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Comment by chii | Hacker News Reader

> Delightful experience.

compare this with the piracy option: search for torrent or download link, click, wait for download to finish. Upload to device. Read and enjoy.

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cough mobilism.org/libgen.is/irc channels/z-library cough

I also appreciated recent HN threads on Anna's Archive.

Do the ends justify the means, matey?

Have you considered accessing freely-licensed content instead, and supporting authors who believe in the freedom movement, such as Creative Commons?

How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living?

> deprived of sales

but the post above explain an arduous process for a purchase, and i would expect that there's not an insignificant number of people who would've given up in the middle.

So do you also feel that you need to make the same complaint of a lost sale to amazon? Why target pirates specifically? Whether they _consumed_ content or not, is irrelevant - in both scenarios, you would've "lost" a sale.

Have you considered accessing freely-licensed content instead, and supporting authors who believe in the freedom movement, such as Creative Commons?

Can you direct me to some of these? Perhaps some you recommend? That sounds interesting, but I don't know where to find such content.

There are tons of them available.

Here's the Creative Commons Search portal: https://search.creativecommons.org/

I tried Openverse and Europeana. Some of these appear to categorize eBooks as "images", or perhaps they are just promotional images for unfree books. Tens of thousands of results.

Here's a Google Books search. I was unable to find a "search for license" type thing, but you can search for "Fully viewable" or "Google eBooks only":

https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=-copyright&tbs...

My father loves HathiTrust, and so do many other people who love freedom: https://www.hathitrust.org/

Of course you know the Internet Archive and Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/

Wikisource hosts lots of freely-licensed text, in many, many languages; here's English: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page

Never forget the O.G. PD site, Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/

Also, while it is not the written word, it is based on awesome freely-available books, and perhaps you could consider adding to the library at LibriVox: https://librivox.org/search?primary_key=0&search_category=au...

My classmates at school ate this stuff up when I volunteered that there are sites where you can find awesome public domain reference material that's often better-quality than the paywalled stuff you pay for.

Don't forget the Open Textbooks and freely licensed academic materials. Community colleges and universities will direct you to those.

https://oercommons.org/hubs/open-textbooks https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks

Don't forget niche uses and special interests. Want to overcome your addiction to porn? Download some free eBooks: https://www.covenanteyes.com/e-books/

I’m not sure that most books are at all fungible. Also do many book authors actually publish under Creative Commons?

Have you considered not accepting intellectual property as a legitimate concept to begin with? It makes no sense to even speak of "freely licensed" anything once you do that.

Arduous is overstating it by a long way. Frustrating, bothersome, annoying, inconsiderate, stupid, yes. Arduous? I used to carry a walkman, several tapes, and spare batteries with me every day; I used to carry a book to read in one pocket and often another, smaller book in another, and even occasionally a newspaper under my arm. Buying a book or any media online is not arduous, even if it's as described.

What it does show is that innovative businesses will, over time, become like the dinosaurs they out-competed, and leave room for something new. Piracy will probably always be there, even when buying is not arduous.

It's arduous relative to today's standards and relative to piracy.

Carrying those books wasn't arduous, except when I travelled around Asia and decided my main bag should be books. Big books. Almost ruined my back.

Words have meaning. Arduous it ain't.

Tiresome doesn't necessarily mean physically tired. Words do have meaning, and you would know if you read those meaning to understand the idea being presented.

Arduous never means "something that is slightly inconvenient" unless one is prone to exaggeration and has the forbearance of a child.

> Tiresome doesn't necessarily mean physically tired.

Not necessarily, no, not at all. I suggest a dictionary. Back in the day, people who cared about reading and the meaning of words would keep one handy, often next to the bed.

> Arduous

> a : hard to accomplish or achieve : difficult

~ https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arduous

Pretty sure this process qualifies as "hard" when compared to standard methods of purchasing digital goods.

Always fun when someone wants to argue about the definition of a word without actually using the definition of the word.

You’re “pretty sure”. Perhaps we should also call it an odyssey, or an epic? They would also fit the dictionary definitions, if we read the dictionary like we’d not bothered to learn proper English. I’m guessing, by your use of Mirriam Webster that you’re an American, so that’s a distinct possibility.

If you knew how to use a dictionary you wouldn’t have left out the helpful examples:

> 1a : hard to accomplish or achieve : DIFFICULT an arduous task years of arduous training

> b : marked by great labor or effort : STRENUOUS … a life of arduous toil. —A. C. Cole

> 2 : hard to climb : STEEP an arduous path arduously adverb arduousness noun

Life, years, climb. No, it does not count as arduous in the slightest. First world problems, is that in the dictionary, I wonder?

... You do realize that examples don't provide a constraint, right?

... right?

