10 ms·

Confessions of a Book Pirate (2010)

96 points by iamiam 7y ago

dang 7y ago
A thread from 2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4992595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4992595 Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1078652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1078652
- iamiam 7y ago
  Thanks Dang for posting the links -- interesting!
Mediterraneo10 7y ago
Interesting that in the old linked discussion from 2013, someone claims that publishers can't complain, because they had a record year financially. I wonder how well they are doing now. My gut feeling is that publishers these days face problems not from privacy so much as from 1) the sheer glut of content, making it hard to stand out, and 2) shortening attention spans and people preferring to read snackable content on their phones instead of longform books. When Kindles appeared, they seemed to augur a golden age for reading (and sure, you could load them up with pirated ebooks). Nowadays I am conscious at the beach or on public transport of usually being the only person with a Kindle while everyone else around me is looking at their phones, and it would be hard to believe any significant number have an EPUB reader open on those phones to read actual books.
- Simon_says 7y ago
  I bought one of the first Kindles and loaded it up with a hundred DRM-liberated ebooks and read it avidly. Since then, phones have gotten bigger screens with higher pixel density and longer battery life, and my Kindle now sits is a drawer unused. The best ebook reader is the one you have on you.
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    Higher battery life? The Kindle battery lasts much longer than a phone with the backlight off and in airplane mode. But again, even if a phone could be used as an ereader, my point is that for most people it is likely not. Even for bibliophiles, they might not get so much reading done on a phone due to the distractions that phones bring.
    - falcolas 7y ago
      These days, so long as the battery lasts all day (it does, using it as an ebook reader), that sufficient for a phone. Longer is better, but I always have a charger on me, a spare battery for emergencies when traveling, and a charging pad next to my bed at home. > they might not get so much reading done on a phone due to the distractions that phones bring. Short of notifications, there are no distractions on my phone when reading a book. No clock, no battery indicator, no nothing. If I really want to read, I can just go into DND mode, and even notifications have gone away.
    - Simon_says 7y ago
      I meant battery life is now longer on phones than it used to be on phones, assuming you're using it as an ebook reader, which means no radios.
      - input_sh 7y ago
        That still can't be compared to an average eReader, whose battery lasts for weeks. I charge mine every two or three weeks (about an hour of usage per day).
        Simon_says 7y ago
        Of course it can be compared.
  - feanaro 7y ago
    e-ink is still vastly superior for reading than any phone screen, IMO. The experience seems completely incomparable.
selfishgene 7y ago
These days if the book is not already on LibGen, will obtain it through inter-library loan until someone uploads it to one of their mirrors. Over the years, have scanned a few technical titles on a high-speed photocopy machine at the university and then made sure to turn around and "do the right thing" ... in order to thank others for sharing :)
supernova87a 7y ago
I can sympathize with the desire to see your favorite books put online for more people to read. I for example, am a big fan of the book "Waves & Beaches" by Willard Bascom, a long out-of-print book on the physics, dynamics of the ocean (and the spirit of longing to understand the nature of the sea), but which always only could be found for >$30 on Ebay or something like that. I finally bought a copy (out of nostalgia) and actually enjoyed it again so much, I went to the trouble of sawing off the spine, scanning it and OCRing it to produce an eBook and prolong its life. For myself. I have been tempted to share it, but have no idea how. But I imagine there's tons of books and people like this.
- jamiek88 7y ago
  Upload to libgen is the best way to share things like that. I'm not goint to upload the latest JK King Grisham page turner but an obscure gardening book where the author is long dead? Yes that is getting uploaded. For the culture.
  - sampo 7y ago
    "Waves and Beaches" (1964 edition) is already in libgen.
    - kick 7y ago
      No OCR.
      - supernova87a 7y ago
        Thanks, I'll have a look at that site and maybe upload it. I have the 1980 version which comes with a bunch more content about energy production from the sea.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- nataz 7y ago
  FYI - on your recommendation I just picked up a used paperback copy for under $7 bucks.
sillysaurusx 7y ago
