8 ms·

> If you ask me, the publishers want to move to a "rent model" like many software companies and even some Auto makers are moving towards. That means every time

by Mezzie 4y ago

> If you ask me, the publishers want to move to a "rent model" like many software companies and even some Auto makers are moving towards. That means every time you read you electronic book, you pay them a small amount. With Libraries gone, that could be the next step. They already enforce this on libraries. Unlike physical books which can be kept until they physically wear out or are destroyed (and even then they can be rebound and most libraries have some kind of book binding tools or access), the ebooks that libraries 'buy' are often artificially limited in terms of number of times they can be used. So libraries 'buy' an ebook that can be lent X amount of times with 1-2 'concurrent' lends. It's all so stupid.

kevviiinn 4y ago
Rent seeking is the end game of capitalism, especially with minimal regulations
- Mezzie 4y ago
  It makes sense as an incentive. It just results in very silly situations where the library buys the terrible copies and just happen to also have information on how the DRM works and which programs can bypass it and since libraries exist to provide information, if someone asks for it, of course you tell them. Same way as there tend to be copiers that are out of sight (and camera) range. At least a couple of libraries I worked for had information by the copiers on exactly how much of a book you could copy before it was considered copyright infringement, thus informing people that they could copy the books. It's very kayfabe-esque. You're right that it's a fundamental values mismatch. Personally, I'm an extremist who would crash every F500 company to prevent another Library of Alexandria. Knowledge > money.
  - ketralnis 4y ago
    > how much of a book you could copy before it was considered copyright infringement So they help people follow the law?
    - Mezzie 4y ago
      Technically, yes. Lawyers and librarians fighting is always fun because each group is very detail-oriented, very pedantic, and amazing at malicious compliance.
    - nine_k 4y ago
      Much like one of my acquaintances, a professor, sent their students a messages that obtaining copies of their textbooks online, e.g. on Libgen (a list of URLs follows), is not officially approved.
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    Now any limits on how much of the book you can copy are irrelevant, since you can LLM yourself a brand new book by paying MS a few bucks and somehow there is no copyright violation in that process...
    - rnk 4y ago
      What do you mean, can you ask chatGPT to write the contents of of some book, and it would just regurgitate them?
      - throwaway290 4y ago
        No I mean prompt a sufficiently capable LLM based on what you wanted to read, chances are the LLM was trained on that book
      - angelbar 4y ago
        Not exactly, but you can work with the AI to recreate a book asking about the topics and from there asking how to explain them one by one in the context of the book application
- spacebanana7 4y ago
  I think renting or some other form of pay per read is a much better way of paying for books that single outright purchases. Tolkien deserves much more of my money than the author of the cookbook I bought a Costco and never read, but with single purchase they get roughly the same amount of economic value from me. (For the purposes of this example, Tolkien is still alive)
  - webnrrd2k 4y ago
    Outright purchase has worked pretty well throughout the history of publishing. So renting would have to offer enough of an improvement over that model to make it worthwhile. I might be ok with renting a book if more of the money went to the author. Theoretically it could work out well for everyone. A lot of cookbooks would be a great option. Rent them for a month or do for, say, $1? Cheaper access to books for a period of time, like O'Reilly's Safari for technical books. But I don't think that's how it's going to work out if renting is the only way to get books. I think that everyone will for forced into onerous terms of the publishers get too much power.
    - whateveracct 4y ago
      Why exactly does a cookbook make more sense to rent than a novel? I'm very confused by this consensus in this thread. Cookbooks if anything seem more useful to buy since they can sit in or near your kitchen and you can grab them and use them. Whereas you read a novel only every so often past the first read?
      - currency 4y ago
        Probably depends on how you use recipes. If you prop the book up next to your work and don't want to worry about getting it messy, you'd want to buy it. If you tend to use one or two recipes per book, and copy them out and make notes and changes, you'd be happy borrowing the book for a bit.
  - cool_dude85 4y ago
    The mechanism to do this sort of already exists, in that you really love Lord of the Rings, so you watch the films, you've bought the whole series and given it away as gifts, read to your kid and she grew up to buy them, etc. while none of those streams exist for the Costco cookbook. But even if you're on the rational consumer mindset and want to give the JRR estate an extra penny shaving per word you read, are you really comfortable with the level of intrusive monitoring of your habits this will entail? You want the publisher to know how many times you open their book, which passages you read most, what time of day, etc. to charge you appropriately? What if JRR wants you to pay extra to read about Tom Bombadil because you can't just watch the movie about him, isn't that fair if people are willing to pay?
