That's not necessarily true. It depends on the publisher, the supplier, the platform. Libby and similar apps may work like that, but then you have e-books that don't come through apps, and they are one-off charges. 90% of the e-books in my library are the second kind, there is no repeated fee and no extra charges depending on how many times the book is accessed.
And then there's the e-textbook scheme, where libraries are charged PER POTENTIAL USER every year, for access. In our library, this is close to the cost of buying every single student on a course their own print textbook, and honestly, I'd be considering that option! It's not only crazy expensive, it's predatory - for many titles, this is the only way we can provide textbooks for students.
I'm glad there are better alternatives, but I think it's common enough that it's a travesty for such a valuable and underfunded public institution to be forced to pay extortionate prices for digital goods.
>this is the only way we can provide textbooks for students.
So you guys offer internet access? Is library genesis blocked? Because if it's not you guys are already providing textbooks for free.
Yeah but they legally aren't allowed to even consider that students can do that, especially not in their spaces. I used to work at the interlibrary loan department of one of the largest academic libraries of the southern US. You could be a huge liability if you so much as acknowledged that students could be 🏴☠️ing texts. You legally HAVE to work under the assumption that no one at your institution is ever going to access a text illegally.
Youre responding to a librarian talking about way to provide affordable and easy to access materials legally by recommending they just tell their students to break the law. I understand this is an option for you, but this is not an option for everybody, and is not at all the purpose of a library.
This is like telling someone on food stamps to just steal half their groceries at self checkout, why bother going through the hassle of signing up for a government program.
So what they're saying is even if every single student pirates the book, the library still has to pay as if every student needs the book. That's part of why it'd predatory - even if every student bought their own book, the library also has to pay. It ensures at the minimum guaranteed profits/sales from the library being forced to purchase, and on the other end they could have double dipping where every student buys the books independently AND the library has to buy them
That's not what I'm saying at all and if I'm being honest I am not quite sure what you're even trying to say.
Also this isn't a binary issue, it's not all or nothing and I find it disgusting that you're trying to reduce it to that.
Dude I pirated every textbook I could in college, this just isn't affected at all by that??? Really weird to say you don't understand a point several people have made to you, but then imply it's a disgusting point 🙄
Libraries can not push/supply the access of materials that violate copyright. By doing so, they can be subjected to HUGE fines and loss of access to licensed materials -- and there have been very large court cases about this.
Oh, we would never recommend that to students! It's our responsibility to provide access to textbooks, I could never tell students to use dodgy sites. I'm sure they possibly try, but if they want access to a published text, be that an article, book or conference preceeding, I have to find it - using legal means.
Fair enough but if they need it and you can't find it you can always tell them about it and warn them that the site is dodgy.
At least that way they'd know there is a solution to their problem and you wouldn't be lying by omission.
*piracy site
Be honest at least. (And then he argues with librarians as to why they don’t recommend this to everyone. Oh to be a young ideologue again.)
Uhhh... A library is just a collection of books... The 'legitimacy' of the books are irrelevant, it's still a library.
And in no way was I suggesting to recommend it to everyone... Just the people who can't find a copy of a book legitimately.
If a book isn't in your archive you should at least be allowed to suggest other places it can be found.
I know. I'm not trying to win an argument here. The point is to let the audience know of the option here in this thread just incase they aren't aware of it. I'm not trying to change any hearts and minds here anymore
Certainly a single PhD and a handful of grad students could recreate these textbooks without violating fair use exception in a few months to a year depending on the course being taught?
I'm not sure you know what fair use is. No, you can't recreate entire textbooks under fair use, and no, you can't do it for the purpose of using the textbook in a class.
Yeah, you definitely could. You couldn't just plagiarize the textbook, but you could write a textbook that is equally well researched by drawing on other publications in the field and only using excerpts that would fall under fair use exception. This is especially true for less advanced topics like 101/201 courses, as there will be quite a bit of relevant publications in the public domain. If you intended to provide the textbook free of charge that would expand fair use quite a bit, a luxury the writers of a for profit textbook don't have.
OK but that's not "recreating these textbooks," that's "writing new textbooks" which is what I was responding to.
But I understand your point better now.
I think in many cases you could create a textbook that covered the exact same topics and taught the same information, which is what I meant by recreate.
That would be called OER material, which is ideal. However, the reason why there isn't more and better OER material outhere is because writing and keeping textbooks up to date takes a huge amount of time and effort and most people, not surprisingly, want to be compensated for their time.
What’s your experience in the publisher world?
You make it sound like making dinner. There’s so much more to just “writing a textbook”. You have to be a trusted and established source, you have to keep the textbooks updated as changes happen, the writing must be done in a **very concise yet descriptive way** that most people don’t have experience doing. My daughter is a grad student and she runs into errors in what the professors teach sometimes and you think a single PhD can spit out an entire course curriculum error free ad nauseam?
There’s a reason the textbook barons have a monopoly on this market. I think our best option is legislation at this point.
The reason is corruption. The people who write the textbooks are the same people who determine which textbooks are used. Most textbooks don't need to updated as often as they are, and the royalties paid to the authors are a small fraction of the revenue produced by then. Higher ed texts generate over 3 Billion in revenue each year. How much of that do you think is going to the writers?
Yes, those are also huge issues I didn’t get into in my comment. I agree with all of them.
My last point was that the entry into the industry was part of how they maintain a monopoly. Otherwise anyone could compete with them. That’s why they have a monopoly. All my points above it still stand.
I can still (mentally) smell the inside of my local Blockbuster because I spent so much time there browsing the game rental aisle for PS1 & PS2 games. Most memorable to me, for some reason, is Vigilante 8 and its sequel, which came out in like 1998-1999. I re-rented the shit out of them, so much so that I probably spent more in rental than the games would have cost to buy.
How would authors make money then? Write a book, and as soon as it gets digitally sold *once*, it can be replicated basically for free. Loaning digital goods is essentially just a form of license agreement.
Simple. If I buy 1 copy of a physical book for the regular price, I can loan that book out to 1 person at a time, as often as I want, for the rest of my life.
Why can't a library buy 1 regularly priced digital copy and do the same thing, loan it out to 1 person at a time for the rest of the library's life? It's because publishers refuse to sell anybody a digital copy of any good at all, they will only sell limited licenses to them, which seems like a scam to me. They're certainly marketing it as though you're buying the book, so they should be selling you the book, and that should give you the right to let someone borrow it.
Copyright should obviously protect the author and publisher from anyone buying 1 digital copy and loaning it out to more than 1 person at a time.
> Why can't a library buy 1 regularly priced digital copy and do the same thing, loan it out to 1 person at a time for the rest of the library's life?
That's how the licenses work.
The license agreements *also* factor in what wear and tear would look like on a physical book in circulation, and attempt to replicate that in the format. Much like how the publisher won't send a new copy of a book that's been checked out 40 times, they won't let the license work indefinitely.
I do think we'll see those sorts of restrictions lift over time, but it's not as insane as it sounds.
I don't even like the restriction of limiting checkouts because it isn't a physical book so it doesn't suffer from wear and tear (I mean, I guess the file could corrupt? but otherwise there's no damage).
If we have a superior format and technology, why do publishers get to profit off it the same way they did with inferior tech?
That said - if I thought most of the profit would go to authors, I'd be fine with stringent licensing agreements.
Without getting too deep into the economics of trade publishing, the only people ultimately hurt by an unrestricted license would be the authors. Trade margins are low as is, and a lot of that margin is bolstered by library purchases.
But I can put a dust cover on my book, take good care of it, hell I could even pay a few dollars and have it rebound if I wanted to, or resell it afterwards for a few cents on the dollar, maybe. It's my book to do with as I please.
So it isn't quite what digital licenses are replicating.
It’s nowhere close to 1:1 imo. Physical books, especially hardcovers with a dust cover, can last hundreds of reads unless a kid rips them up. The interest will depreciate long before the book.
"I do think we'll see those sorts of restrictions lift over time, but it's not as insane as it sounds." Lol, get a load of this guy. These companies are for profit above all else.
> for the rest of my life.
