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"Buy or pirate" is a false dichotomy when there are good public and University libraries available; which is true for most big cities in the US. They will not s

"Buy or pirate" is a false dichotomy when there are good public and University libraries available; which is true for most big cities in the US. They will not stock the latest tech books, but you can easily get them through an interlibrary loan.

bambataa 7y ago
If the book is freely available from a library does it really matter if you find it more convenient to get it by pirating?
- mirimir 7y ago
  Sure, but libraries must buy books to loan. For physical books, there's only one concurrent user. And for ebooks, licenses specify allowed numbers of concurrent users. But still, that is an interesting argument. So why aren't libraries considered to be pirating?
  - Broken_Hippo 7y ago
    IIRC, there have been that claim: Libraries, of course, were going to put book publishers out of business because all of their patrons were reading books they otherwise would have purchased. We simply don't hear of this pushback much anymore and we more see it as a public good - though not always good enough to fund them properly or make sure everyone has access to one for free.
    - jhbadger 7y ago
      It's more complicated than that; in the 19th century when libraries (at the time mostly subscription ones akin to a Victorian Netflix) were the primary purchasers of books rather than individuals, novels were extremely expensive -- the typical novel at the time was a rambling 1000+ page affair taking up three volumes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-volume_novel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-volume_novel) and cost over 30 shillings. That's like £150 or $200 today! It was the decline of the subscription library that forced publishers to sell books to individuals at a more reasonable price and eventually invent the idea of the paperback
krn 7y ago
> "Buy or pirate" is a false dichotomy when there are good public and University libraries available; which is true for most big cities in the US. It's worth pointing out, that many of the book pirates are from outside the US. There are more than 500 million people in the EU, and the most up-to-date technical material has always been in English. Before Kindle was available, it used to take 3 weeks for the books from Amazon UK to arrive in my country, and almost half of the costs were shipping. Also, ten years ago, when this article was written, even senior software engineers in my EU country were making less than 1000€ / month after taxes, which made a 30-40€ book a luxury item. For a junior developer, a single technical book could have easily taken away 10% of his/her monthly salary. I expect something similar to still be the case in many parts of Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South Asia, which are developing regions with a lack of world-class universities and international libraries. For someone in Lviv, Ukraine, a city with 12 universities and 8 academies, where an average monthly salary is 350€, pirating a book might still be the only way to read it.

bambataa 7y ago

If the book is freely available from a library does it really matter if you find it more convenient to get it by pirating?

mirimir 7y ago
Sure, but libraries must buy books to loan. For physical books, there's only one concurrent user. And for ebooks, licenses specify allowed numbers of concurrent users. But still, that is an interesting argument. So why aren't libraries considered to be pirating?
- Broken_Hippo 7y ago
  IIRC, there have been that claim: Libraries, of course, were going to put book publishers out of business because all of their patrons were reading books they otherwise would have purchased. We simply don't hear of this pushback much anymore and we more see it as a public good - though not always good enough to fund them properly or make sure everyone has access to one for free.
  - jhbadger 7y ago
    It's more complicated than that; in the 19th century when libraries (at the time mostly subscription ones akin to a Victorian Netflix) were the primary purchasers of books rather than individuals, novels were extremely expensive -- the typical novel at the time was a rambling 1000+ page affair taking up three volumes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-volume_novel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-volume_novel) and cost over 30 shillings. That's like £150 or $200 today! It was the decline of the subscription library that forced publishers to sell books to individuals at a more reasonable price and eventually invent the idea of the paperback

krn 7y ago

> "Buy or pirate" is a false dichotomy when there are good public and University libraries available; which is true for most big cities in the US. It's worth pointing out, that many of the book pirates are from outside the US. There are more than 500 million people in the EU, and the most up-to-date technical material has always been in English. Before Kindle was available, it used to take 3 weeks for the books from Amazon UK to arrive in my country, and almost half of the costs were shipping. Also, ten years ago, when this article was written, even senior software engineers in my EU country were making less than 1000€ / month after taxes, which made a 30-40€ book a luxury item. For a junior developer, a single technical book could have easily taken away 10% of his/her monthly salary. I expect something similar to still be the case in many parts of Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South Asia, which are developing regions with a lack of world-class universities and international libraries. For someone in Lviv, Ukraine, a city with 12 universities and 8 academies, where an average monthly salary is 350€, pirating a book might still be the only way to read it.