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“The books will stop working.”

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Re: “The books will stop working.”

#71

Post by SkyBelow »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #62
docker_up wrote: post #13

I have a close friend who published an engineering text book. He worked a couple of years on it and it was well received in his particular field. The book was pirated within months and is freely available on PDF. It's unfair that his hard work is being used globally for free. So yes, having books shut off sucks but so does piracy.

Perhaps if text books didn't cost $200 each, broke college kids would actually be able to afford them.

>$200 each

Sadly, you are dating yourself with that comment.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#72

Post by dmix »

blakesterz wrote: post #15

Can you imagine someone trying to start public libraries if they didn't already exist now? I think it's safe to say it would never ever happen, at least in the US. Between lobbying and the general disdain for most things run by any type of government here, they'd never have a chance. Luckily we still have places that still purchase printed books (along with ebooks) and you can go borrow them any time and they never s…

> Between lobbying and the general disdain for most things run by any type of government here,

I’ve grown to distain the government because of how often it pushes strict bills like DMCA which are quickly out-of-date and ripe for abuse.

It’s not just lobbying congress either, there have been some very strict cases coming out of prosecutors offices such as the case against MIT student David LaMacchia in 1994 who put files up on an encrypted BBS. Which resulted in congress passing a bill to fix a “loophole” where people uploading files on the internet without any commercial intent couldn’t be sent to jail. So the bill (predating DMCA by a couple of years) allowed up to 5yrs +$250k fines for online piracy, regardless of commercial intent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._LaMacchia

Every subreddit or Youtube channel or whatever online community I’ve been a part of has had to deal with people abusing DMCA takedown notices and having things that clearly fall under fair use, or even the person’s own content, being taken down.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#73

Post by thatfrenchguy »

sp332 wrote: post #25
blakesterz wrote: post #15

Can you imagine someone trying to start public libraries if they didn't already exist now? I think it's safe to say it would never ever happen, at least in the US. Between lobbying and the general disdain for most things run by any type of government here, they'd never have a chance. Luckily we still have places that still purchase printed books (along with ebooks) and you can go borrow them any time and they never s…

It took the richest guy in the world funding them like crazy to start them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie#3,000_public_l... The one in Philadelphia cost the equivalent of $15,000,000 - and that didn't include the land, operation, or maintenance.

IDK, 15m of early 20th century dollars for a sound like it could finance buying a lot of books.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#75

Post by djsumdog »

inscionent wrote: post #70
sp332 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took the richest guy in the world funding them like crazy to start them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie#3,000_public_l... The one in Philadelphia cost the equivalent of $15,000,000 - and that didn't include the land, operation, or maintenance.

The one in Washington DC is now an Apple store.

Wow ... that's .. is that irony? I don't even know.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#76

Post by unpwn »

docker_up wrote: post #13

I have a close friend who published an engineering text book. He worked a couple of years on it and it was well received in his particular field. The book was pirated within months and is freely available on PDF. It's unfair that his hard work is being used globally for free. So yes, having books shut off sucks but so does piracy.

Piracy sucks for creators, but I also don't think it's fair that poor people should have less access to text books.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#80

Post by delecti »

ForHackernews wrote: post #17

Another case of "Stallman was right": https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

We need someone to be the Carl Sagan for Stallman's philosophy. He's right a lot, but he's also abrasive and doesn't package his arguments in a publicly digestable way.
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