Book piracy is a big reason I've been able to learn as much as I know about ML. I don't know how to feel about it. All I know is that I'm more effective than I would've been if I had to pay for the books, since I wouldn't have read anything. It's common on HN to pretend that everyone here is an affluent programmer working for FAANG with $500k/yr in stock vesting. In reality, I've spoken to many who are more along the lines of "month to month paycheck." Dropping $50 on a book about Tensorflow just isn't in the cards. Yet the outrage is extreme, and probably justified: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047297#18049297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047297#18049297 I apologize to the authors of the books I've absorbed. No doubt you've worked exceptionally hard. For what it's worth, I do recommend your books to others who may be in a position to buy them. I like: - Hands-on Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and Tensorflow, 2nd Edition - IPython Interactive Computing and Visualization Cookbook 2nd Edition - Nick McClure - TensorFlow Machine Learning Cook (2017) These are easily found on Library Genesis, which has become my de facto study.
- noonespecial 7y ago
  Piracy. The ultimate market segregation.
- santa_boy 7y ago
  I've can completely related to your thoughts and it applies a lot more in developing economies with so much of good content floating around. From the learnings, I did a fulfilling and enriching side coding gig for a couple of years spending a couple of hours every week that matched 50% income from my full time job (managing a large US real estate portfolio). It was related to increasing health awareness in the US and later to help immigrant families to prepare for the new administration. I make every effort to buy content nowadays as an attempt to pay back the authors. That is the main reason, I totally love Medium, Spotify, Netflix and other content providers. They allow me to pay as you go and are on-demand.
- kick 7y ago
  An alternative to "Never buy a book" that I think is more fair is buying a couple of copies after I'm finished with a book and sending them to others if I find I enjoy them. A $50 Tensorflow book may not be initially affordable for some people, but assuming you got an understanding of Tensorflow out of it, you'll be able to convert the knowledge to at least $50 pretty easily.
zarkov99 7y ago
I buy a lot of books, more than what I read. But I have to confess that the lack of pdf versions and the sometimes obscene cost of text books does sometime lead me to peruse alternatives.
iamiam 7y ago
I agree in terms of the economics of it for many readers at least. I buy a lot of books. I would buy a lot more e-books I think if prices were reasonable i.e sub $5, vs. usually being as much a print copy. I also gift many books. I recently downloaded 200+ books via b-ok.org...most of which I certainly wouldn't have bought and probably half of which I won't open for years if ever. Two months later, though, a couple of the books I enjoyed that I've ordered new copies to be sent as gifts as friends. I would be a good candidate for something like Kindle Unlimited, but most of the books I'm interested in aren't available there. At least half the books I downloaded (many academic as well as poetry and other books) are not available on Kindle Unlimited. Subscription music aggregators seem to have a pretty decently comprehensive offering in a way that the book, news, and movie aggregators don't. It would be a little weird, but if there was an app where I could read any book but every 20th page or so was some full page ad...I could live with that (as long as it wasn't a video or something). Not sure if that kind of a model could work in terms of the economics for writers -- but it's of course working for news mostly and for some film sites like Tubi and Pluto.
- dorchadas 7y ago
  Have you checked Scribd? They might have some of those that Kindle Unlimited doesn't.
vector_spaces 7y ago
Safari Books Online (I think recently rebranded as O'Reilly Online) is a pretty decent value -- about $49 USD a month for access to most O'Reilly, PragProg, Manning, and quite a few other non-programmer focused publishing houses like Academic Press. Between that subscription, my scribd subscription (which has plenty of unauthorized titles in addition to its authorized titles), and PDFs I'm able to find elsewhere, I'm pretty set. (not affiliated with either OReilly or Scribd, just a happy user) Despite this, I strongly prefer a physical copy. Except for some of the books on Safari which I use as a quick reference, I mostly use PDF copies as a sort of extended preview before purchasing (or not!) a physical copy But the interviewee is spot on when he argues that a pirated download != a lost sale. The idea that it is is just pure silliness. Before I got into tech, if I couldn't find a PDF of a $70-120 book I simply wouldn't read it. Period.
- breck 7y ago
  Interesting, thanks for sharing. I knew about Scribd but didn't know O'Reilly had a subscription offering. Although, like you, I strongly prefer physical copies, and so not sure if it's worth $49 for digital which I read far less. I would probably pay $49/month for full digital access if it came with 1-2 physical books per month as well.
