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I would rather see my books get pirated than this

janefriedman.com

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Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#221

Post by fragmede »

kelnos wrote: post #139
VincentEvans wrote: post #128

Let me tell you how to buy a kindle book for my kid’s Kindle that is connected via a child account in “Amazon Household” to my Amazon account. (This opening sentence already signals how the rest of this will go). A child’s account can’t buy books - you have to do it for them. 1. I open Amazon app on my iphone and find the book - “This app does not support purchasing of this content”. 2. I open Kindle app on my iphone…

I agree that this is ridiculous, but blame Apple and Google for wanting their 30% cut of digital goods; I think Amazon is actually right to refuse to play ball on this. Regardless, though, once you know how to do it, you only have to do two of those steps, which seems... fine?

Apple prohibits Amazon from selling books on the iOS Kindle app, trying to force people to buy it via Apple Books instead.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#222

Post by muzani »

cyberax wrote: post #209
muzani wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I buy a $10 book on Google Books, $3 goes to Google, $7 goes to the publisher. I buy the same on the Kindle Android app, $3 goes to Google, ?? goes to Amazon, Since Amazon had been selling books on the Kindle app for a while, I assume they made more than 30% to be worth it, or pushed the cost to the publishers? Or probably worked out some deal with Google, which seems a bit unlikely.

For a long while everybody ignored the Google's cut from the purchases. Google only started enforcing it a couple of years ago.

Ah that makes sense. I think the workaround was that you could pay without entering payment information, but Google didn't go into every app to enforce this at the time.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#223

Post by brigandish »

corndoge wrote: post #219
brigandish wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arduous is overstating it by a long way. Frustrating, bothersome, annoying, inconsiderate, stupid , yes. Arduous? I used to carry a walkman, several tapes, and spare batteries with me every day; I used to carry a book to read in one pocket and often another, smaller book in another, and even occasionally a newspaper under my arm. Buying a book or any media online is not arduous, even if it's as described. What it doe…

It's arduous relative to today's standards and relative to piracy.

Carrying those books wasn't arduous, except when I travelled around Asia and decided my main bag should be books. Big books. Almost ruined my back.

Words have meaning. Arduous it ain't.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#224

Post by yonaguska »

dangus wrote: post #181
interestica wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been why I've started to really like Costco -- they're essentially acting as product curators (and back it up with a generous return policy.)

Well, I like how local bookstores go about curation more than Costco. I don't know if we can say that a store with unlabeled aisles can be a source of curation.

it's curation in that the products they do offer are generally trustworthy.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#225

Post by zen_1 »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #210
zen_1 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am morally opposed to most IP laws and believe they are categorically illegitimate.

By your own authority, then. Are you a judge, or governor, or a bishop or something?

I'm arguing based on reasoning, not authority. Are you a satire account by any chance?

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#226

Post by deanCommie »

VincentEvans wrote: post #185
grogenaut wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step 1: go to amazon on a real computer and find book Step 2: click buy Step 3: in the post purchase confirmation it says "Want to start reading right away?" and a dropdown of your devices with a deliver button. It's a kids device they (and you) don't want your kid to be sent 50 shades of gray accidentally. The other flow is buy book. Go to kindle, "sync and check for new items". But again, it's a kids book, don't wa…

I am sorry for being so flippant and unreasonable expecting to buy a digital book using my smartphone in 2023.

You should be mad. But not at Amazon - at Apple - that wants to charge every 3rd party book store 30% to sell a book on an your smartphone, but not it's own book store.

Microsoft was fined billions of dollars and went through years of litigation over something much less egregious.

Apple's (And Google's) digital tax is what you should be mad at.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#227

Post by kleiba »

VincentEvans wrote: post #185
grogenaut wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step 1: go to amazon on a real computer and find book Step 2: click buy Step 3: in the post purchase confirmation it says "Want to start reading right away?" and a dropdown of your devices with a deliver button. It's a kids device they (and you) don't want your kid to be sent 50 shades of gray accidentally. The other flow is buy book. Go to kindle, "sync and check for new items". But again, it's a kids book, don't wa…

I am sorry for being so flippant and unreasonable expecting to buy a digital book using my smartphone in 2023.

If your device of choice is one that you don't really control but that instead is just a pile of limitations on top of constraints, I'm quite amazed by your expectation.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#228

Post by Turskarama »

chii wrote: post #149
VincentEvans wrote: post #128

Let me tell you how to buy a kindle book for my kid’s Kindle that is connected via a child account in “Amazon Household” to my Amazon account. (This opening sentence already signals how the rest of this will go). A child’s account can’t buy books - you have to do it for them. 1. I open Amazon app on my iphone and find the book - “This app does not support purchasing of this content”. 2. I open Kindle app on my iphone…

> Delightful experience. compare this with the piracy option: search for torrent or download link, click, wait for download to finish. Upload to device. Read and enjoy.

To be fair, my experience on kindle with a regular account has been:

1. search for book on kindle

2. press buy

3. wait for book to download directly onto kindle

4. read book

I'm not using kindle to find books mind you, generally I already know what I'm after. I get almost all of my recommendations from friends too, it pays to know people who read even more than you do and have similar taste.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#229

Post by ccvannorman »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #190
zen_1 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cough mobilism.org/libgen.is/irc channels/z-library cough

Do the ends justify the means, matey? Have you considered accessing freely-licensed content instead, and supporting authors who believe in the freedom movement, such as Creative Commons? How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living?

> Do the ends justify the means, matey?

Commenter's point was that it's obviously easier to pirate. This is exactly the point; As an author, I'm upset that the system is like it is, I'm not upset at the many people who are undoubtedly going to pirate my work if it's difficult to get, whether it's right or wrong.

No Author finishes their work and declares, "Now, let me make this as difficult as possible to purchase." It's the PLATFORM.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#230

Post by nologic01 »

Every society and every period struggles with the class of behaviors we call "theft" and the big tech era is no different.

The wide-open possibilities of a new technological domain are celebrated and given wide berth to "protect innovation", which openly invites abuse.

Abuse expands with successive waves of breaching trust. There are still some traditional strongholds left, like medical and financial matters, but the crypto "industry" shows how close we are.

The downward spiral continues until society pushes back really hard. Creating legal and moral fences against the new form of theft. This may or may not be a satisfactory solution (institutionalized theft is a thing) but is more stable.

What creates some hope is that despite the latent dehumanizing streak, we mostly derive fulfillment from interactions with other humans.

In a sense the advent of infinite verbatim copying possibilities (the zero marginal cost of reproduction) is now with algorithms expanded to a cloud of infinite near-verbatim copies.

A new balance will be found. To the degree we can help it it should not be a form of institutionalized theft.

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