
Confessions of a Book Pirate (2010) - iamiam
https://themillions.com/2010/01/confessions-of-a-book-pirate.html
======
_jal
I've been very poor (more than once), and I'm currently quite comfortable.
I've always read a lot, and would be in a very different place if I hadn't.
Using libraries has been a big part of that, but they are of course much less
useful for cutting-edge tech topics. I'm limiting this to those, in situations
where you think absorbing the book will improve your chops.

You should buy the book, because this makes both you and the author better
off.

But if you can't, you should read it anyway, because at least one of you is
benefiting. You can buy the book later when you're in a better place, or at
least pay it forward in some other way.

The only thing worse than not getting paid for your work is your unpaid work
not being used at all.

~~~
MaysonL
I bought the book (used), but I can't find it right now, so I borrowed it from
the library, and this article just prompted me to do an online search for it,
and I just downloaded a pdf copy.

------
musicale
It's a major embarrassment for humanity that we've created an astonishing
library system – books in scanned or native digital format, inexpensive
smartphones/e-reader devices, and the internet – that could give billions of
people on the planet the ability to read nearly any book ever published
essentially for free, but for narrow business reasons we're doing the best we
can to prevent that eventuality from ever happening.

To protect their own business interests, publishers (and their technical
accomplices) have invented crippled digital formats that try to destroy the
most fundamental and beneficial advantages of e-books: free transmission and
duplication, and the ability of one library copy to be read by millions
simultaneously.

We have built the library of Alexandria and made it big enough to serve the
entire world, but instead of burning it down we just lock the door so that
nobody can get in.

~~~
pjc50
Sure, but how are writers to get paid? It's hardly the most lucrative business
to start with.

~~~
VvR-Ox
Probably like musicians and a lot of them use platforms to publish their songs
to listen to for free to gain momentum and attract enough people who will be
delighted to get a Vinyl (in case of books it would be a hard cover).

When I personally used pirated stuff it was because I couldn't afford to buy
it or there was no other possibility to get a digital copy that is easier to
search and transport.

It is only greed that is stopping our world from becoming something with all
the good features of series like "Star Trek" including access to all those
books for free.

The greedy people think they can gain even more money by forcing poor people
to buy their stuff by punishing them. The greedy who have money influence
governments to make laws against this piracy and investigate against them with
public money.

In the end the poor can still not afford to buy the books, music etc. and will
just be punished which costs more public money than giving them free access in
the first place.

This is just another thing that is very wrong in our world.

~~~
dsabanin
I think you should become the change you want to see in the world and stop
charging for your work. I wonder how that will go.

~~~
leggomylibro
A lot of people on this forum probably _are_ pretty happy-go-lucky with their
negotiating.

The difference between $200k and $300k is a lot, but I see a lot of unattached
young people not really caring. Ironically, it seems much smaller than the
difference between $20k and $30k.

But most artists don't have people breaking their door down to compete for
their time. And anyways, coding is a creative profession; I'm sure that plenty
of techies are aspiring artists who didn't like their odds.

I'm surprised that more people don't see exclusively 'ex post facto' rewards
as a sort of corrupting influence on the creation of art, rather than a
motivator.

~~~
pjc50
> The difference between $200k and $300k is a lot, but I see a lot of
> unattached young people not really caring.

In which context do you see that?

> ex post facto' rewards as a sort of corrupting influence on the creation of
> art

So ... Patronage only? Commissions only?

------
iamiam
I agree in terms of the economics of it for many readers at least. I buy a lot
of books. I would buy a lot more e-books I think if prices were reasonable i.e
sub $5, vs. usually being as much a print copy. I also gift many books. I
recently downloaded 200+ books via b-ok.org...most of which I certainly
wouldn't have bought and probably half of which I won't open for years if
ever. Two months later, though, a couple of the books I enjoyed that I've
ordered new copies to be sent as gifts as friends.

I would be a good candidate for something like Kindle Unlimited, but most of
the books I'm interested in aren't available there. At least half the books I
downloaded (many academic as well as poetry and other books) are not available
on Kindle Unlimited.

