5 ms·

I've limited sympathy for the publishers. It pisses me off to reflect that they can sit on works until copyright expires, keeping them out of print. There's no

I've limited sympathy for the publishers. It pisses me off to reflect that they can sit on works until copyright expires, keeping them out of print. There's no real need for any of these so-called rare books to be rare while they're under copyright. And related to this, the books that are in print are mostly only in print in the shittiest way. I often see well-made books from the 17th or 18th centuries which are still in good nick. It's ridiculous that in the 21st century, publication standards have fallen to the point where for most works a disposable format is the only type available - where no amount of money could buy a truly decent hardback copy. If we have to have copyright laws, I'd like to see two changes to them. When a publisher has no incentive to keep an edition in print, it should be available to any other publisher to print, without compensation to the original publisher, and with renegotiated royalties for the author. And if the publisher keeps a book in print - but only in bestseller-grade materials, bogroll paper that furrows in any humidity and perfect binding that molts its pages a couple of dry seasons later - and if it refuses to print a durable hardback copy with signatures, good paper and decent print - something that will still be readable in several generations' time - any other publisher keen to have a crack at it should be able to, again without any compensation for the original publisher, though perhaps in this case, with matching royalties for the author.

nobodyandproud 2mo ago
I agree. However, AI companies have managed to make publishers and copyright owners saints by comparison.
kasey_junk 2mo ago
Books in the 17th and 18th century often didnt get bound by the publisher. They were done by independent binders for _custom_ orders. You’d see whole libraries with the owners binding/cover standards rather than per book. Books in that time were _luxury_ goods. Most people could not afford them. One of the ways that was changed was to introduce cheap, mass produced bindings that were lower quality than the bespoke artisianal bindings done by specialist craftsmen. You can still get custom bindings done. There exists whole niches on the internet of crafters that will take a production run book and strip its binding and make you extremely high quality and custom bindings and covers.
- DrewADesign 2mo ago
  I worked in an academic library that rebound pretty much every book they acquired. One of the biggest in the world, too.
  - kasey_junk 2mo ago
    My wife worked for a company that specialized in rebinding paperbacks for schools and libraries. It makes more economic sense to do that for niche use cases rather than make all print runs more expensive.
    - DrewADesign 2mo ago
      Yeah it depends on the library and collection. If it’s a general-purpose library, probably a pretty limited portion of the collection. If it’s a grad school library with a low-turnover collection, like the one I worked in, that’s totally different. The college I worked for had dozens of libraries and their use cases were all pretty different.
  - pfdietz 2mo ago
    Nowadays, academic libraries are moving their books to archival storage. New publications are electronic only. You need to be a formal member of the university community to access it, unlike in times past when any member of the public could stroll the aisles of physical books and journals.
    - DrewADesign 2mo ago
      Most academic libraries have large archival collections anyway, and the extent to which they de-emphasize their patron-facing stacks varies dramatically between institutions. Same with who can access them. You just can’t generalize like that.
- ryanmcbride 2mo ago
  Learning this fact is what got me interested into binding my own books! With how the quality of things seems to have been degrading over the years (either real or just me getting older and experiencing the impermanence of all things) I've been trying to adopt an attitude of "if this practice existed before the industrial revolution, I can _probably_ do it" and it's been really great to learn how things were made before they had to be mass produced as cheaply as possible.
streetfighter64 2mo ago
> When a publisher has no incentive to keep an edition in print, it should be available to any other publisher to print How do you adjudicate that? And wouldn't it just lead to loopholes such as "Ghost Printings" (cf. Ghost Flights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_flight_(commercial_aviation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_flight_(commercial_aviat... ) where the books are technically printed in the required volume but practically unavailable to customers through one method or another. Because, the cost of wastefully printing a few books to warehouse, is less than the potential losses of the IP rights, probably.
- flir 2mo ago
  I think putting the works in a print-on-demand catalogue at an unreasonable price would be more likely. But there are worse outcomes.
tookmund 2mo ago
> I often see well-made books from the 17th or 18th centuries which are still in good nick At the risk of stating the obvious, any poorly made books from then wouldn’t have lasted this long and so you would never see them.
- ortusdux 2mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
kevin_thibedeau 2mo ago
> I often see well-made books from the 17th or 18th centuries which are still in good nick. Those books predate the development of wood pulp paper. It isn't the publisher's fault they can't economically print on rag paper anymore.