- droopyEyelids 4y ago
  While I agree that is true for our current phase of capitalism, when capitalism was first conceptualized it was as an escape from rent seeking! The free market was supposed to be free from rent seeking, like the monopolies and place men of King George's day. To me it's one of the most fascinating examples of how the wiles of human nature change concepts over time.
  - kevviiinn 4y ago
    And just like capitalism was better than feudalism which was better than what came before it, capitalism has been inching towards its end game and we need a better system that works for all citizens rather than the few who have the capital to capture rents
    - Joker_vD 4y ago
      Careful there; you sound almost like one of those silly German guys who moved to England in the middle of the XIX century.
    - phpisthebest 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
        > > capitalism has been inching towards its end game > 100% incorrect, Most of the western world has been moving AWAY from free markets Capitalism does not equal free markets.
      - afiori 4y ago
        For all the good properties that a free market has it is not a stable property game-theory wise. Unless a god-emperor intervenes to prevent (natural) monopolies and unfair competition free markets are bound to degenerate at least a bit.
      - AlexandrB 4y ago
        > Free Markets make a free and fair society. Citation needed. The robber Barrons of the 19th century and companies like Standard Oil needed no help from regulators to become oppressive monopolies and rent seekers. No corporation wants to operate in a truly competitive market and will use any means available to become a monopoly and exert pricing power. Sometimes that means buying up all your competition or driving them out of business by "dumping" products on the market below cost for a while. Other times it means subverting regulators to erect barriers to competition. At least with regulatory capture you have some ability to influence the politicians involved. What influence does a single consumer have on a Standard Oil style monopoly?
- pdonis 4y ago
  No, rent seeking is the end game of regulations. The only reason publishers can pull this kind of stuff is copyright law and the Berne Convention; "we're just protecting copyrights!" is what gets them the political support they need to get away with it.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    And who said regulations are not an inherent part of capitalism? After capitalists have acquired wealth, they'll use it to get the regulations they want. Sure, you can imagine a society with capitalism and no regulations. But that would be a wish, not something you can bring about (or that ever occured for long). In fact, when unregulated capitalism is left free things get even worse for the little man and the small business or upstart: they can be crushed with no regulations to protect them. People not liking this doesn't matter. The power is on the ones with the money and the connections, which would be the capitalists, not with the masses who think voting means they rule. And if we restrict it purely to copyright laws, who said removing them only makes things better? Million creators getting paid because of copyright - authors, recording artists, session musicians, illustrators, movie crews, programmers, etc would beg to differ.
    - pdonis 4y ago
      The post I responded to said "especially with minimal regulations". That's what I was responding to. I said nothing about regulations and capitalism being incompatible. Of course they're not, although capitalists love it when people think capitalism means the same thing as "free markets" and therefore regulations are opposed to capitalism. Great camouflage. As for ordinary people's opinion not mattering, it matters because it affects what the capitalists, and more generally the people in power, can get away with. That's why capitalists like the camouflage of people confusing capitalism and free markets.
      - aleph_minus_one 4y ago
        > Of course they're not, although capitalists love it when people think capitalism means the same thing as "free markets" and therefore regulations are opposed to capitalism. Great camouflage. Why should capitalists love it when people think that regulations (which also include copyright, patent law, trademark law, ...) are opposed to capitalism?
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  Rent seeking, in the manner we see here, is a product of regulations not due to the absence of them
  - mindslight 4y ago
    It seems like you agree with OP? "Capitalism" revolves around maximizing what can be owned as capital, including by divvying up what would otherwise be the commons by creating various types of imaginary properties. One type of capital is government-created privileges obtained through regulatory capture, that keep upstart competitors from entering a market. If you're arguing for having fewer regulations, then you're actually advocating against capitalism! Contrast with focusing on "free markets", which at least keeps the emphasis on the competition mechanic rather than the suffocating dynamic of rent seeking.
    - floor2 4y ago
      It seems to me rather, that you are using a definition of "capitalism" that is distinct from and perhaps at odds with how other people are using the term. The definition you're using seems to be clearly a far-left, anti-capitalism interpretation which has essentially inverted goals/motivations with side-effects/externalities compared to what a pro-capitalist, market-oriented type of person would suggest. Basically, you're suggesting that regulatory capture is a goal of "capitalism" and while most people would say that's an anti-capitalist failure of government. Everyone agrees regulatory capture is bad, so maybe we could all work together to fix that badness regardless of abstract differences of opinion.
