The shutdown of library.nu | Hacker News Reader

The shutdown of library.nu

sayamindu.randomink.org

144 pointstathagatadg71 comments

We here in Iran have an extra problem. I'll explain:

Apple's App store, does not work in Iran, you cannot download anything from the app store (you get the famous 1009 error). But many people like myself have iPhones and iPads. Is it okay to pirate iOS apps?

Mathwork's website will not load if you try to access it from an IP address form Iran. Neither they sell their widely used software (Matlab) in academics to Iranians. I wonder am I guilty to pirate Matlab?

Also many other services including Paypal, Google's Android Market and Amazon are the same.

I wonder what if I want to read the famous `Art of Computer Programming`? Am I guilty if I pirate it?

We have similar problems in Belarus. I can not talk for Iranians, since it might be different there. But in Belarus, country close to the center of Europe continent, located on intersection of major roads between east and west, we are in a quite similar position. No PayPal, no Apple, even Microsoft is represented only via Ukrainian office (i.e. office located in another country!)

And this happens there because people do nothing about it. We have corruption there, presidential clan, which holds most of valuable businesses out there (oil refining, minerals extraction, weapons trade). I've been there, I had an great idea, that together we can change situation, get new government, build businesses. But after 2 years I realized - simply nobody care.

Let put it this way - If I live in bum's family, should I blame fancy restaurant management for not giving me access to it? Probably, no. Same case with Belarus - it is not an excuse for pirating software. Instead, Belorussians should fix their country first.

And in the mean time, if you really need to make work done, there is bunch of open source software. Use it. It might sucks comparing to propriate ones, but you can use it to make work done. There is no excuse for stealing.

The cause is probably very different:

While Iran suffers very heavy economic sanctions (i.e. Banking with Iran is virtually impossible) the reason Belarus is so neglected is that major companies just don't give a shit about this specific market.

Not sure if this difference really matters at the end of the day and I can sure feel your pain.

Well.. I tried to make two points =)

- there are no excuses for stealing property - if your country is excluded from worldwide business, it is your problem first of all, not company's, which have problems selling in your country.

I don't like the assumption that companies are against piracy in markets they do not sell in.

I sell software. If my payment processor doesn't accept payment from your country, I don't mind if you pirate the software instead. You are not "stealing" from me, since I cannot sell anything to you.

Perhaps, instead of assuming that all companies are run by MPAA-style hardliners, it would be better to email the company and ask them what their position is. They might even give you a free license.

It you truly believe this is right to give users from countries where you can not sell, use your software for free (not stealing/pirating), just give away free license once they could confirm they are from these countries. This way I do not have to pirate/steal it, and you got distribution in country where otherwise your software would not be presented.

I've seen this model, often with russian companies giving away their software for free to russian customers (only versions with russian interface) and selling software for real bucks for everybody else. I do not see a reason why this could not be adapted.

But! Adobe, Apple, etc countries do not want to give their software for free. It will damage their brand and/or dilute user base. And it is their right to limit whom they want to sell/give software, and to whom - not. And you can not justify stealing software by the fact owner do not allow you (for any reasons) to buy it.

Use opensource software if you are limited in buying options. Do not steal!

> I wonder am I guilty to pirate Matlab?

If you otherwise support the concept of intellectual property, you are. If you believe that Matlab is MathWorks "property", MathWorks is not obliged to sell you their property, and if you take what you believe is their property against their will, you are guilty. If you dont believe in intellectual property, then everything is allright.

The world does not work like that; it's not easy to judge other people's actions unless you step into their shoes.

I guess if it took you 45 minutes just to send an email, or 3 days to download Apple's new OS to develop/test on (Mountain Lion - around 4GB), then you wouldn't see the piracy issue (in countries that there are absolutely no alternatives) black and white anymore.

I am nut "judging" him. He didnt give enough information to answer his question. My answer was that whether he should feel guilty or not depends on whether he supports intellectual property or not. I, for one, do not support the concept of intellectual property at all. If you ask me, copying Matlab is perfectly OK.

But if he does support intellectual property, then he should accept the fact that MathWorks doesnt want to sell to him because he is an Iranian. He can not both support intellectual property _and_ simply make the excuse to steal because they refuse to sell. If that worked, he could also argue that it is ok to pirate because they refuse to sell for $5.

