[HN Gopher] Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
___________________________________________________________________
Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
Author : cft
Score : 410 points
Date : 2022-11-17 09:13 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.justice.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.justice.gov)
| sva_ wrote:
| This makes me worried about LibGen. It would be an incredible
| loss to humanity to see these libraries go for good.
| PointyFluff wrote:
| I thought Fahrenheit 451 was supposed to be fiction...
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| They were arrested for a lot more than copyright infringement:
|
| Criminal Copyright
|
| Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud
|
| Wire Fraud
|
| Money Laundering Conspiracy
| p1peridine wrote:
| > Records obtained by law enforcement from Google LLC ("Google")
| and Amazon, Inc. ("Amazon") provide evidence of the defendant
| [name]'s control of Z-Library.
|
| They clearly haven't read any "OPSEC 101"-books. Rookie mistake.
| jhvkjhk wrote:
| They are so young! Does anyone know what will happen to them
| after the arrestment? I sincerely think they are doing charity.
| blakblakarak wrote:
| No doubt they'll be chucked in a supermax prison in the arse-
| end of nowhere for fifty years.
| nathancahill wrote:
| They'll charge them like Aaron Swartz, where each piece of
| material is a separate count against them. The years of
| sentencing and fines will be astronomical.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > I sincerely think they are doing charity
|
| By limiting downloads (artificial scarcity)?
|
| By charging for pirated works?
| inshadows wrote:
| They charge for bandwidth, server cycles and rent.
| andsoitis wrote:
| So they don't profit?
| inshadows wrote:
| Who cares. Don't be a free-loader.
| skyyler wrote:
| I find it interesting that zlib is supposed to be
| compensated for their servers but the authors aren't
| supposed to be compensated for their writings.
|
| Personally, I'm in support of zlib / libgen / other
| illegalist libraries. But it is kind of funny to see
| where the morality lies on this.
| [deleted]
| tartoran wrote:
| Not many textbooks require a new edition every year and it wasn't
| really as bad for the secondhand market where the original buyers
| would pay exhorbitant prices for textbooks but would recover some
| of it by selling them as used.
|
| With new editions every semester they want to extract as much
| money from students which I find appalling, students are kindof
| poor on average. Piracy is an outcome to that
| trabant00 wrote:
| What happened to "you get what you pay for" and "if you're not
| the customer you are the product"? We already know what happens
| with free content on the internet: it turns to shit. And no,
| wikipedia or open source are not models you can apply to most
| books. The ones you can, we already have them: free programming
| books and the sorts.
|
| Do you want books to be the next low effort, low quality, ads
| ridden, ideology pushing, click bait, spam, micro transactions,
| gambling medium? Asking for them to be free (as in beer) is the
| way to go.
|
| Another thing: as a long time pirate from a poor country myself I
| never understood the need to morally justify piracy. I do it
| because I want to spend money elsewhere, not because I feel it is
| my right or it should be. I do it because I can and I profit from
| it. My head will not explode with cognitive dissonance if I
| accept I am wronging others to help myself.
| dartharva wrote:
| > Do you want books to be the next low effort, low quality, ads
| ridden, ideology pushing, click bait, spam, micro transactions,
| gambling medium?
|
| Were books and works that came before copyright law was
| invented "low effort" and "low quality"? What kind of mental
| gymnastics does it take to equate IP laws with creativity? It's
| rather _with_ and _because of_ copyright laws that literature
| and educational content have gone down the drain. It 's _now_
| that many books get written with the sole intention of it
| getting consoomed by as many people as possible, riddled with
| dark patterns and cringy styles. Information and ideas are NOT
| your private property if you make them public.
| dchuk wrote:
| (Hypothetically)
|
| Couldn't this concept be built out in a much more decentralized
| way, where there's a desktop app you install that is basically a
| BitTorrent client and a search interface, and then the app
| synchronizes with all other desktop apps to keep a SQLite
| database updated with all of the book meta data, and then each
| user also contributes some amount of disk space (let's say 1gb)
| that the app automatically manages storing some amount of the
| network's book files in (maybe even encrypted somehow, or
| fragments of book files, so you never actually have a complete
| file on any given machine).
|
| So basically a big torrent mesh with redundant, fragmented
| storage of book files everywhere. People can upload a book, the
| app shreds it up and broadcasts to the network, enough other apps
| sync those fragments on their end to make it "permanently" on the
| network (statistically at least).
|
| The metadata can't possibly be that big for a million books in a
| SQLite database. Users would search against their local SQLite
| DB, and for a book they want to download, it's just normal
| BitTorrent downloads in the background. Run it all through TOR or
| similar.
|
| Thoughts? I am only a user of all of the above tech, never
| written software for any of it. Is it possible to build a
| distributed and resilient file sharing system like this?
| chis wrote:
| You also need a system to manage books coming in, separating
| spam/viruses from real content. You either need a centralized
| source verifying books (zlib and usenet approach) or some kind
| of voting system like thepiratebay. If it's a centralized
| source, that'll be the weak point to take down, and voting
| systems won't work well for unpopular books.
|
| Last I checked there were some pretty good usenet servers
| flying under the radar with even more books than z-lib,
| manually curated. So there might not be enough demand for your
| idea at the moment.
| rex_lupi wrote:
| There's IPFS
| wellareyousure wrote:
| robomartin wrote:
| My first thought on this is that the people who download books
| from these sites were never going to buy them in the first place.
| This is particularly true if they engaged in downloading dozens
| or hundreds of books. In other words, not sure just how much
| money anyone lost because of the existence of these sites.
|
| If someone is never going to buy what you sell (let's say they
| can't afford it) and they are able to get it for free in digital
| form, you did not incur any expenses and you did not lose any
| money.
|
| I am not trying to justify IP theft, just trying to understand
| the financial reality of the matter.
|
| At the extreme is the case of an author who produces a great book
| after over a year of hard work only to see 100% of the books
| stolen in digital form. The author has a household to support and
| goes without income.
| xtracto wrote:
| A lot of the typical and expected takes for these sort of
| discussions:
|
| - on one side, people who are in favour of the arrests , because
| they see their a activities as crimes. They have point
|
| - on the other side people that one way or another, believe that
| the distribution of the information should be free in some sense.
| Justifications always abound. A d it's Ok
|
| I offer a third take: Theres no reason why authors should be
| perpetually paid for the work of 500/1000 hours, or whatever time
| it took them to write the books; research time included.
| Publishing a book should give authors, editors and related
| parties the compensation for their worked time at a fair hourly
| wage. The same way you a I are compensated hourly.
|
| After that, the only cost of books should be distribution costs,
| which nowadays are near to 0 with p2p and similar.
|
| The fact that the work output of some people is intended to be
| overpaid indefinitely, while the output of the rest of us is only
| paid hourly, is what's unfair.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| Authors and creators are not wage workers. They are taking on
| the risk that their creations may yield them nothing. In that
| sense they are entrepreneurs/investors, and along with the risk
| of failure they have the prospect of great "upside". So I think
| the question is whether you think there should be limits to how
| much you can earn, etc, in general.
| blairbeckwith wrote:
| Does this apply to everyone? If I build and sell an indie
| software product, should I only be able to sell it for the
| distribution costs ($0.02/user/month, say) once I have recouped
| someone's definition of a fair hourly wage for building it?
| [deleted]
| somebodythere wrote:
| Compensated by whom?
| dartharva wrote:
| Creative works can't be valued just by the number of hours it
| takes to make them. Good books must be paid for more than bad
| books.
| xtracto wrote:
| The way I think this would work is like this:
|
| - A "good writer" sholud release the first chapter of their
| book (or first N pages or whatever) for free. As a sort of
| "Resume"/"Portfolio"
|
| - Then, he lists the rest of the TOC for the next chapters of
| the book, and _the price_ of each of them.
|
| - He raises that money in a place like Kickstarter or similar
| platform, for each of the chapters. And as he gets the money,
| he publishes/uploads the new chapters of the book.
