It's not free at the library, the book was purchased with your taxes.
It was purchased a single time, just like the original e-book that you pirate.
What people fail to realize is that ebooks sometimes cost libraries more money than physical books. The libraries buy them with cost of degradation in mind, so after x number of lends, they have to repurchase the book in order to keep making it available to their patrons. This is how they're able to make an agreement with the publisher in order to legally provide you with a digital lending library.
It was purchased a single time, just like the original e-book that you pirate.
Every person in the world doesnt use a single library with a single copy. Every local library purchases one or more. How many did Zlib purchase? How many Zlibs are there?
That's a logical race to the bottom that makes me think you have never checked out a book from a US library. If you were to calculate how much an author makes from their book being in libraries it's miniscule. For starters most library books are donated secondhand and not purchased new by libraries. Secondly, most libraries only have a single copy of a given book unless it is a major title (It's not uncommon for waitlists to be booked up for months where I live). Additionally, most titles are shared across multiple libraries in a state or city. Where I live you can return a book to any library because they just circulate copies around the state. Regardless, there are roughly 9,000 public libraries in the U.S. let's pretend that every single library purchases 1 copy of a given book new (an extremely generous estimate). Most authors are not self-published and earn 10-12% royalties, but let's pretend this author is self-published and earns around 40% from their printer before operational expenses. Let's also pretend it's an absolute banger of a book and is selling for a whopping $20/copy. That means they make $8/copy before taxes, bookstore fees, shipping, and other expenses that the self-publisher does not pay for. Let's be generous and say they somehow make $8/copy after all of that. If every library bought 1 copy (which, again. They do NOT) the author would earn $72,000. That's absolute peanuts compared to what they earn on Amazon from people who can afford firsthand books. The point of libraries and piracy is not to stop people who CAN afford books from buying them. It's supposed to enable those who CANNOT. A more productive approach would be to publicly fund authors but according to Americans that's filthy communism.
It was purchased a single time, just like the original e-book that you pirate.
Scale is a thing though, right? The library book might get borrowed dozens or hundreds of times. The pirated ebook is copied anywhere from dozens to millions of times.
It goes back to opportunity though. Most people who pirate books don't have the income or ability to purchase them new. The scale is irrelevant if the per-user profit opportunity is 0. The only thing that changes is more people read and further their education.
the point im trying to make is they both hopelessly anti-democracy. they all love lobbying (= anti-democracy to me: the deeper pockets have more influence) there in washington
Like most things, anti-democratic activity is a spectrum rather than black or white. It seems fairly obvious to me that there is a large gulf between the two parties on that spectrum.
> It seems fairly obvious to me that there is a large gulf between the two parties on that spectrum.
Disagree from a distance (non-US'er). They both have their VERY undemocratic behaviors: just one is the name sake :)
I was looking for a book a while ago, it was something like $150 in the U.S. Out of curiosity, I looked up the price in other countries. It was 150 times the exchange rate. 150$ for a book is a lot of money even in the U.S. How do publishers expect other countries to pay the equivalent of 150$ (in local currency)? In many places $150 might be half the monthly salary or worse. I understand publishers and authors need…
There is frequently a system where they sell an international version of the book for significantly lower cost. In order to prevent americans from simply purchasing the international version, it will often have substantial differences. So simply looking up the price of the same book may not show you what would typically be paid in another country.
The publishers originally had a great system, back before the internet was alive and kicking - they'd sell the textbook in the USA for $bigbux, and sell the exact same one in India for $cheapasfree - basic standard price segmentation, charge what the market can bear in each market.
But then the internet and cheap shipping appeared, and suddenly people in the USA realized they could get the same textbook by ordering it from someone in India, and pay $cheapasfree + $shipping.
And ever since the publishers have been trying to get back to the original promised land.
It was purchased a single time, just like the original e-book that you pirate.
What people fail to realize is that ebooks sometimes cost libraries more money than physical books. The libraries buy them with cost of degradation in mind, so after x number of lends, they have to repurchase the book in order to keep making it available to their patrons. This is how they're able to make an agreement with the publisher in order to legally provide you with a digital lending library.
IMO (having worked at a public library) the vast majority of inventory is donated second-hand books.
I know this won't be a popular take on HN, but while I can understand and to a certain extent sympathize with pirating movies (the intentional friction and arbitrary geographic limitations on access imposed by the multinational movie-industry conglomerates), I can't see stealing some poor author's work in the same light. Sure, people get hung-up about DRM (which can easily be removed by widely-accessible tools), but…
> if we don't buy their books, they won't be able to produce the next one for people to pirate.
This is a false dichotomy. Book piracy and traditional book publishing co-exist. If book publishing wants to better compete with piracy, they can innovate like other industries have. As well, your implied prediction —- that if we don’t “stop all the downloading” [0] then books will disappear —- is decidedly ahistorical. Books have existed since long before publishing houses existed, and indeed it’s easier than ever to publish a book and get money for it.
I know this won't be a popular take on HN, but while I can understand and to a certain extent sympathize with pirating movies (the intentional friction and arbitrary geographic limitations on access imposed by the multinational movie-industry conglomerates), I can't see stealing some poor author's work in the same light. Sure, people get hung-up about DRM (which can easily be removed by widely-accessible tools), but…
It's very simple actually. You (and most of HN) live in a tech industry bubble. Living wages in the U.S are terrible and disposable income is non-existent. I work a 9-5 just like everyone else but when it comes down to it I don't have the money to buy new books. I can either buy used paperback from a second-hand store, go to the library, or pirate an epub. None of these options pay the original author and are effecti…
I'm going to pretend you are serious and genuine so:
- living wages in the US are something most of the rest of world only dreams about. And most can afford to buy a book once in a while, even new (of course it depends on the book). Source: eastern Europe.
- second hand and library books have generated revenue for the author already. Going full piracy and decreasing demand for the those two hurts the author, hurts the second book stores and hurts the libraries.
I pirate books as well but at least I'm honest about the consequences of my actions.
Like most things, anti-democratic activity is a spectrum rather than black or white. It seems fairly obvious to me that there is a large gulf between the two parties on that spectrum.
It also doesn't help that true democracy isn't something people actualy want. So democracy has basically been redefined to mean a republic that makes decisions that benefit or are demanded by the most people.
> It also doesn't help that true democracy isn't something people actualy want.
Source?
> So democracy has basically been redefined to mean a republic that makes decisions that benefit or are demanded by the most people.
I claim that with lobby being allowed, democracy is a facade to hide plutocracy's ugly face.
"a republic that makes decisions that benefit or are demanded by the rich/companies that can afford lobbying" is what I think the word democracy currently hides.
>It is disgraceful how our tax dollars are used to prop up failed business models and oppress the little guy U.S. Government Spending, FY 2022 Top 10 Spending by Category $ 1.22 T Social Security $ 914 B Health $ 865 B Income Security $ 767 B National Defense $ 755 B Medicare $ 677 B Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services How do you explain this data? Source: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-fin…
Genuine question: I always hear about the gigantic military spending in the U.S. I would've expected it to be on top of this list. It can't be only 7. no?
US military spending is HUGE compared to other countries budgets. It is not that big compared to the US budget - in WW2 we spent about 45% of GDP on military stuff - if that was done today we'd have a budget of about ten trillion dollars.
Also much of what is classified as military spending could probably be moved to other categories - the VA, for example.