4 ms·

Not an author, are you. Not a lawyer either. When you have spent years honing your craft and spent many months creating a work so that you can buy what you need

Not an author, are you. Not a lawyer either. When you have spent years honing your craft and spent many months creating a work so that you can buy what you need to live and can't afford to support your self and your family without that income and then YOU give that work away - then I may find some value in your self serving questions. By the way, the answer to your questions is yes.

yucky 4y ago
> By the way, the answer to your questions is yes. You say it's theft to take pictures of the pages of a library book? I would need you to cite your sources please. If it matters, I recently ordered 6 hardcovers from an author who's book that I downloaded from libgen was so impressively written, well sourced and thought provoking that I just had to put his best works (the book I "stole" by downloading, and 5 of his other works) in my physical library. On the flipside, I recently wanted to read a book (different author) so badly but it wasn't available anywhere for less than $100 since it's out of print, so I downloaded it and don't feel bad at all. I haven't read that one yet, and if I love it I might spend the money for a physical copy, but it wouldn't matter since it's out of print and used and wouldn't make a difference to the author (also, he's dead).
- jll29 4y ago
  Germany has a system where the books purchased by libraries and also printers and scanners contain a fee that contributes to a fund for reimbursing copyright holders (Verwertungsgesellschaft Wort, cf. https://www.vgwort.de/startseite.html https://www.vgwort.de/startseite.html ). Very fast copiers/scanners are more expensive - inter alia - for that reason, according to a colleague of mine (I'm not an expert in this). So you copying one page from a book in a library would still lead to some form of compensation, although one could debate whether it is fair or not, whereas using a P2P search engine to locate an online copy of a PDF would not. Also, IMHO, the discussion of such online libraries should separate the topic of fair compensation of authors (I believe Norway or Finnland have "author stipends" paid by the government that one can apply) and the topic of locating and researching whether a book is what one needs or to one's liking.
  - yucky 4y ago
    I would imagine authors get compensation from their books purchased by US libraries too. But it's not going to scale with how many times a book is checked out, or even prevent it from being copied after checkout.

yucky 4y ago

> By the way, the answer to your questions is yes. You say it's theft to take pictures of the pages of a library book? I would need you to cite your sources please. If it matters, I recently ordered 6 hardcovers from an author who's book that I downloaded from libgen was so impressively written, well sourced and thought provoking that I just had to put his best works (the book I "stole" by downloading, and 5 of his other works) in my physical library. On the flipside, I recently wanted to read a book (different author) so badly but it wasn't available anywhere for less than $100 since it's out of print, so I downloaded it and don't feel bad at all. I haven't read that one yet, and if I love it I might spend the money for a physical copy, but it wouldn't matter since it's out of print and used and wouldn't make a difference to the author (also, he's dead).

jll29 4y ago
Germany has a system where the books purchased by libraries and also printers and scanners contain a fee that contributes to a fund for reimbursing copyright holders (Verwertungsgesellschaft Wort, cf. https://www.vgwort.de/startseite.html https://www.vgwort.de/startseite.html ). Very fast copiers/scanners are more expensive - inter alia - for that reason, according to a colleague of mine (I'm not an expert in this). So you copying one page from a book in a library would still lead to some form of compensation, although one could debate whether it is fair or not, whereas using a P2P search engine to locate an online copy of a PDF would not. Also, IMHO, the discussion of such online libraries should separate the topic of fair compensation of authors (I believe Norway or Finnland have "author stipends" paid by the government that one can apply) and the topic of locating and researching whether a book is what one needs or to one's liking.
- yucky 4y ago
  I would imagine authors get compensation from their books purchased by US libraries too. But it's not going to scale with how many times a book is checked out, or even prevent it from being copied after checkout.