Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I would rather see my books get pirated than this

janefriedman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 517 posts

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

#371

Post by another-dave »

Pxtl wrote: post #143
theptip wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the very least, if you look at my author profile on Amazon, these junk books don’t appear. It sounds like maybe this is not happening? If they are just appearing under the search for “AuthorName” I am not sure there really is a problem with Amazon’s system. IANAL, perhaps Amazon still has some liability if an author is using a fraudulent pen name for books they submit.

Amazon's software is odd here. If I click on the name on a real Jane Friedman book, it does not include the fake books... But this is not commutative. If I click on the name on a fake Jane Friedman book, it lists out a mix of real and fake books. For example, this is a blank notebook on Amazon Canada that a seller has stuck her all-lowercase name upon. If I click the author name on the listing, I'm taken to an author…

yeah I think what you really need is for Amazon to have a Wikipedia style 'disambiguation' page. Then they can link them but make it obvious that they're two (or more) different people and results for person A aren't related to person B:

> Showing 1-1 books for Dr Spock: > * Baby and Child Care > > Search instead for: > > * Mr Spock (10 albums)

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

#372

Post by prmoustache »

giantg2 wrote: post #110
labster wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re in a race to the bottom. There’s no way a company selling legitimate products will be able to compete or grow a customer base in the AI future, because we’ll be swimming in garbage.

Plenty of niche, premium, or physical stores out there. People might need to pay a little more for it, but they do exist. Not everyone buys everything from the same super stores.

Yes. In term of online store it is better to look for the ones specializing in a specific market than wholesale stores.

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

#373

Post by willis936 »

opportune wrote: post #66
nomat wrote: post #44

I think this is the future of computers for people. they will open their phone and say "hey siri get this book or computer or car" and the browser will show them a bunch of made up products generated by an AI and they'll get the product drop shipped from china and it'll be a shitty counterfeit just like the $5 256GB USB drives. But they won't know because when you look for reviews, the review websites will also be ge…

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.

It's only possible to compete if the index is fair. You could never launch a store like that without google in the fold. Google doesn't have an interest in increasing signal, only in increasing revenue. We'll need to see some trust busting first.

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

#374

Post by bobboies »

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…

So the trouble is these market places allowing third party vendors on there (obviously).

All you need is a system to authenticate reputable sellers. Instead of looking at the stars on a product and clicking “buy now,” folks just need so ask: do I know this seller? Is this the ACTUAL publisher selling me this book?

I’d rather go into a real shop anyway. Unless it’s buying some hard-to-find item there’s no excuse.

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

#375

Post by carlosjobim »

I've come to the conclusion that pirates will be the greatest weapon against AI spam content, especially when it comes to books, movies and music. Commercial interests like Amazon or other sellers will never filter out AI content if they can make money from it. Likewise social media and other ad sellers will never filter out AI content if it can grab attention for ads. The only people who have no motivation to let AI content through are pirates, because they share content at a cost and at a risk.

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

#376

Post by carlosjobim »

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?

> 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?

I'd feel frustrated, to say the least! That's why I think people who pirate should make an effort to buy the book if it's fairly recently published. It's usually not expensive.

However, for older books I think pirating is fine. Usually the authors have passed away.

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

#377

Post by kubanczyk »

spicyusername wrote: post #47
nomat wrote: post #44

I think this is the future of computers for people. they will open their phone and say "hey siri get this book or computer or car" and the browser will show them a bunch of made up products generated by an AI and they'll get the product drop shipped from china and it'll be a shitty counterfeit just like the $5 256GB USB drives. But they won't know because when you look for reviews, the review websites will also be ge…

I think people have a lower tolerance for this than that, and will just go back to relying on personal recommendations and other reliable forms of curation.

> relying on personal recommendations

Taking things off the net would be a huge step back for economy.

LLMs will cause a total collapse of trust online. This problem will be solved by a brand new online trust model (instead of the old one "has gained some followers by formulating text messages and forwarding gifs").

The trustees (bots/humans/orgs mixed) would probably need to sacrifice much more of their privacy. Not for the sake of orwellian Big Brother, but for re-establishing any trust whatsoever online.

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

#378

Post by homarp »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #118
labster wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re in a race to the bottom. There’s no way a company selling legitimate products will be able to compete or grow a customer base in the AI future, because we’ll be swimming in garbage.

We swim in garbage already (looking at amazon) but bhphoto and sweetwater still exist.

and apple.com

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

#379

Post by hammertek »

Whilst I agree that the flood of AI generated crap is frustrating...I kinda see it as people finding their feet with a new technology.

As with all previous technological jumps we've got people that hate it and dont see the point in it.

I wasn't there when the microwave was unleashed on the world, but I'd imagine a lot of chefs thought it was the fucking rapture. Fast forward to today and even top chefs use a microwave occasionally.

I suspect the same will occur with AI. Hated by pros right now because every man and dog is now able to do things they couldn't before...eventually though AI will probably become a crucial part of a writers toolkit and along with their existing talent, they will ultimately create better content for people to consume, while the garbage generating will slow down as the cream rises to the top again....some writers will staunchly be against AI forever, some writers will appear that otherwise would never have been writers if not for AI...and the rest will adapt.

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

#380

Post by thaumasiotes »

another-dave wrote: post #371
Pxtl wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's software is odd here. If I click on the name on a real Jane Friedman book, it does not include the fake books... But this is not commutative. If I click on the name on a fake Jane Friedman book, it lists out a mix of real and fake books. For example, this is a blank notebook on Amazon Canada that a seller has stuck her all-lowercase name upon. If I click the author name on the listing, I'm taken to an author…

yeah I think what you really need is for Amazon to have a Wikipedia style 'disambiguation' page. Then they can link them but make it obvious that they're two (or more) different people and results for person A aren't related to person B: > Showing 1-1 books for Dr Spock: > * Baby and Child Care > > Search instead for: > > * Mr Spock (10 albums)

Amazon's identification is a train wreck. Most books have links on the page to what is, by Amazon's description, the kindle version of the same book.

Quite often, that link goes to the kindle version of an unrelated book.

Post reply on HN