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Comment by k_roy | Hacker News Reader

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.

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