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

Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)

software.annas-archive.gl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 368 posts

Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)

#211

Post by gorgoiler »

zerobees wrote: post #159
whycome wrote: post #147

Earlier 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…

Capitalism works great for shoes. You pay the proletariat for their labor and they labor away in your shoe factory. The shoe economy ticks over on scarcity.

The knowledge economy is different. It’s hard to see how the system works in a world where everyone has the equivalent of a shoe replicator in their pocket.

Ironically the “free market” only survives by having arbitrary regulations on shoe duplication enforced in the interests of shoe-rights holders.

Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)

#212

Post by jzb »

neilv wrote: post #18

The US should just find a way to quietly share literature access with the Russians, rather than letting piracy be promoted and facilitated for US consumers as freedom-fighter "archiving". Between all the piracy, and all the AI training and the purchase/visitor-circumventing AI services, the practice of writing and publishing genuinely good work is being wiped out. We're killing the goose that lays the eggs, for selfi…

Do you have stats on that?

I’m not sure piracy or AI training are really affecting book publishing dramatically. But if you have data, I’d be curious to see it. AI scraper bots are a total pain for online publishers and FOSS sites, but AFAIK they’re not really harming book publishing directly.

The consolidation of publishers and Amazon’s own practices are probably worse for authors than “piracy”.

Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)

#213

Post by zanderwohl »

abrookewood wrote: post #190
whycome wrote: post #147

Earlier 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.

This is a disingenuous argument.

Constant payment into perpetuity for the replication of digital information is just a form of rent-seeking. Except, unlike a landlord, you're not obligated to correct defects.

Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)

#214

Post by alexwennerberg »

zerobees wrote: post #159
whycome wrote: post #147

Earlier 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…

> 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.

If the books were released under an open source license, there would be no problem here?

Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)

#215

Post by drnick1 »

elrostelperien wrote: post #145
Almondsetat wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or... just a USB cable?

I agree that a USB cable is the most practical option. However, the aforementioned site is useful in a specific scenario: if your Kobo is very old, macOS won't recognize it.

If other operating systems interact with the Kobo well, the problem clearly lies with MacOS.

Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)

#216

Post by alexwennerberg »

john-titor wrote: post #161
whycome wrote: post #147

Earlier 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?

> Imagine you're a professional writer and it's your main source of income.

There are probably a few thousand of these in the entire United States. The market system heavily under-values writing as is, independent of piracy

Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)

#217

Post by wwind123 »

ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #19

I live in a country where the selection of available books, especially in English, is very limited. Buying online from foreign markets comes with a long list of administrative hurdles and limits. If it were not for Anna's Archive and Z-Library, I would've never been able to read the books that shaped who I am today, or keep my passion for learning alive. Thanks, AA and ZLib! (Also, thank you to the authors whose book…

I can feel for both camps.

Some of my published work is pirated heavily. That's not my main income source, so I just shrug and let it go. If anything, I'm probably happy that people are reading my work. Especially if it's people that can't afford it, I'm glad they enjoy my work -- those books got pretty high reader ratings, and it seems to me many readers are actually reading the pirated version.

But I do have friends that depend on this income source, and fighting piracy has become a part of their day job. It's not a fun thing to do, they'd rather spend time working on their next story, but they still have to do this everyday. I feel for them.

Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)

#218

Post by kennywinker »

sam1r wrote: post #201
NeutralCrane wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wow very well put.

Except it’s not. That poster is just doing an IP law version of the “paradox of tolerance”. Their argument is just: you say you want information to be free yet you believe in licenses that keep information from being made un-free.

Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)

#219

Post by zanderwohl »

cubefox wrote: post #134

HN logic: Training on copyrighted material --> bad Actually distributing copyrighted material --> good Needless to say, this is backwards. Any copyright holder will be much more worried about the latter.

It's not backwards. Which of the two makes a profit? Which of the two comes away richer? Which of the two actually takes business away from the original copyright holder?

Re: Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)

#220

Post by NavneetKr »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #175

> Plead read [this] carefully before working on a bounty. [this] appears as a link to a .li address, and that goes bad places. Should be https://annas-archive.gl/volunteering#bounties

I went to that link and almost ran a malicious script in my terminal for a supposed reCAPTCHA verification. Just before pressing enter, I verified it with gemini and it said it was a ClickFix script designed to steal passwords and other sensitive information. Because of all the weird things we have to do for CAPTCHA verification these days, I almost believed it was legitimate and went with the steps. It is really frightening.
Post reply on HN