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I pirate all my books now, except for the ones sold with no DRM as epub. I would like to reward the authors, but I refuse to allow the publishing industry to g
by marcus_holmes 3y ago
I pirate all my books now, except for the ones sold with no DRM as epub.
I would like to reward the authors, but I refuse to allow the publishing industry to get away with this bullshit. If the authors choose to publish their books DRM-free as epubs, I will (and do) happily buy them.
- nicbou 3y agoAfter losing most of my books because I moved abroad, I am not paying for books again.
- redeeman 3y agowas this ebooks?
- nicbou 3y agoYes. One account removed my purchases after changing countries. The other is stuck in the old country, but won't let me purchase most books unless they're available in both countries. Libgen works instantly, every time.
- redeeman 3y agothey really should not be allowed to get away with this. Im happy I only buy books where I get a DRM free copy
- pierat 3y agoWho's going to "enforce" this? The UN? (HAH) The only way to force this issue is to "pirate before you buy-it" and save your money. Hard to get screwed by fake purchase buttons if you dont buy, and hit libgen, torrents, and usenet.
- redeeman 3y agoof course not the UN, but things that are sold are presumably sold, so... the country you bought it in? but I agree, do not buy shit you dont own
- marcus_holmes 3y agoThis. I move country a lot, and Amazon/Kindle just wasn't happy with that. Books kept being unavailable despite the fact I'd bought them. Spotify does the same, but at least Spotify doesn't pretend that I've bought the music.
- asynchronous 3y agoGood example is most stuff sold on Humble Bundle.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 3y agoBaen sells thier ebooks DRM free if you get them direct from baen.com. They used to distribute CDs full of DRM free ebooks, back when Jim Baen was still alive. Handed 'em out at cons with instructions to copy and share. You can still find ISOs of them online.
- marcus_holmes 3y agoYeah, I've bought a few bundles :) They're doing good work :)
- TekMol 3y agoThe problem even with DRM-free epubs is that: A) I don't see a reason why some mega-cooperations should know about every book I buy. B) You don't know if they have been watermarked. I don't want every book I own to be watermarked with god-knows-what metadata about me. Let me pay with Bitcoin, and I'll buy books again.
- timidger 3y agoYour solution to a privacy problem vis-a-vis mega corporations involves moving your transaction to a public block chain?
- TekMol 3y agoFrom the outside, the blockchain is just a giant bunch of transactions. No company like a Amazon or Visa has a clear picture of what those transactions are about. Now in the times of lightning, there is not even a transaction for the payment of a book. Payments are bundled into channels. Individual lightning payments do not leave any trace on the blockchain.
- moffkalast 3y ago> No company like a Amazon or Visa has a clear picture of what those transactions are about. That's where you're probably wrong. If the NSA can listen to anyone on the planet through their phone, they surely have the data that exchanges are legally obligated to collect in terms of validating all users by their government documents, aka the place 99% of bitcoin users probably get their coin. The rest is just mapping it all together and correlating the remaining blank accounts with the piles of other data they've got on each person, which I'm sure they're easily capable of. A bitcoin transaction and a book download coming from a the same IP at roughly the same time are surely mappable to a physical person.
- brutusborn 3y agoNot a bad solution if you consider systems like Monero where transaction info isn’t easily obtained from the ledger.
- safety1st 3y agoRight now we are seeing video games disappear after only a few decades. When the business model is for the copyright owner to issue restrictive licenses, most information will eventually disappear. DRM further exacerbates the situation. Moreover this is inherent in the nature of a capitalist system itself - it's Schumpeter's creative destruction at work. It is normal, regular, and otherwise healthy for all businesses to eventually end. But if that business was the only entity with the right and ability to copy, distribute etc. - then the creative work they produced is highly likely to disappear, lost to us forever. It's tragic enough that the early history of video games may simply disappear. That future generations will have no idea how it all got started. With copying and distribution cheaper and easier than ever before, we're somehow still at risk of losing this era of history. It's far, far, FAR scarier to think of this happening to the repository of human knowledge contained in BOOKS. The future which is now unfolding is a sort of permanent, rolling version of the burning of the Library of Alexandria, where the collective wisdom of the human race just sort of fades away over time. Where we lose the ability to learn from our past, because we've lost the ability to make an enduring recording of it. Ironically, with technology, we have unlocked infinite, practically free distribution of copying and information. It can be done with a keystroke. The problem lies in our legal, political and economic systems - the iron boot has become so heavy it's crushing the larynx of the past and future alike, in a way never before seen in human history.
