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It boggles my mind that people can only mention that this resource is illegal without pointing out it's the best library humanity has ever made. It has been th

It boggles my mind that people can only mention that this resource is illegal without pointing out it's the best library humanity has ever made. It has been the goal of the Google cofounders, Carnegie, and great civilizations since antiquity to make something like this. Are people's thoughts really so moulded by their surroundings, that they cannot recognize a wonder in front of them?

tene80i 4y ago
In the name of that ideal, would you be willing for your work to be given away for free and for your income to vanish?
- HideousKojima 4y ago
  Yes? I'm working on an indie game in my spare time and I intend to upload it to the pirate bay myself.
  - tene80i 4y ago
    That’s your spare time. I’m talking about people’s jobs. Would you sacrifice your primary income so that people could enjoy your work for free?
    - bheadmaster 4y ago
      Not the person you asked, but if my primary income was dependent on people not being free, I'd change my primary income.
      - tene80i 4y ago
        You think books having a cost is a restriction of your freedom? Why? And why books, but not your work?
        IggleSniggle 4y ago
        The apple tree gives away its fruit so that its seeds might spread. When a fence is built around the apple tree, it is a restriction on the ability of the apple tree to spread its seeds and on those that desire the apples, both. I don’t personally have a strong stance on this particular issue, but perhaps this analogy will help you understand the view of people who believe that knowledge should be free.
        tene80i 4y ago
        It’s a good analogy and I do understand the perspective. But I think it is very convenient that it applies to the work these people want to consume (which should be free), and not to the work they perform (which should be paid). Why should the software engineer be paid but the author not? Why is the written word information but not the code? I would trust the motives more if there was a general coherence to it all, beyond the consumption of media. Information comes in many forms.
        IggleSniggle 4y ago
        I generally assume that when people talk like that, that they believe that software engineers should not be paid, and that they get over their cognitive dissonance by saying something on the order of, “but since they are paid there’s no point in me working for free,” without noticing that there’s still a disconnect there. There’s a very big Open Source / Free as in Freedom / AND Free as in Beer contingent on HN.
        kybernetikos 4y ago
        Usually these kinds of views come along with ideas about other models that can recompense creators (including software engineers). For example, the Lawyer example is used often - once the lawyer makes the argument, it's in the public domain and can be used by others, but you still pay the lawyer to compose the argument. There are also models where the durable software artifacts are free, but you pay people to support your use of them. Then there are the older models that used to be used a lot in the music and art world. A wealthy benefactor (or in this day and age, crowd) pays for a trusted artist / musican / architect / coder to create something, both for their enjoyment but also for their fame and renown.
    - alpineidyll3 4y ago
      Its really a false dichotomy that freely available information deprived creative people from making a living.
      - tene80i 4y ago
        True, but we’re not talking about generally available information like wikipedia, we’re talking about people’s work who didn’t expect it to end up like this. Should they have a say in it? If not, why not? And if you just mean information, does that mean you think fiction for example should be excluded from this sort of initiative?
- alpineidyll3 4y ago
  Anything I've ever done is freely available! I have several homes. So yeah.
  - tene80i 4y ago
    Honestly, congratulations on your talent and good fortune. Did you have the choice in giving your work away or was it made for you?
  - system2 4y ago
    Can you teach us how to provide everything for free yet still being able to buy houses? I would kill to know this unheard knowledge.
  - massinstall 4y ago
    Great, so if you never needed to be paid for anything then you either don’t live on earth or we’re obviously simply born to rich parents and inherited most of what you needed, or maybe even everything. Even then you could strive to figure out how skewed and subjective your perspective is.
- ok123456 4y ago
  Yes, it's called academic publishing.
  - incompatible 4y ago
    I'm curious about whether people who think that copyright is a good idea, think that we should go to a publisher's site, and pay $50 or whatever to access an old journal article, out of principle, rather than download it from Sci-Hub.
mhb 4y ago
If you invest more than 10 seconds of thought in this line of reasoning, its flaws become obvious and it applies to every field in which this argument is made - stories, drugs, software, movies. Compensating creators based on the marginal cost of reproducing their work is not a paradigm for maintaining the flow of creative works. Maybe you have some junk counterargument that creative people will work for free as well as for material goods. Or who cares about the future, let's distribute what we have now. If you think creative people will work for free just for the joy of creating, then you've never worked on the last 20% of a project which is often not that joyful.
- IggleSniggle 4y ago
  I don’t think they said anything like what you said they said. They said it’s a Wonder. Like, I don’t think it’s right to spend thousands of lives and decades of time of slave-labor building the Great Pyramids, but it’s absolutely a Wonder, and nobody denies this. This library project is absolutely a Wonder, however right or wrong you might ultimately believe it to be, and as the poster said, it has been attempted many times and never come anywhere close to this effort.
  - mhb 4y ago
    Fair enough. I guess I assumed that in the context of a community that surely appreciates the marvel that is the internet, there was a secondary objective in mentioning it.
  - monista 4y ago
    Sorry for nitpicking, but it's believed now that Great Pyramids were built by well payed, well fed laborers, not by slaves.
    - Double_a_92 4y ago
      It eventually still boiled down to some kind of forced labour. Feeding those laborers for decades consumed ressources, which the rulers couldn't just magically conjure out of thin air... so e.g. farmers had to probably suffer from that.
kybernetikos 4y ago
It seems like it would cost around 2k for the hardware to make a complete mirror of this library (31TB for this library, and similar again for Lib Genesis). It's a lot, but considering what used to be spent on the beautiful buildings to host major libraries, it's something that is within the reach of a very large number of people. It does require being OK to fall foul of copyright law in most countries though, which I expect keeps a much larger number of people away.

tene80i 4y ago

In the name of that ideal, would you be willing for your work to be given away for free and for your income to vanish?

