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>Authors are often robbed by the middlemen and copyright helps the middlemen. Can you explain a bit more what you mean? How does this justify copyright violati

>Authors are often robbed by the middlemen and copyright helps the middlemen. Can you explain a bit more what you mean? How does this justify copyright violation? Unless you ask the author, how do you know they would let you read the book for free? Surely they get paid more when people buy the book, right? IIRC most authors recieve royalties.

giantrobot 4y ago
Most authors never see a dime from royalties. Publishers pay them an advance and then use the author's royalties to pay back that advance. Royalties often come out to pannies per book. Even an advance of a few thousand dollars ends up taking tens of thousands of unit sales to cover the author's advance and have them see any direct royalty payments. Publishers also pull all sorts of shady accounting to stiff authors on royalties. They will charge them for editing or cover art against their royalties. Worst is when they charge the author if a retailer returns unsold copies. That's all besides the fact Z-Library is little different than any other library. A library will lend out a book a large number of times and only pay for it once. Most of the readers were never ever going to buy the book and only read it because it was available at a library. Very few authors ever see any money from royalties and fewer still manage to live off royalties.
- Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
  Wouldn't this long-term result in publishers offering less advance money? Also, I doubt most people pirating books care to check wether the author is getting royalties or not. >fact Z-Library is little different than any other library. The difference is that copyright does not cover benefit from a work but reproduction. Libraries would be illegal too if they involved reproduction of the work. In any case, this is all still far from the "it was sad day for the free flow of information, knowledge, and culture" argument given by the OP. Most authors really don't want their works reporduced at no cost, and this idea is basicaly a "what's yours is mine" mentality.
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    > Wouldn't this long-term result in publishers offering less advance money? Also, I doubt most people pirating books care to check wether the author is getting royalties or not. Publishers make money off selling books. Old books do not sell (obviously there's outliers). Publishers offer advances to get new books to sell. If they stop offering advances they won't get new books. For most authors royalties are not a thing and never will be. Worrying about royalties on their behalf is pointless. None of that changes the fact that pirates are no different from a non-customer. Equivocating about "reproduction" is just ridiculous. A library loaning a book out to a hundred non-customers is no different than a hundred people pirating a copy of a book or borrowing a copy from a friend. They're all non-customers. Treating pirates as some special class of non-customers is ridiculous.
    - Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
      >Old books do not sell >For most authors royalties are not a thing and never will be. Can you provide some numbers to back up these claims? Also, I'm not clear on where you addressed my point that this would "long-term result in publishers offering less advance money." If it's that "if they stop offering advances they won't get new books" how do you know that they are already offeringing them exactly the minimum such that if they give them smaller advances they won't write more books? Surely it would depend on how much they think they will make from the sales? And what about self published books? Do you admit that those should not be pirated? >None of that changes the fact that pirates are no different from a non-customer. Do you mean on the avergae or in totality? Because there certainly are people who would pay but instead pirate. >Equivocating about "reproduction" is just ridiculous. That is what the law of copyright is. >A library loaning a book out to a hundred non-customers is no different than a hundred people pirating a copy of a book or borrowing a copy from a friend. Authors do not have conrtol of what buyers do with their books beyond the fact that they cannot copy it. That is the condition of the sale. It is usualy expressed something like: >Copyright © [year] by [author] >All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Basicaly I'm making two points here. One that authors do net lose money from piracy, and second is that even if not, they expressly told all the buyers that the condition of the sale is that they cannot reproduce their works. As for real evidence for my claim, I point you to the Author's guild[0] which fought against google[1] providing for free copyrighted works even if it contained a link to their store. And it in general defends author's copyright. It "has counted among its board members notable authors of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including numerous winners of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards. It has over 9,000 members." [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild_v._Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild_v._Google

giantrobot 4y ago

Most authors never see a dime from royalties. Publishers pay them an advance and then use the author's royalties to pay back that advance. Royalties often come out to pannies per book. Even an advance of a few thousand dollars ends up taking tens of thousands of unit sales to cover the author's advance and have them see any direct royalty payments. Publishers also pull all sorts of shady accounting to stiff authors on royalties. They will charge them for editing or cover art against their royalties. Worst is when they charge the author if a retailer returns unsold copies. That's all besides the fact Z-Library is little different than any other library. A library will lend out a book a large number of times and only pay for it once. Most of the readers were never ever going to buy the book and only read it because it was available at a library. Very few authors ever see any money from royalties and fewer still manage to live off royalties.

Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
Wouldn't this long-term result in publishers offering less advance money? Also, I doubt most people pirating books care to check wether the author is getting royalties or not. >fact Z-Library is little different than any other library. The difference is that copyright does not cover benefit from a work but reproduction. Libraries would be illegal too if they involved reproduction of the work. In any case, this is all still far from the "it was sad day for the free flow of information, knowledge, and culture" argument given by the OP. Most authors really don't want their works reporduced at no cost, and this idea is basicaly a "what's yours is mine" mentality.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  > Wouldn't this long-term result in publishers offering less advance money? Also, I doubt most people pirating books care to check wether the author is getting royalties or not. Publishers make money off selling books. Old books do not sell (obviously there's outliers). Publishers offer advances to get new books to sell. If they stop offering advances they won't get new books. For most authors royalties are not a thing and never will be. Worrying about royalties on their behalf is pointless. None of that changes the fact that pirates are no different from a non-customer. Equivocating about "reproduction" is just ridiculous. A library loaning a book out to a hundred non-customers is no different than a hundred people pirating a copy of a book or borrowing a copy from a friend. They're all non-customers. Treating pirates as some special class of non-customers is ridiculous.
  - Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
    >Old books do not sell >For most authors royalties are not a thing and never will be. Can you provide some numbers to back up these claims? Also, I'm not clear on where you addressed my point that this would "long-term result in publishers offering less advance money." If it's that "if they stop offering advances they won't get new books" how do you know that they are already offeringing them exactly the minimum such that if they give them smaller advances they won't write more books? Surely it would depend on how much they think they will make from the sales? And what about self published books? Do you admit that those should not be pirated? >None of that changes the fact that pirates are no different from a non-customer. Do you mean on the avergae or in totality? Because there certainly are people who would pay but instead pirate. >Equivocating about "reproduction" is just ridiculous. That is what the law of copyright is. >A library loaning a book out to a hundred non-customers is no different than a hundred people pirating a copy of a book or borrowing a copy from a friend. Authors do not have conrtol of what buyers do with their books beyond the fact that they cannot copy it. That is the condition of the sale. It is usualy expressed something like: >Copyright © [year] by [author] >All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Basicaly I'm making two points here. One that authors do net lose money from piracy, and second is that even if not, they expressly told all the buyers that the condition of the sale is that they cannot reproduce their works. As for real evidence for my claim, I point you to the Author's guild[0] which fought against google[1] providing for free copyrighted works even if it contained a link to their store. And it in general defends author's copyright. It "has counted among its board members notable authors of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including numerous winners of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards. It has over 9,000 members." [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild_v._Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild_v._Google