- hilbert42 3y ago"-the iron boot has become so heavy it's crushing the larynx of the past and future alike, in a way never before seen in human history." Exactly, as I said in my post we need a new political movement to fight the problem.
- jmiskovic 3y agoDRM is bad, most of us agree on this. Also, copyright laws were written for bygone era where things didn't move so fast. I think it's the case of the "lawful" not being aligned with "ethical". But the tragedy of games disappearing? There's more than 30 games released on Steam _each day_, let that sink in. Writing and publishing books has never in history been so easy. A vast majority of these are archived and easily available to anyone, in many more magnitudes of scale than our capacity to consume them. In fact, I'm seeing the opposite of your claims, with Meta and OpenAI publicly admitting of breaking copyright laws while training their LLMs, and also the widespread movement for self-proclaimed librarians hoarding books, ROMs and other software in terabyte scales. I'm not passing judgements about any of this, just saying that copyright law is not always strictly applied and the iron boot is more like a fluffy slipper when it comes to availability of historical content. There was a recent article about 87% of "classic" games no longer being commercially available - well that's still above the Sturgeon's law ("ninety percent of everything is crap"). Why would anyone expect publishers to offer content that is only interesting for historical reasons? For games that are still relevant, there is an added effort to run them on modern systems and to offer customer support.
- umvi 3y agoPay for a physical copy and only then pirate the ebook. Otherwise this attitude is incredibly entitled.
- marcus_holmes 3y agoNo, because then: - I'm sending a message to publishers that physical books are in demand (not the case) - I have to deal with the physical book (giving it away to a charity shop is probably the solution, but it's still hassle) - It doesn't solve the problem - publishers still think everything is good. Only by depriving the publishers of revenue until they start respecting their customers can we solve this. And I think my attitude is a lot less entitled than the publisher's. If I pay for something, I should own it, not have it subject to the publisher's whims. The attitude that they can disrespect their customers and keep control of the book even after it has been purchased is more than entitled. It should be illegal.
- nec4b 3y ago>> If I pay for something, I should own Do you believe then same thing when renting a car?
- vonnieda 3y agoWhen you "buy" a Kindle book, for instance, you click "Buy It Now" not "Rent It Now". The implication is that you are buying it to own, not renting it. Not a good comparison to renting a car.
- marcus_holmes 3y agoAlso when renting a car, I pay a fraction of its retail cost. Charging me the whole cost as a clearly marked "sale" and then renting the item to me is what's going on here, and it has to stop.
- nec4b 3y agoDo you buy or rent a subscription? I think it's pretty clear you are buying a license to view Kindle books and not buying the the book itself.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoI wouldn't even buy those. Who wants a bunch of shitty ebooks that they don't even bother to include cover art for? Sure, lately, the way they do contracts for the cover artists must include ebooks, but any title prior to about 2018 still has the shitty generic cover for whichever Random House imprint it is. And as juvenile as it sounds, I'd actually like my copies of The Dark Tower to include the interior art too. Completely absent. We finally got to a point in the future where theoretically they could siphon tens of thousands of dollars out of me (because I wouldn't first have to spend x20 that amount buying a home with a large enough library proper), and their authorized, authentic ebooks look no better than some half-assed scan downloaded from a #bookz DCC bot.
- Daz1 3y agoReally? I pirate e-books because why would I spend money if I don't have to?
- throw__away7391 3y agoThis is the same reason I shoplift all my clothes.
- cinntaile 3y agoMaybe you would it it was just as easy and without consequences.
- duckmysick 3y agoIt sort of is. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27241085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27241085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30315992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30315992
- concordDance 3y agoNote that shoplifting deprives the seller of the ability to sell those clothes while copyright infringement does not.
- esafak 3y agoAnd both deprive the creators of income.
- Brometheus 3y agoIncorrect.
- Fricken 3y agoGood point
- jxramos 3y agosame here, I actually love it when publishers publish epubs, it encourages me to purchase more stuff from them. Same with bandcamp stuff with music files. A lot of times publishers are very ambiguous about the nature of their ebooks and I have to email their sales team or customer service to get a square answer about what exactly I would be buying from them. If it's some complicated morass of third party obscure e-readers and other clunky interference I just end the conversation there and move on.
- tene80i 3y ago[flagged]
- randunel 3y agoHe pays them when they don't DRM their content. Pirates would get a much better experience, otherwise, by not having to put up with the DRM crap. I'm doing the same as OP in other domains. Whether the message is understood or not depends on how many of us do it. It's called activism.