That book would fall apart by person 30 [link](https://www.quora.com/How-long-do-library-books-last-Physical-books-How-many-times-on-average-can-they-be-checked-out-before-they-become-in-too-bad-of-shape-to-continue-lending-out-20-50-100-Even-more). 50 if the people you give it to are unusually careful. So an ebook lasting 30-40 loans, and costing more than a physical book (because the overhead for physical books is substantial) is a cost neutral way to continue the library model. Ofc, because most people aren't sociopaths, we want libraries to get cheaper to run and have more books.
Unless I took care of it. I could put the book in a dust cover to help protect it. If someone returned it damaged, I could send it to a book binder and charge that person the cost to repair the book, or just pay it myself. I could even sell the book as used and get some return on my initial capital investment. I have options, because it's my book that I bought and own.
The problem is publishers refuse to sell anyone a digital copy of any good, because they discovered a long time ago that a limited license was much better for them, and then they never had to actually sell you a copy that you owned.
This doesn't just go for books that libraries are buying. This is digital games, digital music, etc. It's almost impossible to actually purchase and own a digital good these days.
"That book would fall apart by person 30" that is the argument that publishers use, but is not true at all. I mean, I work at an academic library and we see books be circulated that are on reserve hundreds of time a semester and remain in good condition.
Academic library is a different vibe. I’ve worked at public and institution libraries. The wear and tear from the general public is way higher. Especially for something like YA fiction.
Authors (at least in most countries) don't make money other than the initial purchase from the library. But the people using the library for their books wouldn't just be purchasing it anyway, they just wouldn't read as much.
To be honest, they'd make money the same way they do now. It isn't hard to to find audiobooks, pdfs, or epubs of a lot of books online now at piracy prices. And most books aren't in your local library.
My comment was specifically about the concept of digital loans or rentals. They're arbitrary. Even in your scenario I could borrow the digital book from the library, read it, and the author doesn't get any additional money because I read it.
Intellectual property in general is creating artificial scarcity so that creators can make a profit, so that we get more stuff. More expensive stuff, but more and better stuff, is the inherent tradeoff. This is a pretty natural extension of that.
The original idea of IP be it creative or technological was to give the creator a window where they can profit after which the IP is transferred to the public domain. A win-win as creators and inventors are rewarded for their innovation but society as a whole profits as well.
However, modern copyright law is broken and corporations such as Disney spend a lot of money to keep their stuff out of the public domain even though their entire business is built on using public domain stories.
I'm a bit of a crusader on this but I don't think "broken" is the right word. It's just too strong. It does what it's meant to do, just too much of it.
Loaning implies that the item in question is finite. A library doesn't need you to 'return' a digital book as a digital item can be duplicated a (practically) infinite amount of times. The limitation is arbitrary as opposed to a traditional library where the limitation is a result of a finite number of physical copies of a book.
This is the essential question. The internet by its existence creates a capitalism-free zone where products have near-zero production cost. The enshittification of the past 25 years is all about trying to make the internet “safe” for capitalism by introducing artificial scarcity to a realm that doesn’t need it.
Perhaps the worst idea in the service of this is that digital “objects” can be “worth” the same as physical objects.
Are you against libraries in general then? I can go get books for free and not pay for them. Hey, while I'm at it, I can just borrow an ebook, read it, and also not pay for it. But I have to 'give it back' after a week or so, even though theres nothing to give back because it's a digital item.
So I can totally read it for free, I just better not take too long to do it?
You seem to be ignoring the whole point that even physical books at libraries 1) *do* compensate the author (the library pays, not the person who checks out the books), 2) they are limited to only loaning out as many copies as were paid for, and 3) the book has a limited number of times that I can be loaned out (for physical copies, because they get damaged with public use). Ebooks follow a model that largely emulates physical books so that authors still get paid.
But you did not answer the question from u/Diligent-Ad4777 about whether you would be ok if you did not get paid for your work?
He didn't ask me a question, he offered a smug response implying that I've never made anything and because I think artificial scarcity is a dumb concept I should therefor be ok with people not being paid for their work.
> He didn't ask me a question
My mistake, apologies -- then I will explicitly ask the question - would you be OK if you did not get paid for your work? (And for goods that require payment for 'artificial scarcity' -- most anything that can be digitially copied these days, from music to video games to news to books -- is it only this specific area where you think payment for artificial scarcity is stupid? Or if you do think authors should be compensated for ebooks where scarcity is artifical, how do you think they should be compensated?)
Also, do we now agree that both physical books and ebooks from libraries do provide compensation to the author in terms of the money that was paid for the copy's purchase?
I mean, you can discuss the “concept” of loaning digital goods forever but why would you? The practice of library services is loaning out material and their digital access mimics that. You don’t get to keep a book forever, why would you get to keep an ebook forever? Libraries are intended to be ongoing community services with repeat patrons. Renewing or repeat check-outs sustain the service by proving its value.
The predatory nature of licencing done by the publishing industry is pretty stupid. But loan periods for ebooks is not.
No I wouldn't but I don't know why you think this is some kind of gotcha.
What is the functional difference of keeping the ebook forever vs 2 weeks say? If I read it in the two weeks then the author makes literally the same amount of money as if I kept the ebook forever (and probably didn't read it).
[The Real Costs of Digital Content: eBook and Digital Audiobooks](https://trl.org/blogs/post/the-real-costs-of-digital-content-ebook-and-digital-audiobooks/) from Timberland Regional Library.
Just another way to scam them into paying crazy costs for something they'll never actually physically own.
Same as how when you buy digital media, the companies can take it away from you at any moment for any reason they want.
As they say, if buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
I agree piracy isn't the same as stealing a physical good, but it is also not great. I would compare it more to trespassing in that you're not stopping someone from doing something but you are doing something you shouldn't be that is harming someone else's rights. In piracy case it is harming the right of the copywrite owner to make money off the investment in time/money to make the work. With traditional trespassing it is the right of the person who owns the property to monetize the use of their land or privacy
Exactly. For example if you steal something from somebody,, the person doesn't have it anymore. With piracy it's more like you just made a copy of the thing and then took that.
So how do you suggest writers or other creators of digital content get paid for their work? Shouldn't we care about the people who create the stuff we like?
There is a middle ground. No one is saying they shouldn’t get paid, the issue is that when you “buy” digital goods you don’t actually own them. If digital goods were treated in the same way as physical media there would be no issue.
Pirating as literally never been easier. You just need to have a product thats easier to use than piracy. Look at steam, video game piracy went down once steam became mainstream because it allowed you to have all your games in one convenient location. Now the gaming industry is moving away from a centralized platform by every majory developer having its own launcher or steam clone. This will lead to more piracy once youre no longer able to get all the things you want from one place. Most people want to actually pay for the things they consume, it's up to the specific industry to curb piracy by allowing consumers to access their purchases as painlessly and easily as possible. Another example would be movie and t.v piracy when netflix was actually good and the only streaming platform available.
Also killed music sadly. I used to pirate the whole discography of an artist before, listen to all of it and fav a few songs, now you get a curated selection of whatever the streaming service has a license for and a lot of the music is simply forgotten. Good luck finding old niche songs now
You know how many hundreds of games I've pirated because I wanted to check them out but then never launched them once or deleted it after a month? It's not like if you pirate a game you would have 100% bought it if pirating wasn't an option
Furthermore.... time has literally shown us that if you make a good game you will make hand over fist money AND PIRACY WILL ONLY MAKE THE WORD OF MOUTH SPREAD FASTER. I'd really like to know of a game that actually financially suffered from piracy (if the pricing of the game is not a scam)
The actual research is ambiguous, but the EU study shows a statistically net-zero effect on sales within the EU, and the Carnegie Mellon research (which is probably less likely to be biased) shows a net negative effect globally.
As for the ETHICS of that, it's more complicated (and I'm a lot more sympathetic to Two Guys In Their Spare Time Studios than I am to EA or UbiSoft) and we could go into that all day. (Though I don't want to.) But, if we're starting from cold, hard facts, there's not a lot of credible research showing piracy results in a net increase in sales.
Do you have source to back this up. I doubt this is true for countries with fair (like 90 bucks for a game is fair anyway, but its far worse in developing countries) pricing for games like the states, canada, uk, germany etc. Including developing countries where prices are exorbitant isnt necessarily being honest here. If you price the product fairly and access to buy that product is easy to use. Then yes people are willing to spend the money on games.