|
| - Once he gets the 100% of the price of the book, he has
| delievered/published all the chapters. He may offer the whole
| book in one file, printed copy, audio or whatever other
| medium for an additional prodcution and distribution fee.
|
| With this approach writers who write good books would be able
| to demand more money per chapter (hence, $ per hour of their
| work) than writers who write bad books. While at the same
| time, they would be able to ask for some fixed amount of $
| per hour of their work. Sure, a writer like Stephen King may
| ask for $1000 USD per hour of his work, so one chapter of one
| of his book will take $40,000 USD. But I am sure given his
| fame, he won't have any trouble in raising that.
|
| This appraoch would also work for music and software. It is
| kind of based on the Shareware model used in the 90s.
| wafriedemann wrote:
| Well, they would be fine if they had studied at Stanford. Crooks
| don't study at Stanford.
| generationP wrote:
| Cheap bet: We won't hear many authors rejoice over this. As an
| example, Stephen King's pinned tweet is concerned with a very
| different kind of theft ( https://nitter.it/StephenKing ).
|
| In academia, this is slightly narrowing our choices (not much
| because Z-Lib has never been the main source). As for the books
| we can't read... well, we won't then. At this point, it's the
| books competing over our attention, not us scrambling to find
| them. Another cheap bet: The balances of academic publishers at
| least will not improve from this.
| ketzu wrote:
| Am I misunderstanding something, or is this tweet circling the
| completely wrong part? Revenue vs payment is completely
| meaningless, because it is low due to advance payments.
|
| The 'important' part is revenue after profits vs royalties, or
| profit sharing, which seems to be around 8.3%.
| jl6 wrote:
| There is widespread support for the complaint that copyright
| duration is excessive, and that a degree of piracy should be
| tolerated as a form of protest, but IMHO these guys crossed a
| line when they tried to make money from piracy.
| ketzu wrote:
| I wonder, is there a nice site for searching and usage of open
| source and other free books? There are software repositories,
| places you go for free video (especially youtube) and more. I see
| many complaints about missing openness of knowledge. So I think
| something like that would be nice.
| predictsoft wrote:
| The bizarre thing is that they asked for donations as Amazon gift
| cards! Surely Amazon could have blocked them?
| dewey wrote:
| And how would Amazon know which gift cards were donated to
| them? You can buy them with cash everywhere, re-sell the
| product you bought in cash and use that to fund the site.
| pavelevst wrote:
| Very sad day for world's education. They trying so hard to keep
| knowledge only for rich
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| You can set your own rules regarding books.
|
| If you profit from a book, you must buy it, no questions
| answered.
|
| If you pass the 50th page, go buy it.
|
| Same applies to software... if you are generating income with it,
| you must buy it.
|
| Rest is up to your conscience.
| hd4 wrote:
| Ah yes, actual hardened dangerous criminals finally facing
| justice.
| drummer wrote:
| I couldnt sleep for months with those two running around free
| knowing they could strike at any time
| phpisatrash wrote:
| Me and my colleagues will be affected by the end of Z library and
| co related projects.
|
| Here in Brazil and for sure in most second and third world
| countries, people don't have money to spend in books.
|
| You can argue that people can go to the library, but in most
| cases it's even expensive to take a bus or taxi even a Uber.
|
| I'm a law student at an university in brazil. Law books are
| really expensive. Even though my university have a library,
| sometimes it doesn't have the books that the professors ask us to
| read.
|
| Since I found z library I could have access to most of books that
| I needed.
|
| I do know that the writers and publishers have costs and they
| need to make money, but I don't agree with the fact that we have
| to pay to have knowledge. It's more like if we don't have money,
| we can't have knowledge.
| diego_moita wrote:
| What could be more Brazilian than law students breaking the law
| in order to be able to understand the law?
|
| Sounds like those specimens collectors from the 19th century
| that helped on the extinction of species (e.g. dodo bird, great
| auk) by collecting and embalming them for "preservation".
| joak wrote:
| In most countries downloading a book is not illegal. What
| might be illegal is to distribute copyrighted material. I say
| "might" because often distributing is not even illegal.
| Sending to friends and family without making money is usually
| not illegal. And how do you determine "friends"?
| kennend3 wrote:
| > And how do you determine "friends"?
|
| This!!
|
| This exact lawsuit took place in Canada where the supreme
| court ruruled that you don't necessarily need to know
| someone to "lend" to them.
|
| They cited public libraries as an example of where books
| and video s are lent out free of charge and the librarian
| and the borrower are not "friends".
|
| https://www.iposgoode.ca/2012/07/the-pentalogy-the-
| supreme-c...
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Yes, there used to be massive herds of law textbooks roaming
| under the canopies of the Amazon, but thanks to Z-library's
| irresponsible book-hunting and conservation methods they have
| become a very rare sight. The only remaining herds are in the
| Oxford University Press/Scholastic//Wiley/Houghton Mifflin
| textbook preserve located just outside of Brasilia.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| It sucks, but search for used versions of those books. As long
| as you're willing to wait a week or two, you can often get used
| books internationally for <10 dollars.
|
| Also ask your professors if they can share relevant parts of
| the books they use. Many countries outside the English-speaking
| world have partial copyright exemptions for education.
|
| A last resort may be to ask professors whether they can apply
| for evaluation copies. Publishers often give free copies to
| educators so they can evaluate books for their curriculum.
| Sadly, it's mostly digital versions today.
| lettergram wrote:
| > I do know that the writers and publishers have costs and they
| need to make money, but I don't agree with the fact that we
| have to pay to have knowledge. It's more like if we don't have
| money, we can't have knowledge.
|
| For all human history, access to knowledge requires wealth.
| Simple example -- If I want to know how to fix a particular old
| refrigerator I bought second hand, I need to buy the manual.
|
| That said, I enjoy the story of Jesus feeding hundreds of
| people with a few fish and a couple loaves of bread. I point
| out the story is also a parable. Jesus is somehow duplicating
| the fish and bread to feed the crowd. Isn't this similar to
| knowledge? Should we not spread knowledge in a similar way if
| it's of no cost to us? If you say "no, the author needs to be
| paid!" Then I ask, "is not the fisherman and baker missing out
| on profit from the sale of fish and bread?"
|
| It always brings an interesting discussion around this topic.
| Fundamentally, I agree knowledge should be free. I post my
| blogs for free for this very reason. If I need to make money, I
| do work, sell products; etc.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| Theoretically if Jesus duplicated fish and bread on an
| industrial scale, yeah, it would. Also, labor still needs to
| be put in to make the products, all piracy does is make it
| incredibly easy to make additional copies.
|
| There's a reason musicians have to constantly tour and the
| middle class of music has entirely degraded since the 90s
| achenet wrote:
| if the people Jesus fed with the duplicated fish and bread
| were too poor to afford buying any food, is that still lost
| sales?
|
| If some student in Rwanda downloads a copy of some obscure
| Springer-Verlag text (I'm picking on SV because their
| practices with research publications are just so cynically
| rent-seeking it's easy to criticize them) that costs five
| times his annual income and probably isn't even available
| for sale in the country, is that really a lost sale?
|
| You brought up music - I'm an amateur/trying to get to
| semi-pro musician myself, and my current "business model"
| is basically the Patreon approach - make something people
| love, let them give you money for it. I'm also an ardent
| fan of several bands (Surfer Blood being one very notable
| example) whose work I originally discovered via piracy.
| Since that first listen at age 16, I've bought digital
| copies of their work on Bandcamp and have bought tickets to
| see them live. If I like the work I will do my best to
| support the creator. I don't see why some massive record
| company needs to take a 50% cut so they can pay their
| "Managing Director of Artistic Innovation" his seven figure
| salary.
|
| The argument "a pirated copy is a lost sale" is false in
| the general case, as my aforementioned examples
| demonstrate.
| hggh wrote:
| The Z Library is still alive, as a TOR Hidden Service:
| http://zlibrary24tuxziyiyfr7zd46ytefdqbqd2axkmxm4o5374ptpc52...