HideousKojima 4y ago
Yes? I'm working on an indie game in my spare time and I intend to upload it to the pirate bay myself.
- tene80i 4y ago
  That’s your spare time. I’m talking about people’s jobs. Would you sacrifice your primary income so that people could enjoy your work for free?
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    Not the person you asked, but if my primary income was dependent on people not being free, I'd change my primary income.
    - tene80i 4y ago
      You think books having a cost is a restriction of your freedom? Why? And why books, but not your work?
      - IggleSniggle 4y ago
        The apple tree gives away its fruit so that its seeds might spread. When a fence is built around the apple tree, it is a restriction on the ability of the apple tree to spread its seeds and on those that desire the apples, both. I don’t personally have a strong stance on this particular issue, but perhaps this analogy will help you understand the view of people who believe that knowledge should be free.
        tene80i 4y ago
        It’s a good analogy and I do understand the perspective. But I think it is very convenient that it applies to the work these people want to consume (which should be free), and not to the work they perform (which should be paid). Why should the software engineer be paid but the author not? Why is the written word information but not the code? I would trust the motives more if there was a general coherence to it all, beyond the consumption of media. Information comes in many forms.
        IggleSniggle 4y ago
        I generally assume that when people talk like that, that they believe that software engineers should not be paid, and that they get over their cognitive dissonance by saying something on the order of, “but since they are paid there’s no point in me working for free,” without noticing that there’s still a disconnect there. There’s a very big Open Source / Free as in Freedom / AND Free as in Beer contingent on HN.
        kybernetikos 4y ago
        Usually these kinds of views come along with ideas about other models that can recompense creators (including software engineers). For example, the Lawyer example is used often - once the lawyer makes the argument, it's in the public domain and can be used by others, but you still pay the lawyer to compose the argument. There are also models where the durable software artifacts are free, but you pay people to support your use of them. Then there are the older models that used to be used a lot in the music and art world. A wealthy benefactor (or in this day and age, crowd) pays for a trusted artist / musican / architect / coder to create something, both for their enjoyment but also for their fame and renown.
  - alpineidyll3 4y ago
    Its really a false dichotomy that freely available information deprived creative people from making a living.
    - tene80i 4y ago
      True, but we’re not talking about generally available information like wikipedia, we’re talking about people’s work who didn’t expect it to end up like this. Should they have a say in it? If not, why not? And if you just mean information, does that mean you think fiction for example should be excluded from this sort of initiative?
alpineidyll3 4y ago
Anything I've ever done is freely available! I have several homes. So yeah.
- tene80i 4y ago
  Honestly, congratulations on your talent and good fortune. Did you have the choice in giving your work away or was it made for you?
- system2 4y ago
  Can you teach us how to provide everything for free yet still being able to buy houses? I would kill to know this unheard knowledge.
- massinstall 4y ago
  Great, so if you never needed to be paid for anything then you either don’t live on earth or we’re obviously simply born to rich parents and inherited most of what you needed, or maybe even everything. Even then you could strive to figure out how skewed and subjective your perspective is.
ok123456 4y ago
Yes, it's called academic publishing.
- incompatible 4y ago
  I'm curious about whether people who think that copyright is a good idea, think that we should go to a publisher's site, and pay $50 or whatever to access an old journal article, out of principle, rather than download it from Sci-Hub.

mhb 4y ago

If you invest more than 10 seconds of thought in this line of reasoning, its flaws become obvious and it applies to every field in which this argument is made - stories, drugs, software, movies. Compensating creators based on the marginal cost of reproducing their work is not a paradigm for maintaining the flow of creative works. Maybe you have some junk counterargument that creative people will work for free as well as for material goods. Or who cares about the future, let's distribute what we have now. If you think creative people will work for free just for the joy of creating, then you've never worked on the last 20% of a project which is often not that joyful.

IggleSniggle 4y ago
I don’t think they said anything like what you said they said. They said it’s a Wonder. Like, I don’t think it’s right to spend thousands of lives and decades of time of slave-labor building the Great Pyramids, but it’s absolutely a Wonder, and nobody denies this. This library project is absolutely a Wonder, however right or wrong you might ultimately believe it to be, and as the poster said, it has been attempted many times and never come anywhere close to this effort.
- mhb 4y ago
  Fair enough. I guess I assumed that in the context of a community that surely appreciates the marvel that is the internet, there was a secondary objective in mentioning it.
- monista 4y ago
  Sorry for nitpicking, but it's believed now that Great Pyramids were built by well payed, well fed laborers, not by slaves.
  - Double_a_92 4y ago
    It eventually still boiled down to some kind of forced labour. Feeding those laborers for decades consumed ressources, which the rulers couldn't just magically conjure out of thin air... so e.g. farmers had to probably suffer from that.

kybernetikos 4y ago

It seems like it would cost around 2k for the hardware to make a complete mirror of this library (31TB for this library, and similar again for Lib Genesis). It's a lot, but considering what used to be spent on the beautiful buildings to host major libraries, it's something that is within the reach of a very large number of people. It does require being OK to fall foul of copyright law in most countries though, which I expect keeps a much larger number of people away.