9 ms·

> Delightful experience. compare this with the piracy option: search for torrent or download link, click, wait for download to finish. Upload to device. Read a

• zen_1 3y ago
  cough mobilism.org/libgen.is/irc channels/z-library cough
  • all2 3y ago
    I also appreciated recent HN threads on Anna's Archive.
  • NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    Do the ends justify the means, matey? Have you considered accessing freely-licensed content instead, and supporting authors who believe in the freedom movement, such as Creative Commons? How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living?
    • chii 3y ago
      > deprived of sales but the post above explain an arduous process for a purchase, and i would expect that there's not an insignificant number of people who would've given up in the middle. So do you also feel that you need to make the same complaint of a lost sale to amazon? Why target pirates specifically? Whether they _consumed_ content or not, is irrelevant - in both scenarios, you would've "lost" a sale.
      • NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
        Have you considered accessing freely-licensed content instead, and supporting authors who believe in the freedom movement, such as Creative Commons?
        • Ruthalas 3y ago
          Can you direct me to some of these? Perhaps some you recommend? That sounds interesting, but I don't know where to find such content.
          • NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
            There are tons of them available. Here's the Creative Commons Search portal: https://search.creativecommons.org/ https://search.creativecommons.org/ I tried Openverse and Europeana. Some of these appear to categorize eBooks as "images", or perhaps they are just promotional images for unfree books. Tens of thousands of results. Here's a Google Books search. I was unable to find a "search for license" type thing, but you can search for "Fully viewable" or "Google eBooks only": https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=-copyright&tbs=,bkv:f&num=100 https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=-copyright&tbs... My father loves HathiTrust, and so do many other people who love freedom: https://www.hathitrust.org/ https://www.hathitrust.org/ Of course you know the Internet Archive and Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/ https://openlibrary.org/ Wikisource hosts lots of freely-licensed text, in many, many languages; here's English: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page Never forget the O.G. PD site, Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ https://www.gutenberg.org/ Also, while it is not the written word, it is based on awesome freely-available books, and perhaps you could consider adding to the library at LibriVox: https://librivox.org/search?primary_key=0&search_category=author&search_page=1&search_form=get_results https://librivox.org/search?primary_key=0&search_category=au... My classmates at school ate this stuff up when I volunteered that there are sites where you can find awesome public domain reference material that's often better-quality than the paywalled stuff you pay for. Don't forget the Open Textbooks and freely licensed academic materials. Community colleges and universities will direct you to those. https://oercommons.org/hubs/open-textbooks https://oercommons.org/hubs/open-textbooks https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks Don't forget niche uses and special interests. Want to overcome your addiction to porn? Download some free eBooks: https://www.covenanteyes.com/e-books/ https://www.covenanteyes.com/e-books/
        • ffhhttt 3y ago
          I’m not sure that most books are at all fungible. Also do many book authors actually publish under Creative Commons?
      • brigandish 3y ago
        Arduous is overstating it by a long way. Frustrating, bothersome, annoying, inconsiderate, stupid, yes. Arduous? I used to carry a walkman, several tapes, and spare batteries with me every day; I used to carry a book to read in one pocket and often another, smaller book in another, and even occasionally a newspaper under my arm. Buying a book or any media online is not arduous, even if it's as described. What it does show is that innovative businesses will, over time, become like the dinosaurs they out-competed, and leave room for something new. Piracy will probably always be there, even when buying is not arduous.
        • corndoge 3y ago
          It's arduous relative to today's standards and relative to piracy.
          • brigandish 3y ago
            Carrying those books wasn't arduous, except when I travelled around Asia and decided my main bag should be books. Big books. Almost ruined my back. Words have meaning. Arduous it ain't.
            • chii 3y ago
              Tiresome doesn't necessarily mean physically tired. Words do have meaning, and you would know if you read those meaning to understand the idea being presented.
              • brigandish 3y ago
                Arduous never means "something that is slightly inconvenient" unless one is prone to exaggeration and has the forbearance of a child. > Tiresome doesn't necessarily mean physically tired. Not necessarily, no, not at all. I suggest a dictionary. Back in the day, people who cared about reading and the meaning of words would keep one handy, often next to the bed.
                • 3y ago
      • friendzis 3y ago
        > but the post above explain an arduous process for a purchase, and i would expect that there's not an insignificant number of people who would've given up in the middle. Honestly, I would have given up at the very first step. It clearly says that the content is available, but vendor is explicitly refusing to serve the content.
    • zen_1 3y ago
      I am morally opposed to most IP laws and believe they are categorically illegitimate.
      • NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
        By your own authority, then. Are you a judge, or governor, or a bishop or something?
        • zen_1 3y ago
          I'm arguing based on reasoning, not authority. Are you a satire account by any chance?
          • NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
            By what authority do you promote illegal activity? I mean, I support civil disobedience, and jury nullification, and such things, but those are generally personal matters, that one does not promote or encourage in public. Absolutely remarkable that folks in this thread appear to hate freedom so much that I can't even recommend freely-licensed Creative Commons content.
            • defrost 3y ago
              Why would you assume they are promoting "illegal activity". Not every country has signed the Berne Convention, and of those that have signed a number are only bound by the minimum copyright and IP laws of their own country rather than the maximum protections that other countries might hold to.
            • NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
              Because people refrained from encouraging jury nullification, it is now completely irrelevant. No one gets a trial with which a jury could even choose to nullify the charges. When you act coy with this stuff, they sneak around subverting it to the point that it no longer works. Did you see what happened to OWS ten years back?
    • ccvannorman 3y ago
      > Do the ends justify the means, matey? Commenter's point was that it's obviously easier to pirate. This is exactly the point; As an author, I'm upset that the system is like it is, I'm not upset at the many people who are undoubtedly going to pirate my work if it's difficult to get, whether it's right or wrong. No Author finishes their work and declares, "Now, let me make this as difficult as possible to purchase." It's the PLATFORM.
      • Qwertious 3y ago
        >No Author finishes their work and declares, "Now, let me make this as difficult as possible to purchase." It's the PLATFORM. IMO, the logical conclusion here is obvious: copyright should provide the author with the right to money, but not with the right to control actual distribution - we should be legally allowed to send the author $X in the mail and then torrent the thing. This notion that the author should control the means of distribution? It's a historical artifact of old technology when publishing literally meant printing presses, and setting up a competing printing press without the author's authorization was an expensive choice that was inherently, obviously a means to rip off the author. IMO, every ISBN should have the author's bank account number next to it and obtaining a copy of the ebook should be as simple as sending $X to that bank account, then finding a torrent by ISBN.
        • eitland 3y ago
          This is actually a great starting point IMO.
        • chii 3y ago
          > every ISBN should have the author's bank account number next to it and obtaining a copy of the ebook should be as simple as sending $X to that bank account, then finding a torrent by ISBN. which is fine, except what happens if the author sold the rights to another company that then demand a different set of condition? Or are you saying that the owner of said copyright does not have the right to decide such (for example, they would want to decide that the works is only available as part of something else sold)?
    • sam0x17 3y ago
      > How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living? The vast majority of reputable studies on software/music/games piracy have found that piracy boosts sales, and significantly. This is why you seldom see these studies, because the powers that be don't want you to know that. A few breakout songs in the early 00s wouldn't have even made the top 100 if it weren't for limewire (laffy taffy being a prime example) and there were a number of artists at the time who intentionally capitalized on this. So yes in 20 years when I settle down and write a book about the rust community and my wild ride through the startup world, I'll probably upload the torrents myself because I know it will boost sales. Just like Adobe was caught doing back in the early 2000s (though if you try to google it now the news articles are mysteriously scrubbed from the internet). That's right, there is a good chance at least one of the Photoshop CS4 torrents you downloaded as a wee lad was uploaded by a marketing team at Adobe. They were caught red-handed doing this and it wasn't just some rogue employee. And if you think about it, it was absolutely brilliant. The script kiddies grow up using pirated photoshop, get into a work situation where they or their company can actually afford it, and presto now you have a customer with a lifetime of lock-in to your ecosystem and guilt for not paying for it all these years.
      • bryanrasmussen 3y ago
        >The vast majority of reputable studies on software/music/games piracy have found that piracy boosts sales Cool - what do the studies on books show? I mean it might boost sales, I can definitely see how it might, but just because things that are very different from books get their sales boosted does not mean that books do.
      • ferbivore 3y ago
        Which studies? The closest thing I can find is the inconclusive EC study that was misreported as "piracy boosts sales". I could see that being true in some cases, but for games and music?
    • Obscurus 3y ago
      My favourite way is to get a kindle book via Libby, keep it on airplane until I’m actually done, and then buy the physical book to keep. No harm no foul imo.
    • kaba0 3y ago
      So I should be contempt with 1/1000th of all literature? Especially when authors often barely get anything out of their books’ sales, for example science textbooks/research articles. Thanks, I’m more than fine with torrenting, especially when digital copying is not stealing, it has no material consequence. If someone downloads content illegally they wouldn’t have bought either way, the net sum of knowledge/pleasure increases in the world.
    • mvdwoord 3y ago
      You are a lot of fun at parties I guess... Perhaps authors could explore more consumer friendly ways of distributing their work? You paint a false dichotomy.
    • matheusmoreira 3y ago
      > How would you feel, if you were an author I think I'd feel pretty great if I were a perpetual monopolist and rent seeker. As a child I never really developed the reality warping field necessary to believe I can own bits and numbers.
    • carlosjobim 3y ago
      > How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living? I'd feel frustrated, to say the least! That's why I think people who pirate should make an effort to buy the book if it's fairly recently published. It's usually not expensive. However, for older books I think pirating is fine. Usually the authors have passed away.