| akudha wrote:
| I was looking for a book a while ago, it was something like
| $150 in the U.S. Out of curiosity, I looked up the price in
| other countries. It was 150 times the exchange rate.
|
| 150$ for a book is a lot of money even in the U.S. How do
| publishers expect other countries to pay the equivalent of 150$
| (in local currency)? In many places $150 might be half the
| monthly salary or worse.
|
| I understand publishers and authors need to get paid,
| especially the authors. It takes decades to gain expertise in
| difficult subjects and on top of it, one needs to be able to
| write well to create a good book. So yes, authors need to be
| compensated. But at the same time, their customer base in most
| cases are college kids. How do they expect them to pay? And how
| much of all that money goes to the authors anyway, who are the
| real experts vs the middlemen, the publishers?
|
| The whole situation is just depressing.
| syrrim wrote:
| There is frequently a system where they sell an international
| version of the book for significantly lower cost. In order to
| prevent americans from simply purchasing the international
| version, it will often have substantial differences. So
| simply looking up the price of the same book may not show you
| what would typically be paid in another country.
| bombcar wrote:
| The publishers originally had a great system, back before
| the internet was alive and kicking - they'd sell the
| textbook in the USA for $bigbux, and sell the exact same
| one in India for $cheapasfree - basic standard price
| segmentation, charge what the market can bear in each
| market.
|
| But then the internet and cheap shipping appeared, and
| suddenly people in the USA realized they could get the same
| textbook by ordering it from someone in India, and pay
| $cheapasfree + $shipping.
|
| And ever since the publishers have been trying to get back
| to the original promised land.
| tartoran wrote:
| They could have lowered the price in the us enough to not
| make it worth getting a cheapo version which the quality
| is frequently worse. What many did instead was to lower
| the quality and sell at high prices, in many cases books
| have poor binding, poor print and editing and so on.
| bombcar wrote:
| That would involve them making _less_ money, which is a
| big, big no-no. The whole thing is incestously corrupt as
| all hell.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| The situation gets worse when considering the near
| racketeering many publishers engage in. I had a couple of
| professors who assigned us their own $100 textbooks, which of
| course had a new edition every year and while they wouldn't
| rely on it much in class, they'd make sure to include at
| least one question in the exams about something only
| mentioned in the textbook (without stating that that would
| happen).
|
| This kind of textbook "abuse" was pretty crazy in undergrad.
| In comparison, my graduate level professors all either used
| very old textbooks and didn't really care about the edition
| or outright used free textbooks.
| andai wrote:
| Some of our professors would give us a "translation key"
| between new and old editions of textbooks, so we could work
| with used ones. For example, which exercises are assigned
| (in new editions they rearrange the exercises, for no
| apparent reason but to make the old editions obsolete...).
| gruez wrote:
| >But at the same time, their customer base in most cases are
| college kids. How do they expect them to pay?
|
| Student loans. When you flood an entire sector with money,
| it's only logical that prices go up.
| ornornor wrote:
| Check out #bookz on Undernet.
|
| Also bookfinder.com which works all over the world to find the
| cheapest used copy (including shipping) to your country.
| attilaberczik wrote:
| Use Library Genesis. It's also free and there is no download
| limit, and you have access to approximately the same books.
| https://libgen.is/
| generationP wrote:
| Yes, but it is hard to tell whether LG will stay up for long
| either. Their non-commercial nature makes it harder to hit
| them with heavy damages, arguably, but the underlying threat
| is the same, and there is no reason to think they are somehow
| protected from the same dynamic.
|
| Download anything you need and then some. And spread your own
| writings widely and freely.
| reactspa wrote:
| I need a clarification please: was Z-Library a commercial
| service?
| sombragris wrote:
| To some extent, yes. The site limited downloads unless
| you were a paid user.
|
| For more context see this recent HN-linked blog post:
|
| http://annas-blog.org/blog-3x-new-books.html
| andai wrote:
| Two questions: (1) there are torrent backups of LibGen,
| right?
|
| (2) If (1) is true, then I can download a book with a
| magnet link, and they'd have to arrest hundreds or
| thousands of people all over the world to prevent it.
|
| The UI for for finding and downloading a single file from a
| massive torrent is not very good in any torrent client I've
| used, but how hard of a problem is that really? Is there
| not tremendous value in solving it?
| generationP wrote:
| It's a big problem for extending the library. And
| torrenting is inherently less safe than downloading
| through a browser.
| bembo wrote:
| Why would torrenting be less safe?
| cute_boi wrote:
| because you may expose your ip to unintended peers. Not
| all people use VPNs.
|
| If you are downloading from browser, you generally use
| server ip, so you don't expose your ip to peers. You only
| expose your ip to server.
| gibspaulding wrote:
| LibGen is an invaluable resource, but is there reason to
| expect that Library Genesis will remain accessible for long
| if similar sites are under attack?
| agumonkey wrote:
| people were proactively mirroring it, someone also tried
| this for zlib here http://pilimi.org/zlib.html
| ghd_ wrote:
| It's a decentralized system https://freeread.org/ipfs/
| rg111 wrote:
| > _You can argue that people can go to the library,_
|
| Where I grew up, my town library did not have _any_ tech or
| programming books. Forget new jornal issues or cutting edge
| science books.
|
| "Just go to the library" is such a first-world-and-megacity
| thing to say.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Even in the first world in a giant city it can be crap
| advice.
|
| I wrote a paper in library school about how the Vancouver
| Public Library failed to offer anything of substance to
| intermediate language learners (with a focus on Mandarin
| materials because of the high Mandarin speaking population) -
| if you're a person learning Mandarin to communicate with
| immigrant populations there, you skip from basic travel
| phrasebooks to videos/movies in Mandarin for Chinese
| audiences.
|
| Public libraries aren't great at serving the long tail or
| more advanced interests for various reasons. And academic
| institutions usually have rules preventing use of their
| materials by people not affiliated with the school.
| kennend3 wrote:
| As a fellow Canadian i can tell you another story about our
| broken library system.
|
| It NEEDS to be consolidated.
|
| I live in ($smalltown$) just outside Toronto. The border
| between my smalltown ands the other small towns that
| surround me are unclear at best.
|
| Oddly enough, each smalltown has its own library system,
| its own staff and each for the most part has a terrible
| book collection.
|
| I rarely go to the library for the town i actually live in
| because it is a forgotten wasteland. The library from the
| other town is just a few blocks away and they have done an
| excellent job keeping their library current and active.
|
| In my town it would basically be you, the librarians and a
| few insects in the building, next town over is full on a
| regular basis. They also have programs and stay current, my
| town is dead and boring.
|
| Why are we paying for libraries like this? All that
| duplicate staff and their associated pensions and benefits
| could and should have went to books, services for the
| public, etc.
|
| I asked my town mayor once why the library building is so
| nice (granite flooring, floor to ceiling windows, it really
| is an attractive building inside and out) but yet the book
| collection is terrible.
|
| The mayor at the time told me the library is a showpiece to
| attract new residents??? I guess they assume new residents
| don't actually step inside and discover the book collection
| is terrible?
|
| Public libraries are a valuable asset, but need to be
| managed properly as well.
| Mezzie wrote:
| I'm actually not Canadian, I just did my MLIS there. ;)
|
| It is odd that your small towns don't have some kind of
| consortium agreement. There are benefits and drawbacks to
| having separate versus consolidated systems. Consolidated
| systems would, as you note, be more efficient in terms of
| staff costs and probably allow for materials to travel
| more easily. On the other hand, a consolidated system can
| end up only really serving the richest or largest
| community, rendering the rest of the population as
| afterthoughts.
|
| Like from an ROI perspective, it makes _sense_ public
| libraries are terrible at serving the long tail /the part
| of the population who want to educate themselves to a
| high level. Patrons are more interested in popular
| fiction and children's books, so that's the most bang for
| the buck.
