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Comment by esafak | Hacker News Reader

And both deprive the creators of income.

Honestly, this is a very privileged take based upon false assumptions. As someone who doesn't have disposable income ~90% of the books I pirate I would have never read otherwise. I'm not depriving the creators of income because I never had any to give them in the first place. Over 53% of Americans between the ages of 18-34 do not have any disposable income [1]. Additionally, Americans that do have disposable income should probably be saving it all in case of an unexpected medical emergency or layoff. These problems are only worse outside the United States. Before you lecture me about public libraries, go ahead and take a bus outside of San Francisco or whatever major city you live in and try to rent a book published in the last 5 years... I'll wait. For all of human history the poor simply didn't read. Digital piracy has changed the world for the better. As an (unsuccessful) author myself, I beg anyone who cannot afford to pay for my work to pirate it. Most authors I know feel the same way. If you're only into writing for the money your work probably sucks anyway!

[1] https://www.marketingcharts.com/demographics-and-audiences-1...

>These problems are only worse outside the United States.

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.

There is a world of free reading material, recent and old. More than enough for anyone to educate and lift her/himself out of poverty. The Wikipedia alone, with all its errors, is a fountain of knowledge. You don't need piracy.

I hope your indigent pirate going to compensate the authors once he has lifted himself out of poverty.

I'm sorry, I couldn't stop laughing at "this is only worse outside of the United States"

This is not correct. In economic terms if person A values a book at a price below the selling price and pirates it, the seller has not lost income compared to the counterfactual world where piracy was impossible.

That's not true, person A could still send the author money by other means, but really in that situation a trade should not take place because it is against the seller's consent.

I was assuming that the other means have transaction costs higher than the value to person A because this is the case in the real world (how many authors even have a Patreon?).

So write them a check. Visit them in person and shake their hand. Too high a transaction cost? What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Let's return to the central point: transactions ought to be consensual, and pirating ain't.

> Too high a transaction cost?

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.

Incorrect.

Good point

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