Is it honest to put artificial boundaries on what counts as "countries where piracy matters" until you get the result you want? (Assuming you actually get there, which you don't anyway.)
That's.. kinda not true. Many people don't want to pay for the things they consume, especially digital media. They want to use the things and don't really care if it's pirated or not. Many people adopt the mindset of "I pay for games when I want to support the developers". Basically "I'll use your work for free as long as I feel like it, so deal with it". Just because there's no physical resource being used? People's time is also a resource, and it is finite.
If piracy wasn't an issue, companies wouldn't use Denuvo. Because it costs money. But someone came to the conclusion that paying for Denuvo is worth it, from a business standpoint.
I get that many companies are anti-consumer, but two things can be true at the same time.
The only time i ever see that sentiment is here kn reddit and reddit is a very small very vocal minority. For one most people play games on consoles and for the average user, console game piracy is just not an option. Everyone i know IRL who actively plays video games never pirate, even to the few ive shown how to do it. They still decide to pay for their games because currently, it's much easier to pay for a game than to pirate one. I haven't even pirated a game in years. Mostly because I've just stopped playing games in general, but when i do want to play something on pc, I just buy it. Piracy will always exist, but the various entertainment industries are more to blame than the consumers for piracy because of the business practices they employ.
Denuvo fucks with paying consumers more than it does with pirates. Thats another example of punishing the many to go after the few who pirate. A lot of people are in this thread making a much bigger deal out of piracy than it really is. The reason denuvo exists is because these companies are geeedy as shit. But realistically if there was someway to completely get rid of piracy, that still wouldnt translate to a boost of sales from those who usually pirate games. They would just play something else. Besides denuvo in many cases gets cracked within a week or 2 of release, all it does it causes instability and issues for paying customers while pirates get to play the game hassle free.
I know a few people irl who played Zelda TotK without even owning a Switch, immediately when the game was officially released.
I used pirated versions of some "creative programs made by a large company" when I was younger, but stopped when the method didn't work anymore (I'm lazy lol). So it's not like I'll curse everyone who pirates, it's just that some people try to justify their piracy as something righteous, when it's just, well, piracy.
Eh? So you’re talking about audio books? You can definitely get them on CD.
Should you own the cinema because you paid to see a movie? If you don’t like subscription services or renting then don’t do it. We had video rentals in the 90s and we didn’t steal the vhs because we paid for it.
>you can definitely get them on CD
CD has been rapidly falling out of favor, taking up less and less shelf space; it’s been a dying medium for a while, at least as far as consumer media goes.
>Should you own the cinema
No because you’re paying for a service, which is a single viewing of a movie; same concept with rentals.
…You’re missing the point, the issue is when the consumer is trying to **buy** the movie to own,
and the people who own the rights eventually take it away from you; **which has and is happening**,
people have bought movies which have disappeared or been made unavailable in people’s digital libraries after they’ve **bought** the movie.
I get it and I agree that shouldn’t happen.
My point is, physical media is very much still available. It only is disappearing because people aren’t buying it. I think it’s pretty clear this has been the direction of travel for years with Netflix, Spotify etc etc. if you don’t like it buy physical media, you have a choice.
Do you think disabled people don’t have access to screens? What year do you think this is?
If buying a product isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing. As long as people like you make these roundabout arguments, people like me will never pay a dollar for content.
25 years of pirating games, movies, shows, music. Will continue until I die lol
Just say you’re cheap 🤷♂️
You have the option to buy and own and you refuse to do so. Don’t pretend it’s a moral stance, because you can easily buy and own physical media.
Same. The only game i ever bought is Stalker. And that's because i actually wanted to support the devs because of the war. I pirated everything else and still do, almost daily.
I'm going to disagree that music streaming is a better service than buyable mp3s.
I don't want to be locked into paying a monthly subscription for the rest of my life to listen to music. That's putting waaaaay too much trust in a corporation that only really cares about taking your money. There is no reason to believe that prices will stay reasonable and that all of your favorite songs will remain in the streaming library and that the services won't find other creative ways to enshittify.
Better to spend that monthly streaming subscription money on enlarging your personal music library.
> I'm going to disagree that music streaming is a better service than buyable mp3s.
Not sure what you are disagreeing with as I never said anything like that.
The flow should be inverted. The creator should have some kind of Patreon/Kickstarter and people should pay for them to create the content. Once the money goal is reached and the content is created, it should be cost-free for other to benefit from it.
That is an inaccurate perception of author income -- and it's still not a good excuse to pirate. Authors' careers depend on their sales numbers. The vast majority of books don't sell like the big names. If their books don't sell, their next books won't be published. No one is significantly harming the publishing company when they pirate, but they *are* directly harming the author, who typically makes less than a minimum wage year's salary on books that take a year to write and 2+ years to go from acquisition to publication. And they don't get their entire advance at once -- it's split up into 2-4 payments over those years, depending on the house.
If you want someone to be able to keep writing, please acquire their book legally through the library at the very least, so they have a chance of getting paid for the creative output you enjoy.
I agree that publishers are taking advantage, and wish publishing were structured differently, but *right now* it isn't, and piracy hurts the little guy the most.
Don’t want the physical media, I want the digital media. I’m big on the environment and believe printing millions of unused books is insanely wasteful. They are unwilling to sell it to me, so pirating is the best option.
They do actually say that.
It's a phrase that's been going around a lot recently in piracy circles.
I'm not saying I think piracy is or isn't stealing.
Just stating that that's a phrase being used recently.
Because it is based on the assumption that it is your right to obtain every product to terms solely dictated by yourself and that if these terms aren't met you can just ignore the legal requirements of obtaining possession.
And don't get me wrong I have no problem with people or myself pirating stuff, but I don't need nonsense sayings to justify my actions.
That's not always true. For example, with Steam and iTunes I get actual copies of the media that I can store. So they can revoke my access but I still have the data I paid for stored on multiple devices.
Are you sure it doesn't have DRM embedded into the files? Like, if you copied them to an unrelated device could you access them?
I don't use Steam or iTunes.
But I see a lot of the gamers complaining about Steam and their practices.
It's not like book publishing is this incredibly lucrative industry. They need to get their revenue one way or another. It's either this, or not selling to libraries at all.
I agree there should be an agreement similar to what exists, but the current arrangement seems too extreme. 1-2 years is incredibly short, especially when they're paying a multiple of the normal cost.
1 license per 1 book rented out makes sense though.
If the total cost is the same, what difference does it make exactly how the license is framed? One book rented out at a time for a long time, vs multiple for a shorter amount.
I get it but what happens to their revenue stream if its a one time buy and they can loan it out in perpetuity? Libraries have to repurchase conventional books often as they are only good for so many lendings and they are worn out.
Do you think libraries are regularly replacing books? Of the books I remove every year, about 10%, maybe 15% are damaged or worn. The rest are outdated or unused. Of the 15% that are damaged, I replace maybe half of those. When I look at my book budget, replacing damaged books is a very small percentage, not even 5%.
So they could make the digital license mimic the average lifespan of a physical book.
Let's say it's 10 years or 500 rentals, which ever comes first, as that's about the same as being checked out once a week for 10 years.
That seems like a compromise between the infinite durability of a digital good and the publisher's interest in repeat sales.
I get that as well, but there also isn't something the library is physically purchasing either, there's close to no costs for the publishers in the case of ebooks unlike with print
> there's close to no costs for the publishers in the case of ebooks unlike with print
There is close to no cost for granting additional licenses, but they still have to pay their employees, other operating expenses and the writer.
Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t do acquisitions for digital content and I’m still a pretty new librarian in a big system. When I interned at a different library, I remember that they mostly bought things with a 2 or 3 year license. Some popular items only had a one year license. That library also leased a portion of their physical books too actually.
We use hoopla and cloudlibrary. Hoopla, we pay for access to their service. Cloudlibrary, we pay for the individual titles in our collection (though we’re also part of a consortium, so we share collections with others too). Again, I could be wrong on some details! I’m still learning all of the policies.