|
| But ugh on the building rationale. Without knowing what
| the building was like before, I can't comment too much
| (e.g. if there was mold/water damage/etc.) but that does
| seem like an odd use of funds.
| skjoldr wrote:
| A reminder that Z-library is still available through Tor:
| http://zlibrary24tuxziyiyfr7zd46ytefdqbqd2axkmxm4o5374ptpc52... I
| doubt it took just two people to handle the entire project.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| There's also library genesis https://libgen.rs
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I believe that copyright should be reformed, and all books must
| be available for free in the digital form. If there would be
| fewer books, well, there are more than enough fiction books than
| one can read in the hundred lifetimes. Technical/science books,
| and crucial technical information contained in them can be made
| available as paid web services, or authors could be funded prior
| to writing it - via crowdfunding, grants, or by irresistible
| graphomania.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| mirzap wrote:
| How much prison time they face? I'm not sad about them. They did
| it for the money, not because they believed knowledge should be
| free. They basically stole other people work and put their
| paywall to access stolen books. Total opposite of Libgen or Sci-
| Hub.
| technoooooost wrote:
| you must be fun at parties
| pkoird wrote:
| Their free model was much more than enough for a regular user
| to use. I mean 10 books download per day? I'm not sure if I
| personally would have had to ever exceed that limit.
| mirzap wrote:
| Which is bad. They made a mirror of Libgen, closed it and
| charged money for access to it. You were unable to create a
| mirror from their mirror. Why put a limit at all? Why charge
| for access, just as same as publishers do? Defeats entire
| purpose of Libgen and SciHub.
| pkoird wrote:
| I understand what you're saying but if you look at the
| effects alone (and not the means), it seems well justified.
| Their increased revenue allowed them to provide more and
| more (than LibGen at least) books to the users free of
| charge. I do not know the difficulties involved in
| mirroring Z-Library, but there seems to be someone who did
| it recently and posted to HN before the site went down.
| arglebargle123 wrote:
| It was 10 downloads per day from the website and then a
| further 10 from the telegram bot too.
| deathgripsss wrote:
| I didn't even realise there was a limit. I used to get a
| couple of books a month. Never close to 10 a day.
| gustavorg wrote:
| I don't want to say in the meantime, but, in the meantime, the
| pedophile ring that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell served
| have not even been cited, ever.
| gyog wrote:
| True but that includes powerful men in the political sphere
| such as Biden and Trump. No way the Justice Department is going
| to touch this, when it implicates their bosses and potential
| bosses.
| consumer451 wrote:
| How is Biden tied to Epstein? I must have missed that one.
| voakbasda wrote:
| And that right there is why I support the "no justice, no
| peace" movement. Long live the revolution.
| markles wrote:
| And how many people went to prison over the crash of 2008?
| null_object wrote:
| I know this won't be a popular take on HN, but while I can
| understand and to a certain extent sympathize with pirating
| movies (the intentional friction and arbitrary geographic
| limitations on access imposed by the multinational movie-industry
| conglomerates), I can't see stealing some poor author's work in
| the same light.
|
| Sure, people get hung-up about DRM (which can easily be removed
| by widely-accessible tools), but e-books can be purchased pretty
| much anywhere in the world. I'm in Sweden but buy most of my
| e-books from the US. But often buy books directly from publishers
| (hopefully they, and the author, get a better cut that way).
|
| The fact these people were trying to personally profit (some
| other HN:ers have documented this), while trying to present
| themselves as some sort of "information wants to be free" info-
| warriors doesn't make the whole thing any better.
|
| An enormous amount of work goes into producing a book - through a
| close friend who works in book-publishing I know a couple of
| authors who pretty much starve for a year or two to produce their
| work - and then the editing, typesetting, designing, proof-
| reading etc is all an enormous and personal investment.
|
| In spite of what people think, authors are not all budding
| J.K.Rowlings with movie-deals and a couple of billion in the
| bank, and if we don't buy their books, they won't be able to
| produce the next one for people to pirate.
| reisse wrote:
| > but e-books can be purchased pretty much anywhere in the
| world. I'm in Sweden
|
| Sorry, but by "pretty much anywhere in the world" you clearly
| mean "first world". If you live outside of US/Canada and EU it
| is much harder to obtain books legally. Publishing agreements
| usually cover specific countries, and no-one cares about, for
| example, selling books in English in Central Asia. So even if
| you have means to pay for the book (which can be challenging -
| and I'm not talking about "having money" here, I'm talking
| about "technical possiblity" - Visa and Mastercard are not as
| universal as they might seem from the first world), most of the
| time no-one can or wish to sell it to you legally.
|
| Interesting that Steam solved most of that problems for game
| distribution though. They have worldwide publishing agreements,
| regional prices AND good support of local payment providers in
| many countries. I think a lot of people underestimate how these
| factors allowed Steam to overtake piracy.
| anhner wrote:
| > If you live outside of US/Canada and EU it is much harder
| to obtain books legally
|
| I completely agree and even though I imagine countries
| outside of these have it much worse, even within the EU you
| can find massive differences between countries. For example,
| there is a much smaller selection in Eastern European
| countries vs. Western, and books are the same price or
| sometimes even pricier while wages are significantly lower.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| > allowed Steam to overtake piracy
|
| Let's not forget the pricing, as well. Older games are
| actually priced lower than most books and movies, which are
| still being artificially inflated by their respective
| distributors.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| To be fair, I'm guessing books have a longer tail than
| games. The vast majority of game sales for AAA games are at
| release.
| SergeAx wrote:
| Let's also not forget Steam pricing policies for different
| regions. Until recently same games in Turkey were priced 5
| times lower than in Switzerland.
| lezojeda wrote:
| >Interesting that Steam solved most of that problems for game
| distribution though. They have worldwide publishing
| agreements, regional prices AND good support of local payment
| providers in many countries. I think a lot of people
| underestimate how these factors allowed Steam to overtake
| piracy.
|
| Sadly it is being ruined by people from first-world using
| VPNs. Many AAA stopped using regional prices and we're stuck
| paying the same cost as in the first world.
| Calamityjanitor wrote:
| From the other side it feels just as unfair. When I lived
| of ~AU$200 a month, $100 towards rent, a new game was ~$100
| in Aus. It was often much cheaper to buy physical copies
| from Asia and import.
| achenet wrote:
| Not sure the authors are getting much money, compared to the
| publishers. Perhaps it depends on the nice - I heard sci-fi is
| rather low margin, whereas academic publishing tends to be
| rent-seeking.
|
| Still, with the world wide web, it's possible to cut out the
| middleman, get the book and directly support the author is he
| puts a Stripe button on his site. Not sure why we need the
| publishing company middleman anymore.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Your geographical white privilege is showing.
|
| Getting access to books for instance in SEA or Africa is an
| entirely different story to one of the richest countries in the
| world with some of the highest standards of living (in your
| case Sweden but could apply to most EU/NA/AU/NZ).
|
| I would say the vast majority pirating couldn't afford the work
| in the first place, meaning nothing is lost from the
| perspective of the author. It's not a sale stolen, it's someone
| that would otherwise simply go without.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > Your geographical white privilege is showing.
|
| Although I fully agree with the points you make I just want
| to point out that being wealthy (from a world average wealth
| standpoint) is dissociated from being white.
|
| The issue is limited access to resources due to lack of
| wealth, or geo-location with bizantine distribution
| contracts. Race has little to do with this discussion. Plenty
| of white poor people across the globe, plenty of non-white
| rich people across the globe.
| jpgvm wrote:
| smeagull wrote:
| It's human culture. The idea that it should be the sole
| provenance of rich multi-nationals to decide who can afford to
| read is disgusting. It should all be freely accessible.
|
| Removing money from the equation would also solve other quality
| issues.
| jasmer wrote:
| It's 'disgusting' to suggest others should have to labour for
| you for free - and suggesting 'removing money from the issue
| would solve' issues is more than naive, it's glib.
|
| IP is not 'corporate protectionism'.