Actually it was clear that your post was not accusational, but rather a genuine question. I didn't mean to respond with a bad tone... sorry about that.

If MathWorks didn't want to sell something to me (because they don't like the looks of roots of me), I wouldn't buy it even if my life depended on it (an ego thing) – the problem here is that MathWorks, Google, Apple, Amazon and other companies want to sell to me (it's their job, and I don't think they are any more racist than the average American!), but their it's government that prevents them.

This is where you and I differ slightly: I support MathWork's IP, but at the same time I know that they can't sell to me only because of US sanctions. I copy Matlab (not really - I use Mathematica) and I see no moral dilemma here.

Matlab is considered MathWorks "property" because of the IP laws. These IP laws have jurisdiction over areas and peoples that are governed by the legislation that adopt these laws. Why would people who are not governed and protected by the legislations and laws (to do business etc.) of particular authorities be obligated to obey their laws? I am speaking rhetorically, of course, and I do want to support actual innovators to be paid for their efforts.

The article points out the valid complaint from people who do not have access to legitimate ways of obtaining books/information, and makes a point of saying he does not endorse the way library.nu operated.

I'd disagree. We're presented with a technology which is slowly replacing the institutions we take for granted and made a great improvement on society. I'm thinking about both libraries and radio.

As Neil Young said, piracy is the new radio. Except that it is better and easier to access. And library.nu functioned as my library, except that it is better and easier to access.

If the music I was interested overlapped with the mainstream, then radio would probably be good, and if the library had the technical books I like, then that would too. Alas, they don't, and both internet and library.nu are (latter: were) my substitutions. I've downloaded all the books I've purchased after graduating a year ago (which is around 5). Even after owning a book, I've downloaded the same at work and shown it to a colleague, who also ended up purchasing it. When I look for a book on a topic of interest, I search amazon, read a few reviews, then download it on library.nu. The decision to buy it is done after going through the book and see if I like how the author writes, how the example code is, and especially how it covers my specific topic, before buying it. Usually, if it is a broad topic, I do this for about 3-5 books, and decide on which one to buy.

I'm going to go further than the author, and endorse library.nu for all its worth. Both as a library and for those who cannot afford, or don't have access. As for the freeloaders, or more precisely the actual losses: I believe they are small enough that it outweighs the cost. And honestly, if they didn't, the marked would adapt.

The decision to buy it is done after going through the book and see if I like how the author writes, how the example code is, and especially how it covers my specific topic, before buying it

You're basically saying you'd walk in to a restaurant, have a bite of every dish and then maybe decide to pay for it.

I do this for about 3-5 books, and decide on which one to buy.

Now you walk into three restaurants, eat a bit at every one of them and then decide to pay for the one you liked the most.

I agree with the original article and I think there are times where piracy is valid, but let's not think that a valid solution is to pay for what we think we should pay and nothing else.

No. What he's saying is that he'd want to listen to a band on the radio or from a friend before maybe buying their album. Which is completely reasonable.

Drawing parallels between physical property or services and information can be misleading--the real issue with the restaurant example is the restaurant's loss in both time and opportunity cost. Since copies of information are not naturally scarce, this is not an issue. It's really more like he looked at the food and cooked the same meal at home before coming to the restaurant and paying.

The important difference here is that your examples involve something physical; in both, he has eaten some food that can thus no longer be given to anyone else. Whereas, if he downloads a copy of an eBook, the publisher can still sell copies to just as many people; he has not removed any finite resource from the system.

I'm still not sure it's justifiable (though I'm leaning slightly towards it being so), but it certainly isn't comparable to what you're saying it is.

Can we just agree that it's wrong to do market segmentation for electronic goods based on geographic location? It's an anachronistic model that has no justification other than for padding BigCo's(tm) profit margins.

If the big media companies actually cared about piracy they would abandon this system and see piracy drop significantly overnight. Then again I think we all know that's just an excuse to try and hang on to the overinflated profits they're accustomed to for just a little bit longer.

While I too think that market segmentation as it exists for digital goods is stupid, I don't think it is done just for the money.