Subscription music aggregators seem to have a pretty decently comprehensive
offering in a way that the book, news, and movie aggregators don't.

It would be a little weird, but if there was an app where I could read any
book but every 20th page or so was some full page ad...I could live with that
(as long as it wasn't a video or something). Not sure if that kind of a model
could work in terms of the economics for writers -- but it's of course working
for news mostly and for some film sites like Tubi and Pluto.

~~~
dorchadas
Have you checked Scribd? They might have some of those that Kindle Unlimited
doesn't.

------
vector_spaces
Safari Books Online (I think recently rebranded as O'Reilly Online) is a
pretty decent value -- about $49 USD a month for access to most O'Reilly,
PragProg, Manning, and quite a few other non-programmer focused publishing
houses like Academic Press. Between that subscription, my scribd subscription
(which has plenty of unauthorized titles in addition to its authorized
titles), and PDFs I'm able to find elsewhere, I'm pretty set. (not affiliated
with either OReilly or Scribd, just a happy user)

Despite this, I strongly prefer a physical copy. Except for some of the books
on Safari which I use as a quick reference, I mostly use PDF copies as a sort
of extended preview before purchasing (or not!) a physical copy

But the interviewee is spot on when he argues that a pirated download != a
lost sale. The idea that it is is just pure silliness. Before I got into tech,
if I couldn't find a PDF of a $70-120 book I simply wouldn't read it. Period.

~~~
jnurmine
I tried Safari/O'Reilly Online and I think it is too expensive.

The time I can spend every month for "extra" reading translates to roughly one
book. For 49 USD a month, I could just buy the book secondhand every month
(and even sell it further when done).

I would have happily paid 5 USD a month, but 49 USD, that's way too much for
the value, for me.

~~~
Cephalopterus
I wish they had pricing based on countries PPP instead of a flat international
pricing, it's kinda expensive if you're not from a first world country cause
atleast where I am, $588 (49x12) would easily pay for a semester of college.
O'Reilly does have local reprints of the books for slightly cheaper through
their partners here but I wish they would also implement a similar pricing
discount for Safari

------
gtycomb
Similar to books, growing up in India I discovered “Western” music because of
pirated music. The one and only reason I heard of bands like Yes, Jethro Tul,
Roxy Music, Steely Dan, Dylan, Joni Mitchell, or St. Martin in the Fields,
etc. are the pirated copes moving from hand to hand among our school buddies.
There was no way we could have afforded the orginal copies from the
publishers.

Well the clocks ticked, I came here for graduate school and but the time I got
my first job, over a period of time I had instinctively purchased all the
original CDs and Box Sets of these and many other artists, about 1000 of them
on my shelf. When I exchange notes with with my old buddies, some in Canada
and some in England, they have more extensive collections than me. For one
weak immitation of a Gibson lookalike guitar we had, we own a small stable of
the real things by now :-)

The pirated copies that hooked us to the artists in the first place. I hate to
steal from the artists I so much adore, but then shouldn’t there be a way to
spread the music around.

------
sillysaurusx
Book piracy is a big reason I've been able to learn as much as I know about
ML.

I don't know how to feel about it. All I know is that I'm more effective than
I would've been if I had to pay for the books, since I wouldn't have read
anything.

It's common on HN to pretend that everyone here is an affluent programmer
working for FAANG with $500k/yr in stock vesting. In reality, I've spoken to
many who are more along the lines of "month to month paycheck." Dropping $50
on a book about Tensorflow just isn't in the cards.

Yet the outrage is extreme, and probably justified:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047297#18049297](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047297#18049297)

I apologize to the authors of the books I've absorbed. No doubt you've worked
exceptionally hard. For what it's worth, I do recommend your books to others
who may be in a position to buy them.

I like:

\- Hands-on Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and Tensorflow, 2nd
Edition

\- IPython Interactive Computing and Visualization Cookbook 2nd Edition

\- Nick McClure - TensorFlow Machine Learning Cook (2017)

These are easily found on Library Genesis, which has become my de facto study.

