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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

#281

Post by lelanthran »

dragonwriter wrote: post #165
kelnos wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> I agree that this is ridiculous, but blame Apple and Google for wanting their 30% cut of digital goods; That only explains steps 1-2.

> That only explains steps 1-2.

Okay, so Steps 1-2 can be explained by the closed ecosystem of the device. You don't get these hurdles if your device is not closed-off.

Step 3 can be explained by the retailer of that good complying with international IP laws.

Step 4 is just step 1 for everyone else.

Step 5 is a legitimate WTF moment.

Step 6 is once again the result of avoiding the open ecosystem (the web).

Of those 6 steps that the GP complained about:

1. 3 of them are self-inflicted because of his choice of device and usage,

2. 1 is due to legal issues,

3. 1 is not a valid complaint,

4. 1 is an actual and valid complaint about the lack of a feature in the app.

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

#282

Post by developer93 »

therealpygon wrote: post #278
Qwertious wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No Author finishes their work and declares, "Now, let me make this as difficult as possible to purchase." It's the PLATFORM. IMO, the logical conclusion here is obvious: copyright should provide the author with the right to money, but not with the right to control actual distribution - we should be legally allowed to send the author $X in the mail and then torrent the thing. This notion that the author should contro…

But then you are cutting out the publisher, who spent a significant amount of money and an overwhelming amount of hours doing things like, “pressing upload”, and, “collecting payment”. I kid, they are payday loan services for authors.

Don't editors fit in there somewhere?

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

#283

Post by chii »

ffhhttt wrote: post #264
zen_1 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think IP laws are one of the best things that ever happened to human civilization and are responsible for a significant proportion of progress over the last 200-300 years. Even if at this point they are a bit too excessive in some cases.

> are responsible for a significant proportion of progress

it's arguable that they are responsible. They help incentivize sure (at least in theory), but would the counterfactual world, in which there's no IP laws, be just as progressive?

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

#284

Post by mavhc »

throwaway290 wrote: post #279
fragmede wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Apple is not prohibiting anything. This is purely Amazon's decision. They make customer's life hell to save money.

Amazon don't want to pay Apple's ransom, Apple has no part in the transaction, has no costs, yet is acting as the Mafia, demanding their cut if you operate on their territory. Giving in to Apple's crimes would be immoral.

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

#285

Post by [deleted] »

brewdad wrote: post #153
muzani wrote: post #124

If you can't beat them, join them. My pen name is now Tim Ferris, look forward to my upcoming books to be published in 2024: The 4-Hour Nap, The 4-Hour Romance, The 4-Hour Deep Work

Hi Tim. You can call me Stephen King. My latest books, Care-E and CooJoe will be out this fall. I.T. Should be available by next spring.

[deleted]

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

#286

Post by zirgs »

ffhhttt wrote: post #264
zen_1 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think IP laws are one of the best things that ever happened to human civilization and are responsible for a significant proportion of progress over the last 200-300 years. Even if at this point they are a bit too excessive in some cases.

Copyright terms were a lot shorter in the past. 70 years after death is absolutely unreasonable. Also crap like DRM prevents works from going into public domain.

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

#287

Post by mavhc »

kccqzy wrote: post #242
mcphage wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason is that Apple specifically requires all digital only purchases to only use in-app payment and must give Apple 30%. You are not allowed to process digital purchases through an app with your own payment system. You also can’t tell people that or link them to the website. > This does not apply to physical goods. I don't really get this division other than "it's what Apple could get away with". As far as the…

According to Apple's logic, they are providing more service than just payment processing.

It would be a shame if your digital goods were accidentally destroyed by my associates, a fee, of perhaps 30%, would ensure this terrible tragedy would be avoided.

They provide no service, hopefully soon it will be illegal.

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

#288

Post by [deleted] »

brewdad wrote: post #153
muzani wrote: post #124

If you can't beat them, join them. My pen name is now Tim Ferris, look forward to my upcoming books to be published in 2024: The 4-Hour Nap, The 4-Hour Romance, The 4-Hour Deep Work

Hi Tim. You can call me Stephen King. My latest books, Care-E and CooJoe will be out this fall. I.T. Should be available by next spring.

[deleted]

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

#289

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

Ruthalas wrote: post #237
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered accessing freely-licensed content instead, and supporting authors who believe in the freedom movement, such as Creative Commons?

Can you direct me to some of these? Perhaps some you recommend? That sounds interesting, but I don't know where to find such content.

There are tons of them available.

Here's the Creative Commons Search portal: https://search.creativecommons.org/

I tried Openverse and Europeana. Some of these appear to categorize eBooks as "images", or perhaps they are just promotional images for unfree books. Tens of thousands of results.

Here's a Google Books search. I was unable to find a "search for license" type thing, but you can search for "Fully viewable" or "Google eBooks only":

https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=-copyright&tbs...

My father loves HathiTrust, and so do many other people who love freedom: https://www.hathitrust.org/

Of course you know the Internet Archive and Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/

Wikisource hosts lots of freely-licensed text, in many, many languages; here's English: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page

Never forget the O.G. PD site, Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/

Also, while it is not the written word, it is based on awesome freely-available books, and perhaps you could consider adding to the library at LibriVox: https://librivox.org/search?primary_key=0&search_category=au...

My classmates at school ate this stuff up when I volunteered that there are sites where you can find awesome public domain reference material that's often better-quality than the paywalled stuff you pay for.

Don't forget the Open Textbooks and freely licensed academic materials. Community colleges and universities will direct you to those.

https://oercommons.org/hubs/open-textbooks https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks

Don't forget niche uses and special interests. Want to overcome your addiction to porn? Download some free eBooks: https://www.covenanteyes.com/e-books/

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

#290

Post by mavhc »

waihtis wrote: post #274
nomat wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine like an LLM trained on everything you've ever done since birth included as part of the data set. and then one of those for each other person in the world. they could slice and dice you into a thousand different groups. at some point technology is going to stop being something that we interact with through a screen and a keyboard. Google maps will be there, where ever you go, all the time. No more getting lost…

Well, currently the top LLM fails at repeatedly generating a stable set of pretty simple regexes for me, so where pretty far from a full-blown LLM dystopia at this point.

The question is does the rapid progress in LLMs continue over the next few years, or do we reach another local maximum. Is "currently" going to improve rapidly?
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