Different countries have different laws, different taxes, and your home country has different treaties and export control regulations that all need to be accounted for when selling to other countries. In some cases there could be markets/services that abstract some of this away, but it is not a trivial problem.

If it was trivial to do, then the only segmentation you would see would only be differentiating on price (getting the most that someone in that region would pay for it), instead of not selling it in those countries at all.

Now, the RIAA/MPAA has deep enough pockets and plenty of lawyers that they could have figured all this out for themselves already, and could have built a great online distribution system for themselves. So for them, segmentation is purely a play for money, though (hopefully) it will hurt their profits in the long run.

As far as I can tell, the reasons are that there are RIAA/MPAA-like cartels in most countries, which control the local distribution rights. Anyone wanting to sell music needs to negotiate deals with each of these individual copyright fiefdoms in order to be able to do business in the respective country. The legal costs are similar for each country, the expected returns vary wildly with affluence and size of the country.

Apple has very, very deep pockets and a track record of making money hand over fist, and they've got quite far with music, but movies and TV series are only available in a few countries near the top of the list in terms of GDP. You can infer from that how hard it must be for anyone else.

I assume they make it so difficult because they're terrified of upsetting their existing distribution channels. There's no other way I can explain why a DVD is cheaper than the same movie on iTunes, and why CDs on Amazon are still often cheaper than their MP3 counterparts on the same site.

To be totally frank, I don't really understand the legal requirements from this. Do I really have to comply with all of a country's laws in order to allow its citizens to purchase electronic goods from my online storefront (assuming I have no physical presence in their country)?

If so, why? And what possible sanctions do they have against me? Logic would dictate that the country would be responsible for barring access to such resources from within its borders - not individual foreign bussinesses.

With a 8x difference in wages [1] the price of the book in India should surely be $4 if it is $32 in the U.S. Are suggesting it should be $4 everywhere? which means it's still cheaper in the U.S. compared to salaries.

[1] see top item on (Sr. Software Engineer...): http://www.payscale.com/research/IN/Country=India/Salary and http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Country=United_States/Sa...

It is better than when the book isn't being sold at all. This is not a $10 vs $4 vs $4 everywhere vs $10 everywhere. Currently digital distribution sucks if you're outside the USA, and is OK but not great if you're outside a handful of rich countries.

Your way sounds great. Unfortunately, in practice this system is usually used to raise prices outside the US for countries where the public is used to paying more for stuff - not the other way around.

Anyway, I was mostly referring not to price differences but to availability differences. You can argue for or against price differentiation, but I challenge you to provide one good reason why I can purchase a movie on a DVD in my country, but not watch it on Netflix - or why that movie would become available locally months after its US premier.

1) Market can figure it out. At which price would you gross more money? I guess the answer would be something like $10. Books are overpriced anyway in the USA, and there's no reason to pay $30 for an ebook.

2) You can still make promo prices for different regions, but the service should be available everywhere.

TBH, $30 and not sell it in India due to the risk of cheap imports. At $10 it's not going to sell 3x as many as at $30 in the U.S.

Okay, but then again: Making conscious choice to not sell in India and then bitching about piracy in India is immoral.

You can still set the price to $30 but you have to actually sell worldwide to have any moral grounds against worldwide piracy.

UK estimated total of University students: just under 2 million (BBC figures, 2009) and shrinking slowly

India estimated total of University students (or at least places): just over 12 million, government policy to increase by factor 2 over by 2025 (BBC 2011 article)

I think you could discount heavily to something close to local wage rates and still make a handsome profit in India, especially with electronic distribution reducing the distribution costs.

Does anyone else remember/use the Indian editions? I remember Tata/McGraw Hill having a series of Indian printed editions of popular texts. Local production and typesetting, lower price. Some of them even made it to the UK in the 1980s.

    > it's wrong to do market segmentation for electronic
    > goods based on [..] location

I think it's OK to do it, so long as you do it in a way that doesn't leverage the government to be your enforcer.

I worked on an education publishing system. They were concerned about customer organisations photocopying the books. They implemented an online learning system, where each book came with one license being a serial number printed inside the cover. Now the students could tell when they were being short-changed.

IP laws exist to promote publication, not reduce it. If IP owners aren't publishing in a country, why should that country protect their IP?

