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

321–330 of 368 posts

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

#321

Post by Cider9986 »

ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #253
tren wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We sell ebooks in every country, including Tunisia - https://www.ebooks.com/en-tn/ . I understand that the price of books is sometimes prohibitive, but it's largely outside our control.

The issue is not the amount; it's the currency. Ours is not convertible. To put it into perspective: even *free* services can be completely inaccessible here if they require payment info for verification purposes. Acquiring hard currency to spend online is truly a bureaucratic nightmare, and even if you manage it, the annual limit is strictly capped (at around $300).

And people say that Monero is worse than fiat!

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

#322

Post by mmooss »

Aachen wrote: post #297
mmooss wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that some sort of real thing, some significance in law?

Yes You could look it up and see for yourself. It's applicable to all sorts of collections such as map data and I'd presume also a book database but IANAL so best if you see for yourself - my intention was just to point out (what I hope is) the applicable legal principle for anyone curious about this

I don't know about that ... HN is a conversation. It's not a very interesting conversation when you say a few words and then refuse to say more, telling the other people at the table to look it up.

I could look up lots and lots of things to see for myself. I wouldn't be reading your comment, and there is not enough time in the universe. Readers don't have time to look up everything other people post. It's up to the commenter, I think, to say what they intend and what's valuable about it.

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

#323

Post by Cider9986 »

jmye wrote: post #194
TFNA wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

Why would a logical actor pay for something infinitely duplicatable?

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

#326

Post by squibonpig »

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…

I'm not gonna buy the book as an alternative you know. If I'm pirating a book it's usually because I can't really afford to go buying the books I'm interested in. Sometimes if I love a book I'll get a physical copy so I can finish it in a more comfortable format and so I'll have it for another read. I figure most people who pirate are pretty similar, so I wouldn't expect an outsized effect on book sales. Add to that the fact that books by people who are literally dead still have copyright. That has nothing to do with it being hard to write a book, cause I don't think their fucking estate wrote the book.

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

#328

Post by squibonpig »

phatfish wrote: post #242
zerobees wrote: post #159

Earlier 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…

It's almost as if we are in a comment section where most peoples jobs exist due to "content" either being stolen (AI most recently) or crowd sourced under EULAs that effectively steal it. Not that I think a back door to the shit Disney and other corporate content onwers pull is nessecarily a bad thing. But it is funny to see people here gaslight themselves into believing they have some moral right to just take what o…

I don't think the majority here work for ai companies and I also see a lot of people critical of AI and copyright violations by ai companies. They're also very clearly different things, one is done on a massive scale by a company for profit and another is done by one person to use the work in the way it was intended to be used.

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

#329

Post by squibonpig »

andai wrote: post #229
zerobees wrote: post #159

Earlier 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…

> It's just "lol, why pay when you can download for free". Well for starters because the research shows that reading on a screen literally makes you retarded. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-36256-4 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/691462 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-05605-0

More interested in a study on e-readers

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

#330

Post by LocalH »

jll29 wrote: post #299
MarsIronPI wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so. Stallman created copyleft licenses as a defense against the current implementation of copyright. Copyleft uses the existing system of copyright to protect authors of free software from people who want to use copyright to restrict distribution. It wouldn't be necessary if copyright didn't exist.

Stallman wanted to protect the right to fix bugs, he was not against paying for goods and services.

He was also famously staunchly against proprietary software in any way, so therefore he wouldn't have been spending money on software unless there was no other option that came close to meeting his needs.
Post reply on HN