~~~
copperx
"Buy or pirate" is a false dichotomy when there are good public and University
libraries available; which is true for most big cities in the US. They will
not stock the latest tech books, but you can easily get them through an
interlibrary loan.

~~~
bambataa
If the book is freely available from a library does it really matter if you
find it more convenient to get it by pirating?

~~~
mirimir
Sure, but libraries must buy books to loan. For physical books, there's only
one concurrent user. And for ebooks, licenses specify allowed numbers of
concurrent users.

But still, that is an interesting argument.

So why aren't libraries considered to be pirating?

~~~
Broken_Hippo
IIRC, there have been that claim: Libraries, of course, were going to put book
publishers out of business because all of their patrons were reading books
they otherwise would have purchased. We simply don't hear of this pushback
much anymore and we more see it as a public good - though not always good
enough to fund them properly or make sure everyone has access to one for free.

~~~
jhbadger
It's more complicated than that; in the 19th century when libraries (at the
time mostly subscription ones akin to a Victorian Netflix) were the primary
purchasers of books rather than individuals, novels were extremely expensive
-- the typical novel at the time was a rambling 1000+ page affair taking up
three volumes [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-
volume_novel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-volume_novel)) and cost over
30 shillings. That's like £150 or $200 today! It was the decline of the
subscription library that forced publishers to sell books to individuals at a
more reasonable price and eventually invent the idea of the paperback

------
supernova87a
I can sympathize with the desire to see your favorite books put online for
more people to read.

I for example, am a big fan of the book "Waves & Beaches" by Willard Bascom, a
long out-of-print book on the physics, dynamics of the ocean (and the spirit
of longing to understand the nature of the sea), but which always only could
be found for >$30 on Ebay or something like that.

I finally bought a copy (out of nostalgia) and actually enjoyed it again so
much, I went to the trouble of sawing off the spine, scanning it and OCRing it
to produce an eBook and prolong its life. For myself.

I have been tempted to share it, but have no idea how. But I imagine there's
tons of books and people like this.

~~~
jamiek88
Upload to libgen is the best way to share things like that.

I'm not goint to upload the latest JK King Grisham page turner but an obscure
gardening book where the author is long dead? Yes that is getting uploaded.

For the culture.

~~~
sampo
"Waves and Beaches" (1964 edition) is already in libgen.

~~~
kick
No OCR.

~~~
supernova87a
Thanks, I'll have a look at that site and maybe upload it. I have the 1980
version which comes with a bunch more content about energy production from the
sea.

------
dang
A thread from 2013:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4992595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4992595)

Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1078652](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1078652)

~~~
iamiam
Thanks Dang for posting the links -- interesting!

------
Iv
This title just wants me to still throw a useless stone in an already lost
battle: "book piracy" used to mean "Steal a book content and sell it putting
you as the author". That's the original meaning of the word.

Copyright-infriging a book does not sound as serious as "piracy" or "theft"
but these two words are actually misused.

------
ggm
The publisher who does three of a four part series but not part four (ipr
dispute with right holder usually)

The author who is dead, has one seminal work online and four other not online.
(Randolph Stow)

The author who is dead, has four minor works online but not the seminal work
(c.m. kornbluth)

The author who is in dispute with epublishing as a protest against ipr
contract terms (Ursula le guin, Philip Pullman) and has their work ripped
anyway.

The bad OCR conversion.

------
zarkov99
I buy a lot of books, more than what I read. But I have to confess that the
lack of pdf versions and the sometimes obscene cost of text books does
sometime lead me to peruse alternatives.

------
Mediterraneo10
Interesting that in the old linked discussion from 2013, someone claims that
publishers can't complain, because they had a record year financially. I
wonder how well they are doing now.

My gut feeling is that publishers these days face problems not from privacy so
much as from 1) the sheer glut of content, making it hard to stand out, and 2)
shortening attention spans and people preferring to read snackable content on
their phones instead of longform books.

When Kindles appeared, they seemed to augur a golden age for reading (and
sure, you could load them up with pirated ebooks). Nowadays I am conscious at
the beach or on public transport of usually being the only person with a
Kindle while everyone else around me is looking at their phones, and it would
be hard to believe any significant number have an EPUB reader open on those
phones to read actual books.

