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Confessions of a Book Pirate (2010)

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Re: Confessions of a Book Pirate (2010)

#41

Post by MaysonL »

_jal wrote: post #31

I've been very poor (more than once), and I'm currently quite comfortable. I've always read a lot, and would be in a very different place if I hadn't. Using libraries has been a big part of that, but they are of course much less useful for cutting-edge tech topics. I'm limiting this to those, in situations where you think absorbing the book will improve your chops. You should buy the book, because this makes both you…

I bought the book (used), but I can't find it right now, so I borrowed it from the library, and this article just prompted me to do an online search for it, and I just downloaded a pdf copy.

Re: Confessions of a Book Pirate (2010)

#42

Post by freetanga »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #6

Book piracy is a big reason I've been able to learn as much as I know about ML. I don't know how to feel about it. All I know is that I'm more effective than I would've been if I had to pay for the books, since I wouldn't have read anything. It's common on HN to pretend that everyone here is an affluent programmer working for FAANG with $500k/yr in stock vesting. In reality, I've spoken to many who are more along the…

Many authors also live paycheck to paycheck, and dropping 50 bucks on their utility or supermarket bill might be very important to them. You don’t need to make 500k at a FAANG to pay for a 50$ book.

While I understand some people could be in such a spot, I think many people use this argument to wash their conscience.

Re: Confessions of a Book Pirate (2010)

#43

Post by bambataa »

copperx wrote: post #40
sillysaurusx wrote: post #6

Book piracy is a big reason I've been able to learn as much as I know about ML. I don't know how to feel about it. All I know is that I'm more effective than I would've been if I had to pay for the books, since I wouldn't have read anything. It's common on HN to pretend that everyone here is an affluent programmer working for FAANG with $500k/yr in stock vesting. In reality, I've spoken to many who are more along the…

"Buy or pirate" is a false dichotomy when there are good public and University libraries available; which is true for most big cities in the US. They will not stock the latest tech books, but you can easily get them through an interlibrary loan.

If the book is freely available from a library does it really matter if you find it more convenient to get it by pirating?

Re: Confessions of a Book Pirate (2010)

#44

Post by krn »

copperx wrote: post #40
sillysaurusx wrote: post #6

Book piracy is a big reason I've been able to learn as much as I know about ML. I don't know how to feel about it. All I know is that I'm more effective than I would've been if I had to pay for the books, since I wouldn't have read anything. It's common on HN to pretend that everyone here is an affluent programmer working for FAANG with $500k/yr in stock vesting. In reality, I've spoken to many who are more along the…

"Buy or pirate" is a false dichotomy when there are good public and University libraries available; which is true for most big cities in the US. They will not stock the latest tech books, but you can easily get them through an interlibrary loan.

> "Buy or pirate" is a false dichotomy when there are good public and University libraries available; which is true for most big cities in the US.

It's worth pointing out, that many of the book pirates are from outside the US. There are more than 500 million people in the EU, and the most up-to-date technical material has always been in English.

Before Kindle was available, it used to take 3 weeks for the books from Amazon UK to arrive in my country, and almost half of the costs were shipping.

Also, ten years ago, when this article was written, even senior software engineers in my EU country were making less than 1000€ / month after taxes, which made a 30-40€ book a luxury item. For a junior developer, a single technical book could have easily taken away 10% of his/her monthly salary.

I expect something similar to still be the case in many parts of Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South Asia, which are developing regions with a lack of world-class universities and international libraries.

For someone in Lviv, Ukraine, a city with 12 universities and 8 academies, where an average monthly salary is 350€, pirating a book might still be the only way to read it.

Re: Confessions of a Book Pirate (2010)

#45

Post by musicale »

It's a major embarrassment for humanity that we've created an astonishing library system – books in scanned or native digital format, inexpensive smartphones/e-reader devices, and the internet – that could give billions of people on the planet the ability to read nearly any book ever published essentially for free, but for narrow business reasons we're doing the best we can to prevent that eventuality from ever happening.

To protect their own business interests, publishers (and their technical accomplices) have invented crippled digital formats that try to destroy the most fundamental and beneficial advantages of e-books: free transmission and duplication, and the ability of one library copy to be read by millions simultaneously.

We have built the library of Alexandria and made it big enough to serve the entire world, but instead of burning it down we just lock the door so that nobody can get in.

Re: Confessions of a Book Pirate (2010)

#46

Post by mirimir »

bambataa wrote: post #43
copperx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Buy or pirate" is a false dichotomy when there are good public and University libraries available; which is true for most big cities in the US. They will not stock the latest tech books, but you can easily get them through an interlibrary loan.

If the book is freely available from a library does it really matter if you find it more convenient to get it by pirating?

Sure, but libraries must buy books to loan. For physical books, there's only one concurrent user. And for ebooks, licenses specify allowed numbers of concurrent users.

But still, that is an interesting argument.

So why aren't libraries considered to be pirating?

Re: Confessions of a Book Pirate (2010)

#47

Post by neiman »

The problem where I live and studied, is that libraries state and book stores has deteriorated in the last few years for obvious reasons. At the same time it became difficult, or actually, impossible, for a privacy conscious person to buy ebooks online.

Re: Confessions of a Book Pirate (2010)

#48

Post by musicale »

falcolas wrote: post #22

I'm torn on the topic myself. I buy books, because I'm fortunate enough to be in a financial position to buy the books I want to read. But e-books are comparatively expensive. They were conceptually sold to us as a cheaper alternative to hardback and paperback books; but they cost as much as hardback editions quite often. For no reason other than "the market will bear it". The market may technically be bearing it, bu…

Textbooks are definitely a scam, and often the authors don't make much money from them - it's eaten by the publisher and distributors.

A number of e-books on Amazon are priced at $9.99 since Amazon pays a higher royalty rate for prices under $10.

Re: Confessions of a Book Pirate (2010)

#49

Post by silveroriole »

One thing that might lower piracy is making Amazon book previews not absolutely useless. If I preview a book and I can only see the million word introduction by someone who isn’t the author, I’m not buying the book. The “surprise me” thing works ok but isn’t available on most previews.

Re: Confessions of a Book Pirate (2010)

#50

Post by alecco »

vector_spaces wrote: post #17

Safari Books Online (I think recently rebranded as O'Reilly Online) is a pretty decent value -- about $49 USD a month for access to most O'Reilly, PragProg, Manning, and quite a few other non-programmer focused publishing houses like Academic Press. Between that subscription, my scribd subscription (which has plenty of unauthorized titles in addition to its authorized titles), and PDFs I'm able to find elsewhere, I'm…

$49 a month sounds like a lot if you read ~1 book a month and that catalogue is quite narrow. Audible has a similar narrow catalogue but a more aligned price. When reading more (e.g. traveling) I buy extra credits at a reasonable price.

I think Safari is close to the fitness gym upfront year plan. Are most people who subscribe really going to read $49 worth of their material per month?

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