|
| The entire system absolutely depends on it, moreover, the
| vast majority of IP holders are very small entities.
|
| Particularly in this case, authors.
|
| The internet is actually a greatly liberating opportunity for
| authors, especially those on the 'long tail' to develop an
| audience that they would never have an opportunity to
| otherwise.
|
| And of course - anyone who wants to create for free, as many
| do, can do that.
|
| But if there's no concept of IP, then it implies 'creative
| work goes unpaid' and paradoxically, flushes surpluses into
| those that have much more material power in the value chain -
| a bit like 'open source' devs who work tirelessly on projects
| whereupon the surpluses are mostly captured by large
| corporate institutions.
|
| Of course there's always grey areas, and on some level
| 'release valves' for information is appropriate, but on the
| whole, IP protections are reasonable.
|
| Vast amount of the works we are used to in our daily lives
| both professional and private, upon which we depend, would
| immediately vanish, lacking any kind of viable business
| model.
|
| Finally - there's much ado in Africa on so many fronts, if
| you want to help to solve IP distribution issues there
| related to price discrimination, there's a lot of opportunity
| there.
| dartharva wrote:
| Yes, indeed, government-mandated monopolies are really the
| best way to make sure the "creative works" of fundamentally
| indeterminable values get paid and the "free-market" is
| upheld /s.
|
| This moronic notion that IP somehow encourages creativity
| is so delusional it's not even funny. Did Michelangelo and
| Shakespeare need copyrights to their works to make money?
| Have thinkers and authors who contributed most to human
| intellectual evolution across the Golden Ages and
| Renaissances of science, arts and philosophies ever needed
| state-enforced punishments against non-consensual copying?
| Good works are not funded using abusive laws to crack down
| on those trying to share them, they get sponsored by
| communities that value them.
|
| There are countless examples of absolutely garbage works
| that end up making a lot of money and there are countless
| awesome works that are completely free to the public. IP
| does nothing to reward good productions, all it does is
| help publishers and governments abuse individual rights and
| control information. NOBODY HAS THE RIGHT TO HAVE A
| MONOPOLY ON IDEAS AND INFORMATION. You are free to keep
| your ideas and information private, but if you make them
| public they are NOT your private property anymore. IP laws
| are probably among the worst inventions the west has ever
| introduced to the world that has single-handedly held back
| unfathomable amounts of progress.
| sabellito wrote:
| How would the authors pay rent?
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| A huge majority of book authors (especially for technical
| writing) are not professional authors, and barely get any
| money from book sales. Ask any university professor that
| has had a book published.
| ccbccccbbcccbb wrote:
| So let's totally remove the heat-transfer agent from the
| thermodynamic machine of society and instead rely on an army
| of maxwell demons to decide how much food and floor space
| each human element in the system should be given for its
| work, right?
|
| That was called 'communism', had been attempted to implement,
| resulted in millions of deaths and miserably failed
| regardless due to the physics of the process.
|
| The heat transfer agent is not the problem per se, it's the
| ability of some entities to create it out of thin air and
| pump into the system, as well as shady mechanisms of its
| distribution.
| ccbccccbbcccbb wrote:
| Monkey see "communism", monkey downvote
| Tomte wrote:
| > but e-books can be purchased pretty much anywhere in the
| world.
|
| English and local books at least. Can I easily buy Swedish-
| language books in Germany? I really don't know.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>An enormous amount of work goes into producing a book
|
| So your saying books should be protected because they take alot
| of work, but movies should not because they dont?
|
| I am highly confused by your ethical position here. Either
| creative works should be protected by copyright or they should
| not.
|
| It seems your personal connection to authors have clouded your
| judgement in favor of that medium over other creatives mediums,
| I wonder if you would feel the same if you had personal
| relationships with independent film maker, to toss your analogy
| back, not ever filmmaker has a J.K Rowling book to make a film
| about which comes with a built in audience
|
| Now me personally I think copyright is WAY over protective, I
| think the US original copyright law was a good balance, 14
| years, with 1 extension if the physical person that created the
| work requests it (i.e corporations get 14 years only,
| individuals can get up to 28 years of protection)
| connorgutman wrote:
| It's very simple actually. You (and most of HN) live in a tech
| industry bubble. Living wages in the U.S are terrible and
| disposable income is non-existent. I work a 9-5 just like
| everyone else but when it comes down to it I don't have the
| money to buy new books. I can either buy used paperback from a
| second-hand store, go to the library, or pirate an epub. None
| of these options pay the original author and are effectively
| the same. Given that I was never going to pay anyways, why do
| you find the third option unethical? It hurts absolutely no one
| but greatly enhances my quality of life and (in some cases)
| helps society by making me a more educated individual. The only
| thing piracy costs authors is opportunity (which in my case was
| always 0).
| connorgutman wrote:
| Barrin92 wrote:
| If you're pirating Stephen King or a 300$ textbook from a guy
| who has tenure at Harvard I doubt anyone probably including
| the author cares but a fair amount of authors aren't making
| any more than you make.
|
| Friend of mine published her own graphic novel basically
| living in her parents attic and a day after it was out
| someone had ripped it and thrown it on a comic piracy site.
| That's not ethical.
|
| If you live on a 12-15/hour salary which I have too you still
| can afford the occassional book here and there, you can't
| tell me you spend zero on recreational stuff. I don't care if
| anyone fleeces Marvel studios but if people start pirating
| independent works from people no better off, often worse,
| that's iffy.
| connorgutman wrote:
| I appreciate your sentiment, and trust me I really do want
| to support people like your friend, but no I literally do
| not have any money for recreational activities (and if I
| did I would buy a videogame or boardgame because it would
| last longer). I make $13.50 / h (which is above minimum
| wage here in Arizona) and go to school full-time. Rent is
| $1,000 (absolute cheapest I have found in my college town),
| groceries are roughly $500, gas is $50-$100 depending on
| world affairs, utilities are $250,public transportation (so
| that I don't have to pay for parking at shool) is $50, and
| the list goes on tbh. I'm lucky enough to have a Prius that
| was given to me by my family so no car payment even. I'm
| one of the lucky ones for being in college at all. This is
| the America that most people live in. Well even that isn't
| true, I have it way better than most.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Checking out from a library and grabbing a pirated
| version are different in that checking out from a library
| _generates demand_. The library may respond by buying
| additional copies of a given work, and you can put in
| requests to your local library to buy work if they don 't
| currently stock it. Even if a library refuses to buy the
| work, it's common for libraries to loan works to each
| other-- so a library from another city or further out may
| buy the book and let you borrow it for example. It all
| generates demand for libraries to buy more.
| dartharva wrote:
| Large-scale pirates that can actually reach a significant
| amount of people almost never rip-off indie creators, and
| even if they do, they are the least likely to impact sales
| - people are unlikely bother acquiring illegitimate copies
| of obscure indie works as against big-brand stuff whose
| names they have actually heard of.
|
| I really doubt the sales of the graphic novel that friend
| of yours were impacted in any non-negligible way by it
| being ended up on a piracy site. If anything, it might as
| well have worked as an advertisement.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Time and again it has been shown that pirating doesn't hurt
| sales because it is rarely if ever done by people who
| would've paid for the stuff anyway.
|
| Moreover, making stuff easily accessible (e.g. Steam,
| Nerflix) reduces piracy by orders of magnitude.
| trabant00 wrote:
| I'm going to pretend you are serious and genuine so:
|
| - living wages in the US are something most of the rest of
| world only dreams about. And most can afford to buy a book
| once in a while, even new (of course it depends on the book).
| Source: eastern Europe.
|
| - second hand and library books have generated revenue for
| the author already. Going full piracy and decreasing demand
| for the those two hurts the author, hurts the second book
| stores and hurts the libraries.
|
| I pirate books as well but at least I'm honest about the
| consequences of my actions.
