4 ms·

> Publishers in England exploited their monopoly shamelessly. New discoveries were generally published in limited editions of at most 750 copies and sold at a p

by manmal 5y ago

> Publishers in England exploited their monopoly shamelessly. New discoveries were generally published in limited editions of at most 750 copies and sold at a price that often exceeded the weekly salary of an educated worker. This reminds me very much of our modern paywalls. It’s such a shame that people like Alexandra Elbakyan have to risk so much in order to even the playing field just slightly.

hilbert42 5y ago
"at a price that often exceeded the weekly salary of an educated worker" Right, paywalls to knowledge are a disaster for any country that's trying to maintain an educated society/workforce and one of the great outcomes of what Elbakyan has done is to alert the world to the problem. We owe her a great gratitude. As I mentioned in my post the situation with with the price of books isn't that much different now to what it was in the UK in the 19th C. except that in rich countries a person can buy about two specialist textbooks for a week's salary. Of course that doesn't apply to those in less well developed countries, if anything at $300 per book they're worse off in this modern world than English citizens were back in the 19th C.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > except that in rich countries a person can buy about two specialist textbooks for a week's salary One has to remember that salary != disposable income. Perhaps especially in developed countries, most people spend more than 3/4th of their monthly salary on necessities such as food, rent, clothing, maintenance and healthcare. "A week's salary" is a couple months of saving up money, and buying a textbook for it means deferring other purchases like new (used) car, or vacation, or home appliance, etc.
  - hilbert42 5y ago
    Right, no disagreement. No matter how one looks at it a $300 textbook isn't small change for most people anywhere and it's going to be worse for those in poor countries. In some ways it's easy to understand why some countries are dragging their feet when it comes to enforcing copyright. Incidentally, the $300 I used may even be conservative, recently I was pricing specialist textbooks and one was over $500. If I'd bought the three books that I wanted it would have come to just under $1200. Instead, I managed to borrow one from a colleague and I'm trying to get the others on interlibrary loan but that's not yet been possible.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

by manmal 5y ago

hilbert42 5y ago

"at a price that often exceeded the weekly salary of an educated worker" Right, paywalls to knowledge are a disaster for any country that's trying to maintain an educated society/workforce and one of the great outcomes of what Elbakyan has done is to alert the world to the problem. We owe her a great gratitude. As I mentioned in my post the situation with with the price of books isn't that much different now to what it was in the UK in the 19th C. except that in rich countries a person can buy about two specialist textbooks for a week's salary. Of course that doesn't apply to those in less well developed countries, if anything at $300 per book they're worse off in this modern world than English citizens were back in the 19th C.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
> except that in rich countries a person can buy about two specialist textbooks for a week's salary One has to remember that salary != disposable income. Perhaps especially in developed countries, most people spend more than 3/4th of their monthly salary on necessities such as food, rent, clothing, maintenance and healthcare. "A week's salary" is a couple months of saving up money, and buying a textbook for it means deferring other purchases like new (used) car, or vacation, or home appliance, etc.
- hilbert42 5y ago
  Right, no disagreement. No matter how one looks at it a $300 textbook isn't small change for most people anywhere and it's going to be worse for those in poor countries. In some ways it's easy to understand why some countries are dragging their feet when it comes to enforcing copyright. Incidentally, the $300 I used may even be conservative, recently I was pricing specialist textbooks and one was over $500. If I'd bought the three books that I wanted it would have come to just under $1200. Instead, I managed to borrow one from a colleague and I'm trying to get the others on interlibrary loan but that's not yet been possible.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]