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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

#501

Post by VincentEvans »

fennecfoxy wrote: post #500
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 call this "technoshit", which is the general downhill trend of UX as technology and software becomes more complicated. I suppose there's Doctorow's "enshittification", however that lends more to intentional anti-patterns whereas I try to describe the feeling of "why couldn't they just try harder to make this not shit". Stuff like your experience with Amazon, mine even just last night having to: find where I can buy…

Indeed, in my original post I tried hard to stick to relaying the facts without too much editorializing, to let people make up their own minds as to the level of frustration what I describe evokes in them. But if I were to get to the point - I would express it in the words similar to yours - “what the actual fork?”

Here’s another mini-anecdote. On my iphone I have Amazon Prime app where it allows me to download episodes of Peppa Pig for my daughter to watch when we don’t have internet. Recently I wanted to cast these episodes on an AppleTV hooked up to a big TV in a hotel. It wouldn’t let me - because you are not allowed to use Screen Mirroring to show protected content, and AppleTV was connected to WiFi, but not internet - so it couldn’t verify licenses.

So bottom line - here I have content that I paid for, stored inside a protected from ground-up encrypted mainstream device, but I can’t play it on large TV in the same room, because there’s a bunch of likely complicated technology sitting there worrying about “what if i somehow got around it being licensed!”.

But even I did in fact circumvent their copy protection - has anyone stopped to think whether its worth getting in the way of millions of their customers lives streaming their legally purchased content just to stop this one guy who managed to jailbreak their iphone? Have they completely lost touch with reality?

All of this feels insane to me, especially being rather familiar with constant pompous rhethoric coming from Amazon and Apple about their customer-focused philosophies.

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

#502

Post by scubbo »

luma wrote: post #201
scubbo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, among my social group, almost everyone has heard of it, and no-one has ever experienced it.

... that they are aware of.

I have no problem with receiving a counterfeit that is indistinguishable from the "real" product. Is it morally sketchy? Absolutely. Is the outcome for me the same? Also yes.

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

#503

Post by scubbo »

projectileboy wrote: post #208
scubbo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, among my social group, almost everyone has heard of it, and no-one has ever experienced it.

Your mileage may definitely vary. In 20+ years, I’ve had four incidents of receiving obviously counterfeit goods; no idea if it has happened more often than that and I was just unaware.

Certainly fair! I suspect there's probably some concentration in particular product areas - would be interested to see any research done (though that'd be tricky, given the cost involved and the difficulty in proving something to be counterfeit)

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

#504

Post by maximinus_thrax »

scubbo wrote: post #502
luma wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... that they are aware of.

I have no problem with receiving a counterfeit that is indistinguishable from the "real" product. Is it morally sketchy? Absolutely. Is the outcome for me the same? Also yes.

> I have no problem with receiving a counterfeit that is indistinguishable from the "real" product.

Would you hold the same opinion about stuff you'd eat such as supplements? What does `indistinguishable` mean in this context? Say lower quality fish oil which as it's a pill, you can't tell the difference? This would be the fortunate case, I wouldn't even want to bring up mislabeled vitamins or stuff which can actually cause harm that's hard to trace back.

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

#506

Post by mavhc »

memefrog wrote: post #495
mavhc wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apple App Store led with an estimated revenue of $85.1 billion (roughly £70.5 billion) in 2021, responsible for 63% of total app revenue. In the same year, Google Play Store generated revenues of nearly $47.9 billion (roughly £39.7 billion) through Android apps

Right, because the Apple app store is used by people that own iPhones, which are expensive luxury goods for people with lots of disposable income. The Android app store is used by everyone else. The Apple app store is still a minority player in terms of market share. I genuinely don't understand how you can simultaneously post these stats and claim that Apple's business model is bad for people that develop apps for A…

Apps, fine. Charge people, say, $99/year to be on their platform and get moderation. But digital goods? Not fine.

Google also reviews apps using humans, and allows 3rd party app stores.

Interestingly they say their 15-30% fee pays for Android development. You'd think Apple's $400 profit per phone would pay for iOS development.

Apparently Google Play Store Kindle app has the same restrictions

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

#507

Post by bradknowles »

bobboies wrote: post #374
mrweasel wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Marketplaces need to be held liable for products and services sold through them.

And when you have a dispute with a seller that came through a marketplace, your dispute should be with the marketplace and it is then up to the marketplace to recover the value of the goods from the seller.

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

#508

Post by YeBanKo »

It falls into an “identity fraud” bucket. When vendors mistake knowledge of information for message authentication.

In a more typical scenario, a piece of knowledge maybe a name, an address and ssn and a message is a request for a loan from the bank. In this case a piece of knowledge is the name only, and the unauthenticated message is an AI gibberish.

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

#509

Post by tremon »

tsimionescu wrote: post #295
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…

Copyright doesnt exist only to prevent people from getting your books for free. It's also there to prevent other authors from using your story for their own - for example, this is (part of) what prevents Universal Studios from putting out their own Spider Man movie. Now, arguably this has even worse consequences on culture than the banning of copying ebooks. Still, it complicates the expected cost of a book significa…

this is (part of) what prevents Universal Studios from putting out their own Spider Man movie.

It's not though. It's the trademark that prevents that. Copyright only prevents them from making a Spiderman movie based on a story that's already been written. Nothing prevents them from writing a new story about a guy that shoots sticky goo from his wrists, and making a movie out of that.

I guess that story wouldn't be considered canon. But canon also has nothing to do with copyright.

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

#510

Post by brigandish »

thefurdrake wrote: post #486
brigandish wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re “pretty sure”. Perhaps we should also call it an odyssey , or an epic ? They would also fit the dictionary definitions, if we read the dictionary like we’d not bothered to learn proper English. I’m guessing, by your use of Mirriam Webster that you’re an American, so that’s a distinct possibility. If you knew how to use a dictionary you wouldn’t have left out the helpful examples: > 1a : hard to accomplish or a…

... You do realize that examples don't provide a constraint, right? ... right? Anyway, you seem very confused with internet vernacular; everyone else was able to grasp the context. You appear to be the only individual experiencing difficulties. Just saying.

Yes, there’s no constraint, feel free to use language as you wish. That doesn’t make your argument any better as to what words actually mean, given examples, from a dictionary, when you claim to know how to use one and that I don’t.

Inane, specious, and mendacious are other entries in the dictionary that come to mind. I also have no trouble comprehending the argument before me, it’s simply misdescribed. Can you not comprehend that? Apparently not.

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