      - mindslight 4y ago
        I agree there is a stark difference between what I'm pointing out and what most people who describe themselves as capitalist would say they're advocating. But there is always a difference between what proponents of an ideology claim in theory, and the actual dynamic of an ideology in practice. Consider how copyright itself is strong demonstration of the distinction between markets and capitalism. When expressing anti-copyright opinions, one often gets labeled an anti-capitalist even though they're expressing a free market opinion - why is this? Fundamentally, a free market does not have copyright - if I have series of bits A, and you have series of bits B, then in a free market we can trade copies of each. It's only by creating a privilege of imaginary property that party C can force themselves into our voluntary exchange, declaring that me and you cannot trade our series of bits without their permission. C's privilege of dictating that you and I cannot freely trade is a form of capital that has been created out of whole cloth with the deliberate economic purpose of creating an income stream - aka rent seeking. Arguing against the existence of this privilege is simultaneously anti-capitalist and pro-market. The distinction between capitalism and markets becomes ever more important as more capitalist activity shifts from direct application to managing intrinsic problems of the natural world (eg facilitating investment in a machine that produces widgets), to the circular application of inventing new forms of intermediated rent streams. For example, the freedom-destroying trend of companies "selling" physical products while retaining control over them through software backdoors makes perfect sense from a capitalist perspective - the ongoing right to control the device is a form of capital that can be separated and retained to create a revenue stream. But from a pro-market pro-freedom perspective, the chipping away of individual autonomy in favor of centrally-owned control is abhorrent.
- Supermancho 4y ago
  Expanding the logical progression of capitalism, we get the future presented in Continuum (imdb.com/title/tt1954347/) as well as other shows like Altered Carbon, etc.
- barrysteve 4y ago
  Rent seeking? Taking books off the market is straight power over the supply of knowledge. Having to learn everything the hard way, because the good books on your topic of choice have been nerfed and/or black-holed, is a nightmare that makes rent seeking look tame. You pop off the book supply and disconnect russian piracy websites and suddenly we only know what Amazon editors, pricey Scientific journals and extended university courses, allow us to know. The internet is excellent for technical knowledge around STEM subjects, primarily computing... but it routinely deletes valuable information from all media types. The popular http sites are a curated garden. Half of all youtube videos from 2015 onward, have been deleted. I don't really care about paying $20/month to access all the rare and good books. Keeping it on the map is more valuable than rent-seeking.

by Mezzie 4y ago

kevviiinn 4y ago

Rent seeking is the end game of capitalism, especially with minimal regulations

Mezzie 4y ago
It makes sense as an incentive. It just results in very silly situations where the library buys the terrible copies and just happen to also have information on how the DRM works and which programs can bypass it and since libraries exist to provide information, if someone asks for it, of course you tell them. Same way as there tend to be copiers that are out of sight (and camera) range. At least a couple of libraries I worked for had information by the copiers on exactly how much of a book you could copy before it was considered copyright infringement, thus informing people that they could copy the books. It's very kayfabe-esque. You're right that it's a fundamental values mismatch. Personally, I'm an extremist who would crash every F500 company to prevent another Library of Alexandria. Knowledge > money.
- ketralnis 4y ago
  > how much of a book you could copy before it was considered copyright infringement So they help people follow the law?
  - Mezzie 4y ago
    Technically, yes. Lawyers and librarians fighting is always fun because each group is very detail-oriented, very pedantic, and amazing at malicious compliance.
  - nine_k 4y ago
    Much like one of my acquaintances, a professor, sent their students a messages that obtaining copies of their textbooks online, e.g. on Libgen (a list of URLs follows), is not officially approved.
- throwaway290 4y ago
  Now any limits on how much of the book you can copy are irrelevant, since you can LLM yourself a brand new book by paying MS a few bucks and somehow there is no copyright violation in that process...
  - rnk 4y ago
    What do you mean, can you ask chatGPT to write the contents of of some book, and it would just regurgitate them?