Oh, wait, there's an international treaties, and pro-copyright UN organization administering it. That UN can't ban the execution of children, but can enforce 70 years plus life of the author says a lot about the power of vested interests.

Agree with your sentiment but not the underling logic.

If IP owners aren't publishing in a country, why should that country protect their IP

Property rights don't vaporise automatically due to lack of use, e.g. in India squatters could, at one time, claim ownership to property after illegally sitting there for a certain period. This seems wrong to me. On the other end if Merck or Pfizer were to get pissed off at say Libya and deny its people certain drugs I would support suspending their property rights.

I agree that this situation is ridiculous and that the black market is often a solid incentive for legislators to re-consider ridiculous regulation. But the suspension of property rights is something that should be thought out meticulously before implementation; in this case it fits into the greater debate on the nature of IP as a "true" property.

Pro-copyright UN organization administering it

I don't think the UN was actively involved in any of these decisions nor overtly in their enforcement any more than it is in other issues - the author was simply quoting UN statutes to underline how this is an evolving debate.

There are a lot of intersecting rationales, but squatters' rights exist in most countries, including common-law ones like the US and UK, in part out of a desire to ensure that the legal situation of ownership doesn't diverge too far from the de facto situation of possession. Prevents the situation where someone digs up a dusty old deed from a basement showing they really own something that someone else is currently living on (and that maybe their parents were also living on); the on-the-ground facts of the past 100 years in that case trump the deed, regardless of whether it's genuine, promoting a sort of stability. Same with adverse possession and boundary disputes; if your neighbor puts up a fence and you don't challenge it, it eventually becomes the new property line, to avoid disputes always going back to ancient documents and upsetting the status quo.

There is, though, an intersecting economic-use rationale, which was especially prevalent in the American west, which is more like the copyright argument: something like, if you're not helping to make America great by neglecting your land, and someone else is willing to mine or farm there, well then move aside.

> Property rights don't vaporise automatically due to lack of use

IP rights are not property rights. They are a temporary monopoly enacted by society as a means for more works to enter the public sphere. If the copyright holders don't exploit their works in a certain country, the bargain is not upheld.

And some IP rights do vaporize automatically due to lack of use, namely trademarks.

> in India squatters could, at one time, claim ownership to property after illegally sitting there for a certain period. This seems wrong to me.

To me it seems right - property is a scarce resource. If someone does not make use of it, and lets it sit unclaimed to the point where they don't notice that someone lives there for quite some time, then why is it in the interest of society to acknowledge that property claim? But it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand, exactly because property is a scarce resource - the arguments that apply to property largely don't apply to copyright.

"If someone does not make use of it, and lets it sit unclaimed to the point where they don't notice that someone lives there for quite some time"

Then you get into different people having different ideas of what it means to "use" something.

A person buys a tract of land and doesn't develop it, because she thinks it should be a nature reserve. Another person wants to build a golf course there. Should the second person be able to just waltz in and build a golf course, because the land isn't being "used"?

Also, in the case of IP, a piece of IP can be "in use" without being publicly available yet. Consider a book being turned into a movie. That can take years.

Property rights don't vaporise automatically due to lack of use

Yes they do. Trademarks are a form of intellectual property, and expire if not maintained/fought.

Likewise most countries do not have absolute property rights. Squatters have rights. The government can compulsary purchase property for the public interest. Why is "copyright property" treated specially than normal property?

I agree with your logic & deduction. I wonder if this is a problem with the first global copyright treaty? The Bern Convention of 1886. Maybe it's time to roll back that? You only get copyright in a region if you're commerically exploiting the copyrighted work in that region (plus a sensible, few year buffer period)

> You only get copyright in

How about letting people everywhere simply vote on copyright? On copyright duration. On copyright extent. On filesharing. Etc. It is the people whom copyright is primarily enforced against. It is their natural right to share information with their fellow men that is restricted. _They_ should have a final say of how many artificial restrictions they are willing to bear to get more works produced. And maybe they dont care about works at all and value their freedoms most?