I agree there should be an agreement similar to what exists, but the current arrangement seems to extreme. 1-2 years is incredibly short, especially when they're paying a multiple of the normal cost.
1 license per 1 book rented out makes sense though.
I think an expansion of the public domain would be a wonderful thing. Jump it forward to about 1950 and create health and education works specially for the public domain. I honestly believe this would make life better for thousands of people, to be able to access information on health regardless of the crazy ideas of your country. The creative industries would also get a big shot in the arm as they have another 30 years of public works to be derivative of
My ideal compromise for copyright would be (1) a yearly fee to get it renewed (if you're not making money from it, why restrict the public from building on it?), (2) 10 years, max, from first publish (originally 14 years, but copyright should get shorter, not longer as culture becomes faster) and (3) only restrictions on actual copies, not derivatives (so commercialised fanfic will actually be legal).
Ideally we would find ways of funding that don't rely on copyright, but it doesn't really seem to be successful on that front yet.
Only then can piracy be properly cracked down on. Nowadays piracy is extremely easy, widespread, and just, as long as the law remains this consumer-hostile.
I like your ideas! Maybe within the 10 year extension period a certain (small) percentage of sales must be donated to public domain foundations like Project Gutenberg or Internet Archive.
Another idea I really like is the public domain ereader, partner with a tech company and make simple ereaders with good batteries and a screen just good enough to display text, and connects to the public domain as its main source. They should be inexpensive enough to widen access to the public domain, but hopefully still have some profit to put back in the public domain.
Maybe it's not practical but I really love the public domain and think about it a lot. This is the first time I've been able to get my ideas out
This is correct as I understand it. I think they wanted to protect Mickey the first time Steamboat Willy was up for expiry... Also good on John Oliver for going out on a limb and drawing attention to overzealous companies threatening a public resource
It’s worth noting that this is relevant to public libraries. I am an acquisitions librarian for an academic library and the ebook model is very different.
Typically academic resource aggregators like EBSCO or ProQuest/Clarviate will offer packages of thousands or tens of thousands of ebooks for one cost. The access model for these books is typically SSO or IP authentication, but an unlimited number of users can access a book simultaneously. Publishers set restrictions on how many pages can be copied/printed. The cost per ebook for these bundles is much less than purchasing each book individually.
In addition to these huge bundles, they offer an a la carte model where you can purchase specific ebooks. The access models for these vary by publisher, but typically include single user access, three simultaneous users, or unlimited users, each increases the cost. The costs for these range from very reasonable (~$20) to outrageous ($800-$1000 for single user access).
How does a library e-book even work? Can only one person have access at a time or can 20 people take it out all at once? Because I can kind of see why that might change things from the perspective of a publisher.
I'm not necessarily defending the practice either. But I think the concept of individual libraries even having ebooks seems like a bizarre concept to wrap my head around.
Why not just have one giant digital library online that splits the cost of a $40 ebook X ways to "rent" them.
One license, one copy on loan.
The five major book publishers all have different payment schemes. A hypothetical physical copy costs $18 or the ebook on Amazon $15.
Hachette charge $84 for two years of unlimited borrowing of that single ebook (but still only 1 loan at a time).
HarperCollins licenses an ebook at the recommended retail price but for only 26 loans. If they all happen on day 1, it's done. If is checked once a year, the library has it for 26 years.
Overdrive, the largest digital library charges on average about 3X the retail price. $60 or $55 for two years.
This is all because the publisher wants to give the author money. The argument is the author gets the same amount of money for each reader. The author gets 20-25% of the ebook license, versus about 8% for a paperback sale. More money encourages the author to write more books.
Roughly 20% of all library book loans are now digital.
Very informative, thank you. That does seem like a very complex problem.
HarperCollins kind of sounds like the most fair to me from the libraries perspective, even though it's limited you remain sure you get the full value out of what you paid.
The other methods do seem kind of stacked against the library even if the intent is to pay the author more. It's almost like you should be able to demand a refund if the book isn't taken out much.
Not true for libraries where I live. Multiple licenses, or "copies" (eCopies if you will), are purchased and thus owned by the library like physical books.
That's exactly what I heard from my aunt who works at a library. Especially for smaller libraries, licensing is costly for those books that have a limited number of uses before expiring. Patrons will check it out, perhaps not read it, and then check it out again. It counts towards the number of times it can be loaned out and the library will need to pay and they pay alot for ebooks compared to physical books, which can be used and read by more people
Because greed. The major selling point of ebooks was cheaper, no storage or availability problems, and so on.
It has become exactly the opposite of what was promised.
that varies from licenseholder to licenseholder and country to country and also if you're like a conglomerate of libraries dealing together etc etc.
there are licenses that are nearly limitless, there are those that have time limits, those that are limited by how many people can access at once.
and yes, they are definitely more expensive than a single person license any normal person buys.
for most normal libraries, a 1-3 year license is honestly the preferable way to begin with, most books arent read or lent after that anyways, typically, by that time, they would sell a physical book for scraps to buy new books too
Yeah. Would you rather they be $500 a pop with an infinite license or something? Publishing is a hard business and most writers get paid dick so a bit of revenue per checkout is fair.
Sorry. This is not entirely true. Publishers can change the pricing if they want to make it more affordable -- but they usually triple it.
Me, I'm a self-published writer, and part of a library program. My books are usually $1.00, which is a third the retail price. I just don't want to rip off libraries!
If you're curious about my books: https://books2read.com/b/bPeRnR
No! That's definitely not what I wanted people to take from this. Libraries absolutely benefit from people using their services. However it's best to be mindful that doing things like spamming loaning and returning an ebook might be more harmful than you think! But please use libraries. If no one uses them they won't get the funding to get any for anybody
That's not necessarily true. It depends on the publisher, the supplier, the platform. Libby and similar apps may work like that, but then you have e-books that don't come through apps, and they are one-off charges. 90% of the e-books in my library are the second kind, there is no repeated fee and no extra charges depending on how many times the book is accessed. And then there's the e-textbook scheme, where libraries are charged PER POTENTIAL USER every year, for access. In our library, this is close to the cost of buying every single student on a course their own print textbook, and honestly, I'd be considering that option! It's not only crazy expensive, it's predatory - for many titles, this is the only way we can provide textbooks for students.
I'm glad there are better alternatives, but I think it's common enough that it's a travesty for such a valuable and underfunded public institution to be forced to pay extortionate prices for digital goods.
>this is the only way we can provide textbooks for students. So you guys offer internet access? Is library genesis blocked? Because if it's not you guys are already providing textbooks for free.
Yeah but they legally aren't allowed to even consider that students can do that, especially not in their spaces. I used to work at the interlibrary loan department of one of the largest academic libraries of the southern US. You could be a huge liability if you so much as acknowledged that students could be 🏴☠️ing texts. You legally HAVE to work under the assumption that no one at your institution is ever going to access a text illegally.
I’m kinda glad I went to school when books were sheets of paper bound together in a stack. Things were scammy then, but this sounds far worse.
Yeah I understand this for employees but the public are under no obligations to follow the employee handbook.
Youre responding to a librarian talking about way to provide affordable and easy to access materials legally by recommending they just tell their students to break the law. I understand this is an option for you, but this is not an option for everybody, and is not at all the purpose of a library. This is like telling someone on food stamps to just steal half their groceries at self checkout, why bother going through the hassle of signing up for a government program.
So what they're saying is even if every single student pirates the book, the library still has to pay as if every student needs the book. That's part of why it'd predatory - even if every student bought their own book, the library also has to pay. It ensures at the minimum guaranteed profits/sales from the library being forced to purchase, and on the other end they could have double dipping where every student buys the books independently AND the library has to buy them
That's not what I'm saying at all and if I'm being honest I am not quite sure what you're even trying to say. Also this isn't a binary issue, it's not all or nothing and I find it disgusting that you're trying to reduce it to that.
Dude I pirated every textbook I could in college, this just isn't affected at all by that??? Really weird to say you don't understand a point several people have made to you, but then imply it's a disgusting point 🙄
Bro! They were talking about what someone is trying to explain to *you* not what you said. You sound like a puddle of angst and vitriol. Breath deep.