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      No I mean prompt a sufficiently capable LLM based on what you wanted to read, chances are the LLM was trained on that book
    - angelbar 4y ago
      Not exactly, but you can work with the AI to recreate a book asking about the topics and from there asking how to explain them one by one in the context of the book application
spacebanana7 4y ago
I think renting or some other form of pay per read is a much better way of paying for books that single outright purchases. Tolkien deserves much more of my money than the author of the cookbook I bought a Costco and never read, but with single purchase they get roughly the same amount of economic value from me. (For the purposes of this example, Tolkien is still alive)
- webnrrd2k 4y ago
  Outright purchase has worked pretty well throughout the history of publishing. So renting would have to offer enough of an improvement over that model to make it worthwhile. I might be ok with renting a book if more of the money went to the author. Theoretically it could work out well for everyone. A lot of cookbooks would be a great option. Rent them for a month or do for, say, $1? Cheaper access to books for a period of time, like O'Reilly's Safari for technical books. But I don't think that's how it's going to work out if renting is the only way to get books. I think that everyone will for forced into onerous terms of the publishers get too much power.
  - whateveracct 4y ago
    Why exactly does a cookbook make more sense to rent than a novel? I'm very confused by this consensus in this thread. Cookbooks if anything seem more useful to buy since they can sit in or near your kitchen and you can grab them and use them. Whereas you read a novel only every so often past the first read?
    - currency 4y ago
      Probably depends on how you use recipes. If you prop the book up next to your work and don't want to worry about getting it messy, you'd want to buy it. If you tend to use one or two recipes per book, and copy them out and make notes and changes, you'd be happy borrowing the book for a bit.
- cool_dude85 4y ago
  The mechanism to do this sort of already exists, in that you really love Lord of the Rings, so you watch the films, you've bought the whole series and given it away as gifts, read to your kid and she grew up to buy them, etc. while none of those streams exist for the Costco cookbook. But even if you're on the rational consumer mindset and want to give the JRR estate an extra penny shaving per word you read, are you really comfortable with the level of intrusive monitoring of your habits this will entail? You want the publisher to know how many times you open their book, which passages you read most, what time of day, etc. to charge you appropriately? What if JRR wants you to pay extra to read about Tom Bombadil because you can't just watch the movie about him, isn't that fair if people are willing to pay?
droopyEyelids 4y ago
While I agree that is true for our current phase of capitalism, when capitalism was first conceptualized it was as an escape from rent seeking! The free market was supposed to be free from rent seeking, like the monopolies and place men of King George's day. To me it's one of the most fascinating examples of how the wiles of human nature change concepts over time.
- kevviiinn 4y ago
  And just like capitalism was better than feudalism which was better than what came before it, capitalism has been inching towards its end game and we need a better system that works for all citizens rather than the few who have the capital to capture rents
  - Joker_vD 4y ago
    Careful there; you sound almost like one of those silly German guys who moved to England in the middle of the XIX century.
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      > > capitalism has been inching towards its end game > 100% incorrect, Most of the western world has been moving AWAY from free markets Capitalism does not equal free markets.
    - afiori 4y ago
      For all the good properties that a free market has it is not a stable property game-theory wise. Unless a god-emperor intervenes to prevent (natural) monopolies and unfair competition free markets are bound to degenerate at least a bit.
    - AlexandrB 4y ago
      > Free Markets make a free and fair society. Citation needed. The robber Barrons of the 19th century and companies like Standard Oil needed no help from regulators to become oppressive monopolies and rent seekers. No corporation wants to operate in a truly competitive market and will use any means available to become a monopoly and exert pricing power. Sometimes that means buying up all your competition or driving them out of business by "dumping" products on the market below cost for a while. Other times it means subverting regulators to erect barriers to competition. At least with regulatory capture you have some ability to influence the politicians involved. What influence does a single consumer have on a Standard Oil style monopoly?
pdonis 4y ago
No, rent seeking is the end game of regulations. The only reason publishers can pull this kind of stuff is copyright law and the Berne Convention; "we're just protecting copyrights!" is what gets them the political support they need to get away with it.
- coldtea 4y ago
  And who said regulations are not an inherent part of capitalism? After capitalists have acquired wealth, they'll use it to get the regulations they want. Sure, you can imagine a society with capitalism and no regulations. But that would be a wish, not something you can bring about (or that ever occured for long). In fact, when unregulated capitalism is left free things get even worse for the little man and the small business or upstart: they can be crushed with no regulations to protect them. People not liking this doesn't matter. The power is on the ones with the money and the connections, which would be the capitalists, not with the masses who think voting means they rule. And if we restrict it purely to copyright laws, who said removing them only makes things better? Million creators getting paid because of copyright - authors, recording artists, session musicians, illustrators, movie crews, programmers, etc would beg to differ.
