time working on that book and, while I definitely didn't do it for the money, it still hurt a bit to think that folks could just download it for free.

But at the end of the day, I wrote my book to communicate knowledge I had and thought was valuable, and if people who couldn't afford the $30 got some value out of it then it was worth it. Now obviously it would be different for someone trying to make a living out of their writing.

> and if people who couldn't afford the $30

Be sure that some people in fact paid you the $30 only because they tried it first and said "this is worth it" (it is how it sometimes actually works).

Meh, that's an argument often heard "I'll download this game to try it and if I like it I'll buy it legit", but how often does it really happen? :). Maybe some did, but it's impossible to quantify.

I am not sure about the rhetoric: why should you quantify it?

If it is to calculate missed revenue: are you considering that the other side of what I have written - a fact - is that a number of people who downloaded an available copy of your book would not have bought it anyway?

Those relevant to the missed revenue are those who would have paid but did not: the number in that group is something that you can hardly quantify, and on the other hand you have gained buyers that would not have bought your book if they had not tried it.

Someone that downloads something and never pays for it is no different than them never downloading it but also never paying for it. They're non-customers.

There's also no difference between the game downloader and them playing a copy at their friend's house and deciding not to buy it. There's also no difference if they were to buy the game second hand.

"an increase in illegal consumption over time is found to correlate with an increase in legal consumption and vice versa"

In a study commissioned by Google: https://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/Global-Online-Pirac...

the problem is that, in general that content made of "blood,sweat and tears" is already being pillaged by the robber barons who take 90%+ of the profit from your work, at least in the fields of movies, tv, music and books. Not saying anything is right or wrong. just pointing out this complicating factor.

So by this logic, it's ok to further immiserate the poor author since she was already 90% immiserated by the big bad publisher?

There’s a serious citation needed on those numbers but even if they are accurate, theseauthors are not slaves. They voluntarily sign contracts rather than give their work away, self-publish, or stop writing. It seems rather self-serving to argue that you are better equipped to make that decision for them and that means you should get something you want without paying for it.

> I haven't seen one commenter here concerned with copyright violation

While we are enumerating things we haven't seen...

In the United States, copyright exists "to promote the progress of the useful arts and sciences", yet copyright is defined in terms of "life of the creator plus some years".

I have never seen an explanation of how copyright is expected to incentivize a dead creator to perform further creative acts.

> Is this not thievery in your eyes

Certainly not: a thief removes property, leaving the victim without the re-appropriated.

99% of the people that use something like z-library would _never_ buy access to the articles.

Yes.

How about you? How hard was your life destroyed by book piracy (or any other kind)?

It depends on who steals it. If an individual, say one of my peers, wants to read and enjoy it, that's very different from a global clothing retailer using it to sell their stuff.

>You're ok with that?

Yes

Very difficult questions, with even harder answers. IMHO it’s totally different trying to liberate the knowledge locked behind paywalls (books, research papers, studies…) and the real piracy of digital content (movies, software, audio…). Many different factors to consider and I think it all comes down to personal views and preferences.

How is a book a "locked paywall" and a movie is "real piracy"? I fail to see how the difference in medium between a book and a movie makes the situation so completely different.

Not all books are available in all countries, especially poor ones. My whole point is that we’re talking about freedom of knowledge. Someone who writes a book or publishes research is doing it for the spread of information/knowledge and for the greater good. I agree that these people have to make a living as well and that’s where it’s getting difficult. In my mind, piracy of knowledge is ok, but piracy for profit or for not wanting to pay is bad.

And not all books are about spreading information and/or knowledge. We're not only talking about academic books here, there are also fictions. What does the latest Stephen King have to do with freedom of knowledge? I understand what you are talking about and as an author myself I do agree as per some of my comments under this thread, but let's not pretend all the books made available for free are about "knowledge".

Who are you to say what's knowledge and what's not?

Why can't I, a speaker in language X, buy books in that language outside of the country where this language is spoken on the same platform where it's sold.

See e.g. availability of, say, Japanese or Russian books on Apple Books in Europe, US, Russia and Japan.

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