- iamiam 7y ago
  Yes, Safari is a good deal...they also have a nice trial period which requires a simple signup/no payment.
- clumsysmurf 7y ago
  I have Safari, and find it to be a poor value. Here are a few reasons (1) you can't read books in your browser while offline (2) many publishers don't contribute to Safari (Springer, MIT Press, etc) (3) publishers that are technically on Safari don't publish their whole catalog (Wiley) (4) Publishers that are on Safari, and do publish their whole catalog, may take months, a year even to put their books online (Wrox). (5) A lot of the books in the catalog are from Packt, which I consider noise. So, while I do have Safari, I use it as a last resort and buy the DRM-free PDFs from publishers that have then (Manning, Prag Prog, etc) even if they are in Safari. This past week, my account got corrupted. I lost about one years worth of Playlists that I put much effort into curating. All gone. Support was able to get me a CSV file of a known good state, but its going to be a PITA to manually recreate everything again. I might not bother.
falcolas 7y ago
I'm torn on the topic myself. I buy books, because I'm fortunate enough to be in a financial position to buy the books I want to read. But e-books are comparatively expensive. They were conceptually sold to us as a cheaper alternative to hardback and paperback books; but they cost as much as hardback editions quite often. For no reason other than "the market will bear it". The market may technically be bearing it, but it's caused a segmentation of that market with piracy on the other side of the line. Technical books are even more ridiculous; $50 for a book is insane in this day and age. Especially when it's a distilling of topics and subjects easily found online for free. The act of distilling is not worth $50 to me. "Physically Based Rendering" is probably the only technical book I've purchased and felt good about purchasing; and that's because it feels like a full college course in the subject. And then there's the college textbook scam. I feel morally incapable of supporting that racket in any way, shape or form. It's an egregious abuse of a captive audience that forces purchases at prices which are based on what can be gotten from a college loan, not in the value the textbook may provide.
- musicale 7y ago
  Textbooks are definitely a scam, and often the authors don't make much money from them - it's eaten by the publisher and distributors. A number of e-books on Amazon are priced at $9.99 since Amazon pays a higher royalty rate for prices under $10.
gtycomb 7y ago
Similar to books, growing up in India I discovered “Western” music because of pirated music. The one and only reason I heard of bands like Yes, Jethro Tul, Roxy Music, Steely Dan, Dylan, Joni Mitchell, or St. Martin in the Fields, etc. are the pirated copes moving from hand to hand among our school buddies. There was no way we could have afforded the orginal copies from the publishers. Well the clocks ticked, I came here for graduate school and but the time I got my first job, over a period of time I had instinctively purchased all the original CDs and Box Sets of these and many other artists, about 1000 of them on my shelf. When I exchange notes with with my old buddies, some in Canada and some in England, they have more extensive collections than me. For one weak immitation of a Gibson lookalike guitar we had, we own a small stable of the real things by now :-) The pirated copies that hooked us to the artists in the first place. I hate to steal from the artists I so much adore, but then shouldn’t there be a way to spread the music around.
floki999 7y ago
This is an old story and much has changed since. You can find just about any technical title in seconds, and in clean pdf format - not scanned.
ggm 7y ago
The publisher who does three of a four part series but not part four (ipr dispute with right holder usually) The author who is dead, has one seminal work online and four other not online. (Randolph Stow) The author who is dead, has four minor works online but not the seminal work (c.m. kornbluth) The author who is in dispute with epublishing as a protest against ipr contract terms (Ursula le guin, Philip Pullman) and has their work ripped anyway. The bad OCR conversion.
JustSomeNobody 7y ago
I will sometimes try to locate a pdf of a technical book I am interested in. If I find it, I’ll scan through it and if I think it’s something I would like to read I’ll buy a physical copy. If not, I delete the pdf and don’t read it. If I don’t want to buy it, it isn’t worth my time to read it free. It’s my equivalent to walking into a book store and thumbing through books until I find one I want to buy.
_jal 7y ago