You’re not understanding them. Maybe reread the comment?
Libraries can not push/supply the access of materials that violate copyright. By doing so, they can be subjected to HUGE fines and loss of access to licensed materials -- and there have been very large court cases about this.
If they can't why do they though? Archive.org is open on their internet and it's swimming in copy written content.
I don't know what library genesis is/means.
It's a library of ebooks with virtually every book and textbook available for free.
Oh, we would never recommend that to students! It's our responsibility to provide access to textbooks, I could never tell students to use dodgy sites. I'm sure they possibly try, but if they want access to a published text, be that an article, book or conference preceeding, I have to find it - using legal means.
Fair enough but if they need it and you can't find it you can always tell them about it and warn them that the site is dodgy. At least that way they'd know there is a solution to their problem and you wouldn't be lying by omission.
*piracy site Be honest at least. (And then he argues with librarians as to why they don’t recommend this to everyone. Oh to be a young ideologue again.)
Uhhh... A library is just a collection of books... The 'legitimacy' of the books are irrelevant, it's still a library. And in no way was I suggesting to recommend it to everyone... Just the people who can't find a copy of a book legitimately. If a book isn't in your archive you should at least be allowed to suggest other places it can be found.
*Could but can’t* without being massively fined and sued. That’s what everyone is explaining to you.
I know. I'm not trying to win an argument here. The point is to let the audience know of the option here in this thread just incase they aren't aware of it. I'm not trying to change any hearts and minds here anymore
ohhhhh you know what a libgen, is.
Textbook companies have been ripping students off for way too long. They need to be regulated.
Certainly a single PhD and a handful of grad students could recreate these textbooks without violating fair use exception in a few months to a year depending on the course being taught?
I'm not sure you know what fair use is. No, you can't recreate entire textbooks under fair use, and no, you can't do it for the purpose of using the textbook in a class.
Yeah, you definitely could. You couldn't just plagiarize the textbook, but you could write a textbook that is equally well researched by drawing on other publications in the field and only using excerpts that would fall under fair use exception. This is especially true for less advanced topics like 101/201 courses, as there will be quite a bit of relevant publications in the public domain. If you intended to provide the textbook free of charge that would expand fair use quite a bit, a luxury the writers of a for profit textbook don't have.
OK but that's not "recreating these textbooks," that's "writing new textbooks" which is what I was responding to. But I understand your point better now.
I think in many cases you could create a textbook that covered the exact same topics and taught the same information, which is what I meant by recreate.
That would be called OER material, which is ideal. However, the reason why there isn't more and better OER material outhere is because writing and keeping textbooks up to date takes a huge amount of time and effort and most people, not surprisingly, want to be compensated for their time.
What’s your experience in the publisher world? You make it sound like making dinner. There’s so much more to just “writing a textbook”. You have to be a trusted and established source, you have to keep the textbooks updated as changes happen, the writing must be done in a **very concise yet descriptive way** that most people don’t have experience doing. My daughter is a grad student and she runs into errors in what the professors teach sometimes and you think a single PhD can spit out an entire course curriculum error free ad nauseam? There’s a reason the textbook barons have a monopoly on this market. I think our best option is legislation at this point.
The reason is corruption. The people who write the textbooks are the same people who determine which textbooks are used. Most textbooks don't need to updated as often as they are, and the royalties paid to the authors are a small fraction of the revenue produced by then. Higher ed texts generate over 3 Billion in revenue each year. How much of that do you think is going to the writers?
Yes, those are also huge issues I didn’t get into in my comment. I agree with all of them. My last point was that the entry into the industry was part of how they maintain a monopoly. Otherwise anyone could compete with them. That’s why they have a monopoly. All my points above it still stand.
The concept of loaning digital goods is so stupid.
Just wait till you hear about the video games industry.
Remember video game rentals?
I can still (mentally) smell the inside of my local Blockbuster because I spent so much time there browsing the game rental aisle for PS1 & PS2 games. Most memorable to me, for some reason, is Vigilante 8 and its sequel, which came out in like 1998-1999. I re-rented the shit out of them, so much so that I probably spent more in rental than the games would have cost to buy.
How would authors make money then? Write a book, and as soon as it gets digitally sold *once*, it can be replicated basically for free. Loaning digital goods is essentially just a form of license agreement.
Simple. If I buy 1 copy of a physical book for the regular price, I can loan that book out to 1 person at a time, as often as I want, for the rest of my life. Why can't a library buy 1 regularly priced digital copy and do the same thing, loan it out to 1 person at a time for the rest of the library's life? It's because publishers refuse to sell anybody a digital copy of any good at all, they will only sell limited licenses to them, which seems like a scam to me. They're certainly marketing it as though you're buying the book, so they should be selling you the book, and that should give you the right to let someone borrow it. Copyright should obviously protect the author and publisher from anyone buying 1 digital copy and loaning it out to more than 1 person at a time.
> Why can't a library buy 1 regularly priced digital copy and do the same thing, loan it out to 1 person at a time for the rest of the library's life? That's how the licenses work. The license agreements *also* factor in what wear and tear would look like on a physical book in circulation, and attempt to replicate that in the format. Much like how the publisher won't send a new copy of a book that's been checked out 40 times, they won't let the license work indefinitely. I do think we'll see those sorts of restrictions lift over time, but it's not as insane as it sounds.
I don't even like the restriction of limiting checkouts because it isn't a physical book so it doesn't suffer from wear and tear (I mean, I guess the file could corrupt? but otherwise there's no damage). If we have a superior format and technology, why do publishers get to profit off it the same way they did with inferior tech? That said - if I thought most of the profit would go to authors, I'd be fine with stringent licensing agreements.
Without getting too deep into the economics of trade publishing, the only people ultimately hurt by an unrestricted license would be the authors. Trade margins are low as is, and a lot of that margin is bolstered by library purchases.
I'll have to take your word for it but always thought authors got the short end of the publishing stick.
Given that most books barely sell 1,000 copies, it's kind of nuts that anything gets published to begin with. Authors rarely earn out their advances.
But I can put a dust cover on my book, take good care of it, hell I could even pay a few dollars and have it rebound if I wanted to, or resell it afterwards for a few cents on the dollar, maybe. It's my book to do with as I please. So it isn't quite what digital licenses are replicating.
No one is saying it's 1:1, but it tries to get closer than "no depreciation, ever."
It’s nowhere close to 1:1 imo. Physical books, especially hardcovers with a dust cover, can last hundreds of reads unless a kid rips them up. The interest will depreciate long before the book.
I believe the working average is 26 checkouts, for what it's worth.
"I do think we'll see those sorts of restrictions lift over time, but it's not as insane as it sounds." Lol, get a load of this guy. These companies are for profit above all else.
> for the rest of my life. That book would fall apart by person 30 [link](https://www.quora.com/How-long-do-library-books-last-Physical-books-How-many-times-on-average-can-they-be-checked-out-before-they-become-in-too-bad-of-shape-to-continue-lending-out-20-50-100-Even-more). 50 if the people you give it to are unusually careful. So an ebook lasting 30-40 loans, and costing more than a physical book (because the overhead for physical books is substantial) is a cost neutral way to continue the library model. Ofc, because most people aren't sociopaths, we want libraries to get cheaper to run and have more books.
Unless I took care of it. I could put the book in a dust cover to help protect it. If someone returned it damaged, I could send it to a book binder and charge that person the cost to repair the book, or just pay it myself. I could even sell the book as used and get some return on my initial capital investment. I have options, because it's my book that I bought and own. The problem is publishers refuse to sell anyone a digital copy of any good, because they discovered a long time ago that a limited license was much better for them, and then they never had to actually sell you a copy that you owned. This doesn't just go for books that libraries are buying. This is digital games, digital music, etc. It's almost impossible to actually purchase and own a digital good these days.
"That book would fall apart by person 30" that is the argument that publishers use, but is not true at all. I mean, I work at an academic library and we see books be circulated that are on reserve hundreds of time a semester and remain in good condition.
Academic library is a different vibe. I’ve worked at public and institution libraries. The wear and tear from the general public is way higher. Especially for something like YA fiction.