ShinyLeftPad 2mo ago
I have even less sympathy for IP stealing LLM operators
- phoghed 2mo ago
  It’s been determined that training on lawfully acquired works is fair use. Presumably in this discussion of shredding physical books Dario and Sam are not pulling heists at the local library. I’m sure there’s ongoing litigation, and better sources than this, but fair use was determined in June 2025 in a sf federal district court https://www.goodwinlaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/06/alerts-practices-aiml-district-court-issues-ai-fair-use-decision?utm_source=your_mom https://www.goodwinlaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/06/... Similar conclusion vs meta https://www.jw.com/news/insights-kadrey-meta-bartz-anthropic-ai-copyright/?utm_source=your_mom https://www.jw.com/news/insights-kadrey-meta-bartz-anthropic... And the more recent $1.5B settlement did not overturn it https://www.reuters.com/world/us-judge-approves-anthropics-15-billion-settlement-copyright-lawsuit-2026-07-20/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us-judge-approves-anthropics-1...
  - ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
    You don’t know what “Fair Use” is. Fair Use is not an activity that you engage in. Fair Use is not a category with criteria that you meet. Fair Use is not a precedent that paves the way for everything afterwards. Fair Use is a defense that can be used in court when you’re named in a copyright lawsuit. Fair Use is how you justify your actions before the court finds infringement.
    - parineum 2mo ago
      s/fair use/ip theft The comment uses the same language as it's parent.
    - gruez 2mo ago
      >>It’s been determined that training on lawfully acquired works is fair use >You don’t know what “Fair Use” is. This isn't the opinion of some armchair HN commenter. Actual judges have affirmed this, as other commenters in this thread has pointed out.
stellamariesays 2mo ago
[flagged]
nyeah 2mo ago
Yeah it's as if the publishers are somehow strapped for cash compared to AI companies.
giancarlostoro 2mo ago
A friend proposed that copyright should just die with the author and / or their spouse and I'm left agreeing. I want books and music to be less strict on copyright. Some of my favorite YouTube channels break down music and songs, and go as far as recreating beats / tracks from famous hip hop songs, but someone at a record label company dings every one of their videos, they can barely sample a few seconds, its VERY CLEARLY fair use, and even gets me to listen to the songs more, but they are stealing all revenue for a fair use video that took a lot of time and money to make to begin with, they are profiting from work they didn't even do. This is silly to me, I'm sure there's loads of other channels and videos out there screwed over by the record industry over 15 second samples from a song... Which should 100% be fair use and not be given to the record labels. Issue is small streamers have no legal defense. Edit, adding the channel I am referring to: https://www.youtube.com/@diggingthegreats/videos https://www.youtube.com/@diggingthegreats/videos
- Always42 2mo ago
  This would create incentive to kill people
  - ktm5j 2mo ago
    So does life insurance.. but we still have that.
    - fragmede 2mo ago
      What we don't have anymore though because of that, is tontines.
      - dspillett 2mo ago
        They are still around.
        account42 2mo ago
        And common if you count retirement funds.
ctolsen 2mo ago
I'd go for the less complex version: just make copyright last for like 20 years at most.
jolmg 2mo ago
> I've limited sympathy for the publishers. This doesn't affect publishers. It affects humanity as a whole by having large private parties hoard books to partly destroy them. The covers and spines can have historical value too. There's not even a reason for these companies to release their scans to the public once the copyright expires. It prevents proper preservation by archivists and preservationists.
SwtCyber 2mo ago
[dead]
Aurornis 2mo ago
> It's ridiculous that in the 21st century, publication standards have fallen to the point where for most works a disposable format is the only type available - where no amount of money could buy a truly decent hardback copy. This is purely a response to market demand. Publishers aren’t going to put in the extra expense of binding high quality versions of every book so it can occupy warehouse space while consumers everywhere buy the cheap paperback. > And if the publisher keeps a book in print - but only in bestseller-grade materials, bogroll paper that furrows in any humidity and perfect binding that molts its pages a couple of dry seasons later - and if it refuses to print a durable hardback copy with signatures, good paper and decent print - something that will still be readable in several generations' time - any other publisher keen to have a crack at it should be able to, again without any compensation for the original publisher, though perhaps in this case, with matching royalties for the author. This is all based on the idea that there is hidden demand for something, but publishers are choosing to deprive us all of it for reasons. That if we open up the laws, another company will come along and satisfy this hidden market opportunity and associated profits that publishers are declining to take. The simpler explanation is that these high quality editions aren’t being published because the publishers have the data about demand for them. They know they won’t sell. If the goal is preservation, laws forcing publishers to print on slightly nicer paper isn’t going to solve the problem. It needs to be a robust digital archive and it needs to exist somewhere other than in unsold warehouse inventory or some book collector’s shelf. You’re trying to solve a problem with last century’s technology.