  - pdonis 4y ago
    The post I responded to said "especially with minimal regulations". That's what I was responding to. I said nothing about regulations and capitalism being incompatible. Of course they're not, although capitalists love it when people think capitalism means the same thing as "free markets" and therefore regulations are opposed to capitalism. Great camouflage. As for ordinary people's opinion not mattering, it matters because it affects what the capitalists, and more generally the people in power, can get away with. That's why capitalists like the camouflage of people confusing capitalism and free markets.
    - aleph_minus_one 4y ago
      > Of course they're not, although capitalists love it when people think capitalism means the same thing as "free markets" and therefore regulations are opposed to capitalism. Great camouflage. Why should capitalists love it when people think that regulations (which also include copyright, patent law, trademark law, ...) are opposed to capitalism?
phpisthebest 4y ago
Rent seeking, in the manner we see here, is a product of regulations not due to the absence of them
- mindslight 4y ago
  It seems like you agree with OP? "Capitalism" revolves around maximizing what can be owned as capital, including by divvying up what would otherwise be the commons by creating various types of imaginary properties. One type of capital is government-created privileges obtained through regulatory capture, that keep upstart competitors from entering a market. If you're arguing for having fewer regulations, then you're actually advocating against capitalism! Contrast with focusing on "free markets", which at least keeps the emphasis on the competition mechanic rather than the suffocating dynamic of rent seeking.
  - floor2 4y ago
    It seems to me rather, that you are using a definition of "capitalism" that is distinct from and perhaps at odds with how other people are using the term. The definition you're using seems to be clearly a far-left, anti-capitalism interpretation which has essentially inverted goals/motivations with side-effects/externalities compared to what a pro-capitalist, market-oriented type of person would suggest. Basically, you're suggesting that regulatory capture is a goal of "capitalism" and while most people would say that's an anti-capitalist failure of government. Everyone agrees regulatory capture is bad, so maybe we could all work together to fix that badness regardless of abstract differences of opinion.
    - mindslight 4y ago
      I agree there is a stark difference between what I'm pointing out and what most people who describe themselves as capitalist would say they're advocating. But there is always a difference between what proponents of an ideology claim in theory, and the actual dynamic of an ideology in practice. Consider how copyright itself is strong demonstration of the distinction between markets and capitalism. When expressing anti-copyright opinions, one often gets labeled an anti-capitalist even though they're expressing a free market opinion - why is this? Fundamentally, a free market does not have copyright - if I have series of bits A, and you have series of bits B, then in a free market we can trade copies of each. It's only by creating a privilege of imaginary property that party C can force themselves into our voluntary exchange, declaring that me and you cannot trade our series of bits without their permission. C's privilege of dictating that you and I cannot freely trade is a form of capital that has been created out of whole cloth with the deliberate economic purpose of creating an income stream - aka rent seeking. Arguing against the existence of this privilege is simultaneously anti-capitalist and pro-market. The distinction between capitalism and markets becomes ever more important as more capitalist activity shifts from direct application to managing intrinsic problems of the natural world (eg facilitating investment in a machine that produces widgets), to the circular application of inventing new forms of intermediated rent streams. For example, the freedom-destroying trend of companies "selling" physical products while retaining control over them through software backdoors makes perfect sense from a capitalist perspective - the ongoing right to control the device is a form of capital that can be separated and retained to create a revenue stream. But from a pro-market pro-freedom perspective, the chipping away of individual autonomy in favor of centrally-owned control is abhorrent.
Supermancho 4y ago
Expanding the logical progression of capitalism, we get the future presented in Continuum (imdb.com/title/tt1954347/) as well as other shows like Altered Carbon, etc.
barrysteve 4y ago
Rent seeking? Taking books off the market is straight power over the supply of knowledge. Having to learn everything the hard way, because the good books on your topic of choice have been nerfed and/or black-holed, is a nightmare that makes rent seeking look tame. You pop off the book supply and disconnect russian piracy websites and suddenly we only know what Amazon editors, pricey Scientific journals and extended university courses, allow us to know. The internet is excellent for technical knowledge around STEM subjects, primarily computing... but it routinely deletes valuable information from all media types. The popular http sites are a curated garden. Half of all youtube videos from 2015 onward, have been deleted. I don't really care about paying $20/month to access all the rare and good books. Keeping it on the map is more valuable than rent-seeking.