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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

#331

Post by mordae »

huganabaga wrote: post #324
tomsmeding wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting idea but one that will, if anything, increase piracy. Given a torrent link and a bank account number, how many people will think "let me try the book first for a bit, if I like it I'll pay" and then never come around to pay? Or even not care about paying at all, nobody will notice or be able to track, so you're basically safe from law enforcement.

The key here is the dishonesty in society. It annoys me every day. I hear 30-year old overpaid software engineers brainstorming how to cheat the ticket checks at the ski resort. I watch people at all-you-can-eat buffets piling more food on than they can eat and bring something with them for consuming later at home or by their family. People discussing tax loopholes. Or how to get train rides for free if nobody checks…

Because the system tries to screw them over at every step.

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

#332

Post by gnopgnip »

mrweasel wrote: post #309
opportune wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, until someone creates a website that just ships the products they say they have, and people type in the URL for the site directly and shop there? If online shopping were truly such a terribly scammy UX in 100% of cases people would stop using it or shift to shopping from trusted sellers who recognize the tremendous amount of value they can capture by not scamming people.

> If online shopping were truly such a terribly scammy UX in 100% of cases people would stop using it or shift to shopping from trusted sellers That slide has already started. I can't buy stuff on Amazon anymore, because I don't trust the quality or that I'm not scammed. Unless I trust the author I'd question buying self published books. There's a number of Chinese website, like Wish, that I don't understand. Why bot…

Amazon has been problematic for a while. I think it was 2019 when I remember filtering to sold by amazon.com was a lot harder, but before that there were still problems with tons of low quality products and fake reviews

Costco bucks this trend though

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

#334

Post by ImaCake »

Turskarama wrote: post #228
chii wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Its great when the book is reasonably priced and not obscure. For more obscure books its never clear if the book will be formatted correctly, contain all the content, or even be a legitimate book. I often try the sample and find if lacking and so I find a torrent that is often much higher quality.

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

#335

Post by memefrog »

mavhc wrote: post #287
kccqzy wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Illegal to do what? Charge people fees for what they do using your platform? On what possible basis can you make it illegal? It's Apple's app store for software that runs on Apple's phones. Nobody is forced to use an iPhone. They're expensive luxury products.

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

#336

Post by uoaei »

Planktonne wrote: post #328
sznio wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> LLMs are too dumb to be useful, but smart enough to be destructive. I think this puts the blame in the wrong place; LLMs are too dumb to be useful, but it's the users who are too dumb to realise that, or too unethical to care.

It's also the creators, hosters, and startup founders who are overselling its capabilities.

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

#337

Post by memefrog »

WalterBright wrote: post #42
tornato7 wrote: post #29

Just some of the problems authors already faced online (I'm related to one): - Google indexing and republishing all of their work for free on Google Books (finally resolved after a huge Class Action suit where the authors were awarded a few $$) - List your book on Amazon for $20 and a "third party" reseller will immediately hijack your listing with a poorly printed knockoff copy for $19 - Widespread piracy of Kindle…

> It's very difficult to make money writing books these days That's been true as long as the printing press existed. I know many authors, and none of them make money worth spit.

I used to be difficult to make money writing books because it was difficult to write a good book that people wanted to buy.

Now it's also made even more difficult by rampant fraud. That's not the same sort of thing at all.

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

#338

Post by hathchip »

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…

Most of this is because the makers of the phone you chose to buy have decided that if you use the Kindle or Amazon app to buy books, they should get 30% of the price of the book.

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

#339

Post by memefrog »

owlninja wrote: post #57
kneebonian wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think reddit is genuine human content I have same bad news for you buddy.

I believe the majority of it is, what do you have that says otherwise?

Large amounts of it might be written by humans, but they're humans that are being paid to promote products and brands. It's an open secret.

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

#340

Post by Semaphor »

dylan604 wrote: post #112
zebomon wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't see how one follows the other without then in sequence, as the comment you replied to describes, value-based businesses emerge to fill the obvious gap and compete.

people still shop at Amazon, so I'm not too convinced in your argument

I have gotten a fake product one time (public domain book, PoD instead of what I wanted and what apparently used to be under that URL) refunded, no questions asked, even got to keep the book (anyone in Germany interested in an HP Lovecraft decent quality hardcover PoD book?).

I realize that it’s apparently way worse in the US, but there supposedly are issues here as well, I just never encountered them (or the products are so well-faked that it’s a distinction without a difference).

Fast delivery, a lot of choices, both "Aliexpress but faster delivery for a price", but also EU products, and a customer service that does pretty much anything asked.

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