Comment by beej71 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beej71 | Hacker News Reader

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Whoever owns the rights to the book can absolutely change the book. Period. All this talk about "should" or "woke" is completely irrelevant. The owner does what the owner wants.

The publisher is clearly doing this so they can make more money just like any other good capitalist.

There are a lot of calls for this to be "illegal" in the comments. That would be a ludicrous level of government oversight on the publishing process and certainly a violation of the First Amendment in the US.

The owner of the rights to the work is free to change the work in whatever way they want, and they don't have to ask our permission or the government's (thank Christ!). This isn't a case of some sneaky leftist changing the content behind the owner's back. The owner of the content is doing it, actively and knowingly, for bigger profits.

They know a certain demographic doesn't like it, but they've done the math, and know where the best money is.

I don't think that most consumers of these books will know that modern changes have been made. And I think that most of them would be less willing to pay for copies with these changes. So they're being mislead for increased profit.

Even in the US, the First Amendment doesn't protect false advertising. I don't think making these changes without informing the buyer would be illegal under current law, but I don't think it would be unconstitutional to make it illegal, not would it contravene the spirit of free speech.

> I don't think that most consumers of these books will know that modern changes have been made.

Indeed, one never knows what changes have been made without an itemized list, which is rarely provided and certainly not required by law. And I'd argue it shouldn't be.

> And I think that most of them would be less willing to pay for copies with these changes.

The publishers clearly disagree, or at least they disagree they'd make more money without the changes. And maybe they're wrong, but it's entirely their prerogative.

What mechanism do you propose to use to notify a reader of the particular changes in a printing?

Asterisk after the author's name on the cover, leading to some brief explanation of what kind of changes have been made. There doesn't need to be an exact list.

And this will happen on every edition of every book?

Just the ones with changes to later editions not made by the author.

An fb2 diff tool

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