In the vast majority of copyright discussions, the biggest party is usually being completely ignored, like a flock of sheep. While it is _them_ that will be caged, that will sheared, that will be milked, that will be slaughtered by the resulting policy, they are the only ones having absolutely no baaa and meeh in how much freedom they are willing to trade for how big a benefit. We have only special interests standing around the corrals and deciding "whats best" for the corralled sheep, and unsurprisingly, the decision always end up as total and maximal exploitation of the ones who have no say in it.

How the fuck is this "democracy"? Why is copyright constantly and permanently being excluded from "the will of the people" being mapped into law? Why cant we finally stop all the useless discussions on what would be "best" for the sheep and simply let them decide?

How about letting people everywhere simply vote on copyright?

In theory, we have that already. Laws are made by governments, who are elected, etc.

In practice...

I completely agree.

I would gladly pay $100 for K&R's C Programming Language, but sadly I can't do that (It's against US export laws to sell to me). Yesterday I spent almost an hour trying to find an offset copy of Dragon Book (Compilers), but I couldn't find it (there are none), so I have to bury myself in ebooks on my iPad (which is not a great experience).

It's against US export laws to sell to me

Really? How? why?

Because they are in Iran

yep.

A few months ago I wanted to buy a Mac app (that wasn't available through Mac App Store). Obviously I couldn't buy it with credit card, so I offered the developer $15 iTunes gift credit, but he was afraid to do business with me (it is illegal, he said) :)

Also, Google Code & SourceForge block Iranian IPs, so it's hard even to download free stuff!

wow! Not being able to buy K&R is tough.

If I may ask, what is the software/hacking scene in Iran really like? Do most computers use Linux? (And if trading with Iran is illegal how would you buy an Apple or Dell machine anyway?). Can you have gmail/blogger/twitter accounts or are US companies forbidden from giving you free accounts? What languages are popular? Is there a large internal market for software?

Thanks in advance.

> what is the software/hacking scene in Iran really like?

For indie developers and those who want to use cutting edge technologies (think of a web service created on Node.js + MongoDB), pretty grim. People use those kind of services, but it's hard to make a living making them (because of lack of widespread payment systems).

But the government invests heavily on software technologies (security/blocking/MITMing!), and all corporations/big businesses have to rely on home-made solutions (banks, hospitals, universities) Those areas are usually dominated by Microsoft technologies (.Net and SQL Server).

> Do most computers use Linux?

Absolutely no. It's easy to crack Windows, Photoshop and Microsoft Word! And many (including myself) don't consider it unethical, as you can't buy them in any other way (I buy a lot through Mac/iTunes App Store, but mainly to support fellow developers and not because I consider it more ethical for my situation).

> And if trading with Iran is illegal how would you buy an Apple or Dell machine anyway?

I think it's called black market (though I'm not sure if it applies to our situation or not). What I mean is that a guy buys 25 MacBooks in Hong Kong and ships them to Iran (they're all registered under his name) and then sells them independently of Apple, usually with a tasty premium (Apple products are really popular, but also more expensive than other brands.

> Can you have gmail/blogger/twitter accounts or are US companies forbidden from giving you free accounts?

You usually can use them, but you can't register from Iran (you have to choose another country). But in case of most social things it doesn't matter, because they are blocked by the government anyway. Stuff like sf.net, code.google.com, and like of Oracle are more problematic; as they block Iranian IPs.

> What languages are popular?

C#, ASP.Net, PHP, Java (for businesses). Hackers and hobbyists use whatever they feel like.

> Is there a large internal market for software?

For end users? No. But for corporations and businesses (those I mentioned above), I don't think it's different than other places.

I'm pretty sure you can't buy any US stuff in Iran, not just books. Some other countries (Syria & North Korea IIRC. Cuba?)

Ah yes, Iran. For a moment, I thought there was something special about K&R C (like the crypto export regs).

I totally agree with the comment on the OP's blog: "books have basically been my singular source of investment, more because of the site than in spite of it." I can't seem to remember how many books I've purchased after downloading them from library.nu. Being in India, library.nu was a gem when a substantial number of books aren't available at Rupee prices.

I also bought the books which I would never had I not had library.nu. Don't tell me about the preview in Amazon, for these particular books I had to see more other pages than "legally" available to make a decision.

I really mourn the loss of library.nu

I buy a lot of books in english. Currently I live in South America. Last book I bought from Amazon-US (Thinking Fast and Slow) took 2 months to arrive.