Anyway, you seem very confused with internet vernacular; everyone else was able to grasp the context. You appear to be the only individual experiencing difficulties. Just saying.

Yes, there’s no constraint, feel free to use language as you wish. That doesn’t make your argument any better as to what words actually mean, given examples, from a dictionary, when you claim to know how to use one and that I don’t.

Inane, specious, and mendacious are other entries in the dictionary that come to mind. I also have no trouble comprehending the argument before me, it’s simply misdescribed. Can you not comprehend that? Apparently not.

Hey man, I'm just gonna point out why the examples don't provide constraints. I'm surprised you didn't realize this, seeing as you're intimately familiar with the operation of a dictionary. Under the first definition:

> an arduous task

And let's take a look back to the post to which you originally replied!

> but the post above explain an arduous process

Wow, those look really similar, don't they? The quoted usage you find so objectionable is /nearly identical/ to the example you yourself copied. Galaxy brain.

Here's another definition you might want to study. It will really help reduce your confusion with internet interactions:

Hyperbole (noun) > extravagant exaggeration (such as "mile-high ice-cream cones")

I truly believe once you internalize this information you will grasp where you went wrong.

> you will grasp where you went wrong.

Beginning a back and forth over how to use a dictionary with someone who defines how to use a dictionary after the fact to help their point?

> Galaxy brain.

This is not Reddit or Twitter, please refrain from such petty, openly disrespectful and, shall we say arduous, slurs.

It is very telling to me that you first chose to ignore the definition I provided, and now you have chosen to ignore how your example was demonstrably self-destructive. You're grasping desperately for straws by focusing on everything not inconvenient for your initial point.

I'll take that as an admission you know you're wrong.

Here's some more advice for ya: Do your homework next time and come prepared. Or maybe, just maybe, don't try to play the pedantic card. It's clearly not your best game.

> but the post above explain an arduous process for a purchase, and i would expect that there's not an insignificant number of people who would've given up in the middle.

Honestly, I would have given up at the very first step. It clearly says that the content is available, but vendor is explicitly refusing to serve the content.

I am morally opposed to most IP laws and believe they are categorically illegitimate.

By your own authority, then. Are you a judge, or governor, or a bishop or something?

I'm arguing based on reasoning, not authority. Are you a satire account by any chance?

By what authority do you promote illegal activity?

I mean, I support civil disobedience, and jury nullification, and such things, but those are generally personal matters, that one does not promote or encourage in public.

Absolutely remarkable that folks in this thread appear to hate freedom so much that I can't even recommend freely-licensed Creative Commons content.

Why would you assume they are promoting "illegal activity".

Not every country has signed the Berne Convention, and of those that have signed a number are only bound by the minimum copyright and IP laws of their own country rather than the maximum protections that other countries might hold to.

Because people refrained from encouraging jury nullification, it is now completely irrelevant.

No one gets a trial with which a jury could even choose to nullify the charges.

When you act coy with this stuff, they sneak around subverting it to the point that it no longer works. Did you see what happened to OWS ten years back?

Not being any of those things gives extra authority, if anything, in my experience.

Yes, IP is a handicap for the top 1% of corporations that turns into a weakness when you go toe-to-toe with countries that won't play that game anyway. It's an emperor with no clothes situation if I ever saw one.

I think IP laws are one of the best things that ever happened to human civilization and are responsible for a significant proportion of progress over the last 200-300 years.

Even if at this point they are a bit too excessive in some cases.

> are responsible for a significant proportion of progress

it's arguable that they are responsible. They help incentivize sure (at least in theory), but would the counterfactual world, in which there's no IP laws, be just as progressive?

It was very hard to make a living as an author or a publisher before IP laws existed. Basically you already had to be independently wealthy, have a sponsor or a day-job if you wanted to write. Which one could argue impedes progress to a non insignificant degree.

And that’s only content creation patents and protection of trade secrets is another matter.

Copyright terms were a lot shorter in the past. 70 years after death is absolutely unreasonable. Also crap like DRM prevents works from going into public domain.

Yes, the system definitely needs some tweaking. I wouldn’t say this means that there is something inherently wrong about it just because of that.

> Do the ends justify the means, matey?

Commenter's point was that it's obviously easier to pirate. This is exactly the point; As an author, I'm upset that the system is like it is, I'm not upset at the many people who are undoubtedly going to pirate my work if it's difficult to get, whether it's right or wrong.

No Author finishes their work and declares, "Now, let me make this as difficult as possible to purchase." It's the PLATFORM.

>No Author finishes their work and declares, "Now, let me make this as difficult as possible to purchase." It's the PLATFORM.

IMO, the logical conclusion here is obvious: copyright should provide the author with the right to money, but not with the right to control actual distribution - we should be legally allowed to send the author $X in the mail and then torrent the thing.