I've been very poor (more than once), and I'm currently quite comfortable. I've always read a lot, and would be in a very different place if I hadn't. Using libraries has been a big part of that, but they are of course much less useful for cutting-edge tech topics. I'm limiting this to those, in situations where you think absorbing the book will improve your chops. You should buy the book, because this makes both you and the author better off. But if you can't, you should read it anyway, because at least one of you is benefiting. You can buy the book later when you're in a better place, or at least pay it forward in some other way. The only thing worse than not getting paid for your work is your unpaid work not being used at all.
- MaysonL 7y ago
  I bought the book (used), but I can't find it right now, so I borrowed it from the library, and this article just prompted me to do an online search for it, and I just downloaded a pdf copy.
AnonC 7y ago
I stopped buying books when I realized that I don’t really read most of them (blame short attention span). So I pirate a lot of books, which also, for the most part, remain unread. If I read a book and really like it, then I’d look at buying a DRM free ebook copy of it. I also buy ebooks when they’re on sale at a low price.
Iv 7y ago
This title just wants me to still throw a useless stone in an already lost battle: "book piracy" used to mean "Steal a book content and sell it putting you as the author". That's the original meaning of the word. Copyright-infriging a book does not sound as serious as "piracy" or "theft" but these two words are actually misused.
paggle 7y ago
I downloaded several thousand ebooks and read about 10 of them. I’ve also bought more ebooks than I’ve pirated and read, and the ones that I didn’t read barely even happened... just a transfer of bits from one drive to another.
musicale 7y ago
It's a major embarrassment for humanity that we've created an astonishing library system – books in scanned or native digital format, inexpensive smartphones/e-reader devices, and the internet – that could give billions of people on the planet the ability to read nearly any book ever published essentially for free, but for narrow business reasons we're doing the best we can to prevent that eventuality from ever happening. To protect their own business interests, publishers (and their technical accomplices) have invented crippled digital formats that try to destroy the most fundamental and beneficial advantages of e-books: free transmission and duplication, and the ability of one library copy to be read by millions simultaneously. We have built the library of Alexandria and made it big enough to serve the entire world, but instead of burning it down we just lock the door so that nobody can get in.
- LittlePeter 7y ago
  Weren't most of those books created to begin with for "narrow business reasons"?
  - sam_lowry_ 7y ago
    Nope
- mbar84 7y ago
  Do you believe in copyright law? Maybe you're part of the problem. https://questioncopyright.org/ https://questioncopyright.org/
- pjc50 7y ago
  Sure, but how are writers to get paid? It's hardly the most lucrative business to start with.
  - VvR-Ox 7y ago
    Probably like musicians and a lot of them use platforms to publish their songs to listen to for free to gain momentum and attract enough people who will be delighted to get a Vinyl (in case of books it would be a hard cover). When I personally used pirated stuff it was because I couldn't afford to buy it or there was no other possibility to get a digital copy that is easier to search and transport. It is only greed that is stopping our world from becoming something with all the good features of series like "Star Trek" including access to all those books for free. The greedy people think they can gain even more money by forcing poor people to buy their stuff by punishing them. The greedy who have money influence governments to make laws against this piracy and investigate against them with public money. In the end the poor can still not afford to buy the books, music etc. and will just be punished which costs more public money than giving them free access in the first place. This is just another thing that is very wrong in our world.
neiman 7y ago
The problem where I live and studied, is that libraries state and book stores has deteriorated in the last few years for obvious reasons. At the same time it became difficult, or actually, impossible, for a privacy conscious person to buy ebooks online.
silveroriole 7y ago
One thing that might lower piracy is making Amazon book previews not absolutely useless. If I preview a book and I can only see the million word introduction by someone who isn’t the author, I’m not buying the book. The “surprise me” thing works ok but isn’t available on most previews.
- odysseus 7y ago
  You can usually get a usable preview on the Apple bookstore.
Rerarom 7y ago
I read like 70 books per year, of which about 60 in pirated form on my Kindle. I never had any qualms with it.
stebann 7y ago
It's funny to think that I do books translations so others in my country (or for those that know my language) can read them, most of them pirated books. I sometimes ask my self how much would I earn if publishers would pay me for that work. Anyway, it feels good to know that someone got his(her) exams fine, school homework done or just a pleasant read because some of my work. This is my contribution to the humanity. The invisible spark of information freedom.