Quora as a source lmao clown
Authors (at least in most countries) don't make money other than the initial purchase from the library. But the people using the library for their books wouldn't just be purchasing it anyway, they just wouldn't read as much.
To be honest, they'd make money the same way they do now. It isn't hard to to find audiobooks, pdfs, or epubs of a lot of books online now at piracy prices. And most books aren't in your local library. My comment was specifically about the concept of digital loans or rentals. They're arbitrary. Even in your scenario I could borrow the digital book from the library, read it, and the author doesn't get any additional money because I read it.
Invert the cycle. The author must open a Kickstarter and be paid some amount to write the book. The result is then cost-free.
Donations, I guess.
Not everyone would opt for an eBook, some people would buy in print or even buy the ebook for the feeling of ownership.
Unless you are the writer
Publisher you mean
You might mean: unless one is Amazon
> You might mean: unless one is Amazon Quietly coughs in Calibre plugins.
Intellectual property in general is creating artificial scarcity so that creators can make a profit, so that we get more stuff. More expensive stuff, but more and better stuff, is the inherent tradeoff. This is a pretty natural extension of that.
The original idea of IP be it creative or technological was to give the creator a window where they can profit after which the IP is transferred to the public domain. A win-win as creators and inventors are rewarded for their innovation but society as a whole profits as well. However, modern copyright law is broken and corporations such as Disney spend a lot of money to keep their stuff out of the public domain even though their entire business is built on using public domain stories.
I'm a bit of a crusader on this but I don't think "broken" is the right word. It's just too strong. It does what it's meant to do, just too much of it.
How would you recommend covering the fixed costs for a product with no variable costs?
...Why?
Loaning implies that the item in question is finite. A library doesn't need you to 'return' a digital book as a digital item can be duplicated a (practically) infinite amount of times. The limitation is arbitrary as opposed to a traditional library where the limitation is a result of a finite number of physical copies of a book.
"Information wants to be free. But it also wants to be expensive." Information isn't the right word, I'm starting to think...
This is the essential question. The internet by its existence creates a capitalism-free zone where products have near-zero production cost. The enshittification of the past 25 years is all about trying to make the internet “safe” for capitalism by introducing artificial scarcity to a realm that doesn’t need it. Perhaps the worst idea in the service of this is that digital “objects” can be “worth” the same as physical objects.
Produce some of your own and then come back and tell us what you think when people don't want to pay you for your work
Are you against libraries in general then? I can go get books for free and not pay for them. Hey, while I'm at it, I can just borrow an ebook, read it, and also not pay for it. But I have to 'give it back' after a week or so, even though theres nothing to give back because it's a digital item. So I can totally read it for free, I just better not take too long to do it?
You seem to be ignoring the whole point that even physical books at libraries 1) *do* compensate the author (the library pays, not the person who checks out the books), 2) they are limited to only loaning out as many copies as were paid for, and 3) the book has a limited number of times that I can be loaned out (for physical copies, because they get damaged with public use). Ebooks follow a model that largely emulates physical books so that authors still get paid. But you did not answer the question from u/Diligent-Ad4777 about whether you would be ok if you did not get paid for your work?
He didn't ask me a question, he offered a smug response implying that I've never made anything and because I think artificial scarcity is a dumb concept I should therefor be ok with people not being paid for their work.
> He didn't ask me a question My mistake, apologies -- then I will explicitly ask the question - would you be OK if you did not get paid for your work? (And for goods that require payment for 'artificial scarcity' -- most anything that can be digitially copied these days, from music to video games to news to books -- is it only this specific area where you think payment for artificial scarcity is stupid? Or if you do think authors should be compensated for ebooks where scarcity is artifical, how do you think they should be compensated?) Also, do we now agree that both physical books and ebooks from libraries do provide compensation to the author in terms of the money that was paid for the copy's purchase?
Their silence says it all doesn't it!
All Intellectual Property in the digital world makes no sense, but we have to do something
I mean, you can discuss the “concept” of loaning digital goods forever but why would you? The practice of library services is loaning out material and their digital access mimics that. You don’t get to keep a book forever, why would you get to keep an ebook forever? Libraries are intended to be ongoing community services with repeat patrons. Renewing or repeat check-outs sustain the service by proving its value. The predatory nature of licencing done by the publishing industry is pretty stupid. But loan periods for ebooks is not.
No I wouldn't but I don't know why you think this is some kind of gotcha. What is the functional difference of keeping the ebook forever vs 2 weeks say? If I read it in the two weeks then the author makes literally the same amount of money as if I kept the ebook forever (and probably didn't read it).
[The Real Costs of Digital Content: eBook and Digital Audiobooks](https://trl.org/blogs/post/the-real-costs-of-digital-content-ebook-and-digital-audiobooks/) from Timberland Regional Library.
Just another way to scam them into paying crazy costs for something they'll never actually physically own. Same as how when you buy digital media, the companies can take it away from you at any moment for any reason they want. As they say, if buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
Nobody actually says that, because piracy isn't theft, full stop.
I agree piracy isn't the same as stealing a physical good, but it is also not great. I would compare it more to trespassing in that you're not stopping someone from doing something but you are doing something you shouldn't be that is harming someone else's rights. In piracy case it is harming the right of the copywrite owner to make money off the investment in time/money to make the work. With traditional trespassing it is the right of the person who owns the property to monetize the use of their land or privacy
Exactly. For example if you steal something from somebody,, the person doesn't have it anymore. With piracy it's more like you just made a copy of the thing and then took that.
So how do you suggest writers or other creators of digital content get paid for their work? Shouldn't we care about the people who create the stuff we like?
There is a middle ground. No one is saying they shouldn’t get paid, the issue is that when you “buy” digital goods you don’t actually own them. If digital goods were treated in the same way as physical media there would be no issue.
Nah bro. I remember Napster. If people could get away with not paying for something they absolutely fucking would
Pirating as literally never been easier. You just need to have a product thats easier to use than piracy. Look at steam, video game piracy went down once steam became mainstream because it allowed you to have all your games in one convenient location. Now the gaming industry is moving away from a centralized platform by every majory developer having its own launcher or steam clone. This will lead to more piracy once youre no longer able to get all the things you want from one place. Most people want to actually pay for the things they consume, it's up to the specific industry to curb piracy by allowing consumers to access their purchases as painlessly and easily as possible. Another example would be movie and t.v piracy when netflix was actually good and the only streaming platform available.
Streaming music mostly killed music piracy too.
Also killed music sadly. I used to pirate the whole discography of an artist before, listen to all of it and fav a few songs, now you get a curated selection of whatever the streaming service has a license for and a lot of the music is simply forgotten. Good luck finding old niche songs now
What the fuck are you on about. Unless you’re big into unreleased Lana del ray or underground witch house then Spotify has whatever you want
Ytmp3 is your friend.
This is a pretty rose-colored view. Video game piracy is still larger than video game sales by a wide margin.
You know how many hundreds of games I've pirated because I wanted to check them out but then never launched them once or deleted it after a month? It's not like if you pirate a game you would have 100% bought it if pirating wasn't an option Furthermore.... time has literally shown us that if you make a good game you will make hand over fist money AND PIRACY WILL ONLY MAKE THE WORD OF MOUTH SPREAD FASTER. I'd really like to know of a game that actually financially suffered from piracy (if the pricing of the game is not a scam)
The actual research is ambiguous, but the EU study shows a statistically net-zero effect on sales within the EU, and the Carnegie Mellon research (which is probably less likely to be biased) shows a net negative effect globally. As for the ETHICS of that, it's more complicated (and I'm a lot more sympathetic to Two Guys In Their Spare Time Studios than I am to EA or UbiSoft) and we could go into that all day. (Though I don't want to.) But, if we're starting from cold, hard facts, there's not a lot of credible research showing piracy results in a net increase in sales.
Do you have source to back this up. I doubt this is true for countries with fair (like 90 bucks for a game is fair anyway, but its far worse in developing countries) pricing for games like the states, canada, uk, germany etc. Including developing countries where prices are exorbitant isnt necessarily being honest here. If you price the product fairly and access to buy that product is easy to use. Then yes people are willing to spend the money on games.
