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Comment by TFNA | Hacker News Reader

That doesn't accord with my experience. I've been involved in academic book piracy since the early millennium, and there definitely was no "buy it if you like it" ideal. Virtually no one will spend the 100-400€ that a typical scholarly book costs except libraries. And since this was a community that reads heavily outside their research as well, once works of fiction started to be more heavily hosted on these servers, it came to seem a waste to ever actually spend money on media if you could just read it all for free -- nevermind that a lot of users were in the former USSR or the Third World where media was not available for sale locally even if you wanted to spend the money.

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These people tend to outgrow that tho. I def would have pirated books as a youth as it’d save me a trip to the library. Now i’m old and have money, I would never pirate a book as I value both contributing to the author and owning the physical thing. Maybe some exceptions if it’s in some niche tech or something and don’t wanna commit yet..

Wouldn’t you rather live in a world where book piracy is rampant than one where many people just don’t read anything?

I don't think this a youth thing that "people outgrow", lol. For over a decade now adult (and now middle-aged) peers who are heavy readers were asking me to put books on their ebook readers, since they knew I had the hookup, but now since Anna's Archive is so convenient, they are just getting the books themselves. A surprisingly large number of normie bibliophiles knows AA now.

For the majority of literature, buying the book won't contribute to the author because the author is deceased. For that minority where the author is alive, many people won't see a need to make an exception to their policy of not paying. Indeed, your second paragraph gets to the heart of it.

> I don't think this a youth thing that "people outgrow",

Totally agree. Also, we're applying western ethics to the third world.

They don't share our values on IP, I assure you.

Textbook pricing is such a scam and often self serving at expense of poor students, I find the lack of support for buying them not at all surprising

I wasn't talking about textbooks, which were only a sideshow of the pre-AA academic pirate circles I was active in, but rather published research.

Well, ethics is weaker, when the other is unethical in their own way.

400 euro for a book is hardly ethical. If you must charge that much for a copy you shouldn't have written it because you simply couldn't afford ro write it. Passin your poor business judgement onto others is not ethical.

Prices for scholarly books are not set by the author but by the publisher. The author will often send you a PDF for free if you email and ask nicely.

That's the problem, though. One of my books costs more than $100 USD and that's even on the cheaper side, and as you rightly point out, I had zero choice or saying in the pricing. Some more established authors can influence it, either by publisher choice or by talking with the acquisition editor but that's rare.

The academic book publishing industry is very predatory, which is why so many authors nowadays support open textbook initiatives.

What I can say with certainty is that in many poorer countries scientific research would be impossible without piracy. Universities just don't have the budgets and libraries are often abysmal (unless you work in the capital and it has a prestige state library).

Sorry, I should have said "publish it" instead of "write it".

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