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Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
191–200 of 368 posts
Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Knowledge should be free. It was never created in a vacuum. This is a common perspective on HN, but it's so jarring. Someone violates an open-source license and we grab our pitchforks. Someone pirates books and it's fine - really, the authors should be thanking us. Good books are incredibly challenging to write, more so than good software. It's not like you grab Harry Potter and say "I'm just gonna change character…
If this is not bad faith argument, then I don't what is. When someone is violating an OSS licence, they are doing it for commercial gains and monetary profit. Nobody is angry at someone using FOSS software for himself with no money getting involved. As opposed to that, books, movies are pirated for personal consumption. Not monetary gains. If someone bought a $30 book, and then ran a BaaS with millions of VC money in…
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Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Knowledge should be free. It was never created in a vacuum. This is a common perspective on HN, but it's so jarring. Someone violates an open-source license and we grab our pitchforks. Someone pirates books and it's fine - really, the authors should be thanking us. Good books are incredibly challenging to write, more so than good software. It's not like you grab Harry Potter and say "I'm just gonna change character…
If this is not bad faith argument, then I don't what is. When someone is violating an OSS licence, they are doing it for commercial gains and monetary profit. Nobody is angry at someone using FOSS software for himself with no money getting involved. As opposed to that, books, movies are pirated for personal consumption. Not monetary gains. If someone bought a $30 book, and then ran a BaaS with millions of VC money in…
If knowledge is to be free, that means there should be no restrictions on how it is used. Even an open source license misses the point, because the implication is still that one person can dictate how another person can make use of knowledge. It’s still premised on the same dystopian view that a person can own an idea.
Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Knowledge should be free. It was never created in a vacuum. It belongs to us all Imagine you're a professional writer and it's your main source of income. How would you feel if someone said this to you? Would you still want to write books?
Things have changed a lot since the late twentieth century. The kind of people you imagine, who can live full-time off writing, are responsible for a vanishingly small amount of the books that appear today. Piracy has little to do with it; this is primarily due to the fierce competition from other books, the glut of content available today, but especially from mobile phones as fewer and fewer people read books. Even…
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Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you’re saying your entire current life is because of the proceeds of crime?! I’m kidding. Knowledge should be free. It was never created in a vacuum. It belongs to us all
> Knowledge should be free. It was never created in a vacuum. It belongs to us all Imagine you're a professional writer and it's your main source of income. How would you feel if someone said this to you? Would you still want to write books?
We certainly wouldn't want to return to the pre-1976 era, where, as we all know, no books were written.
Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you’re saying your entire current life is because of the proceeds of crime?! I’m kidding. Knowledge should be free. It was never created in a vacuum. It belongs to us all
This is such a ridiculous statement. The people who spent their time building up this body of work deserve to be compensated. Take whatever job you do and imagine people confidently stating that you should work for free.
Yes, but do their publishers need to be compensated for a century after their death?
Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you’re saying your entire current life is because of the proceeds of crime?! I’m kidding. Knowledge should be free. It was never created in a vacuum. It belongs to us all
This is such a ridiculous statement. The people who spent their time building up this body of work deserve to be compensated. Take whatever job you do and imagine people confidently stating that you should work for free.
But do their grandchildren deserve to live off the proceeds for the rest of their lives as well? Say I'm a carpenter and I make chairs. How many chairs do I need to make before I get to retire? If I make a really really good one and get it put it in the right place, one should be enough. Just sit back and collect $1 for every time that someone sits in it. I don't have to make the chair particular good or comfortable, just get it into the right place where people will pay. And then I don't have to work for the rest of my life. Nor do my children. Or their children either. Framing the question at the extreme, that one should be expected to work for free, is just as absurd as framing it as some people should just never have to work at all, ever. No one put me in charge, but I believe people need to do work of some sort. Who gets to decide what counts as work or not isn't for me to decide though, so the system we've got is just this whole unorganized unplanned economy.
Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#198If you shouldn't be able to copyright GRAPES...you shouldn't be able to copyright BOOKS.
And why's that? I don't see how either of those two things relate to one another. A grape is a naturally occurring fruit, while the creation of a book is wholly a human creative endeavor.
There’s a lot of crops that are very intensively bred to create new, specific cultivars. Take a look at all the new Apple varieties popping up. There’s nothing natural about their creation: https://applerankings.com
Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you’re saying your entire current life is because of the proceeds of crime?! I’m kidding. Knowledge should be free. It was never created in a vacuum. It belongs to us all
> Knowledge should be free. It was never created in a vacuum. This is a common perspective on HN, but it's so jarring. Someone violates an open-source license and we grab our pitchforks. Someone pirates books and it's fine - really, the authors should be thanking us. Good books are incredibly challenging to write, more so than good software. It's not like you grab Harry Potter and say "I'm just gonna change character…
Just because something is challenging, that doesn't mean you should get paid for it. Art and business are two distinct endeavors. All the copyright and IP issues come up because of this one confusion.
Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Knowledge should be free. It was never created in a vacuum. This is a common perspective on HN, but it's so jarring. Someone violates an open-source license and we grab our pitchforks. Someone pirates books and it's fine - really, the authors should be thanking us. Good books are incredibly challenging to write, more so than good software. It's not like you grab Harry Potter and say "I'm just gonna change character…
Taken out of context, you're right. But the parent comment couldn't buy these books even if they wanted to. I'd say there's a consensus that the primary motivation for piracy is hurdles to access having nothing to do with payment.
I think iTunes Store and Netflix both showed 15 or so years back that if you give people and easy and convenient way to pay a reasonable price for music/movies - a huge number of people will willingly choose to pay and support the artists/creators, instead of hanging out on Bittorrent trackers and paying for seedboxes and sharing with friends.
And the siloing of movies by Netflix nd all the other streaming services, and the introduction of advertising into the "reasonable price" tiers, shows that people can and do remember piracy in still an option, for when corporations and copyright holding groups enshittify things. Lately amongst a lot of my friends I've seen more usb stick with movies being shared that even in the heyday of Bittorrent.