6 ms·

They aren’t?

karaterobot 6y ago
Your position is unusual enough that I don't really understand it. If you laid out an argument, I'd be happy to read it and have my mind changed. Terse responses are not persuasive, though.
- hopfscotch7 6y ago
  I hold that you cannot own information. I can have a copy of some information which you have, without depriving you of it. Property rights don't apply. One needs only look at the way Disney has gotten copyright terms extended to see that it exists purely to serve entrenched publishing interests, and nothing more.
chipotle_coyote 6y ago
Better yet, nobody should be paid for any work whatsoever. We should all love what we do, and if we won't do what we do for free, we clearly don't love it enough. We should all put our lack of money where our mouths are.
- hopfscotch7 6y ago
  If you just dropped the sarcastic tone, that's exactly right.
- mlyle 6y ago
  If we could only find enough people who love cleaning toilets...
thr0waw4y5555 6y ago
We are, very poorly. With rampant piracy of books (e.g., ruslib), royalties have become quite reduced that would traditionally compensate for low up front payment from publishers. I’d blame publishers for paying so poorly, but the bulk of my irritation goes to entitled consumers who have decided that regardless of the time and effort required to create something, they deserve it for free.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  What I think I deserve for free is the ability to decide whether a book is worth the price or not. This is simple in a bookstore, but when I’m online the default seems to be that I have to shell out to even take a look.
  - thr0waw4y5555 6y ago
    100% agree. The death of in-person bookstores has killed that mode of browsing, and I have yet to see a viable replacement when buying online.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Many ebooks have some degree of preview. In some cases, it's imperfect, but it seems overall at least roughly equivalent to a bookstore.
    - sjy 6y ago
      It’s not roughly equivalent. I often look at the free previews on Amazon and Google Books to check print citations or read a few pages from a chapter of interest, but usually the pages I want to read are unavailable. An online equivalent to bookstores is not possible because there’s no way to glare at a customer for treating the store as a library.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  > I’d blame publishers for paying so poorly That's exactly what you should do. You should have been adequately compensated for the time and effort required to write your book. Instead, your publisher decided to require you to put the work in first and then offer you the chance to get compensated afterwards based on how well your book sold. The expected results didn't materialize because the market conditions that enabled those sales no longer exist. The world has changed. We're living in the 21st century. It costs $0 to make and distribute copies of information. Only the costs associated with creating the first copy must be paid for. Blaming consumers for this reality isn't going to make it go away. Insisting on copyright doesn't seem to be working either. The sooner people accept this, the sooner we can start working towards alternative business models that don't depend on creating artificial scarcity in the age of free information. Creators are scarce. Intellectual works, once created, are not. Therefore we must somehow compensate creators for the act of creating and not for the sale of the resulting work.

They aren’t?

Your position is unusual enough that I don't really understand it. If you laid out an argument, I'd be happy to read it and have my mind changed. Terse responses are not persuasive, though.

hopfscotch7 6y ago
I hold that you cannot own information. I can have a copy of some information which you have, without depriving you of it. Property rights don't apply. One needs only look at the way Disney has gotten copyright terms extended to see that it exists purely to serve entrenched publishing interests, and nothing more.

chipotle_coyote 6y ago

Better yet, nobody should be paid for any work whatsoever. We should all love what we do, and if we won't do what we do for free, we clearly don't love it enough. We should all put our lack of money where our mouths are.

hopfscotch7 6y ago
If you just dropped the sarcastic tone, that's exactly right.
mlyle 6y ago
If we could only find enough people who love cleaning toilets...

thr0waw4y5555 6y ago

We are, very poorly. With rampant piracy of books (e.g., ruslib), royalties have become quite reduced that would traditionally compensate for low up front payment from publishers. I’d blame publishers for paying so poorly, but the bulk of my irritation goes to entitled consumers who have decided that regardless of the time and effort required to create something, they deserve it for free.

Aeolun 6y ago
What I think I deserve for free is the ability to decide whether a book is worth the price or not. This is simple in a bookstore, but when I’m online the default seems to be that I have to shell out to even take a look.
- thr0waw4y5555 6y ago
  100% agree. The death of in-person bookstores has killed that mode of browsing, and I have yet to see a viable replacement when buying online.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Many ebooks have some degree of preview. In some cases, it's imperfect, but it seems overall at least roughly equivalent to a bookstore.
  - sjy 6y ago
    It’s not roughly equivalent. I often look at the free previews on Amazon and Google Books to check print citations or read a few pages from a chapter of interest, but usually the pages I want to read are unavailable. An online equivalent to bookstores is not possible because there’s no way to glare at a customer for treating the store as a library.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
> I’d blame publishers for paying so poorly That's exactly what you should do. You should have been adequately compensated for the time and effort required to write your book. Instead, your publisher decided to require you to put the work in first and then offer you the chance to get compensated afterwards based on how well your book sold. The expected results didn't materialize because the market conditions that enabled those sales no longer exist. The world has changed. We're living in the 21st century. It costs $0 to make and distribute copies of information. Only the costs associated with creating the first copy must be paid for. Blaming consumers for this reality isn't going to make it go away. Insisting on copyright doesn't seem to be working either. The sooner people accept this, the sooner we can start working towards alternative business models that don't depend on creating artificial scarcity in the age of free information. Creators are scarce. Intellectual works, once created, are not. Therefore we must somehow compensate creators for the act of creating and not for the sale of the resulting work.