I love ebooks but those cost almost the same as hardcopy and you lose the right to lend or sell. Also, the quality of the content is usually very inferior. Recently I did ebook management software so I know the ins and outs.

The temptation to use unpaid electronic copies is bigger than ever. Specially after noting the higher management on publishing businesses is usually in the 55+ age range and repeat how they only want to keep the status quo until they retire.

I was a big fan of library.nu. As a student in Mexico, you just cannot get some of the books that were available in there, so it was incredibly useful. I no longer used the site so much, but I'm still grateful that this site was live when I went to university. It kind of marvels me how artificial are the limits that humans put on knowledge that can be useful to others, I hope we can solve this problem someday.

Not completely true. It is trivial to buy dead-tree books from Amazon.com (US) and send them to Mexico (books do not pay taxes when entering Mexico). I have done it for more than 10 years.

The real problem is the cost. Imagine that, if people in the USA, earning it US dollars think that a text-book (http://www.amazon.com/Marketing-Management-14th-Philip-Kotle...) costing USDd$168.72 is crazy. Imagine what people in Mexico (where the average yearly income is about USD$7,300) , India, China or other development countries think.

Quite simply, a lot of the people who pirate books are not a market for the publishers simply because it is impossible to pay.

Are they entitled to get such knowledge for free? legally, they are not. Morally... it is subjective.

Whenever anyone talks about copyright and piracy they seem to include a sop "Obviously I'm not against piracy and don't support breaking the law". Why do they always do that.

I'm in favour of piracy when it's for the greater good.

Perhaps because if they don't, the discussion tends to gravitate towards "you are breaking the law if you are pirating", instead of focusing on the main point they are trying to make.

I presume that, were they to not say it, that someone could accuse them of condoning piracy and breaking the law.

This hits closer to home than I thought it would.

Let's leave aside the fact library.nu was illegal under current laws, but for many books it was the only reasonable option to obtain it.

library.nu offered extreme convenience for those outside of US especially in the education sector.

When I lived in US, it was quite inexpensive to order physical books. I used to order older editions of university books for a few bucks each and shipping was very inexpensive (think Amazon Prime now).

Now in Europe it is quite hard to bargain shop for books. Perhaps anyone have any tips?

Shopping on Amazon is physically painful, when you see how much you end up paying for extra costs.

Then there is the matter of buying experience for e-books.

Buying e-books on O'Reilly feels the best out of all current e-book sellers, you actually feel like an owner of the e-book(even though of course you really are not).

Still the ideal would be that e-books would be inexpensive to purchase and that buying a physical book would qualify one for e-book version.

    > Shopping on Amazon is physically painful, when you
    > see how much you end up paying for extra costs.

That's not my experience. I recently bought a stack of ancient machine code and assembly books and paid 2p for some, with two pounds of shipping on top of that. The books are practically free to me.

    > Buying e-books on O'Reilly feels the best out of all
    > current e-book sellers

Nostarch are pretty good. You can go in and download your books when you like from them. If a book you already own subsequently gets a new electronic format release, they open up access to that to you automatically.

Whenever I read anything about piracy I often think of Gabe Newell's ubiquitous speech which underlines one single thing: Piracy is a service problem. And books are not an exception.

It is a service problem with a service, not legal, not technical, solution

It seems to me that, especially with India, there's a big question which nobody is asking. When foreign companies can't or won't supply the market at a suitable price, where is the local replacement? Why isn't this being fixed by local competition? India outpopulates the US four to one - is it credible that Indian engineers and publishers are somehow incapable of producing output that is to the same, or better, standard as that from the US at a price more commensurate with the local market?

That had occurred to me as well.

Back in the 80s we had Pergamon Press, started by Robert Maxwell of subsequent ill-fame. He located experts in eastern European countries, paid them to write university level texts on science and aspects of technology, paid an English speaking academic to check the translation of the texts and published the editions quite cheap. I think it helped that Maxwell actually bought a printing company.

I worked through a lot of Landau and Lifshitz's volumes on theoretical physics that way, including the imfamous footnote on shockwaves in rock (think nuclear tests).

So where are all the Indian/Pakistani authors?

