985
Iraqi book market culture
(lemmy.world)
Me, stealing every pdf I can find:
But the reader does not steal, the clear logical conclusion is that piracy isn't theft if you read the book.
Do you read them?
Sometimes 🥲
It's a shame the people who you stole them from don't have them any more...
Next you'll tell me that you wouldn't download a car.
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This is clearly a indoor Bazar with doors that lock on both ends, they leave them out cause it's not technically outside and ain't nobody breaking in to steal some books, shits heavy and probably doesn't sell for all that much on the black market
Yeah it's a cute quote but that's obviously not outside. Jeez
I also don't steal. I download my books from online copies, which is copying, not stealing.
Cool, you hate creatives and feel entitled to their work on the basis of semantics
on the basis of semantics
It's not semantics when "stealing" results in the loss of the original by the owner while "copying" just results in a new one being created.
TL;DR: ✨die mad✨
Publishers don't lose money when I download their products, but I wish they did.
Too bad. Because it's being redistributed through a third party, you aren't even stealing a negligible amount of electricity, bandwidth, or CPU time from them. Damn, when you think about it, it's just not "stealing" in any capacity, is it?
That’s a semantic point. The truth is that artists deserve to be paid for their work. Whether you “copy” or “steal”, you’re getting the work without paying the creator. That’s fundamentally shitty behavior.
Okay, but I literally just expressed how they're fundamentally, pragmatically different while you keep reaching for the word "semantics". You can still disagree that it's wrong to copy – that's not what I'm trying to litigage. To call it only semantically different from stealing is asinine.
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Is it stealing if I buy a second hand book? I'm still getting to enjoy the work without paying the author (even if the original person paid). Multiple people can own a physical copy at different times (with the author only getting paid once).
Just like downloads. I don't feel bad about downloading stuff that's out of print. No one is making money from it now anyway, so what harm. If anything, digital copies help to stop these books being lost.
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i often buy books on a DRM'd store or a paper copy, but then download the epub to put on my e-ink tablet so i don't have to deal with the shitty DRM'd app it would be stuck in.
You don't deserve the downvotes, you're right. If everyone used the "iTs NoT sTeAlInG" argument then no digital works would ever be profitable and everyone would lose.
Cool stuff.
The epubs in my PIRATED MEDIA folder begs to differ
Piracy is not theft. You have not deprived anyone of something they would otherwise have.
I have deprived the authors and publishers and bookstores of the money they would've made.
You were never gonna buy all those books in the first place.
This. As a hillbilly with no access to books growing up, with my education practically stopping at the 4th grade and no stores in sight to purchase books from, I would have never had access to the things I read without piracy.
I half believe that’s why it’s an issue in the first place.
I started my reading adventure at 640x480 on windows 98.
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Libraries, lending to a friend, donating to someone, buying used... All the same as piracy?
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I have a physical book collection worth thousands of dollars. The only party that has profited off me is Elsevier.
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Here people even "steal" books from public bookcases and sell them.
For people who aren't familiar, let me explain: These public bookcases are a weatherproof shelf, old phone booth or something in the streets. The concept is you can take any book and leave any book. There are no written rules and you can keep a book if you like or just read it and put it back. In recent years people started to scan the barcodes and checked what books they can sell. There is a debate going on if people should mark these books or not, so they can't be sold.
Who tf is buying normal books from the local black market in 2025 is my real question here
It's more of an online market. eBay, Amazon to a certain extent, there's loads of book specific ones and some that are for used items generally and allow books. And unless marked it's not the black market at all. I mean obviously the book is stolen, but it's just entering the used market as opposed to being sold through a fence or whatever
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We do this at a used book store. It's books that we don't think we can sell inside for whatever reason, and we put them on shelves outside. There's a big awning so they don't really get rained on unless it's raining sideways. We sell them for a dime or a quarter, and there's a slot for overnight drops in case people want to get books at night. Every morning there's at least a couple of bucks from the previous day/night.
We donate the proceeds to public radio, and over the years we've donated over $100,000.
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But what if the thief steals the books not to read them, but just to fill their house with books and make themselves seem erudite and intelligent?
I'm imagining the most extreme version of this, where a man is living in a house that is a veritable library. Yet, they're actually illiterate.
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They should learn to read and find out the shit Sheherazade said about them.
Yeah but the vandal does vandalize. In my country there are tons of shitheads who like to see the world burn and destroy someone else property when nobody is around. Like in some neighborhoods in certain cities you can’t have a mini library in your front yard, since a certain type of teenager will ransack it and set the books on fire.
I think that's just one way of saying they're not prints worth stealing
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And it doesn't rain
It’s Iraq, not Arrakis.
The vandal does not read, either.
At one point you could get swaths of ebooks on pirate bay. Probably still could. With seeders. Soo…we know that’s not true.
piracy is not the same as stealing. You having a copy of a bible as a PDF is fundamentally physically different from having a physical book.
Publishers have perverted the concept of ownership by hiding the fact that there is no scarcity of digital items compared to physcial ones.
I'm tired of people pretending like piracy does no harm.
If 100% of readers pirate an authors book, they get 0% income. It really is that simple.
Pirate your shit if the publishing sucks, but also support the author.
Donate, buy their merch, buy the ebook of their site directly.
Don't be a cunt.
Depends. They certainly lose a potential sale from some people, but many people who pirate books never would have read it if they needed to pay for it. Be that because of a lack of money or a lack of interest. Same with games and shows. So no lost sales there.
You could even argue that pirating helps with sales by causing people who never would have read the book otherwise to discuss it with friends or strangers online. I personally think that argument is a big stretch, but it's not entirely wrong.
But yeah, more pirates should be willing to support authors of books they like. If you think they deserve it, buy the ebook even if you've already read the whole thing.
People who pirate in my experience typically do so because they would never have bought the thing otherwise. Pirates are enabled by technology to have things they wouldn’t otherwise get to have. There isn’t often any “lost sale.” Only free advertisement.
OK, but there are barriers of entry to piracy. You have to be tech literate enough to know what to do, and you have to be on top of the latest developments to know where to even go to get the files... and you must have heard about the book from somewhere, presumably some people had to buy and read it first.
There will never be a text published with 100% piracy rate. It's a fantastical scenario.
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But the arsonist, tho...
Middle school me would have taken advantage and proven them very wrong
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this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
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