I would like to reward the authors, but I refuse to allow the publishing industry to get away with this bullshit. If the authors choose to publish their books DRM-free as epubs, I will (and do) happily buy them.
Manning does put a “licensed to my_email” on the pages of the digital copies but it’s not onerous.
- I'm sending a message to publishers that physical books are in demand (not the case)
- I have to deal with the physical book (giving it away to a charity shop is probably the solution, but it's still hassle)
- It doesn't solve the problem - publishers still think everything is good. Only by depriving the publishers of revenue until they start respecting their customers can we solve this.
And I think my attitude is a lot less entitled than the publisher's. If I pay for something, I should own it, not have it subject to the publisher's whims. The attitude that they can disrespect their customers and keep control of the book even after it has been purchased is more than entitled. It should be illegal.
That doesn't count as a mention?
Publishers wouldn't be able to take down the list website, as it's perfectly legal to send authors money. Publishers wouldn't be able to take down the pirate sites either, because they've already been trying for decades and can't win the whack-a-mole.
I had thought he decided to distribute this way specifically as a response to how much publishers kept from commercial sales, but I can't seem to dredge up a source confirming that at the moment.
Generally if I say I would like to do something but I can't be bothered it's because I don't actually care about it at all and I'm just saying that as part of my complicated get away routine.
I believe what you probably really mean is you would be ok with rewarding the authors if it was convenient and met your requirements. Then you wouldn't pirate and the author would be paid as part of your purchasing in the way you wanted.
on edit: sorry, I see it wasn't you that made the original comment, and you were just pointing it out.
There are plenty of authors choosing to publish their work DRM-free.
Most authors want to write and be recognized, so they get picked up for more writing contracts. Piracy is really the publisher's problem.
Yeah, hence the physical book. I agree with the other person that this is very morally questionable
Bullshit. While I agree with your point of view otherwise, this attitude is indefensible. To validate your "piracy," you have the simple option of paying for the physical book in order to provide the author at least a pittance. But your objection to that is that you might imply demand for physical books? Are you fucking kidding? Supporting physical books is A PUBLIC SERVICE. Because the fact is that many people DO prefer physical books, for the very reasons that you're railing against. They can't be taken away. If people don't demand them, they will disappear and we'll all be subject to yet another rental scam. That includes YOU.
WTF dude. You lost a lot of us right there, and need to re-think your value system.
I'm fine with my values, they make sense to me and I believe if everyone followed the same values we'd end up with a better world.
Furthermore, it doesn't matter if they're "obsolete." In the case we're replying to, they provide a non-revokable mechanism to reward the author if you decide to "pirate" the E-book. Complaining that it sends a misleading signal that physical books are still in demand is a weak, ridiculous excuse for stealing.
Authors either need to sell something people want or get pirated.
It seems very obvious there is no moral or ethical justification for copyright/DRM or any other way of giving control over the replication of information. The author has at best only a legal right to money, and often bad law needs to be fought with civil disobedience (which is perfectly morally justifiable).
If an author/creator wants to get paid by people who disagree with DRM and the "licensing" of books/content they need to offer something for the money that those people want, or accept and attract donations.
I haven't pirated lately because there's enough great content I can get on reasonable terms. But if I'm put in a situation where the publisher says "my way or the highway", I'm gonna go option C every single time, and feel no remorse whatsoever.
You’re complaining about the terms they offer, not the product. If you’re not clear on that point, it’s no wonder the position is so garbled.
Maybe the author doesn’t want to get paid by people who dislike DRM. That doesn’t give anyone the right to take their content without paying. The principled answer is to refuse to read works from these authors.
> Maybe the author doesn’t want to get paid by people who dislike DRM.
That’s fine and as I stated those people shouldn’t / won’t pay them.
> That doesn’t give anyone the right to take their content without paying.
This is exactly what my original comment addressed and you ignored:
I contend that there is absolutely no moral or ethical problem with copying information and no valid moral or ethical basis for giving creators exclusive rights or “ownership” of their creations, when they can be copied without depriving existing holders of the information, or giving anyone special/exclusive rights to profit from information.