- abdullahkhalids 2mo ago
  Large publishers are optimizing their overall revenue/profit, not the revenue/profit per book. Given that large publishers dictate a significant fraction of what appears on bookstore shelves, how concentrated publicity drives of new books/authors drives their sales at the expense of old books/authors, and how the emergence of second hand books outside their control drives sales in different categories, its extremely likely that the advantageous strategy often is to not print older titles even when there is demand for them.
eudamoniac 2mo ago
I've never read a coherent argument for why all of these "should"s should be. I understand you want to read the books. But I don't see how that desire results in the laws needing to be changed so that you can read everything you want, even things the author or owner doesn't want you to read. There is not a shortage of books in print. I don't understand why people get so hung up on a few of them being out of print. It is okay for someone to own something cool and not let anyone see it. The cool thing doesn't suddenly become a societal necessity because it is words written down.
- jolmg 2mo ago
  > There is not a shortage of books in print. I don't understand why people get so hung up on a few of them being out of print. Because the point isn't so much in reading whatever text as if all text is the same. The point is the spreading of knowledge. A single book can contain knowledge not present in any other. > But I don't see how that desire results in the laws needing to be changed so that you can read everything you want In order for your "people" (country, etc.) to do better, you want them to be educated. In order for people to understand one another, you want them to be able to see all the same various perspectives there are. It makes perfect sense for laws to aim for these goals. This is why libraries exist. > It is okay for someone to own something cool and not let anyone see it. The cool thing doesn't suddenly become a societal necessity because it is words written down. Books aren't simply trinkets, like an item you bought at a gift-shop. > I understand you want to read the books. I think you're looking at this too much as what people want for their own individual selves, when it's more of what people want for everyone. It's about what they believe is best for society as a whole. They don't need to want to read a book themselves.
  - eudamoniac 2mo ago
    Which books are in copyright, not being published, and contain unique valuable knowledge? I've never seen this be the case. It's always some genre fiction or obsolete botanical text or something. I've never seen valuable knowledge locked away like you are describing.
trescenzi 2mo ago
No one reasonable is concerned for publishers they are concerned for the books. Assuming the allegations are correct historical artifacts are being destroyed with no trace. It doesn’t even matter if they republish it. The artifact itself and the time it has transited is the valuable thing. It is simply immoral to destroy stuff like this.
andrepd 2mo ago
Thanks for your thoughts, but how is this is anyway relevant to the issue at hand? I'm sad that this is the top comment...
cataphract 2mo ago
The post doesn't call for the sympathy for the publishers, so I'm not sure what you're responding to.
tourmalinetaco 2mo ago
15 years, 5 year extension, that’s it. That’s all we ever need, and there is no logical reason to extend it outside of the kind of greed they warned about in The Bible. Additionally, any and all source code, assets, etc should all be entered into the copyright office and released when it enters the public domain. This should even include printing assets and high res copies of artwork. Copyright can be intrinsic, sure, but only to maybe 5-10yrs, far less than the maximum to incentivize registration (and thus incentivizing archiving of culture). I should be able to freely download every Disney film prior to 2006, compile Killer7 for the fun of it, buy a hardback of the LOTR trilogy from any printer I wish, and do so without any interference from the copyright holders. However, because we don’t live in a utopia and Sonny Bozo became a politician, I’ll be waving a certain jolly flag for the foreseeable future.
SimonTemplar 2mo ago
This has little to do with copyright, chances are many of these books were written before that. It’s much more about preserving knowledge. AI labs are a bit like the Borg. They eat up knowledge and so far the average output is often questionable.
tracker1 2mo ago
That's one that really gets me... if I'm buying a classic work or reprint, I'd really like a decent copy that can be handed down generationally... no such thing gets published today. I can understand a technical manual or programming book being printed in a lesser quality, even some education materials as they're likely to only be read through maybe once and maybe sparsely used for reference. I can even understand the cheaper novel prints... but there should be decent hard back/cover copies that are much higher quality than what we see today. There's really zero excuse for it. Other than general enshitification we see everywhere. I think if a work is out of publication/availability for over a decade, then copyright should maybe be forfeit altogether. Especially, if that would include digital copies, that has pretty much zero production cost.