96 points by iamiam 7y ago

dang 7y ago

A thread from 2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4992595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4992595 Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1078652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1078652

iamiam 7y ago
Thanks Dang for posting the links -- interesting!

Mediterraneo10 7y ago

Interesting that in the old linked discussion from 2013, someone claims that publishers can't complain, because they had a record year financially. I wonder how well they are doing now. My gut feeling is that publishers these days face problems not from privacy so much as from 1) the sheer glut of content, making it hard to stand out, and 2) shortening attention spans and people preferring to read snackable content on their phones instead of longform books. When Kindles appeared, they seemed to augur a golden age for reading (and sure, you could load them up with pirated ebooks). Nowadays I am conscious at the beach or on public transport of usually being the only person with a Kindle while everyone else around me is looking at their phones, and it would be hard to believe any significant number have an EPUB reader open on those phones to read actual books.

Simon_says 7y ago
I bought one of the first Kindles and loaded it up with a hundred DRM-liberated ebooks and read it avidly. Since then, phones have gotten bigger screens with higher pixel density and longer battery life, and my Kindle now sits is a drawer unused. The best ebook reader is the one you have on you.
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  Higher battery life? The Kindle battery lasts much longer than a phone with the backlight off and in airplane mode. But again, even if a phone could be used as an ereader, my point is that for most people it is likely not. Even for bibliophiles, they might not get so much reading done on a phone due to the distractions that phones bring.
  - falcolas 7y ago
    These days, so long as the battery lasts all day (it does, using it as an ebook reader), that sufficient for a phone. Longer is better, but I always have a charger on me, a spare battery for emergencies when traveling, and a charging pad next to my bed at home. > they might not get so much reading done on a phone due to the distractions that phones bring. Short of notifications, there are no distractions on my phone when reading a book. No clock, no battery indicator, no nothing. If I really want to read, I can just go into DND mode, and even notifications have gone away.
  - Simon_says 7y ago
    I meant battery life is now longer on phones than it used to be on phones, assuming you're using it as an ebook reader, which means no radios.
    - input_sh 7y ago
      That still can't be compared to an average eReader, whose battery lasts for weeks. I charge mine every two or three weeks (about an hour of usage per day).
      - Simon_says 7y ago
        Of course it can be compared.
- feanaro 7y ago
  e-ink is still vastly superior for reading than any phone screen, IMO. The experience seems completely incomparable.

selfishgene 7y ago

These days if the book is not already on LibGen, will obtain it through inter-library loan until someone uploads it to one of their mirrors. Over the years, have scanned a few technical titles on a high-speed photocopy machine at the university and then made sure to turn around and "do the right thing" ... in order to thank others for sharing :)

supernova87a 7y ago

I can sympathize with the desire to see your favorite books put online for more people to read. I for example, am a big fan of the book "Waves & Beaches" by Willard Bascom, a long out-of-print book on the physics, dynamics of the ocean (and the spirit of longing to understand the nature of the sea), but which always only could be found for >$30 on Ebay or something like that. I finally bought a copy (out of nostalgia) and actually enjoyed it again so much, I went to the trouble of sawing off the spine, scanning it and OCRing it to produce an eBook and prolong its life. For myself. I have been tempted to share it, but have no idea how. But I imagine there's tons of books and people like this.

jamiek88 7y ago
Upload to libgen is the best way to share things like that. I'm not goint to upload the latest JK King Grisham page turner but an obscure gardening book where the author is long dead? Yes that is getting uploaded. For the culture.
- sampo 7y ago
  "Waves and Beaches" (1964 edition) is already in libgen.
  - kick 7y ago
    No OCR.
    - supernova87a 7y ago
      Thanks, I'll have a look at that site and maybe upload it. I have the 1980 version which comes with a bunch more content about energy production from the sea.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nataz 7y ago
FYI - on your recommendation I just picked up a used paperback copy for under $7 bucks.

