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Comment by JonChesterfield | Hacker News Reader

Do you have thoughts on persuading people to spend years of their lives writing books for zero compensation?

Many have done so, and will continue to do. No one has to be persuaded if they have thoughts on their mind. Compensation is the side-effect.

[0]: https://monoskop.org

[1]: https://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/

[2]: https://computerhistory.org/collections/

[3]: https://oapen.org/

So, that creates a world (not too dissimilar to our own, but notably so) where only the independently wealthy can ever afford to produce art full time. Can you see any downsides to that world?

I'd be more on board with this take if it were artists engaging in these lawsuits. Elsevier doesn't elicit the same sympathy, though.

'Stealing' from a company with 2B in profit (much from publicly funded research), LibGen is looking a lot like Robin Hood to Elsevier's Prince John.

It's the same issue. If writers could meaningfully get an audience who buys their work independently, they wouldn't need a publisher.

Publishers offer support and printing, but ultimately an author needs a publisher to spread reach (i won't say "make money", because authors sure won't make much). Becsuse it's all about being loud and publishers have resources to be loud. Much better odds compared to a grassroots community paying a fair price when the author is ready to release.

The problem is that publishers, being the middleman, take over authors the same way the supermarket network takes over the food producers. Publishers own the shelf and a price label, and being less numerous and more organized, they can effectively own the audience's attention. They can help, they can also shut author down. They're not ultimately interested in maximizing availability, because they profit directly from the gap. That's why they need restrictions and ways around them.

Maybe a billion-dollar company has more money to spend on lawsuits than artists do? Doesn't make them the good guys, but I'm not surprised that it's them doing it.

The greatest and most lasting art in human history was created by artists who were sponsored by the wealthy as their only source of income.

This is survivorship bias: art owned and protected by wealthy sponsors has a much higher chance of making it through the years. Most art is folk art, and has been lost to the centuries.

The did say "longest lasting art". It feels more survivor bias to mention the Picasso's of history over the many more wealthy who spent their time in the craft.

It's not fair, but it makes sense. And sure the most well known art is not the best art. But a place like this should know the best tech is rarely the most popular product.

So you don't think there's a downside to the wealthy having a defacto monopoly on what art gets created?

I dislike copyright as much as the next guy, but the people who want to write and share free books can (and do) do that now as well.

Being paid and knowing they can spend their livelihood writing while paying rent is about the best persuasion you can have. Aside from the wealthy who don't need to worry about that.

Yes: we can pay authors nothing. It works. In fact we can make them grovel to get something published, and even get them to pay for the privilege of being considered for the publishing we're offering zero compensation for.

We can give ourselves a cool name. "Elsevier" has a nice ring to it.

The people who are using libgen, are probably also not the people who would pay an author for a book anyway.

Not saying I agree or disagree one way or another, but that's really probably the reality.

I've bought multiple physics textbooks which I've first downloaded from libgen. I'm not going to spend 50-100€ of my money on a book before skimming through the contents first. Also some textbooks on niche topics can cost more than 200€ or cannot be found at all.

The alternative would be to make a request for my university library to get the book, but I don't know how long that would take if it would happen at all.

Would the world be a better place if I stuck to studying only the books in local libraries and what I can personally afford? I personally don't think so.

Sounds like a good opportunity to start lobbying to raise library funding, maybe even overhaul it into the 21st century so we can reasonably have a government funded "Netflix of books" of sorts.

Also long term, but it'd kill like, 5 birds with one stone.

>The people who are using libgen, are probably not the people who would pay an author for a book

Isn't that supposed to be the publisher's job? They don't. Just ask the authors.

> The people who are using libgen, are probably also not the people who would pay an author for a book anyway

Quite the opposite: as with all piracy, the ones who pirate stuff are also the ones who spend the most money buying the stuff they pirate. (For books there's the obvious reason that paper is still by far the best reading experience, but it was also true of DVD, video games, music CDs etc. but these people wouldn't have spent more money if piracy was impossible).