~~~
Simon_says
I bought one of the first Kindles and loaded it up with a hundred DRM-
liberated ebooks and read it avidly. Since then, phones have gotten bigger
screens with higher pixel density and longer battery life, and my Kindle now
sits is a drawer unused. The best ebook reader is the one you have on you.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
Higher battery life? The Kindle battery lasts much longer than a phone with
the backlight off and in airplane mode.

But again, even if a phone _could_ be used as an ereader, my point is that for
most people it is likely not. Even for bibliophiles, they might not get so
much reading done on a phone due to the distractions that phones bring.

~~~
Simon_says
I meant battery life is now longer on phones than it used to be on phones,
assuming you're using it as an ebook reader, which means no radios.

~~~
input_sh
That still can't be compared to an average eReader, whose battery lasts for
weeks.

I charge mine every two or three weeks (about an hour of usage per day).

~~~
Simon_says
Of course it can be compared.

------
stebann
It's funny to think that I do books translations so others in my country (or
for those that know my language) can read them, most of them pirated books. I
sometimes ask my self how much would I earn if publishers would pay me for
that work.

Anyway, it feels good to know that someone got his(her) exams fine, school
homework done or just a pleasant read because some of my work. This is my
contribution to the humanity. The invisible spark of information freedom.

------
falcolas
I'm torn on the topic myself. I buy books, because I'm fortunate enough to be
in a financial position to buy the books I want to read.

But e-books are comparatively expensive. They were conceptually sold to us as
a cheaper alternative to hardback and paperback books; but they cost as much
as hardback editions quite often. For no reason other than "the market will
bear it". The market may technically be bearing it, but it's caused a
segmentation of that market with piracy on the other side of the line.

Technical books are even more ridiculous; $50 for a book is insane in this day
and age. Especially when it's a distilling of topics and subjects easily found
online for free. The act of distilling is not worth $50 to me. "Physically
Based Rendering" is probably the only technical book I've purchased and felt
good about purchasing; and that's because it feels like a full college course
in the subject.

And then there's the college textbook scam. I feel morally incapable of
supporting that racket in any way, shape or form. It's an egregious abuse of a
captive audience that forces purchases at prices which are based on what can
be gotten from a college loan, not in the value the textbook may provide.

~~~
musicale
Textbooks are definitely a scam, and often the authors don't make much money
from them - it's eaten by the publisher and distributors.

A number of e-books on Amazon are priced at $9.99 since Amazon pays a higher
royalty rate for prices under $10.

------
AnonC
I stopped buying books when I realized that I don’t really read most of them
(blame short attention span). So I pirate a lot of books, which also, for the
most part, remain unread. If I read a book and really like it, then I’d look
at buying a DRM free ebook copy of it. I also buy ebooks when they’re on sale
at a low price.

------
neiman
The problem where I live and studied, is that libraries state and book stores
has deteriorated in the last few years for obvious reasons. At the same time
it became difficult, or actually, impossible, for a privacy conscious person
to buy ebooks online.

------
JustSomeNobody
I will sometimes try to locate a pdf of a technical book I am interested in.
If I find it, I’ll scan through it and if I think it’s something I would like
to read I’ll buy a physical copy. If not, I delete the pdf and don’t read it.
If I don’t want to buy it, it isn’t worth my time to read it free.

It’s my equivalent to walking into a book store and thumbing through books
until I find one I want to buy.

------
Rerarom
I read like 70 books per year, of which about 60 in pirated form on my Kindle.
I never had any qualms with it.

------
silveroriole
One thing that might lower piracy is making Amazon book previews not
absolutely useless. If I preview a book and I can only see the million word
introduction by someone who isn’t the author, I’m not buying the book. The
“surprise me” thing works ok but isn’t available on most previews.

~~~
odysseus
You can usually get a usable preview on the Apple bookstore.

------
floki999
This is an old story and much has changed since. You can find just about any
technical title in seconds, and in clean pdf format - not scanned.

------
paggle
I downloaded several thousand ebooks and read about 10 of them. I’ve also
bought more ebooks than I’ve pirated and read, and the ones that I didn’t read
barely even happened... just a transfer of bits from one drive to another.