| connorgutman wrote:
| I am absolutely genuine, and I think you do not understand
| the average American. The rest of the world may dream about
| our wages but it's still putting lipstick on a pig. Most
| the people I know can't even feed their families right now,
| let alone buy a book for pleasure. I'm not sure where you
| are getting your information from but the lives of college-
| educated middle-class Americans and above are not
| representative of the majority. I will clarify, I obviously
| DO NOT think that my situation compares to someone in
| another country, specifically under-developed ones. In the
| context of books and recreational activities, however, I
| think you are vastly overestimating the US.
| aquariusDue wrote:
| I agree with you, even if it is unethical to pirate books
| I'd make the case that pirating books you can't afford to
| buy is what helped a non-trivial amount of people escape
| the generational cycle of poverty. In this particular
| case, stealing knowledge for a chance at a better career,
| the end might justify the means.
|
| Programmers from poor countries and poor backgrounds are
| were they are today making a good living from this career
| probably because of torrents with collections of
| programming books back from 10 years ago or more when
| free video learning on YouTube wasn't as developed as it
| is today.
|
| I made some sweeping generalizations but I hope I got my
| point across at least. This criminal avenue of pirating
| books and stealing potential revenue from authors is what
| allows some people to enjoy a better living.
| wang_li wrote:
| Median household income in the US in 2022 is $78,000. The
| average American has adequate income and can't justify
| pirating movies, books, music, porn, etc. on the basis of
| poverty.
| connorgutman wrote:
| That is a wildly skewed outlook. The per-capita income in
| America is $35,000 (https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fac
| t/table/US/SEX255221). Household income, as defined by
| the U.S. Census Bureau, includes the gross cash income of
| all people ages 15 years or older occupying the same
| housing unit, regardless of how they are related, if at
| all. Meaning my household income is somewhere above $100K
| because I have 3 roommates. Typically, the lower your
| income the more roommates you have. Median household
| income is a useless figure for determining how well the
| average American is doing.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| BetterWorldBooks.com is excellent. I have bought from them
| for years. I recommend you try it.
|
| Also, you wrote: <<None of these options pay the original
| author>> Libraries buy millions of books per year in the US
| -- expensive hardbacks. They must be the single largest
| buying group. That money pays authors. Also, I never once saw
| an author upset that a library was lending their book. The
| same is true for second hand book selling.
| dublinben wrote:
| Here's an example I found in less than a minute of an
| author railing against used book sales:
| https://authorkristenlamb.com/2015/12/pay-the-writer-
| pirates...
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| They're burning a thousand libraries and you're complaining
| about hypothetical lost profits?
| Mandatum wrote:
| This is the most American take I've seen on the debate yet.
| tuyiown wrote:
| I'm french. I occasionally buy ebooks, but the price of eBooks
| is maintained artificially higher to protect traditional
| (paper) channels. The things is, that extra money does _not_ go
| to the authors, which I would finance way more wholeheartedly.
| Basically you get taxed because of your medium preferences, and
| the money is pocketed by the worse actor of the whole business.
| criddell wrote:
| > which can easily be removed by widely-accessible tools
|
| Even if that were true today, it's a cat-and-mouse game and it
| may not always be true.
|
| I don't know if FairPlay DRM that Apple uses or Adobe's DRM has
| been thoroughly cracked, but last time I checked, Amazon's KFX
| hasn't truly been cracked yet. The best I've seen are
| workarounds to get Amazon to deliver the book in an older
| format that has been cracked, but then you lose the typography
| improvements that are tied to the new format.
| nudpiedo wrote:
| Although I agree with you, tell me now how can I find "The book
| of Gossage" which is a singular classic book nowadays out of
| catalogue.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Agree, forget copyright, there needs to be an "abandonware"
| clause similar to the (unauthorized, I know) way software is
| treated.
|
| Plenty of books I have only been able to find on eBay and at
| sometimes insane prices.
| sitkack wrote:
| Not only that, I looked into republishing some books from
| the 80s, it is impossible to know who currently could
| possibly have legitimate rights to do so!
|
| For any work out of print, one should be able to republish
| it and pay a nominal fee directly to the library of
| congress.
| prisoner655321 wrote:
| > if we don't buy their books, they won't be able to produce
| the next one for people to pirate.
|
| This is a false dichotomy. Book piracy and traditional book
| publishing co-exist. If book publishing wants to better compete
| with piracy, they can innovate like other industries have. As
| well, your implied prediction --- that if we don't "stop all
| the downloading" [0] then books will disappear --- is decidedly
| ahistorical. Books have existed since long before publishing
| houses existed, and indeed it's easier than ever to publish a
| book and get money for it.
|
| [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1eA3XCvrK90
| sec400 wrote:
| Imagine the person who cannot afford a book or paper on a
| particular topic. Should they not have access to the
| information?
|
| I agree, as always there is nuance, but zlib et al fulfill a
| need for certain people. In b4 public libraries, they aren't
| equal around the world, depend on geographic proximity and add
| latency to the learning process.
| null_object wrote:
| > Imagine the person who cannot afford a book or paper on a
| particular topic. Should they not have access to the
| information?
|
| Imagine I want whatever you do for a living? Should you work
| for me for free?
| theCrowing wrote:
| I would be on board with you if only we got access to the
| public founded papers.
| jliptzin wrote:
| That analogy doesn't work when the marginal cost to do that
| work is literally zero, in fact he wouldn't even know he's
| performing the "work"
| jsmith99 wrote:
| The key question is, what proportion of zlibrary users
| would have purchased the books legitimately if piracy
| didn't exist, or would have been able to afford it?
| Anecdotally I suspect most pirates have little income for
| books but I can't find data on this.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| The error in this argument is assuming that the price of
| a good must equal its marginal cost. Software, for
| example, also has a marginal cost of zero -- it can be
| reproduced with the same technology as electronic text,
| and yet developing software is expensive, so the price of
| each copy is set above the marginal cost so that the
| developer gets paid. By denying the developer the right
| to set a price for their work, you are in effect forcing
| them to work for someone else for free. It does not
| matter what the marginal cost is.
|
| Now there's a lot of open source software, and a lot of
| open access publications and free books out there, as
| well as systems in place -- we call them "libraries" --
| by which taxpayers purchase works on behalf of the public
| and make them available in limited quantities for no
| charge. And here I need to reiterate the bane of badly
| construed interventions is trying to control prices
| rather than adjusting incomes. Stop messing with prices.
| The way we help the poor is with income support, not by
| creating a parallel price system for the poor.
| jliptzin wrote:
| I don't think anyone should work for free, I don't know
| what the right answer is. It's a shame when someone
| doesn't get paid for their work due to piracy, but also a
| shame if someone can't access an important work to them
| that is free to deliver but they just can't afford (like
| a student/researcher, etc). Ideally digital works should
| be free and donation supported, where people voluntarily
| contribute what they feel the work is worth, limited by
| what they can afford. But I won't delude myself into
| thinking something like that would actually work.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| You're not - they can just not do the work. You can argue
| that a business model is being destroyed; you can't argue
| that anyone is "forced to work for free" by piracy,
| because they're not forced to work in the first place.
| splistud wrote:
| benibela wrote:
| I do research at an university and develop open-source
| software.
|
| Everything I work on is free to download
| zerotolerance wrote:
| I'm an author. Steal my book. The whole point of writing is to
| hopefully help anyone learn something that you've shared.
| Authors aren't writing for the money those who do are selling
| at such volumes that they'll never even notice the dip. In most
| cases they'd be trying to get blood from stone.
|
| Steal it every time.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| try buying Italian books in USA.
|
| Hell, it's hard to find them even in France!
| gizmo wrote:
| Artificial scarcity is still bad. Imagine a world where books
| are free for everybody, not just for people who live in
| prosperous areas with good libraries. Would you then advocate
| making books nonfree thereby placing books out of reach for
| 2/3rd of the world population, which is more or less where we
| are today?
| trabant00 wrote:
| > Imagine a world where books are free for everybody
|
| I imagine it will go the same way of the other internet
| content that is free: adds, spam, clickbait, low quality,
| etc.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| For fiction, I almost exclusively read online serialized
| fanfiction/webfiction. This is already the world I live in.
| And I can confirm: it's pretty great.
| theCrowing wrote:
| The price spike on comics and graphic novels after the
| comiXology acquisition by Amazon is over 150%...