nobodyandproud 2mo ago

I agree. However, AI companies have managed to make publishers and copyright owners saints by comparison.

kasey_junk 2mo ago

Books in the 17th and 18th century often didnt get bound by the publisher. They were done by independent binders for _custom_ orders. You’d see whole libraries with the owners binding/cover standards rather than per book. Books in that time were _luxury_ goods. Most people could not afford them. One of the ways that was changed was to introduce cheap, mass produced bindings that were lower quality than the bespoke artisianal bindings done by specialist craftsmen. You can still get custom bindings done. There exists whole niches on the internet of crafters that will take a production run book and strip its binding and make you extremely high quality and custom bindings and covers.

DrewADesign 2mo ago
I worked in an academic library that rebound pretty much every book they acquired. One of the biggest in the world, too.
- kasey_junk 2mo ago
  My wife worked for a company that specialized in rebinding paperbacks for schools and libraries. It makes more economic sense to do that for niche use cases rather than make all print runs more expensive.
  - DrewADesign 2mo ago
    Yeah it depends on the library and collection. If it’s a general-purpose library, probably a pretty limited portion of the collection. If it’s a grad school library with a low-turnover collection, like the one I worked in, that’s totally different. The college I worked for had dozens of libraries and their use cases were all pretty different.
- pfdietz 2mo ago
  Nowadays, academic libraries are moving their books to archival storage. New publications are electronic only. You need to be a formal member of the university community to access it, unlike in times past when any member of the public could stroll the aisles of physical books and journals.
  - DrewADesign 2mo ago
    Most academic libraries have large archival collections anyway, and the extent to which they de-emphasize their patron-facing stacks varies dramatically between institutions. Same with who can access them. You just can’t generalize like that.
ryanmcbride 2mo ago
Learning this fact is what got me interested into binding my own books! With how the quality of things seems to have been degrading over the years (either real or just me getting older and experiencing the impermanence of all things) I've been trying to adopt an attitude of "if this practice existed before the industrial revolution, I can _probably_ do it" and it's been really great to learn how things were made before they had to be mass produced as cheaply as possible.

streetfighter64 2mo ago

> When a publisher has no incentive to keep an edition in print, it should be available to any other publisher to print How do you adjudicate that? And wouldn't it just lead to loopholes such as "Ghost Printings" (cf. Ghost Flights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_flight_(commercial_aviation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_flight_(commercial_aviat... ) where the books are technically printed in the required volume but practically unavailable to customers through one method or another. Because, the cost of wastefully printing a few books to warehouse, is less than the potential losses of the IP rights, probably.

flir 2mo ago
I think putting the works in a print-on-demand catalogue at an unreasonable price would be more likely. But there are worse outcomes.

tookmund 2mo ago

> I often see well-made books from the 17th or 18th centuries which are still in good nick At the risk of stating the obvious, any poorly made books from then wouldn’t have lasted this long and so you would never see them.

ortusdux 2mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

kevin_thibedeau 2mo ago

> I often see well-made books from the 17th or 18th centuries which are still in good nick. Those books predate the development of wood pulp paper. It isn't the publisher's fault they can't economically print on rag paper anymore.