sillysaurusx 7y ago

Book piracy is a big reason I've been able to learn as much as I know about ML. I don't know how to feel about it. All I know is that I'm more effective than I would've been if I had to pay for the books, since I wouldn't have read anything. It's common on HN to pretend that everyone here is an affluent programmer working for FAANG with $500k/yr in stock vesting. In reality, I've spoken to many who are more along the lines of "month to month paycheck." Dropping $50 on a book about Tensorflow just isn't in the cards. Yet the outrage is extreme, and probably justified: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047297#18049297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047297#18049297 I apologize to the authors of the books I've absorbed. No doubt you've worked exceptionally hard. For what it's worth, I do recommend your books to others who may be in a position to buy them. I like: - Hands-on Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and Tensorflow, 2nd Edition - IPython Interactive Computing and Visualization Cookbook 2nd Edition - Nick McClure - TensorFlow Machine Learning Cook (2017) These are easily found on Library Genesis, which has become my de facto study.

noonespecial 7y ago
Piracy. The ultimate market segregation.
santa_boy 7y ago
I've can completely related to your thoughts and it applies a lot more in developing economies with so much of good content floating around. From the learnings, I did a fulfilling and enriching side coding gig for a couple of years spending a couple of hours every week that matched 50% income from my full time job (managing a large US real estate portfolio). It was related to increasing health awareness in the US and later to help immigrant families to prepare for the new administration. I make every effort to buy content nowadays as an attempt to pay back the authors. That is the main reason, I totally love Medium, Spotify, Netflix and other content providers. They allow me to pay as you go and are on-demand.
kick 7y ago
An alternative to "Never buy a book" that I think is more fair is buying a couple of copies after I'm finished with a book and sending them to others if I find I enjoy them. A $50 Tensorflow book may not be initially affordable for some people, but assuming you got an understanding of Tensorflow out of it, you'll be able to convert the knowledge to at least $50 pretty easily.

zarkov99 7y ago

I buy a lot of books, more than what I read. But I have to confess that the lack of pdf versions and the sometimes obscene cost of text books does sometime lead me to peruse alternatives.

iamiam 7y ago

I agree in terms of the economics of it for many readers at least. I buy a lot of books. I would buy a lot more e-books I think if prices were reasonable i.e sub $5, vs. usually being as much a print copy. I also gift many books. I recently downloaded 200+ books via b-ok.org...most of which I certainly wouldn't have bought and probably half of which I won't open for years if ever. Two months later, though, a couple of the books I enjoyed that I've ordered new copies to be sent as gifts as friends. I would be a good candidate for something like Kindle Unlimited, but most of the books I'm interested in aren't available there. At least half the books I downloaded (many academic as well as poetry and other books) are not available on Kindle Unlimited. Subscription music aggregators seem to have a pretty decently comprehensive offering in a way that the book, news, and movie aggregators don't. It would be a little weird, but if there was an app where I could read any book but every 20th page or so was some full page ad...I could live with that (as long as it wasn't a video or something). Not sure if that kind of a model could work in terms of the economics for writers -- but it's of course working for news mostly and for some film sites like Tubi and Pluto.

dorchadas 7y ago
Have you checked Scribd? They might have some of those that Kindle Unlimited doesn't.

vector_spaces 7y ago

Safari Books Online (I think recently rebranded as O'Reilly Online) is a pretty decent value -- about $49 USD a month for access to most O'Reilly, PragProg, Manning, and quite a few other non-programmer focused publishing houses like Academic Press. Between that subscription, my scribd subscription (which has plenty of unauthorized titles in addition to its authorized titles), and PDFs I'm able to find elsewhere, I'm pretty set. (not affiliated with either OReilly or Scribd, just a happy user) Despite this, I strongly prefer a physical copy. Except for some of the books on Safari which I use as a quick reference, I mostly use PDF copies as a sort of extended preview before purchasing (or not!) a physical copy But the interviewee is spot on when he argues that a pirated download != a lost sale. The idea that it is is just pure silliness. Before I got into tech, if I couldn't find a PDF of a $70-120 book I simply wouldn't read it. Period.