This notion that the author should control the means of distribution? It's a historical artifact of old technology when publishing literally meant printing presses, and setting up a competing printing press without the author's authorization was an expensive choice that was inherently, obviously a means to rip off the author.

IMO, every ISBN should have the author's bank account number next to it and obtaining a copy of the ebook should be as simple as sending $X to that bank account, then finding a torrent by ISBN.

This is actually a great starting point IMO.

> every ISBN should have the author's bank account number next to it and obtaining a copy of the ebook should be as simple as sending $X to that bank account, then finding a torrent by ISBN.

which is fine, except what happens if the author sold the rights to another company that then demand a different set of condition?

Or are you saying that the owner of said copyright does not have the right to decide such (for example, they would want to decide that the works is only available as part of something else sold)?

The ISBN could be the bank account. Like a DOI. Or a BTC wallet address. Access/control over it could be transferable.

Or partial rights. Movie, TV series, audiobook, podcast, blog; all to different entities.

This is an interesting idea but one that will, if anything, increase piracy. Given a torrent link and a bank account number, how many people will think "let me try the book first for a bit, if I like it I'll pay" and then never come around to pay? Or even not care about paying at all, nobody will notice or be able to track, so you're basically safe from law enforcement.

The key here is the dishonesty in society. It annoys me every day.

I hear 30-year old overpaid software engineers brainstorming how to cheat the ticket checks at the ski resort. I watch people at all-you-can-eat buffets piling more food on than they can eat and bring something with them for consuming later at home or by their family. People discussing tax loopholes. Or how to get train rides for free if nobody checks the ticket. All well-off folks. Cheating their way through life. It's sickening.

It makes me wonder whether religion may actually be a (partial) solution to this. An atheist myself, I can see value in brainwashing people into believing that they are constantly being watched by an almighty being which will ensure they go to hell if they steal or similar, even if nobody else is watching.

It's really sad that people can't just be decent.

Because the system tries to screw them over at every step.

But then you are cutting out the publisher, who spent a significant amount of money and an overwhelming amount of hours doing things like, “pressing upload”, and, “collecting payment”.

I kid, they are payday loan services for authors.

Don't editors fit in there somewhere?

Copyright doesnt exist only to prevent people from getting your books for free. It's also there to prevent other authors from using your story for their own - for example, this is (part of) what prevents Universal Studios from putting out their own Spider Man movie.

Now, arguably this has even worse consequences on culture than the banning of copying ebooks. Still, it complicates the expected cost of a book significantly, so replacing current copyright with your proposal would require some alternative for this case as well.

this is (part of) what prevents Universal Studios from putting out their own Spider Man movie.

It's not though. It's the trademark that prevents that. Copyright only prevents them from making a Spiderman movie based on a story that's already been written. Nothing prevents them from writing a new story about a guy that shoots sticky goo from his wrists, and making a movie out of that.

I guess that story wouldn't be considered canon. But canon also has nothing to do with copyright.

> How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living?

The vast majority of reputable studies on software/music/games piracy have found that piracy boosts sales, and significantly. This is why you seldom see these studies, because the powers that be don't want you to know that.

A few breakout songs in the early 00s wouldn't have even made the top 100 if it weren't for limewire (laffy taffy being a prime example) and there were a number of artists at the time who intentionally capitalized on this.

So yes in 20 years when I settle down and write a book about the rust community and my wild ride through the startup world, I'll probably upload the torrents myself because I know it will boost sales.

Just like Adobe was caught doing back in the early 2000s (though if you try to google it now the news articles are mysteriously scrubbed from the internet). That's right, there is a good chance at least one of the Photoshop CS4 torrents you downloaded as a wee lad was uploaded by a marketing team at Adobe. They were caught red-handed doing this and it wasn't just some rogue employee.

And if you think about it, it was absolutely brilliant. The script kiddies grow up using pirated photoshop, get into a work situation where they or their company can actually afford it, and presto now you have a customer with a lifetime of lock-in to your ecosystem and guilt for not paying for it all these years.

>The vast majority of reputable studies on software/music/games piracy have found that piracy boosts sales

Cool - what do the studies on books show? I mean it might boost sales, I can definitely see how it might, but just because things that are very different from books get their sales boosted does not mean that books do.

Which studies? The closest thing I can find is the inconclusive EC study that was misreported as "piracy boosts sales". I could see that being true in some cases, but for games and music?

My favourite way is to get a kindle book via Libby, keep it on airplane until I’m actually done, and then buy the physical book to keep. No harm no foul imo.

So I should be contempt with 1/1000th of all literature? Especially when authors often barely get anything out of their books’ sales, for example science textbooks/research articles.