ShinyLeftPad 2mo ago

I have even less sympathy for IP stealing LLM operators

phoghed 2mo ago
It’s been determined that training on lawfully acquired works is fair use. Presumably in this discussion of shredding physical books Dario and Sam are not pulling heists at the local library. I’m sure there’s ongoing litigation, and better sources than this, but fair use was determined in June 2025 in a sf federal district court https://www.goodwinlaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/06/alerts-practices-aiml-district-court-issues-ai-fair-use-decision?utm_source=your_mom https://www.goodwinlaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/06/... Similar conclusion vs meta https://www.jw.com/news/insights-kadrey-meta-bartz-anthropic-ai-copyright/?utm_source=your_mom https://www.jw.com/news/insights-kadrey-meta-bartz-anthropic... And the more recent $1.5B settlement did not overturn it https://www.reuters.com/world/us-judge-approves-anthropics-15-billion-settlement-copyright-lawsuit-2026-07-20/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us-judge-approves-anthropics-1...
- ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
  You don’t know what “Fair Use” is. Fair Use is not an activity that you engage in. Fair Use is not a category with criteria that you meet. Fair Use is not a precedent that paves the way for everything afterwards. Fair Use is a defense that can be used in court when you’re named in a copyright lawsuit. Fair Use is how you justify your actions before the court finds infringement.
  - parineum 2mo ago
    s/fair use/ip theft The comment uses the same language as it's parent.
  - gruez 2mo ago
    >>It’s been determined that training on lawfully acquired works is fair use >You don’t know what “Fair Use” is. This isn't the opinion of some armchair HN commenter. Actual judges have affirmed this, as other commenters in this thread has pointed out.

stellamariesays 2mo ago

[flagged]

nyeah 2mo ago

Yeah it's as if the publishers are somehow strapped for cash compared to AI companies.

giancarlostoro 2mo ago

A friend proposed that copyright should just die with the author and / or their spouse and I'm left agreeing. I want books and music to be less strict on copyright. Some of my favorite YouTube channels break down music and songs, and go as far as recreating beats / tracks from famous hip hop songs, but someone at a record label company dings every one of their videos, they can barely sample a few seconds, its VERY CLEARLY fair use, and even gets me to listen to the songs more, but they are stealing all revenue for a fair use video that took a lot of time and money to make to begin with, they are profiting from work they didn't even do. This is silly to me, I'm sure there's loads of other channels and videos out there screwed over by the record industry over 15 second samples from a song... Which should 100% be fair use and not be given to the record labels. Issue is small streamers have no legal defense. Edit, adding the channel I am referring to: https://www.youtube.com/@diggingthegreats/videos https://www.youtube.com/@diggingthegreats/videos

Always42 2mo ago
This would create incentive to kill people
- ktm5j 2mo ago
  So does life insurance.. but we still have that.
  - fragmede 2mo ago
    What we don't have anymore though because of that, is tontines.
    - dspillett 2mo ago
      They are still around.
      - account42 2mo ago
        And common if you count retirement funds.

ctolsen 2mo ago

I'd go for the less complex version: just make copyright last for like 20 years at most.

jolmg 2mo ago

> I've limited sympathy for the publishers. This doesn't affect publishers. It affects humanity as a whole by having large private parties hoard books to partly destroy them. The covers and spines can have historical value too. There's not even a reason for these companies to release their scans to the public once the copyright expires. It prevents proper preservation by archivists and preservationists.

SwtCyber 2mo ago

[dead]

Aurornis 2mo ago

> It's ridiculous that in the 21st century, publication standards have fallen to the point where for most works a disposable format is the only type available - where no amount of money could buy a truly decent hardback copy. This is purely a response to market demand. Publishers aren’t going to put in the extra expense of binding high quality versions of every book so it can occupy warehouse space while consumers everywhere buy the cheap paperback. > And if the publisher keeps a book in print - but only in bestseller-grade materials, bogroll paper that furrows in any humidity and perfect binding that molts its pages a couple of dry seasons later - and if it refuses to print a durable hardback copy with signatures, good paper and decent print - something that will still be readable in several generations' time - any other publisher keen to have a crack at it should be able to, again without any compensation for the original publisher, though perhaps in this case, with matching royalties for the author. This is all based on the idea that there is hidden demand for something, but publishers are choosing to deprive us all of it for reasons. That if we open up the laws, another company will come along and satisfy this hidden market opportunity and associated profits that publishers are declining to take. The simpler explanation is that these high quality editions aren’t being published because the publishers have the data about demand for them. They know they won’t sell. If the goal is preservation, laws forcing publishers to print on slightly nicer paper isn’t going to solve the problem. It needs to be a robust digital archive and it needs to exist somewhere other than in unsold warehouse inventory or some book collector’s shelf. You’re trying to solve a problem with last century’s technology.