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| And the app apparently became worse. I wanted to buy some
| manga on comiXology, but when I downloaded the free trial
| chapter, it had a bunch of weird borders, which made it
| unenjoyable to read.
|
| According to the reviews, the previous version of the app was
| much better, but the current version is just a reskin of the
| Kindle app.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Maybe I'm _thinking wrong_ but I expected digital editions of
| books to be like $3 or something since there are no printing
| /shipping costs of the equivalent printed book.
|
| In the old analog world, authors might expect 15% of gross
| sales. You figure the publisher needed the 85% to cover
| printing, shipping of the physical book. (Oh, and they should
| make a profit there too.)
|
| But if you no longer have to deal with pulp, I would naively
| expect an electronic book to sell for something like 30% of
| the cost of the physical book -- splitting the sale between
| author and publisher. Presumably both parties still make a
| comparable profit.
|
| I know I've dropped advertising on the floor in the above
| discussion and perhaps that counts for a significant cost to
| the publisher. But at the same time, assuming DRM, a digital
| book sale should benefit the publisher/author as it is
| typically non-transferable (unlike the physical books that
| end up in Little Libraries or Goodwill).
|
| I might add that if eBooks dropped to $0.99 a book, I would
| be buying them faster than music tracks. Maybe Jobs got two
| things right. ;-)
| mmmlinux wrote:
| Download video games have the same issue. same price as
| physical release, cant resell it, never goes on sale, still
| the same price it started at 4 years later when a physical
| copy is 50% discounted. Already have a physical copy? no
| you cant download it.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Most of the cost of a book is not the physical pulp or ink
| that went into making the book, it is in the editing,
| typesetting, and marketing that went into making the book
| ready for sale, so ebooks generally should not be much
| cheaper than physical books.
| auggierose wrote:
| Many of the books I am interested in have actually been
| financed by tax payers, because their authors are professors.
| These days publishers are not adding much value here, actually
| they often make high quality publishing harder by terrible off-
| shore handling of LaTeX.
|
| I've bought quite a few ebooks from the AMS (American
| Mathematical Society), just to get very angry about the
| annoying small print on the bottom of EVERY FREAKING PAGE
| stating that I am the owner of this book. I don't feel bad
| about replacing these damaged goods with the real deal.
| sombragris wrote:
| > e-books can be purchased pretty much anywhere in the world
|
| That would be true if and only if there's an ebook version for
| the book you want.
|
| There are lots of books (even essential works for some fields)
| out there for which there are no legal ebooks. Your only hope
| would be to get a digitized PDF from zlibrary or libgen. Even
| if you had the cash to spare for purchasing it, you can't.
|
| One interesting case is what happened with books such as James
| Livingston's "Modern Christian Thought" (Fortress Press). I
| need it as an ebook. Well, they have (and I have purchased)
| volume I as an ebook, but they have Volume II only as
| paperback.
|
| I reached out to the publisher to inquire whether they are
| going to release Volume II as an ebook. Someone there answered,
| telling me that they "forgot" to release Volume II in
| electronic format, and that they plan to release it "soon". I'm
| still waiting...
| christophilus wrote:
| I bought a Kobo for its easy public library integration. Jokes
| on me. My public library doesn't have most of the books I want,
| and the way ebooks are leased to public libraries is a
| disgrace-- something I only found out after buying the Kobo.
| So, what's a guy to do? I buy the books wherever I can find
| them at the cheapest price (usually on the used market,
| sometimes via Kindle store, sometimes via Kobo store). Then, I
| pirate it, since that's a much more convenient way to get a
| DRM-free format that actually works on my device.
|
| In my case, at least, I paid for every z-library book I ever
| downloaded--with one exception. Z-library also made it easy to
| browse books the way you would in a physical book store.
| Sometimes, you think, "Looks interesting." You open it up, read
| a few pages and realize, "Not for me." Z-library was a good way
| to do this.
|
| Both of those are legitimate use cases. Probably not the most
| _common_ use case, but it sure was handy, and now I 've got to
| find a replacement.
| andai wrote:
| Most of zlib's content was from libgen, zlib had a nicer ui
| though.
| nathell wrote:
| I think we can have our cake and eat it too.
|
| https://blog.danieljanus.pl/2022/09/24/paying-for-books/
| mavhc wrote:
| This is the simplest solution, get a drm ebook, and pay the
| person who wrote it directly, they'll get way more money from
| you that way than if you bought the book
| lezojeda wrote:
| 10 USD is the average cost for an e-book from my anecdotal
| experience, some even 20. 200 USD our average salary range
| approximately.
|
| It's not easy for us, you can say "well if you can't afford
| them then tough luck" which I could understand but that'd be
| your point for most of the third world. There's a reason Steam
| videogames regional prices exist for example (which people with
| VPNs ruined it exploting the system)
| noodlesUK wrote:
| A lot of the usage I see of these sites is in the academic
| world. Academic publishing is a nightmare (especially on the
| journal side).
|
| The books are often not available at all in the region you're
| in or if they are, they might be priced differently. It's
| especially difficult because you're going to skim a book to see
| if it has any relevant material, then move on to the next one.
| Usually university libraries are the only way of doing this,
| but not everyone has access to one. No individual is going to
| buy a dozen books nominally priced at >100 usd each just to
| write a paper for their masters degree or similar
| cge wrote:
| >The books are often not available at all in the region
| you're in or if they are, they might be priced differently.
|
| Also, "the region you're in" can even mean _the same country
| as the publisher_ , or even anywhere in the world. Publishers
| may be unwilling to sell the books to individuals at all, or
| may sell them only as part of larger sets with very high
| prices. They may only be willing to sell hardcover copies,
| for a premium, even if they do produce softcover ones. It's
| simply not feasible, in most cases, to purchase the books you
| need to do scholarly research as an individual. And if you're
| looking at digital publications, the situation becomes even
| worse.
|
| I recently had someone tell me that their father, in the US,
| had been looking, not wanting to ask them, for a copy of a
| book they had just published a chapter in. The book could
| only be purchased by individuals as a set of six books, all
| in hardcover, for around $500.
|
| Part of the problem here is that individuals are often not
| the target customers for academic publishing: libraries are.
| Publishers can be worried that if they do sell in ways that
| are convenient to individuals, that might reduce their
| profits from libraries. If they sell books individually,
| instead of as larger sets, then university libraries can
| order only the volumes that people request, rather than
| needing to purchase all of them. If they sell softcover
| copies, libraries can buy them and rebind them in-house, or
| simply have them as softcover, rather than needing to pay
| that premium. If they have prices that are reasonable for
| individuals choosing books to buy with their own money, the
| prices will need to be far lower than what they can be for
| libraries being instructed to buy books by others and needing
| to figure out how.
|
| And, as you mention, the journal (and reference) side is
| _even worse_. Outside of very high profile journals, which
| are simply expensive for individual subscriptions, many
| otherwise quite reasonable journals from reputable publishers
| simply won 't offer subscriptions to individuals at all:
| their only option for individuals may well be article-level
| purchases at prices that would be utterly absurd for actual
| research. In some cases, they also won't offer subscriptions
| to institutions, except as a (potentially very large) package
| of journals. At a small university, I can remember the
| library pointing out that getting access to one yearly
| proceedings publication very important for our field would
| cost a five figure yearly amount per year, because it was
| only sold as a package of hundreds of publications. Larger
| universities can have problems with this in the six or seven
| figures.
| psychphysic wrote:
| If I can access a book for free at a library.
|
| Why can't I read it online for free?
|
| Ultimately the answer will be about rights and really
| suggesting the author can put arbitrary restrictions in content
| that's been purchased.