We do have something called "Indian Low Price Edition" http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22indian+subcontinent%22+%22low+pr... but not all titles are available for whatever reason. Mostly, these are books used as texts in schools & colleges.

Another note: An LPE of a book that is available for INR ~500 would cost anywhere from INR ~4000 to ~6000 if the original publication is ordered. Generally the original is not stocked so there is a wait period of ~5 weeks from placing the order.

Sure, but that's imported content again. It's reliant on the foreign publishers deigning to think it worthwhile. Is the existence of LPEs enough to prevent the growth of a market in indigenous content?

That had occurred to me as well.

I worked through a lot of Landau and Lifshitz's volumes on theoretical physics that way, including the imfamous footnote on shockwaves in rock (think nuclear tests).

These are non-fungible goods.

In specific, yes. In general, I don't understand why, to pick an arbitrary example, O'Reilly gets a free pass as a go-to publisher on technical content, or why academic textbooks should be imported by default. Put another way: why isn't there yet an Indian publisher with the status of O'Reilly, whose books we're all desperate to get our hands on?

I think there are a variety of factors: 0) Many of the best computer engineers emigrate to US, where they do publish nice books. 1) US based developers often work with really good and experienced professionals (or at least learn from them). 2) US professionals are educated in a system that greatly encourages the "German Style" of textbook writing: clear, concise and to the point. This was started by the great mathematicians and physicists in Germany, who then came over to the US; the people who started writing computer books knew a great style and built upon it. In contrast most Indian books are heavy on facts, low on insight, examples are crappy, typeset quality is terrible, many errors etc. 3) Most importantly, there just aren't that many excellent developers in India. A large chunk of the "computer engineers" are mostly doing grunt work that does not require much innovation. What will they write about? 4) Most Indian computer engineers work very long shifts; they don't get enough free time to try out and learn a new technology "in their free time" because there is no free time. Less people using a technology means that there is less expertise, less adoption. All of that adds up to a great inertia

Seems like there's an opportunity for some kind of middle ground.

Books are emotive. Why not embrace the community's desire to make titles available in different markets, but manage it in such a way that the publisher is involved in the process and has ultimate approval over a digitized version? Active community members get books for free based on the degree of their participation. Everyone else gets to buy designated "community editions" of titles with a proper cut going back to the copyright owner. The community platform takes enough money to keep itself ticking over, including a cut for partner services that make it possible to sell in hard-to-reach global markets.

Sounds crazy, perhaps, but only because publishers still want a one-way relationship. A deep participative relationship with their global community of readers would only be a good thing. And it's less crazy for the publishers / authors than not making any money from these markets at all.

I really think (and hope) open source textbooks are going to solve this. While it might be difficult for OS books to catch on in places where there are market pressures from textbook publishers, in the countries this post mentions where the information just isn't available, there's going to be very little pushback/meddling. I'm really excited to see what this open source initiatives can do outside the US.

You might be right about publishers taking a smaller cut and thinking it's better than nothing- but my guess is that the publishers would rather get no cut (while shutting down anyone who monetizes by pirating their content) than let the information be available in places that can't afford it at their inflated prices (and for other reasons, I'm sure - not trying to oversimplify the complexities of this market). Publishers are already mad enough that they don't get their cut everytime Amazon sells a used version of their textbooks. But this is part of what Apple will solve in their textbook initiatives.

Which is why I really like what Zed Shaw is doing and I hope his series extends to "Learning X The Hard Way", where 'X' can be anything. http://learncodethehardway.org/

manage it in such a way that the publisher is involved in the process and has ultimate approval over a digitized version?

Is that not what we have now? Publishers have final say about whether or not to enter a market? If not, how am I wrong? If I'm right then this system (which is the current one) is broken.

The solution is to not have markets. Have a market. One global market.

List of alternatives to library.nu (see first comment):

http://www.reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/hrgmv/tracker_with...

Same pain, there is always times that I wanted to buy an old book from amazon, but told me it is only available in US. Then I always turn to library.nu for help. Sad it is gone.

The only complaint I have about copyright protection is they should try to make their work accessible. Otherwise, there will be another library.nu given time.

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ http://en.bookfi.org/ http://pastebin.com/LTZfu2DX

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