abdullahkhalids 2mo ago
Large publishers are optimizing their overall revenue/profit, not the revenue/profit per book. Given that large publishers dictate a significant fraction of what appears on bookstore shelves, how concentrated publicity drives of new books/authors drives their sales at the expense of old books/authors, and how the emergence of second hand books outside their control drives sales in different categories, its extremely likely that the advantageous strategy often is to not print older titles even when there is demand for them.

eudamoniac 2mo ago

I've never read a coherent argument for why all of these "should"s should be. I understand you want to read the books. But I don't see how that desire results in the laws needing to be changed so that you can read everything you want, even things the author or owner doesn't want you to read. There is not a shortage of books in print. I don't understand why people get so hung up on a few of them being out of print. It is okay for someone to own something cool and not let anyone see it. The cool thing doesn't suddenly become a societal necessity because it is words written down.

jolmg 2mo ago
> There is not a shortage of books in print. I don't understand why people get so hung up on a few of them being out of print. Because the point isn't so much in reading whatever text as if all text is the same. The point is the spreading of knowledge. A single book can contain knowledge not present in any other. > But I don't see how that desire results in the laws needing to be changed so that you can read everything you want In order for your "people" (country, etc.) to do better, you want them to be educated. In order for people to understand one another, you want them to be able to see all the same various perspectives there are. It makes perfect sense for laws to aim for these goals. This is why libraries exist. > It is okay for someone to own something cool and not let anyone see it. The cool thing doesn't suddenly become a societal necessity because it is words written down. Books aren't simply trinkets, like an item you bought at a gift-shop. > I understand you want to read the books. I think you're looking at this too much as what people want for their own individual selves, when it's more of what people want for everyone. It's about what they believe is best for society as a whole. They don't need to want to read a book themselves.
- eudamoniac 2mo ago
  Which books are in copyright, not being published, and contain unique valuable knowledge? I've never seen this be the case. It's always some genre fiction or obsolete botanical text or something. I've never seen valuable knowledge locked away like you are describing.

trescenzi 2mo ago

No one reasonable is concerned for publishers they are concerned for the books. Assuming the allegations are correct historical artifacts are being destroyed with no trace. It doesn’t even matter if they republish it. The artifact itself and the time it has transited is the valuable thing. It is simply immoral to destroy stuff like this.

andrepd 2mo ago

Thanks for your thoughts, but how is this is anyway relevant to the issue at hand? I'm sad that this is the top comment...

cataphract 2mo ago

The post doesn't call for the sympathy for the publishers, so I'm not sure what you're responding to.

tourmalinetaco 2mo ago

15 years, 5 year extension, that’s it. That’s all we ever need, and there is no logical reason to extend it outside of the kind of greed they warned about in The Bible. Additionally, any and all source code, assets, etc should all be entered into the copyright office and released when it enters the public domain. This should even include printing assets and high res copies of artwork. Copyright can be intrinsic, sure, but only to maybe 5-10yrs, far less than the maximum to incentivize registration (and thus incentivizing archiving of culture). I should be able to freely download every Disney film prior to 2006, compile Killer7 for the fun of it, buy a hardback of the LOTR trilogy from any printer I wish, and do so without any interference from the copyright holders. However, because we don’t live in a utopia and Sonny Bozo became a politician, I’ll be waving a certain jolly flag for the foreseeable future.

SimonTemplar 2mo ago

This has little to do with copyright, chances are many of these books were written before that. It’s much more about preserving knowledge. AI labs are a bit like the Borg. They eat up knowledge and so far the average output is often questionable.

tracker1 2mo ago

That's one that really gets me... if I'm buying a classic work or reprint, I'd really like a decent copy that can be handed down generationally... no such thing gets published today. I can understand a technical manual or programming book being printed in a lesser quality, even some education materials as they're likely to only be read through maybe once and maybe sparsely used for reference. I can even understand the cheaper novel prints... but there should be decent hard back/cover copies that are much higher quality than what we see today. There's really zero excuse for it. Other than general enshitification we see everywhere. I think if a work is out of publication/availability for over a decade, then copyright should maybe be forfeit altogether. Especially, if that would include digital copies, that has pretty much zero production cost.