I can see an argument for preventing corporate entities from profiting from any information or content they didn’t create, but not when it comes to people’s ability to freely copy and share.
The principled answer is to support and fund people and tools that enable piracy and free information sharing, to the detriment of “rights holders”.
But it’s also totally disconnected from DRM. Presumably you wouldn’t pay for non-DRM ebooks either, or at least see no “moral or ethical” issue with someone so declines to do so.
And I hope you’re also on the side of AI training as fair use that does not require permission or payment?
They are in demand of course, just not by you.
https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-can-boost-digital-music-sale...
You cannot eat the cake and have it too
Since when? There may be a reduction in demand but bookshops where I live are full of customers.
I only buy physical copies—actual black atoms on white paper aren't as ephemeral as digital copies, neither are they subject the DRM nonsense.
There may be a reduction and I am kinda starting to warm up to my reader's ability to add multiple bookmarks to quotable quotes/interesting concepts/neat scripts, but I am not sure parent is right.
Maybe it depends on locale? If anyone has good data on that, it is likely to be Amazon.
The world operates on contracts, and we are all free to decline to do business with companies we dislike or who ask more than we think their product is worth.
Agree to terms or don’t, but I have a hard time seeing “I’m going to take what they’re offering but not pay what they’re asking” as some kind of noble stand.
That's not a great comparison. The problem in this instance isn't a high price, it's a lack of access. If they offered ebooks drm free with a X% unlock fee or something then you'd have a point.
How would that not apply to shoplifting because the price is too high or the return policy too short or whatever?
It's fine if you think what they are doing is wrong. The government shares your opinion.
Additionally, this argument here is even worse, because the laws you'd be violating in this instance have nothing to do with IP or theft, but rather privacy.
But you wouldn't be charged with theft.
That has nothing to do with it being a good or bad analogy.
> How would that not apply to shoplifting because the price is too high or the return policy too short or whatever?
What is "that" in this statement? I'm not saying the word "theft" isn't valid, I'm saying the circumstances are different enough that equating the two is a poor basis to reason from.
Digital assets cannot be compared to physical goods. A physical good that is shoplifted not only misses out on the sale, but must be restocked at the shop’s expense in order to capture the next sale. Digital piracy does not create any additional burden to a business’s expenses. This will never be a valid line of logic.
If a book was excessively expensive for people, they wouldn't steal it. They'd get it from the library, Xerox it and bind the photocopies .
Copying a pdf is just the digital equivalent.
Do you believe then same thing when renting a car?
When I want to read a book, I usually prefer a physical copy (and I am willing to pay for it, if I do not merely want to read it for a few hours at the library (if the library has a copy)); sometimes it is helpful to have it on the computer too, and in that case I would only accept non-DRM files, and possibly even piracy. However, some books might be difficult to find, or maybe I only want one page, etc.
I've got cash, plenty of people around me don't and I don't begrudge their piracy. I pay, see below, when I was young and broke I pirated everything. I'm surrounded by people for whom a US minimum wage would be a stonking income, why shouldn't they pirate?
The big issue for me personally is shipping. I live outside the US and EU, and it's a real problem getting books out. I often pay more for shipping than I do for the books themselves, and I have to wait up to a month, and there's the ridiculousness of getting a book shipped across the US/EU, then to my third country.
My approach is that I pirate freely and happily, without a shred of guilt. Most of the books on my reader only get read up through the first few chapters, some I'll finish completely.
I do however like books, real books. If I'm getting into an author I've pirated, I'll then buy some of their other stuff, and I buy frequently.
This comes back to the old thing with music pirates being the biggest spenders on music. A classic case, I think.
So please, leave your moralizing out of this. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to pirate, much of it ending up with money in author and publishers pockets.
Hmm, tough choice... not :)
there are valid reasons to pirate books sometimes but at the end of the day, someone has to pay something into the system to keep books getting published
I believe authors deserve to be rewarded proportionally to the quality of their work, I also believe good publishers can add a lot of value to an author's work, and even more I believe that DRM-Free publishers have shown it's possible to base their core business model on being more convenient than piracy. I buy a book, it's mine to use on my devices, no strings ttached.