- innocenat 3y ago[flagged]
- hurutparittya 3y ago[flagged]
- Brometheus 3y agoMaking a copy is not theft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4
- marcus_holmes 3y agoThis. It's low-key activism, for sure, but it is activism.
- unmole 3y agoNot only do you get to take stuff for free, you also get to feel smug about being an activist. Amazing.
- tene80i 3y agoThis is, respectfully, bullshit. Are you having an impact? Do you have publishers quaking in their boots? Do you even have a plan to extract your demands? Or are you just pirating shit you want to read and dressing it up as meaningful? Which achieves what? Activism would mean you are out there convincing people who don’t already agree with you, and making hard choices about your own consumption, such as with a boycott. You’re just enjoying the fruits of people’s labour without compensating them. Cheap, cheap, cheap.
- unmole 3y agoInteresting how your grand principled stand doesn't inconvenience you in any way. Now, you could choose to not read books that don't meet your high moral bar for distribution. But screw that, you can have your cake and eat it too!
- marcus_holmes 3y agoYes, I agree. But I don't see any other way around it that works. Publishers need to stop doing this, or we end up in a world where everything is rented. They will only pay attention to what affects their revenue. I repeat: I'm happy to pay for books if they're DRM-free. It's not like I'm pirating everything because it's free; I'm happy to pay for it if I can actually own it.
- nicbou 3y agoDo you block ads on your computer, or avoid the internet altogether?
- unmole 3y agoI pay to skip ads wherever that's an option. I do use an ad-blocker because ads are annoying. What I don't so is pretend my ad-blocking is a grand crusade for privacy.
- izacus 3y agoOh no, poor inconvenience exploiters and profiteers, why won't anyone think of the rich people?!
- unmole 3y agoYeah, screw the author who actually wrote the book and the publisher who financed it. Only the freeloaders and parasites matter.
- Qwertious 3y agoI've taken a principled stand against Crunchyroll and Kindle - the result has been basically dropping reading nonfiction books and watching anime as a hobby for over a decade. Who does this benefit? Self-flagellation is not a moral imperative.
- fluxem 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jrflowers 3y agoI like your point that the person you’re responding to is lying. It’s cheaper and easier to pirate everything, including books published DRM-free, so in order for your point to be true they must not actually buy any books at all. Why not just say “You are lying” rather than asking them to stop bringing up morals?
- _v7gu 3y agoHe has to show he is one step above him on the great ladder of moral upstanding.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- qwerty456127 3y agoThe same. I only buy DRM-free epubs (e.g. on Gumroad, Humble Bundle and directly), also pirate some which are not available this way. If I really were to buy something I would unDRM it. If I found out I can't unDRM it I wouldn't buy. Needless to say I only buy games at GOG.com.
- acomjean 3y agoManning is another publisher without DRM. I used to buy Oreilly books without DRM, but they’re subscription only but some books do show up on humble bundle from time to time. Manning does put a “licensed to my_email” on the pages of the digital copies but it’s not onerous.
- qwerty456127 3y agoAwesome to know! Thank you!
- tlow 3y agoWhat about local library?
- marcus_holmes 3y agoI was living in Germany, but don't speak/read German, so that was tricky. Moving country a lot doesn't help with this - a lot of the time you have to be a citizen or permanent resident to join the library and rent ebooks.
- Qwertious 3y agoThe arguments for pirating ebooks are very similar to the arguments in Uniquenameosaurus's "you should pirate anime" video (originally uploaded in, IIRC, 2018?). This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmi3akNnqis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmi3akNnqis - You Should Pirate Anime (Reupload) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXiQJWT442I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXiQJWT442I - You Should Pirate Anime 2 (Reupload)
- deelly 3y agoJust 5 cents, thats why I always trying to buy any games on GOG. No "install necessary launcher" bullshit and 100% confidence that backup of any purchased game will work in next decades, or even in next next decades without internet.
- Narishma 3y agoMaybe I'm being pessimistic but I feel it's only a matter of time before they too make their launcher mandatory.
- jocoda 3y agoLast time I looked Gog had a launcher as well.
- mrguyorama 3y agoIt's entirely optional. Every game you buy from them has a link on the store page to raw executables or even disk images.
- deely3 3y agoGOG launched like 15y ago and mostly owned by CD Projekt - creators of Witcher and Cyberpunk games, so I am cautiously optimistic.
- marcus_holmes 3y agoGoG for books would be awesome
- dageshi 3y agoI on the other hand am absolutely happy to buy ebooks via kindle. In fact most of the time I just borrow them via Kindle Unlimited, read them and effectively return them. Don't need to own a book I'm going to read once and never read again.
- T3RMINATED 3y ago[dead]