4 ms·

I would be more supportive of their cause if Libgen was limited to academic books, but I've found nearly every fiction/nonfiction book I've wanted to on there;

I would be more supportive of their cause if Libgen was limited to academic books, but I've found nearly every fiction/nonfiction book I've wanted to on there; it was just a standard book piracy website to me.

mhh__ 6y ago
The case for textbooks is much weaker than papers as, although it's basically implied that most won't make any money, it's an almost herculean task to write a good textbook (of 1k pages let's say). I steal all my papers (I am a member of the tyre society - ladies queue up please... - because it's so obscure I can't find them on Sci-Hub) but I don't mind paying for textbooks on principle.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  The trouble with textbooks is that nowadays there's a new edition every other year, with slightly different pagination and exercises, all of this for an extortionate price. In the past, prices were more reasonable, and you'd buy standard texts to build a personal library because you'd enter the profession; nowadays it's all about fleecing students, who need a college degree to enter the workforce. The social contract around textbooks has broken down as much as it has around journals.
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    > The trouble with textbooks is that nowadays there's a new edition every other year, with slightly different pagination and exercises, all of this for an extortionate price. This is what really gets me. I don't necessarily mind charging $150 new for a big textbook, especially given the likelihood of it being shoveled back into the used market, but when the used textbook market is also killed off via gimmicks like new editions that do little more than shuffle exercises or one-time-use online codes, the justification for that high initial price tag is lost. And I say this as somebody who also curated a personal library of textbooks that I do refer to in my day-to-day work!
    - metiscus 6y ago
      It's an incredibly toxic cycle. The book is expensive because it is required for completion of an already expensive task (a class). Teachers and departments require the latest evergreen textbook because of incentives from the publishers paid for with the profits of the sales of said evergreen books. How does education get off of the treadmill? Students can't reasonable refuse to buy the new textbook. They could organize and demand that professors stop, but in some fields the subject matter does change relatively frequently e.g. advanced medical courses. So the opposition would point to those and ask the rhetorical question "Don't you want your education to be current?. It is unlikely that professors at scale will act unilaterally because they are at best neutral in this situation. It could be solved, perhaps, with legislation, although it seems that such things are fairly universal across countries (although I am somewhat ignorant of how it works in Europe) and if the Europeans haven't tried to regulate it yet, it is incredibly unlikely that the Americans would try. Book piracy is the logical result of this cycle. If book prices were reduced either through reduced evergreening causing the used market to exist again or by some other means then piracy would reduce as well.
      - HarryHirsch 6y ago
        How does education get off of the treadmill? The answer may be surprising: pay teaching faculty better and give them proper job security. Students see only the textbook, but there's the other half, the slides that come with the textbook that contingent faculty will use for their lectures. If teaching faculty were to stay in any one place for more than three years they would prepare their own lecture materials instead on relying on the readymade pap. Students would have to push for proper teaching. Unfortunately, in these times of elite overproduction they are more interested in their GPA to get into medical school.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Among the strongest counterarguments to the textbooks case is the law article "The Uneasy Case for Copyright", written by an academic and published in the Harvard Law Review in 1970. The author argued three principle points: - That the only defensible justification of copyright is a consequentialist economic balance between maximizing the distribution of works and encouraging their production. - That there is significant historical, logical, and anecdotal evidence which shows that exclusive rights will provide only limited increases in the volume of literary production, particularly within certain sections of the book market. - That there was limited justification for contemporary expansions in the scope and duration of copyright. A substantial portion of the analysis is directed to the textbook market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uneasy_Case_for_Copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uneasy_Case_for_Copyright Copyright at the time of publication required registration, and was for a term of 28 years, renewable for an additional term, so or 54 years, lapsing four years from now in 2024. Subsequent copyright revisions have extended by 41 years, to a total duration of 95 years, expiring in 2065. Best I can tell, copyright is held by the Harvard Law Review Association, rather than the author, presently Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Stephen Breyer. Though the article is available via LibGen (or Sci-Hub). http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/10.2307%2F1339714 http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/10.2307%2F1339714
cinntaile 6y ago
This is about Sci-hub, not Libgen. Sci-hub only has academic papers.
- watwut 6y ago
  Both sci-hub and libgen are mentioned in the article as targets.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
Why would other types of books deserve protection? Information wants to be free.
- ativzzz 6y ago
  Well authors also want to make money, so we have to choose between having high quality writing that people get paid for or free low quality writing that people don't get paid for.
  - matheusmoreira 6y ago
    People with something to say will write regardless of whether they get paid. People wrote books before copyright and will continue to write books no matter what happens. The internet itself proves this. I have no doubt they'll find other ways to make money through writing. Maybe authors will be able to set up a patreon or something. An artificial 100+ year monopoly on the data they create is nothing but rent seeking. It's also unenforceable in the 21st century.

mhh__ 6y ago

The case for textbooks is much weaker than papers as, although it's basically implied that most won't make any money, it's an almost herculean task to write a good textbook (of 1k pages let's say). I steal all my papers (I am a member of the tyre society - ladies queue up please... - because it's so obscure I can't find them on Sci-Hub) but I don't mind paying for textbooks on principle.