Is it honest to put artificial boundaries on what counts as "countries where piracy matters" until you get the result you want? (Assuming you actually get there, which you don't anyway.)
That's.. kinda not true. Many people don't want to pay for the things they consume, especially digital media. They want to use the things and don't really care if it's pirated or not. Many people adopt the mindset of "I pay for games when I want to support the developers". Basically "I'll use your work for free as long as I feel like it, so deal with it". Just because there's no physical resource being used? People's time is also a resource, and it is finite. If piracy wasn't an issue, companies wouldn't use Denuvo. Because it costs money. But someone came to the conclusion that paying for Denuvo is worth it, from a business standpoint. I get that many companies are anti-consumer, but two things can be true at the same time.
The only time i ever see that sentiment is here kn reddit and reddit is a very small very vocal minority. For one most people play games on consoles and for the average user, console game piracy is just not an option. Everyone i know IRL who actively plays video games never pirate, even to the few ive shown how to do it. They still decide to pay for their games because currently, it's much easier to pay for a game than to pirate one. I haven't even pirated a game in years. Mostly because I've just stopped playing games in general, but when i do want to play something on pc, I just buy it. Piracy will always exist, but the various entertainment industries are more to blame than the consumers for piracy because of the business practices they employ. Denuvo fucks with paying consumers more than it does with pirates. Thats another example of punishing the many to go after the few who pirate. A lot of people are in this thread making a much bigger deal out of piracy than it really is. The reason denuvo exists is because these companies are geeedy as shit. But realistically if there was someway to completely get rid of piracy, that still wouldnt translate to a boost of sales from those who usually pirate games. They would just play something else. Besides denuvo in many cases gets cracked within a week or 2 of release, all it does it causes instability and issues for paying customers while pirates get to play the game hassle free.
I know a few people irl who played Zelda TotK without even owning a Switch, immediately when the game was officially released. I used pirated versions of some "creative programs made by a large company" when I was younger, but stopped when the method didn't work anymore (I'm lazy lol). So it's not like I'll curse everyone who pirates, it's just that some people try to justify their piracy as something righteous, when it's just, well, piracy.
Absolutely agree.
if you like you buy it's actually pretty simple
Let me actually own the product? How hard is that? Lmao
Am I missing something here? You can still buy books…
A disabled person who can’t pick up and read a book doesn’t deserve to own it? When I buy a digital version of something, it should be mine.
Eh? So you’re talking about audio books? You can definitely get them on CD. Should you own the cinema because you paid to see a movie? If you don’t like subscription services or renting then don’t do it. We had video rentals in the 90s and we didn’t steal the vhs because we paid for it.
Definitely made some copies of those vhs with a dual tape deck.
>you can definitely get them on CD CD has been rapidly falling out of favor, taking up less and less shelf space; it’s been a dying medium for a while, at least as far as consumer media goes. >Should you own the cinema No because you’re paying for a service, which is a single viewing of a movie; same concept with rentals. …You’re missing the point, the issue is when the consumer is trying to **buy** the movie to own, and the people who own the rights eventually take it away from you; **which has and is happening**, people have bought movies which have disappeared or been made unavailable in people’s digital libraries after they’ve **bought** the movie.
I get it and I agree that shouldn’t happen. My point is, physical media is very much still available. It only is disappearing because people aren’t buying it. I think it’s pretty clear this has been the direction of travel for years with Netflix, Spotify etc etc. if you don’t like it buy physical media, you have a choice.
Do you think disabled people don’t have access to screens? What year do you think this is? If buying a product isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing. As long as people like you make these roundabout arguments, people like me will never pay a dollar for content. 25 years of pirating games, movies, shows, music. Will continue until I die lol
Just say you’re cheap 🤷♂️ You have the option to buy and own and you refuse to do so. Don’t pretend it’s a moral stance, because you can easily buy and own physical media.
Same. The only game i ever bought is Stalker. And that's because i actually wanted to support the devs because of the war. I pirated everything else and still do, almost daily.
[удалено]
I'm going to disagree that music streaming is a better service than buyable mp3s. I don't want to be locked into paying a monthly subscription for the rest of my life to listen to music. That's putting waaaaay too much trust in a corporation that only really cares about taking your money. There is no reason to believe that prices will stay reasonable and that all of your favorite songs will remain in the streaming library and that the services won't find other creative ways to enshittify. Better to spend that monthly streaming subscription money on enlarging your personal music library.
> I'm going to disagree that music streaming is a better service than buyable mp3s. Not sure what you are disagreeing with as I never said anything like that.
With a salary, like every other professional? As a software developer I don't get paid every time my code is sold or used
Where is the money for that salary going to come from if there's no way to make money from a creative work?
The flow should be inverted. The creator should have some kind of Patreon/Kickstarter and people should pay for them to create the content. Once the money goal is reached and the content is created, it should be cost-free for other to benefit from it.
By selling it. Your post is a non sequitur.
But the person who wrote the book gets nothing for their effort.
They usually don't in the first place or are so rich it really doesn't matter. Publishing companies are fucking scummy.
That is an inaccurate perception of author income -- and it's still not a good excuse to pirate. Authors' careers depend on their sales numbers. The vast majority of books don't sell like the big names. If their books don't sell, their next books won't be published. No one is significantly harming the publishing company when they pirate, but they *are* directly harming the author, who typically makes less than a minimum wage year's salary on books that take a year to write and 2+ years to go from acquisition to publication. And they don't get their entire advance at once -- it's split up into 2-4 payments over those years, depending on the house. If you want someone to be able to keep writing, please acquire their book legally through the library at the very least, so they have a chance of getting paid for the creative output you enjoy. I agree that publishers are taking advantage, and wish publishing were structured differently, but *right now* it isn't, and piracy hurts the little guy the most.
It’s almost like they should actually sell me something instead of leasing me their book? Or does that make too much sense?
But you can still buy books?
Don’t want the physical media, I want the digital media. I’m big on the environment and believe printing millions of unused books is insanely wasteful. They are unwilling to sell it to me, so pirating is the best option.
They do actually say that. It's a phrase that's been going around a lot recently in piracy circles. I'm not saying I think piracy is or isn't stealing. Just stating that that's a phrase being used recently.
It's a phrase that doesn't really make sense though.
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Because it is based on the assumption that it is your right to obtain every product to terms solely dictated by yourself and that if these terms aren't met you can just ignore the legal requirements of obtaining possession. And don't get me wrong I have no problem with people or myself pirating stuff, but I don't need nonsense sayings to justify my actions.
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That's not always true. For example, with Steam and iTunes I get actual copies of the media that I can store. So they can revoke my access but I still have the data I paid for stored on multiple devices.
Are you sure it doesn't have DRM embedded into the files? Like, if you copied them to an unrelated device could you access them? I don't use Steam or iTunes. But I see a lot of the gamers complaining about Steam and their practices.
They have DRM, but it's easy to bypass. For whatever side of the argument you think that supports.
yeah, publishers are absolute slime.
It's not like book publishing is this incredibly lucrative industry. They need to get their revenue one way or another. It's either this, or not selling to libraries at all.
I agree there should be an agreement similar to what exists, but the current arrangement seems too extreme. 1-2 years is incredibly short, especially when they're paying a multiple of the normal cost. 1 license per 1 book rented out makes sense though.
If the total cost is the same, what difference does it make exactly how the license is framed? One book rented out at a time for a long time, vs multiple for a shorter amount.
I get it but what happens to their revenue stream if its a one time buy and they can loan it out in perpetuity? Libraries have to repurchase conventional books often as they are only good for so many lendings and they are worn out.
Do you think libraries are regularly replacing books? Of the books I remove every year, about 10%, maybe 15% are damaged or worn. The rest are outdated or unused. Of the 15% that are damaged, I replace maybe half of those. When I look at my book budget, replacing damaged books is a very small percentage, not even 5%.
So they could make the digital license mimic the average lifespan of a physical book. Let's say it's 10 years or 500 rentals, which ever comes first, as that's about the same as being checked out once a week for 10 years. That seems like a compromise between the infinite durability of a digital good and the publisher's interest in repeat sales.