The hubris of some companies make them refuse to see the reality of the market, and instead stubbornly push for wider copyright laws, harsher punishment, DRM, and higher walls for their gardens.
A) I don't see a reason why some mega-cooperations should know about every book I buy.
B) You don't know if they have been watermarked. I don't want every book I own to be watermarked with god-knows-what metadata about me.
Let me pay with Bitcoin, and I'll buy books again.
Now in the times of lightning, there is not even a transaction for the payment of a book. Payments are bundled into channels. Individual lightning payments do not leave any trace on the blockchain.
That's where you're probably wrong. If the NSA can listen to anyone on the planet through their phone, they surely have the data that exchanges are legally obligated to collect in terms of validating all users by their government documents, aka the place 99% of bitcoin users probably get their coin.
The rest is just mapping it all together and correlating the remaining blank accounts with the piles of other data they've got on each person, which I'm sure they're easily capable of. A bitcoin transaction and a book download coming from a the same IP at roughly the same time are surely mappable to a physical person.
I have over 2x my fiat savings in crypto and none of it could easily be traced to my real identity.
Just last week I walked into a random "crypto exchange service" in the city I was visiting and sold them USDT and walked out with $10k in cash. No kyc. They didn't even ask my name. They were buying and selling for only 0.5% commission.
You give then cash, they give you USDT or BTC. Now you can buy all the ebooks you want with anonymous crypto.
Just because you don’t find a comment useful doesn’t mean no one else will.
My reply described how it's easily possible to convert USDT to fiat because I assumed it was obvious that the process is similar in both directions and can be done for any common form of crypto, including Bitcoin.
Also your story begins with you holding USDT. I am assuming that you were able to amass your entire crypto fortune without ever involving a bank account or debit card, because otherwise your answer to my question would likely be “Visa or Mastercard” when it comes to how you came to possess any crypto assets in the first place.
Acting like a petulant child doesn’t do anyone any good.
Out of curiosity, what did you learn?
I learnt that Cryto ATM withdrawal limits have grown significantly in the last few years.
As a fun observation, when you see someone discussing something inane like buying ebooks, it’s actually pretty odd for a stranger to hop in and volunteer details about how much money they have and to brag about how they knowingly pay a premium to avoid KYC when handling cash.
For example, if a stranger walked up to you on the street and interrupted your conversation with “I totally know a guy that’ll take any amount of cash you’ve got and give you untraceable crypto or vice versa, no questions asked” without volunteering any other information, you’d be better off being suspicious of him rather than the person being skeptical of that guy.
If you think GP is talking about “Bitcoin ATMs”, can you point me to one that will dispense $10,000 cash from USDT, not Bitcoin without any KYC?
But please go on with your critique.
There you have it. And beyond that, the corporation will sell the data to whoever if profitable. They will abuse them any time there is anything to gain.
They won't sell it because it is their advantage.
So they do care and intend to use the information to practice psychological tricks and deception to make me buy more things (probably not just books) and also sell it to others who want to do the same. No thanks!
I rather have targeted adds of things that I might need than porn and poker adds.
1. No recommendations
2. Generic recommendations
3. Tailored recommendations
4. Paid ads
I’ll always use an ad blocker to aim for (1) anyway, but shouldn’t have to rely on that.
Moreover this is inherent in the nature of a capitalist system itself - it's Schumpeter's creative destruction at work. It is normal, regular, and otherwise healthy for all businesses to eventually end.
But if that business was the only entity with the right and ability to copy, distribute etc. - then the creative work they produced is highly likely to disappear, lost to us forever.
It's tragic enough that the early history of video games may simply disappear. That future generations will have no idea how it all got started. With copying and distribution cheaper and easier than ever before, we're somehow still at risk of losing this era of history.
It's far, far, FAR scarier to think of this happening to the repository of human knowledge contained in BOOKS. The future which is now unfolding is a sort of permanent, rolling version of the burning of the Library of Alexandria, where the collective wisdom of the human race just sort of fades away over time. Where we lose the ability to learn from our past, because we've lost the ability to make an enduring recording of it.
