4 ms·

Donate to authors? How many ever do this. Please. I'm sure if your livelihood was affected by piracy, you would feel differently.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> I'm sure if your livelihood was affected by piracy, you would feel differently. The livelihood of many researchers is affected by piracy - in a positive way. If these shadow libraries wouldn't exist, they would have a much harder time doing their research (and thus - to bring in livelihood - staying in their research position and/or getting research grants).
grafmax 2y ago
It’s worth noting that paying retailers and publishers books is actually a very inefficient way to compensate authors. They typically only see a small fraction of this revenue. The piracy debate often simplifies the issue as one of pirates vs authors. But pirates vs publishing and retailing businesses is closer to the truth, when you look at where the money goes.
observationist 2y ago
Not many people donate, yet many of my favorite authors have this available. I've even donated to actors and animators that had bitcoin wallets. The DMCA exists almost entirely to support a class of fiscal leeches and parasites who extract value from individuals and groups who produce media. Copyright law in the US is fundamentally and irreparably broken; rights holders hoard massive collections of legal technicalities, then use the gotcha provisions to go after little people, artists, parents of kids who don't know to use a vpn, and an endless parade of people who don't even deserve to be hassled over a downloaded file, let alone have their lives and livelihoods wrecked. 99.999% of all sales, whether physical or digital, have been made within 5 years of media going to market. A vast majority of the profits from those sales go to publishers, platforms, lawyers in the middle, and people who bring virtually no value to the market whatsoever. They tell great stories about how they provide funding and advertisement, and guaranteed sales, and distribution, but the fact of the matter is, we live in a connected world where there is nothing cheaper than the things they purport to facilitate. We need to disempower these centralized leeches and overhaul copyright law, limiting the scope and scale to which massive organizations can hoard rights, strictly limiting the time frame. Massive corporations like Sony profiting off of a technicality, not bringing any concurrent return on value to society, simply leeching off artists, and using the returns to get their tentacles on more - situations like this have to end. It's absurd, and it incentivizes abuses almost anywhere it touches. Please. Pay attention to the world you live in - it's not about the "yOu WoUlDn'T dOwNlOaD a CaR!11!" argument, it's about the rules we purport to live by serving nobody except the lawyers who figured out gotchanomics exploits and spend a metric shitton of money on lobbying, bribes, campaigns, and aggressive lawsuits to defend their racket. That MAFIAA is a thing should be sufficient incentive to wipe the board and start from scratch. Until the copyright system gets fixed and there's a fair system in play, pirating everything is the only moral and ethical choice. By continuing to participate and support the system as is, you kick the can down the road to some future generation to handle. You disenfranchise the artists who are exploited, suppressed, and otherwise abused. You put money in the pockets of lawyers who "earned" that profit on a technicality. By pirating and donating directly, you do no harm and ever so slightly deprive a badly broken and abusive system of unearned profit.
agumonkey 2y ago
that could be a fun idea actually.. whenever a book author has a patreon or a tippee .. throw them a buck or two (that doesn't help the editor / distributor though)
DANmode 2y ago
I'd never tie my eating to someone avoiding hitting the download button.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago

> I'm sure if your livelihood was affected by piracy, you would feel differently. The livelihood of many researchers is affected by piracy - in a positive way. If these shadow libraries wouldn't exist, they would have a much harder time doing their research (and thus - to bring in livelihood - staying in their research position and/or getting research grants).

grafmax 2y ago

It’s worth noting that paying retailers and publishers books is actually a very inefficient way to compensate authors. They typically only see a small fraction of this revenue. The piracy debate often simplifies the issue as one of pirates vs authors. But pirates vs publishing and retailing businesses is closer to the truth, when you look at where the money goes.

observationist 2y ago

Not many people donate, yet many of my favorite authors have this available. I've even donated to actors and animators that had bitcoin wallets. The DMCA exists almost entirely to support a class of fiscal leeches and parasites who extract value from individuals and groups who produce media. Copyright law in the US is fundamentally and irreparably broken; rights holders hoard massive collections of legal technicalities, then use the gotcha provisions to go after little people, artists, parents of kids who don't know to use a vpn, and an endless parade of people who don't even deserve to be hassled over a downloaded file, let alone have their lives and livelihoods wrecked. 99.999% of all sales, whether physical or digital, have been made within 5 years of media going to market. A vast majority of the profits from those sales go to publishers, platforms, lawyers in the middle, and people who bring virtually no value to the market whatsoever. They tell great stories about how they provide funding and advertisement, and guaranteed sales, and distribution, but the fact of the matter is, we live in a connected world where there is nothing cheaper than the things they purport to facilitate. We need to disempower these centralized leeches and overhaul copyright law, limiting the scope and scale to which massive organizations can hoard rights, strictly limiting the time frame. Massive corporations like Sony profiting off of a technicality, not bringing any concurrent return on value to society, simply leeching off artists, and using the returns to get their tentacles on more - situations like this have to end. It's absurd, and it incentivizes abuses almost anywhere it touches. Please. Pay attention to the world you live in - it's not about the "yOu WoUlDn'T dOwNlOaD a CaR!11!" argument, it's about the rules we purport to live by serving nobody except the lawyers who figured out gotchanomics exploits and spend a metric shitton of money on lobbying, bribes, campaigns, and aggressive lawsuits to defend their racket. That MAFIAA is a thing should be sufficient incentive to wipe the board and start from scratch. Until the copyright system gets fixed and there's a fair system in play, pirating everything is the only moral and ethical choice. By continuing to participate and support the system as is, you kick the can down the road to some future generation to handle. You disenfranchise the artists who are exploited, suppressed, and otherwise abused. You put money in the pockets of lawyers who "earned" that profit on a technicality. By pirating and donating directly, you do no harm and ever so slightly deprive a badly broken and abusive system of unearned profit.

agumonkey 2y ago

that could be a fun idea actually.. whenever a book author has a patreon or a tippee .. throw them a buck or two (that doesn't help the editor / distributor though)

DANmode 2y ago

I'd never tie my eating to someone avoiding hitting the download button.