The only med books I bought were atlases (histology, anatomy, etc) Everything else I borrowed, photocopied or bought second hand. Many of my classmates did the same. In our group, very few rich students ever photocopied or bought second hand

If books weren't sold for profit, we would have better books, only released less often. Back then, we didn't have so many yearly releases, and I honestly think that isn't needed.

Why would we have better books you say? Similar to how open source projects draw very good programmers. Some do it for prestige, and some weird ones do it for the joy o f doing true quality work. IMHO

> Quite the opposite: as with all piracy, the ones who pirate stuff are also the ones who spend the most money buying the stuff they pirate. (For books there's the obvious reason that paper is still by far the best reading experience, but it was also true of DVD, video games, music CDs etc. but these people wouldn't have spent more money if piracy was impossible).

you take a few interesting leaps in a failed attempt of.... trying to turn opinion into fact?

> the ones who pirate stuff are also the ones who spend the most money buying the stuff they pirate.

Uhhh, wot??

Please provide ANY source for this. Really. Like even if it's a blog you wrote and was a creative writing experiment for you, publish it. Just so I can mock you.

> (For books there's the obvious reason that paper is still by far the best reading experience, but it was also true of DVD, video games, music CDs etc. but these people wouldn't have spent more money if piracy was impossible).

So at this point, I hope it's clear that you are a bit silly. But...

> For books there's the obvious reason that paper is still by far the best reading experience

This level of intellectual dishonest is horrible, especially if it's legitimate.

How do you expect do have any kind of conversation with this behavior? Flagging is the only thing that you'll get.

And how can you expect to have any level of honest discussion if you are going to make insane assertions, with zero backup of anything resembling facts, and then get bent out of shape when called out about it.

I'm sorry that I called you intellectually dishonest and you got mad, but it's the truth.

This is like saying that no great software would exist if people didn't get paid for developing software.

> Do you have thoughts on persuading people to spend years of their lives writing books for zero compensation?

Most books make very very little income for the author. So it is already the case.

I don't think we should make it even worse for them. They are at least going to make some money for their long months or years of work with a chance to make it big.

Do you think books which are written by people who had to be persuaded to write them are worth reading?

I think the chance of financial success can incentivize the author to make a better work. Let the authors who are willing to write for free release their work for free.

Yes, the second order effects of money incentive. Internet and movies also suffer from enshittification.

Wait until you discover that researchers aren't compensated by publishing corporations for their papers. Or that most book authors get ridiculous royalties in their publishing contract (a few percent of the price, including for ebooks that are being sold at the price of paper copies) unless they are already famous.

ACM charged me to publish. After I'd written the paper and after their peer review process which was not convincingly value adding, but it was something like $100 so I paid it. Overall experience makes it likely I'll just post to arxiv instead next time.

(In fairness that fee did nominally grant access to read other papers by them as well, but the credentials they sent out didn't let me log in and I didn't bother contacting them to resolve it)

> Wait until you discover that researchers aren't compensated by publishing corporations for their papers.

Yes, but most researchers are compensated by either the state, universities or companies hoping to profit of their research. Little high-level research is done for the fun of it.

Given how low the pay can be when not working on hot topics, one could argue that most research is in fact done for the fun of it.

They should find a patron or grant making institution that values the production of knowledge, not publishers who seek property to license out.

I buy most of my books second hand. The author doesn't get anything from that either. Should it be illegal?

The secondhand market helps the firsthand market: people are more likely to buy something at the offered price if they know they can resell it on the secondhand market later.

Can you imagine what the automobile market would look like if you couldn't trade-in or sell your car and just had to trash it? New cars sales would plummet.

I think a used market exchange where someone had to buy each product is a different scale from one buyer who uploads infinite copies to the internet.

It's a tragedy of the commons. Not a commons of the product tho, of the ability to keep the creations flowing.

Lots of people already do, in essence.

I think a UBI could be a good start.

I'm willing to receive that. How much will you be giving me?

Iirc the current rate is 120 CRC per month. Sign up here: https://circles.garden/welcome/onboarding

The real question is: are you willing to build a community around accepting it? Otherwise it's just numbers.

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