51–60 of 151 posts
I just wonder why all that can't be uploaded into Library Genesis? They already have the distribution part sorted out (IPFS, Torrent, even ed2k!).
It would be nice if we could read these books online rather than having to download a file and find some sort of reading app for it. Like, what am I supposed to do with an "azw3" file? And do I really want evidence of piracy sitting on my hard disk?
In all likelihood the book you are looking for is available as a .pdf The "best" format for reading books is epub, as it is an opwn format which does not try to adapt a paper format. There are many free readers available for it. >And do I really want evidence of piracy sitting on my hard disk? If your house gets raided by law enforcement, charges for minor copyright infringement should be of absolutely zero concern t…
Not really.
Practically, for many pirate ebooks you can find in both ePub and PDF you better choose PDF because it looks and reads like the original while the ePub version probably is almost garbage with broken tables, code quotes etc.
As a format FB2 is better than ePub because it separates the content from the view while ePub mixes them heavily. I usually convert ePub to FB2 before reading just to force my PocketBook reader to use its default typesetting instead of that hardcoded in the ePub file. FB2 also is much more convenient to process programmatically and it defines more meaningful metadata than ePub.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In all likelihood the book you are looking for is available as a .pdf The "best" format for reading books is epub, as it is an opwn format which does not try to adapt a paper format. There are many free readers available for it. >And do I really want evidence of piracy sitting on my hard disk? If your house gets raided by law enforcement, charges for minor copyright infringement should be of absolutely zero concern t…
> The "best" format for reading books is epub, as it is an opwn format which does not try to adapt a paper format. There are many free readers available for it. I disagree. ePub assumes that the thing you are reading can easily be reformatted – for mathematics, technical documents, or similar, this is really not true. I've got a few technical books where the publisher released them as either a LaTeX'd pdf or an epub…
I just wonder why all that can't be uploaded into Library Genesis? They already have the distribution part sorted out (IPFS, Torrent, even ed2k!).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taking all your fiat money technically doesn't "remove" it either, just relocation. Gets even better if we talk about virtual funds.
When all my fiat money is taken, I cannot use it anymore, therefore it's removed. If you make an exact copy of my fiat money, yet I can still use it, nothing is stolen.
When governments make exact copy of existing fiat money (i.e. engage in money printing) they increase supply of fiat money and as a result cause inflation, which decrease the value of fiat money existing before the money printer was turned on. So while such a copy did not completely eliminate your ability to use your money, it did in fact decreased its utility. And indeed can be a valid case of "stealing".
Be warned that IPFS is not anonymous, and the IP addresses of the nodes serving the content are quite easily obtainable. And since the FBI already got involved and arrested people, this is quite the risky endeavor.
Be warned that IPFS is not anonymous, and the IP addresses of the nodes serving the content are quite easily obtainable. And since the FBI already got involved and arrested people, this is quite the risky endeavor.
If you run an IPFS server, you don't know what's on it, do you?
It's just like running a webserver, but with content-based addressing, the possibility of having multiple machines provide the same content and much more convenient mirroring than over HTTP.
If you start an IPFS node, it'll remain empty until you upload something, or pin (copy) somebody else's content.
I think your node might also cache requests you make to it for some time, but that's also something that's a result of you asking for it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In all likelihood the book you are looking for is available as a .pdf The "best" format for reading books is epub, as it is an opwn format which does not try to adapt a paper format. There are many free readers available for it. >And do I really want evidence of piracy sitting on my hard disk? If your house gets raided by law enforcement, charges for minor copyright infringement should be of absolutely zero concern t…
> The "best" format for reading books is epub, as it is an opwn format which does not try to adapt a paper format. There are many free readers available for it. I disagree. ePub assumes that the thing you are reading can easily be reformatted – for mathematics, technical documents, or similar, this is really not true. I've got a few technical books where the publisher released them as either a LaTeX'd pdf or an epub…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Completely false equivalence. Copying answers isn't bad because you are infringing on someones "right" to have control over their answers. It is bad because you are commiting academic fraud and seeking a qualification you have not earned. You are claiming anothers achievement as your own. Me reading a pirated book does not mean I claim to be the author.
I guess the elephant in the room is that you're not paying the authors for what they created; in this sense it's like "stealing". Someone spends time and resources making something and you use that something without compensating that someone. I agree it's not exactly like stealing (that's why we invented a different word for it), bt ut's still something that is unfair to the book author(s).
Eg, if you steal a book from a shelf, then it's gone. The shop can no longer sell it to anyone else, and needs to obtain a replacement. The customer that really need it may not be able to get it now.
But if a 10 year old from a dirt poor family with $100 to their name downloads a whole library of technical literature worth $10M, it's a very different situation. I think it's very arguable that there was no scenario in which the authors would have gotten paid, and that no real harm has been done in this particular case.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When all my fiat money is taken, I cannot use it anymore, therefore it's removed. If you make an exact copy of my fiat money, yet I can still use it, nothing is stolen.
Let's go down the rabbit hole... When governments make exact copy of existing fiat money (i.e. engage in money printing) they increase supply of fiat money and as a result cause inflation, which decrease the value of fiat money existing before the money printer was turned on. So while such a copy did not completely eliminate your ability to use your money, it did in fact decreased its utility. And indeed can be a val…
It's not stealing, government didn't steal anyone's money, they just devalued it. In a similar sense, gold miners are increasing the supply of gold and lowering its price, but they still aren't stealing anyone's gold - they're making more. The fact that fiat money is completely fictional does make it more prone to systemic abuse - but even in that case, what the government is taking away from people is value and labor, not money itself, and those two are a little more abstract and harder to reason about.
The word "stealing" has a specific meaning related to physically taking something away from someone else, let's not use it in contexts where it doesn't apply. Especially when the use of the word is mostly perpetuated by copyright holders who want to persuade the public that not giving money to them is equal to stealing from them. That's bullshit, and it will always be bullshit. To me, it sounds horribly similar to narcissistic abuse: "How could you not give money to me? Do you have any idea how much that hurts me?".