breck 7y ago
Interesting, thanks for sharing. I knew about Scribd but didn't know O'Reilly had a subscription offering. Although, like you, I strongly prefer physical copies, and so not sure if it's worth $49 for digital which I read far less. I would probably pay $49/month for full digital access if it came with 1-2 physical books per month as well.
iamiam 7y ago
Yes, Safari is a good deal...they also have a nice trial period which requires a simple signup/no payment.
clumsysmurf 7y ago
I have Safari, and find it to be a poor value. Here are a few reasons (1) you can't read books in your browser while offline (2) many publishers don't contribute to Safari (Springer, MIT Press, etc) (3) publishers that are technically on Safari don't publish their whole catalog (Wiley) (4) Publishers that are on Safari, and do publish their whole catalog, may take months, a year even to put their books online (Wrox). (5) A lot of the books in the catalog are from Packt, which I consider noise. So, while I do have Safari, I use it as a last resort and buy the DRM-free PDFs from publishers that have then (Manning, Prag Prog, etc) even if they are in Safari. This past week, my account got corrupted. I lost about one years worth of Playlists that I put much effort into curating. All gone. Support was able to get me a CSV file of a known good state, but its going to be a PITA to manually recreate everything again. I might not bother.

falcolas 7y ago

I'm torn on the topic myself. I buy books, because I'm fortunate enough to be in a financial position to buy the books I want to read. But e-books are comparatively expensive. They were conceptually sold to us as a cheaper alternative to hardback and paperback books; but they cost as much as hardback editions quite often. For no reason other than "the market will bear it". The market may technically be bearing it, but it's caused a segmentation of that market with piracy on the other side of the line. Technical books are even more ridiculous; $50 for a book is insane in this day and age. Especially when it's a distilling of topics and subjects easily found online for free. The act of distilling is not worth $50 to me. "Physically Based Rendering" is probably the only technical book I've purchased and felt good about purchasing; and that's because it feels like a full college course in the subject. And then there's the college textbook scam. I feel morally incapable of supporting that racket in any way, shape or form. It's an egregious abuse of a captive audience that forces purchases at prices which are based on what can be gotten from a college loan, not in the value the textbook may provide.

musicale 7y ago
Textbooks are definitely a scam, and often the authors don't make much money from them - it's eaten by the publisher and distributors. A number of e-books on Amazon are priced at $9.99 since Amazon pays a higher royalty rate for prices under $10.

gtycomb 7y ago

Similar to books, growing up in India I discovered “Western” music because of pirated music. The one and only reason I heard of bands like Yes, Jethro Tul, Roxy Music, Steely Dan, Dylan, Joni Mitchell, or St. Martin in the Fields, etc. are the pirated copes moving from hand to hand among our school buddies. There was no way we could have afforded the orginal copies from the publishers. Well the clocks ticked, I came here for graduate school and but the time I got my first job, over a period of time I had instinctively purchased all the original CDs and Box Sets of these and many other artists, about 1000 of them on my shelf. When I exchange notes with with my old buddies, some in Canada and some in England, they have more extensive collections than me. For one weak immitation of a Gibson lookalike guitar we had, we own a small stable of the real things by now :-) The pirated copies that hooked us to the artists in the first place. I hate to steal from the artists I so much adore, but then shouldn’t there be a way to spread the music around.

floki999 7y ago

This is an old story and much has changed since. You can find just about any technical title in seconds, and in clean pdf format - not scanned.

ggm 7y ago

The publisher who does three of a four part series but not part four (ipr dispute with right holder usually) The author who is dead, has one seminal work online and four other not online. (Randolph Stow) The author who is dead, has four minor works online but not the seminal work (c.m. kornbluth) The author who is in dispute with epublishing as a protest against ipr contract terms (Ursula le guin, Philip Pullman) and has their work ripped anyway. The bad OCR conversion.

JustSomeNobody 7y ago

I will sometimes try to locate a pdf of a technical book I am interested in. If I find it, I’ll scan through it and if I think it’s something I would like to read I’ll buy a physical copy. If not, I delete the pdf and don’t read it. If I don’t want to buy it, it isn’t worth my time to read it free. It’s my equivalent to walking into a book store and thumbing through books until I find one I want to buy.