Ironically, with technology, we have unlocked infinite, practically free distribution of copying and information. It can be done with a keystroke. The problem lies in our legal, political and economic systems - the iron boot has become so heavy it's crushing the larynx of the past and future alike, in a way never before seen in human history.
Exactly, as I said in my post we need a new political movement to fight the problem.
But the tragedy of games disappearing? There's more than 30 games released on Steam _each day_, let that sink in. Writing and publishing books has never in history been so easy. A vast majority of these are archived and easily available to anyone, in many more magnitudes of scale than our capacity to consume them.
In fact, I'm seeing the opposite of your claims, with Meta and OpenAI publicly admitting of breaking copyright laws while training their LLMs, and also the widespread movement for self-proclaimed librarians hoarding books, ROMs and other software in terabyte scales. I'm not passing judgements about any of this, just saying that copyright law is not always strictly applied and the iron boot is more like a fluffy slipper when it comes to availability of historical content.
There was a recent article about 87% of "classic" games no longer being commercially available - well that's still above the Sturgeon's law ("ninety percent of everything is crap"). Why would anyone expect publishers to offer content that is only interesting for historical reasons? For games that are still relevant, there is an added effort to run them on modern systems and to offer customer support.
No one is saying publishers have to offer content which is not commercially interesting. My contention is that if we want to preserve knowledge we need to put it in the public domain after a while, maybe several decades, or at least be very generous with exceptions for archival. This is consistent with copyright law until it was subverted in the modern era. At this point it looks like Disney has successfully lobbied for permanent and perpetual copyright.
Now, you could choose to not read books that don't meet your high moral bar for distribution. But screw that, you can have your cake and eat it too!
Publishers need to stop doing this, or we end up in a world where everything is rented. They will only pay attention to what affects their revenue.
I repeat: I'm happy to pay for books if they're DRM-free. It's not like I'm pirating everything because it's free; I'm happy to pay for it if I can actually own it.
Self-flagellation is not a moral imperative.
And as juvenile as it sounds, I'd actually like my copies of The Dark Tower to include the interior art too. Completely absent.
We finally got to a point in the future where theoretically they could siphon tens of thousands of dollars out of me (because I wouldn't first have to spend x20 that amount buying a home with a large enough library proper), and their authorized, authentic ebooks look no better than some half-assed scan downloaded from a #bookz DCC bot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmi3akNnqis - You Should Pirate Anime (Reupload)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXiQJWT442I - You Should Pirate Anime 2 (Reupload)
Libgen works instantly, every time.
Im happy I only buy books where I get a DRM free copy
The only way to force this issue is to "pirate before you buy-it" and save your money. Hard to get screwed by fake purchase buttons if you dont buy, and hit libgen, torrents, and usenet.
but I agree, do not buy shit you dont own
Don't need to own a book I'm going to read once and never read again.
[1] https://www.marketingcharts.com/demographics-and-audiences-1...
I hope your indigent pirate going to compensate the authors once he has lifted himself out of poverty.
Huh? I agree with everything up to this point. Of the G20 nations, only the US has all the problems you complain about: no disposable income, enormous medical costs, no job protections, etc. Well-run developed nations don't have these problems.
As someone who left the US, the only real problem over here is that English-language books are hard to find in countries where English isn't widely spoken (which should be obvious of course), so of course e-books are very attractive for this reason. But then, as you can see in many comments here, the e-book sellers don't work much with people living outside the US, your "purchased" e-books stop working outside the US, etc.
Let's return to the central point: transactions ought to be consensual, and pirating ain't.
Yes, those transaction costs are way above the worth of the item if its already below the selling price for person A.
Note that in practice, almost all transaction costs are not money.
The key to the problem is political action.
Normally "have to" is used when the consequences of not doing so are very dire, possibly life threatening. A person shoplifting a copy of Harry Potter for their own use would not normally count.
Many would contend the consequences would be very dire if they didn't act. For example, those who depend on Sci-Hub for educational material. They'd contend they've no other option.