Thanks, I’m more than fine with torrenting, especially when digital copying is not stealing, it has no material consequence. If someone downloads content illegally they wouldn’t have bought either way, the net sum of knowledge/pleasure increases in the world.

You are a lot of fun at parties I guess...

Perhaps authors could explore more consumer friendly ways of distributing their work? You paint a false dichotomy.

> How would you feel, if you were an author

I think I'd feel pretty great if I were a perpetual monopolist and rent seeker. As a child I never really developed the reality warping field necessary to believe I can own bits and numbers.

> How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living?

I'd feel frustrated, to say the least! That's why I think people who pirate should make an effort to buy the book if it's fairly recently published. It's usually not expensive.

However, for older books I think pirating is fine. Usually the authors have passed away.

> How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living?

I'd feel like I need to start publishing on a non-user-hostile platform and, having been a writer for most of my life AND having used Amazon for over a decade, wouldn't be upset at people pirating my work.

Perhaps if things continue this way, more and more authors will seek alternatives to Amazon Kindle and a new platform will emerge. Unlike video content, hosting for ebooks really wouldn't be that expensive. I think competition is viable in this area.

To be fair, my experience on kindle with a regular account has been:

1. search for book on kindle

2. press buy

3. wait for book to download directly onto kindle

4. read book

I'm not using kindle to find books mind you, generally I already know what I'm after. I get almost all of my recommendations from friends too, it pays to know people who read even more than you do and have similar taste.

Its great when the book is reasonably priced and not obscure. For more obscure books its never clear if the book will be formatted correctly, contain all the content, or even be a legitimate book. I often try the sample and find if lacking and so I find a torrent that is often much higher quality.

As a wise man once said

> piracy is almost always a service issue and not a pricing issue

Service _is_ a pricing issue: pricing is about the valuation of a service.

If the price doesn't outweigh the benefits of the service, people will not use the service.

Or at least go to kobo or any other non-shitty company, buy and download book and then download to device

Just text the book title to Telegram bot of Z-Library. Under 5 seconds, you have the book.

Tap the share button to email the book to your Kindle email address.

If the Kindle has wifi on, the book automatically appears under another 10 seconds.

The whole process takes less than 30 seconds.

I buy Kindles specifically for this feature of being able to mail EPUBs to Kindle. When or if it is no longer possible, I stop buying Kindles.

I tried Telegram at first and found several channels all claiming to be official, but without obvious instructions for such a bot. Then I tried Googling, and there are countless shady links. It's unclear what the real thing is and what's a scam/spam.

https://www.reddit.com/r/zlibrary is full of warnings about scam websites.

My point is it's hardly easier, let alone safe, compared to Amazon.

Edit: Is it this? https://go-to-zlibrary.se/#telegram_bot_tab. Seems a bit risky, given the trail it creates vs anonymous downloads from some tor site.

Not that. You try the link that says Single Login.

I use ZLib since before it was popular. So there was near zero risks of scam sites.

There's no Single Login url on that page. But there's one I found here https://singlelogin.me/. Except it's seized by the FBI.

If you have a jailbroken Kindle, I highly recommend using https://github.com/gutenye/syncthing-kindle - no need to plug into your computer anymore.

> Search for torrent or download link, click,

Hope that you didn't click a sketchy ad that looks just like the download link, because the site didn't police any of its ads.

I recommend looking into adblockers! uBlock Origin is the best one.

Most people don't run an adblocker on their phone, and these torrent sites would cease to exist or become malware sites themselves if enough users used adblock.

Let's not kid ourselves- these site runners are not Aaron Swartz.

So what? If you are looking for an epub file, but instead get an exe just don’t run it. Mobile OSs are quite good at security, but even desktop has largely grown up to the task now.

Nobody is getting their books from torrent sites. They get ePubs or PDFs from Anna's Archive or LibGen.

> Hope that you didn't click a sketchy ad that looks just like the download link, because the site didn't police any of its ads.

That only happens once. Maybe twice. Most people learn.

It's not reasonable to expect site operators police every ad if they use a major ad network, like Adsense. There are millions of creatives, and new ones get uploaded every minute.

> Upload to device.

Compared to a WisperNet download, that's actually a bit of a faff. Don't get me wrong, I use a hacked Kobo, but getting the books on the thing requires a computer and either to use a micro-USB cable or faffing about with a fileshare and WebDAV.

Kindle: attach book to Kindle email address, send.

> Kindle: attach book to Kindle email address, send.

I like to image, that jeff bezos dies a little inside whenever I do this.

I imagine they add one more microdrone hunter-killer with my name in the EEPROM to the swarm.

Does the kindle have a web browser? If so you can just go directly to libgen and download books.

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