_jal 7y ago

I've been very poor (more than once), and I'm currently quite comfortable. I've always read a lot, and would be in a very different place if I hadn't. Using libraries has been a big part of that, but they are of course much less useful for cutting-edge tech topics. I'm limiting this to those, in situations where you think absorbing the book will improve your chops. You should buy the book, because this makes both you and the author better off. But if you can't, you should read it anyway, because at least one of you is benefiting. You can buy the book later when you're in a better place, or at least pay it forward in some other way. The only thing worse than not getting paid for your work is your unpaid work not being used at all.

MaysonL 7y ago
I bought the book (used), but I can't find it right now, so I borrowed it from the library, and this article just prompted me to do an online search for it, and I just downloaded a pdf copy.

AnonC 7y ago

I stopped buying books when I realized that I don’t really read most of them (blame short attention span). So I pirate a lot of books, which also, for the most part, remain unread. If I read a book and really like it, then I’d look at buying a DRM free ebook copy of it. I also buy ebooks when they’re on sale at a low price.

Iv 7y ago

This title just wants me to still throw a useless stone in an already lost battle: "book piracy" used to mean "Steal a book content and sell it putting you as the author". That's the original meaning of the word. Copyright-infriging a book does not sound as serious as "piracy" or "theft" but these two words are actually misused.

paggle 7y ago

I downloaded several thousand ebooks and read about 10 of them. I’ve also bought more ebooks than I’ve pirated and read, and the ones that I didn’t read barely even happened... just a transfer of bits from one drive to another.

musicale 7y ago

It's a major embarrassment for humanity that we've created an astonishing library system – books in scanned or native digital format, inexpensive smartphones/e-reader devices, and the internet – that could give billions of people on the planet the ability to read nearly any book ever published essentially for free, but for narrow business reasons we're doing the best we can to prevent that eventuality from ever happening. To protect their own business interests, publishers (and their technical accomplices) have invented crippled digital formats that try to destroy the most fundamental and beneficial advantages of e-books: free transmission and duplication, and the ability of one library copy to be read by millions simultaneously. We have built the library of Alexandria and made it big enough to serve the entire world, but instead of burning it down we just lock the door so that nobody can get in.

LittlePeter 7y ago
Weren't most of those books created to begin with for "narrow business reasons"?
- sam_lowry_ 7y ago
  Nope
mbar84 7y ago
Do you believe in copyright law? Maybe you're part of the problem. https://questioncopyright.org/ https://questioncopyright.org/
pjc50 7y ago
Sure, but how are writers to get paid? It's hardly the most lucrative business to start with.
- VvR-Ox 7y ago
  Probably like musicians and a lot of them use platforms to publish their songs to listen to for free to gain momentum and attract enough people who will be delighted to get a Vinyl (in case of books it would be a hard cover). When I personally used pirated stuff it was because I couldn't afford to buy it or there was no other possibility to get a digital copy that is easier to search and transport. It is only greed that is stopping our world from becoming something with all the good features of series like "Star Trek" including access to all those books for free. The greedy people think they can gain even more money by forcing poor people to buy their stuff by punishing them. The greedy who have money influence governments to make laws against this piracy and investigate against them with public money. In the end the poor can still not afford to buy the books, music etc. and will just be punished which costs more public money than giving them free access in the first place. This is just another thing that is very wrong in our world.

neiman 7y ago

The problem where I live and studied, is that libraries state and book stores has deteriorated in the last few years for obvious reasons. At the same time it became difficult, or actually, impossible, for a privacy conscious person to buy ebooks online.

silveroriole 7y ago

One thing that might lower piracy is making Amazon book previews not absolutely useless. If I preview a book and I can only see the million word introduction by someone who isn’t the author, I’m not buying the book. The “surprise me” thing works ok but isn’t available on most previews.

odysseus 7y ago
You can usually get a usable preview on the Apple bookstore.

Rerarom 7y ago

I read like 70 books per year, of which about 60 in pirated form on my Kindle. I never had any qualms with it.

stebann 7y ago

It's funny to think that I do books translations so others in my country (or for those that know my language) can read them, most of them pirated books. I sometimes ask my self how much would I earn if publishers would pay me for that work. Anyway, it feels good to know that someone got his(her) exams fine, school homework done or just a pleasant read because some of my work. This is my contribution to the humanity. The invisible spark of information freedom.