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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

#311

Post by ffhhttt »

chii wrote: post #283
ffhhttt wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It was very hard to make a living as an author or a publisher before IP laws existed. Basically you already had to be independently wealthy, have a sponsor or a day-job if you wanted to write. Which one could argue impedes progress to a non insignificant degree.

And that’s only content creation patents and protection of trade secrets is another matter.

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

#312

Post by mrweasel »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #140
hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, but also in the professional space. My coworkers much be 200% faster now, but I’m going to spend 80% of my time unfucking their work.

But also good luck next time you google health symptoms - sure it’s bad, but everybody does it, and we’re going to move further and further away from accurate.

You can rely on the internet to provide even remotely correct health information anymore. It was always a little questionable, due to all the variables, but you could get some indication on how quickly you should get yourself to the doctor.

Same with weight-loss or exercise programs, that's basically impossible to search for due to the amount of spam and garbage content.

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

#313

Post by ffhhttt »

zirgs wrote: post #286
ffhhttt wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, the system definitely needs some tweaking. I wouldn’t say this means that there is something inherently wrong about it just because of that.

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

#314

Post by throwaway2037 »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #140
hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, but also in the professional space. My coworkers much be 200% faster now, but I’m going to spend 80% of my time unfucking their work.

But also good luck next time you google health symptoms - sure it’s bad, but everybody does it, and we’re going to move further and further away from accurate.

Regarding health, stick to Mayo Clinic, US Centers for Disease Control, or other very reputable websites. That one seems easier than buying stuff online. The slow descent is hard to navigate for many people.

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

#315

Post by sznio »

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.

LLMs are too dumb to be useful, but smart enough to be destructive.

You don't need to be able to generate correct regexes to create a blogspam article about regexes that will go to the top of the search results.

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

#316

Post by throwaway2037 »

dylan604 wrote: post #117
userbinator wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, "personal recommendations" seems to mean "influencers" these days.

that's the part that I love love love. society has gotten to this ridiculous follower stage that people seem to think it is a personal connection. maybe i've just spent too much time too close to the ad agency world to see how nasty they are, but anytime i see some random person on the internet that i do not personally know recommending anything, i immediately assume they are paid for that "recommendation". too much…

Hell yes. +9000 for your post. To me, the solution is much transparency around paid product placement through strong regulation.

See "Parasocial interaction".

    Parasocial interaction (PSI) refers to a kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers in the mass media, particularly on television and on online platforms. Viewers or listeners come to consider media personalities as friends, despite having no or limited interactions with them. PSI is described as an illusory experience, such that media audiences interact with personas (e.g., talk show hosts, celebrities, fictional characters, social media influencers) as if they are engaged in a reciprocal relationship with them. The term was coined by Donald Horton and Richard Wohl in 1956.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction

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

#317

Post by throwaway2037 »

christkv wrote: post #233
tornato7 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you "Look Inside" the offending books on Amazon you can see they have extensive "About the Author" page describing Jane Friedman - so it would be difficult to argue that the books are not trying to trick people into believing it's Jane.

Is it not a form of defamation?

Assuming the author is US-based, you would need to find US-based defamers, then drag them into court. And winning defamation suit in the US is insanely hard. It is much easier in the UK. Oh, and she needs to pay the lawyers for their work.

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

#318

Post by c0eos »

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.

If you have a jailbroken Kindle, I highly recommend using https://github.com/gutenye/syncthing-kindle - no need to plug into your computer anymore.

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

#319

Post by qwerty456127 »

Almost all good things (books, software, music, movies) get pirated. If nobody pirates yours (even as time passes) this is a very negative signal - chances are nobody wants it and nobody finds it worth sharing (or almost nobody just knows it exists). And the pirates mostly are people who would never buy anyway so this is not really a material loss. Some of them even pay once they find the book worth it and once their budget permits. I tend to buy paperback copies of books I have found online and actually read, and I have hard time resisting temptation to share books I've bought digitally as great books feel like they would make the world a better place if more people would read them :-)

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

#320

Post by s6ro »

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…

This "delightful" experience is not just Amazon. Its what happens when large tech. companies play "who blinks first". Apple has a fair share of blame here, with their cut of 30%/15% from digital content they did not help to produce.

As someone who enjoys reading on my Kindle and as an early Audible customer, the crap in app browsing and purchasing experience was one of the reasons I put off having an iPhone.

After years of complaints, now at least in app Audible books browsing and purchasing works on iPhone, sigh ...

Now having an iPhone, I have simply traded one set of bad experiences for another, as currently the set of bad experiences on an iPhone, is less important than the on an Android.

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