    • thefurdrake 3y ago
      > How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living? I'd feel like I need to start publishing on a non-user-hostile platform and, having been a writer for most of my life AND having used Amazon for over a decade, wouldn't be upset at people pirating my work. Perhaps if things continue this way, more and more authors will seek alternatives to Amazon Kindle and a new platform will emerge. Unlike video content, hosting for ebooks really wouldn't be that expensive. I think competition is viable in this area.
  • notcensored02 3y ago
    [dead]
• barbazoo 3y ago
  Or at least go to kobo or any other non-shitty company, buy and download book and then download to device
• Turskarama 3y ago
  To be fair, my experience on kindle with a regular account has been: 1. search for book on kindle 2. press buy 3. wait for book to download directly onto kindle 4. read book I'm not using kindle to find books mind you, generally I already know what I'm after. I get almost all of my recommendations from friends too, it pays to know people who read even more than you do and have similar taste.
  • ImaCake 3y ago
    Its great when the book is reasonably priced and not obscure. For more obscure books its never clear if the book will be formatted correctly, contain all the content, or even be a legitimate book. I often try the sample and find if lacking and so I find a torrent that is often much higher quality.
• stevenwliao 3y ago
  > Search for torrent or download link, click, Hope that you didn't click a sketchy ad that looks just like the download link, because the site didn't police any of its ads.
  • oefnak 3y ago
    I recommend looking into adblockers! uBlock Origin is the best one.
    • stevenwliao 3y ago
      Most people don't run an adblocker on their phone, and these torrent sites would cease to exist or become malware sites themselves if enough users used adblock. Let's not kid ourselves- these site runners are not Aaron Swartz.
      • kaba0 3y ago
        So what? If you are looking for an epub file, but instead get an exe just don’t run it. Mobile OSs are quite good at security, but even desktop has largely grown up to the task now.
      • carlosjobim 3y ago
        Nobody is getting their books from torrent sites. They get ePubs or PDFs from Anna's Archive or LibGen.
  • lelanthran 3y ago
    > Hope that you didn't click a sketchy ad that looks just like the download link, because the site didn't police any of its ads. That only happens once. Maybe twice. Most people learn.
  • archon810 3y ago
    It's not reasonable to expect site operators police every ad if they use a major ad network, like Adsense. There are millions of creatives, and new ones get uploaded every minute.
• masklinn 3y ago
  As a wise man once said > piracy is almost always a service issue and not a pricing issue
  • unglaublich 3y ago
    Service _is_ a pricing issue: pricing is about the valuation of a service. If the price doesn't outweigh the benefits of the service, people will not use the service.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
• rg111 3y ago
  Just text the book title to Telegram bot of Z-Library. Under 5 seconds, you have the book. Tap the share button to email the book to your Kindle email address. If the Kindle has wifi on, the book automatically appears under another 10 seconds. The whole process takes less than 30 seconds. I buy Kindles specifically for this feature of being able to mail EPUBs to Kindle. When or if it is no longer possible, I stop buying Kindles.
  • archon810 3y ago
    I tried Telegram at first and found several channels all claiming to be official, but without obvious instructions for such a bot. Then I tried Googling, and there are countless shady links. It's unclear what the real thing is and what's a scam/spam. https://www.reddit.com/r/zlibrary https://www.reddit.com/r/zlibrary is full of warnings about scam websites. My point is it's hardly easier, let alone safe, compared to Amazon. Edit: Is it this? https://go-to-zlibrary.se/#telegram_bot_tab https://go-to-zlibrary.se/#telegram_bot_tab. Seems a bit risky, given the trail it creates vs anonymous downloads from some tor site.
    • rg111 3y ago
      Not that. You try the link that says Single Login. I use ZLib since before it was popular. So there was near zero risks of scam sites.
      • archon810 3y ago
        There's no Single Login url on that page. But there's one I found here https://singlelogin.me/ https://singlelogin.me/. Except it's seized by the FBI.
• adhesive_wombat 3y ago
  > Upload to device. Compared to a WisperNet download, that's actually a bit of a faff. Don't get me wrong, I use a hacked Kobo, but getting the books on the thing requires a computer and either to use a micro-USB cable or faffing about with a fileshare and WebDAV. Kindle: attach book to Kindle email address, send.
  • hnben 3y ago
    > Kindle: attach book to Kindle email address, send. I like to image, that jeff bezos dies a little inside whenever I do this.
    • adhesive_wombat 3y ago
      I imagine they add one more microdrone hunter-killer with my name in the EEPROM to the swarm.
  • okasaki 3y ago
    Does the kindle have a web browser? If so you can just go directly to libgen and download books.
• c0eos 3y ago
  If you have a jailbroken Kindle, I highly recommend using https://github.com/gutenye/syncthing-kindle https://github.com/gutenye/syncthing-kindle - no need to plug into your computer anymore.