HarryHirsch 6y ago
The trouble with textbooks is that nowadays there's a new edition every other year, with slightly different pagination and exercises, all of this for an extortionate price. In the past, prices were more reasonable, and you'd buy standard texts to build a personal library because you'd enter the profession; nowadays it's all about fleecing students, who need a college degree to enter the workforce. The social contract around textbooks has broken down as much as it has around journals.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  > The trouble with textbooks is that nowadays there's a new edition every other year, with slightly different pagination and exercises, all of this for an extortionate price. This is what really gets me. I don't necessarily mind charging $150 new for a big textbook, especially given the likelihood of it being shoveled back into the used market, but when the used textbook market is also killed off via gimmicks like new editions that do little more than shuffle exercises or one-time-use online codes, the justification for that high initial price tag is lost. And I say this as somebody who also curated a personal library of textbooks that I do refer to in my day-to-day work!
  - metiscus 6y ago
    It's an incredibly toxic cycle. The book is expensive because it is required for completion of an already expensive task (a class). Teachers and departments require the latest evergreen textbook because of incentives from the publishers paid for with the profits of the sales of said evergreen books. How does education get off of the treadmill? Students can't reasonable refuse to buy the new textbook. They could organize and demand that professors stop, but in some fields the subject matter does change relatively frequently e.g. advanced medical courses. So the opposition would point to those and ask the rhetorical question "Don't you want your education to be current?. It is unlikely that professors at scale will act unilaterally because they are at best neutral in this situation. It could be solved, perhaps, with legislation, although it seems that such things are fairly universal across countries (although I am somewhat ignorant of how it works in Europe) and if the Europeans haven't tried to regulate it yet, it is incredibly unlikely that the Americans would try. Book piracy is the logical result of this cycle. If book prices were reduced either through reduced evergreening causing the used market to exist again or by some other means then piracy would reduce as well.
    - HarryHirsch 6y ago
      How does education get off of the treadmill? The answer may be surprising: pay teaching faculty better and give them proper job security. Students see only the textbook, but there's the other half, the slides that come with the textbook that contingent faculty will use for their lectures. If teaching faculty were to stay in any one place for more than three years they would prepare their own lecture materials instead on relying on the readymade pap. Students would have to push for proper teaching. Unfortunately, in these times of elite overproduction they are more interested in their GPA to get into medical school.
dredmorbius 6y ago
Among the strongest counterarguments to the textbooks case is the law article "The Uneasy Case for Copyright", written by an academic and published in the Harvard Law Review in 1970. The author argued three principle points: - That the only defensible justification of copyright is a consequentialist economic balance between maximizing the distribution of works and encouraging their production. - That there is significant historical, logical, and anecdotal evidence which shows that exclusive rights will provide only limited increases in the volume of literary production, particularly within certain sections of the book market. - That there was limited justification for contemporary expansions in the scope and duration of copyright. A substantial portion of the analysis is directed to the textbook market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uneasy_Case_for_Copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uneasy_Case_for_Copyright Copyright at the time of publication required registration, and was for a term of 28 years, renewable for an additional term, so or 54 years, lapsing four years from now in 2024. Subsequent copyright revisions have extended by 41 years, to a total duration of 95 years, expiring in 2065. Best I can tell, copyright is held by the Harvard Law Review Association, rather than the author, presently Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Stephen Breyer. Though the article is available via LibGen (or Sci-Hub). http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/10.2307%2F1339714 http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/10.2307%2F1339714

cinntaile 6y ago

This is about Sci-hub, not Libgen. Sci-hub only has academic papers.

watwut 6y ago
Both sci-hub and libgen are mentioned in the article as targets.

matheusmoreira 6y ago

Why would other types of books deserve protection? Information wants to be free.

ativzzz 6y ago
Well authors also want to make money, so we have to choose between having high quality writing that people get paid for or free low quality writing that people don't get paid for.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  People with something to say will write regardless of whether they get paid. People wrote books before copyright and will continue to write books no matter what happens. The internet itself proves this. I have no doubt they'll find other ways to make money through writing. Maybe authors will be able to set up a patreon or something. An artificial 100+ year monopoly on the data they create is nothing but rent seeking. It's also unenforceable in the 21st century.