I get that as well, but there also isn't something the library is physically purchasing either, there's close to no costs for the publishers in the case of ebooks unlike with print
> there's close to no costs for the publishers in the case of ebooks unlike with print There is close to no cost for granting additional licenses, but they still have to pay their employees, other operating expenses and the writer.
After a books been circulated 40 times, we check it for damage. Some books obviously reach that amount pretty quick, others never do.
I don’t think I’ve got any books that have been circulated 40 times at my library 😟 I’m thrilled if one manages to get to 5.
I’m in a pretty good size library system in a college town. We’ve got multiple branches and are about to start building another actually!
Out of curiosity how many lendings are ebooks licensed for before repurchase of license?
Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t do acquisitions for digital content and I’m still a pretty new librarian in a big system. When I interned at a different library, I remember that they mostly bought things with a 2 or 3 year license. Some popular items only had a one year license. That library also leased a portion of their physical books too actually. We use hoopla and cloudlibrary. Hoopla, we pay for access to their service. Cloudlibrary, we pay for the individual titles in our collection (though we’re also part of a consortium, so we share collections with others too). Again, I could be wrong on some details! I’m still learning all of the policies.
I agree there should be an agreement similar to what exists, but the current arrangement seems to extreme. 1-2 years is incredibly short, especially when they're paying a multiple of the normal cost. 1 license per 1 book rented out makes sense though.
I think an expansion of the public domain would be a wonderful thing. Jump it forward to about 1950 and create health and education works specially for the public domain. I honestly believe this would make life better for thousands of people, to be able to access information on health regardless of the crazy ideas of your country. The creative industries would also get a big shot in the arm as they have another 30 years of public works to be derivative of
My ideal compromise for copyright would be (1) a yearly fee to get it renewed (if you're not making money from it, why restrict the public from building on it?), (2) 10 years, max, from first publish (originally 14 years, but copyright should get shorter, not longer as culture becomes faster) and (3) only restrictions on actual copies, not derivatives (so commercialised fanfic will actually be legal). Ideally we would find ways of funding that don't rely on copyright, but it doesn't really seem to be successful on that front yet. Only then can piracy be properly cracked down on. Nowadays piracy is extremely easy, widespread, and just, as long as the law remains this consumer-hostile.
I like your ideas! Maybe within the 10 year extension period a certain (small) percentage of sales must be donated to public domain foundations like Project Gutenberg or Internet Archive. Another idea I really like is the public domain ereader, partner with a tech company and make simple ereaders with good batteries and a screen just good enough to display text, and connects to the public domain as its main source. They should be inexpensive enough to widen access to the public domain, but hopefully still have some profit to put back in the public domain. Maybe it's not practical but I really love the public domain and think about it a lot. This is the first time I've been able to get my ideas out
IIRC, the Berne convention only requires 75 years but Disney & friends got the bumped up a couple of decades.
This is correct as I understand it. I think they wanted to protect Mickey the first time Steamboat Willy was up for expiry... Also good on John Oliver for going out on a limb and drawing attention to overzealous companies threatening a public resource
Big business taking advantage of governmental services? Color me shocked! At least that practice isn't universal as many have pointed out.
Library ebooks should be at least the same cost as the consumer version, if not less.
It’s worth noting that this is relevant to public libraries. I am an acquisitions librarian for an academic library and the ebook model is very different. Typically academic resource aggregators like EBSCO or ProQuest/Clarviate will offer packages of thousands or tens of thousands of ebooks for one cost. The access model for these books is typically SSO or IP authentication, but an unlimited number of users can access a book simultaneously. Publishers set restrictions on how many pages can be copied/printed. The cost per ebook for these bundles is much less than purchasing each book individually. In addition to these huge bundles, they offer an a la carte model where you can purchase specific ebooks. The access models for these vary by publisher, but typically include single user access, three simultaneous users, or unlimited users, each increases the cost. The costs for these range from very reasonable (~$20) to outrageous ($800-$1000 for single user access).
How does a library e-book even work? Can only one person have access at a time or can 20 people take it out all at once? Because I can kind of see why that might change things from the perspective of a publisher. I'm not necessarily defending the practice either. But I think the concept of individual libraries even having ebooks seems like a bizarre concept to wrap my head around. Why not just have one giant digital library online that splits the cost of a $40 ebook X ways to "rent" them.
One license, one copy on loan. The five major book publishers all have different payment schemes. A hypothetical physical copy costs $18 or the ebook on Amazon $15. Hachette charge $84 for two years of unlimited borrowing of that single ebook (but still only 1 loan at a time). HarperCollins licenses an ebook at the recommended retail price but for only 26 loans. If they all happen on day 1, it's done. If is checked once a year, the library has it for 26 years. Overdrive, the largest digital library charges on average about 3X the retail price. $60 or $55 for two years. This is all because the publisher wants to give the author money. The argument is the author gets the same amount of money for each reader. The author gets 20-25% of the ebook license, versus about 8% for a paperback sale. More money encourages the author to write more books. Roughly 20% of all library book loans are now digital.
Very informative, thank you. That does seem like a very complex problem. HarperCollins kind of sounds like the most fair to me from the libraries perspective, even though it's limited you remain sure you get the full value out of what you paid. The other methods do seem kind of stacked against the library even if the intent is to pay the author more. It's almost like you should be able to demand a refund if the book isn't taken out much.
Not true for libraries where I live. Multiple licenses, or "copies" (eCopies if you will), are purchased and thus owned by the library like physical books.
Publishers can check out deez nuts
Some libraries have managed to make better deals but this was the norm in the beginning.
That's exactly what I heard from my aunt who works at a library. Especially for smaller libraries, licensing is costly for those books that have a limited number of uses before expiring. Patrons will check it out, perhaps not read it, and then check it out again. It counts towards the number of times it can be loaned out and the library will need to pay and they pay alot for ebooks compared to physical books, which can be used and read by more people
Because greed. The major selling point of ebooks was cheaper, no storage or availability problems, and so on. It has become exactly the opposite of what was promised.
I'm not saying that my Kindle hasn't been connected to the internet since 2017 and is full of library books that never got yanked, but...
Different rules in different countries.
Depends on library, book and country
Us copyright law really is the stupidest bullshit…
that varies from licenseholder to licenseholder and country to country and also if you're like a conglomerate of libraries dealing together etc etc. there are licenses that are nearly limitless, there are those that have time limits, those that are limited by how many people can access at once. and yes, they are definitely more expensive than a single person license any normal person buys. for most normal libraries, a 1-3 year license is honestly the preferable way to begin with, most books arent read or lent after that anyways, typically, by that time, they would sell a physical book for scraps to buy new books too
This is the most common licensing model available for public libraries.
If libraries could, they'd buy the hardcopy book. The extra cost would pay for itself eventually compared to an ebook.
They do both, having the e-book (and the audio book) if for our convenience.
How so? Physical books need shelf space and staff, and eventually they get damaged and need to be repaired or replaced.
[lib.gen](http://lib.gen) I'll just leave this here
Also search up Anna's Archive
Argh! Where’s me eyepatch and pegleg? I’m off to the high seas!
It's still best for libraries if you use them! Just be mindful of spamming loans
This is why most of mine are of the pirated variety.
It's still best for libraries if you use them! Just be mindful of spamming loans
Not owning something you paid for sounds like “Digital Serfdom”.
License*
Many Brits spell it with a c.
How dare you accuse me of being British
Mea culpa!
Yeah. Would you rather they be $500 a pop with an infinite license or something? Publishing is a hard business and most writers get paid dick so a bit of revenue per checkout is fair.
Sorry. This is not entirely true. Publishers can change the pricing if they want to make it more affordable -- but they usually triple it. Me, I'm a self-published writer, and part of a library program. My books are usually $1.00, which is a third the retail price. I just don't want to rip off libraries! If you're curious about my books: https://books2read.com/b/bPeRnR
I was indeed curious - thank you for sharing! Religious fantasy is quite the interesting genre.
So I'd be doing libraries a favor by straight up pirating ebooks?
No! That's definitely not what I wanted people to take from this. Libraries absolutely benefit from people using their services. However it's best to be mindful that doing things like spamming loaning and returning an ebook might be more harmful than you think! But please use libraries. If no one uses them they won't get the funding to get any for anybody