|
| Those restrictions exist for financial reasons not moral. As
| such this is not theft in any ethical sense but a quirk of the
| laws. A law apparently many people disagree with...
| aliqot wrote:
| It's not free at the library, the book was purchased with
| your taxes.
| connorgutman wrote:
| It was purchased a single time, just like the original
| e-book that you pirate.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| What people fail to realize is that ebooks sometimes cost
| libraries more money than physical books. The libraries
| buy them with cost of degradation in mind, so after x
| number of lends, they have to repurchase the book in
| order to keep making it available to their patrons. This
| is how they're able to make an agreement with the
| publisher in order to legally provide you with a digital
| lending library.
| connorgutman wrote:
| IMO (having worked at a public library) the vast majority
| of inventory is donated second-hand books.
| angelbar wrote:
| * copy
| aliqot wrote:
| Every person in the world doesnt use a single library
| with a single copy. Every local library purchases one or
| more. How many did Zlib purchase? How many Zlibs are
| there?
| connorgutman wrote:
| That's a logical race to the bottom that makes me think
| you have never checked out a book from a US library. If
| you were to calculate how much an author makes from their
| book being in libraries it's miniscule. For starters most
| library books are donated secondhand and not purchased
| new by libraries. Secondly, most libraries only have a
| single copy of a given book unless it is a major title
| (It's not uncommon for waitlists to be booked up for
| months where I live). Additionally, most titles are
| shared across multiple libraries in a state or city.
| Where I live you can return a book to any library because
| they just circulate copies around the state. Regardless,
| there are roughly 9,000 public libraries in the U.S.
| let's pretend that every single library purchases 1 copy
| of a given book new (an extremely generous estimate).
| Most authors are not self-published and earn 10-12%
| royalties, but let's pretend this author is self-
| published and earns around 40% from their printer before
| operational expenses. Let's also pretend it's an absolute
| banger of a book and is selling for a whopping $20/copy.
| That means they make $8/copy before taxes, bookstore
| fees, shipping, and other expenses that the self-
| publisher does not pay for. Let's be generous and say
| they somehow make $8/copy after all of that. If every
| library bought 1 copy (which, again. They do NOT) the
| author would earn $72,000. That's absolute peanuts
| compared to what they earn on Amazon from people who can
| afford firsthand books. The point of libraries and piracy
| is not to stop people who CAN afford books from buying
| them. It's supposed to enable those who CANNOT. A more
| productive approach would be to publicly fund authors but
| according to Americans that's filthy communism.
| wang_li wrote:
| >A more productive approach would be to publicly fund
| authors but according to Americans that's filthy
| communism.
|
| That's how you get books written by authors who are good
| at filling out government forms, not books written by
| good authors. See the many terrible pieces of public art
| that is required in many places as part of public
| construction projects as an example of what I'm talking
| about.
| psychphysic wrote:
| I think you need to specify what context you're talking
| in.
|
| Do you see it as... 1. Criminal 2. Immoral 3. Having
| downsides
|
| I think we agree it's not criminal (as scale doesn't
| apply to a binary criminality judgement stealing a penny
| is as criminal as stealing a pound though punishment will
| vary).
|
| Are you suggesting it's immoral? Because I can't see
| where you make such an argument.
|
| Or are you saying well it has downsides as authors may
| earn less? It's likely book purchases are affected by
| libraries. I don't think the effect is as profound as
| people think.
|
| Without that context it's quite hard to discuss this
| topic.
| GrinningFool wrote:
| Scale is a thing though, right?
|
| The library book might get borrowed dozens or hundreds of
| times. The pirated ebook is copied anywhere from dozens
| to millions of times.
| connorgutman wrote:
| It goes back to opportunity though. Most people who
| pirate books don't have the income or ability to purchase
| them new. The scale is irrelevant if the per-user profit
| opportunity is 0. The only thing that changes is more
| people read and further their education.
| [deleted]
| gglitch wrote:
| Careful. They'll come for the libraries next.
| wellareyousure wrote:
| nivenkos wrote:
| The American Empire strikes again.
|
| You'd think they would have seen this coming though.
|
| I think a long-term solution is a universal revenue-sharing
| programme - so like some portion of taxes is allocated to a
| universal repository, and then paid out to creators according to
| usage. No middle-men and no distribution issues, etc.
| prox wrote:
| Maybe in the first 5 years it's just what it is now, and then
| it goes into the repository. I am going to assume most sales
| are in those years.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > universal revenue-sharing programme
|
| Run by whom? The UN?
| djmips wrote:
| What about a Spotify for books?
| dartharva wrote:
| > I think a long-term solution is a universal revenue-sharing
| programme - so like some portion of taxes is allocated to a
| universal repository, and then paid out to creators according
| to usage. No middle-men and no distribution issues, etc.
|
| So, just another publishing and distribution monopoly, no
| matter who runs it. Still a good improvement over the current
| status quo, I'll agree. Flawed as they may be, Spotify and
| Youtube did end up boosting independent creative production and
| accessibility of content manifold.
| nivenkos wrote:
| But government naturally has a monopoly.
|
| Like the US already forces publishers to send books to the
| Library of Congress with the mandatory deposit.
| SunlightEdge wrote:
| I will miss Z-Library... I hope it's alternatives are as good as
| it...
|
| I linked it to an old email account of mine. Could there be
| repercussions if you downloaded books from that site? I probably
| downloaded at least 1k dollars worth of books. Only about half I
| ever went into.
| jl2718 wrote:
| I looked up the actual citation. Here's what I found interesting:
|
| Copyright theft became a crime (versus tort) in 1990 and only
| applied to the sale of physical copies. It expanded to digital
| distribution in 2008.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/506
| SergeAx wrote:
| Release says "defendants profited illegally off work they stole".
| I wonder what the charges would be if they were runnig Z-Lib as a
| non-profit?
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Feds Seize One of the Largest Sites for Pirated Books and
| Articles, Z-Library_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33570539 - Nov 2022 (6
| comments)
|
| _Z-Library Aftermath Reveals the Feds Seized Dozens of Domain
| Names_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33530240 - Nov 2022
| (73 comments)
|
| _ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal
| Inspection Service_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33460970 - Nov 2022 (517
| comments)
|
| _Z Library_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29365627 -
| Nov 2021 (36 comments)
|
| _Zshelf: Z-Library books downloader for reMarkable tablet_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26355778 - March 2021 (51
| comments)
| sharperguy wrote:
| Burn down the library of Alexandria because free access to
| information is too inconvenient
| reisse wrote:
| I guess in 2022 "don't ever travel to countries that have
| extradition agreements with US" should've already been #0 opsec
| rule, above everything else.
|
| Sad for them. Does anyone know if Z-library provided torrent
| dumps?
| gadders wrote:
| Apparently yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32972923
| newsclues wrote:
| Extradition agreements are irrelevant when extraordinary
| rendition is a legal and valid option.
| voakbasda wrote:
| Ummm, aren't those extrajudicial? Or have I watched too many
| movies?
| from wrote:
| > Iorizzo did travel to Panama City, on his private jet.
| But his stay was cut short when two unidentified locals
| kidnapped him at gunpoint and put him on a plane to Miami.
| He arrived into the welcoming arms of F.B.I. agent Dan
| Lyons
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/1991/02/john-gotti-joe-
| colum...
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB834595561730973500
|
| Yes but at the end of the day there is nothing you can do
| about because there is no constitutional right to be a
| fugitive and the country you were kidnapped from either
| doesn't care or isn't competent enough to do anything about
| it.
| hggh wrote:
| https://ia801505.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/17...
| adamors wrote:
| As Russian nationals, their choices are rather limited at this
| time.
| reisse wrote:
| Given the political climate, they could easily ban Russian
| books from their platform and live happily in Moscow. Surely
| I'd prefer that over US custody.
| untech wrote:
| > live happily in Moscow
|
| Not an option for a majority of people who would host an
| online library, sadly. You can't live happily in Moscow at
| the moment if you are capable of intellectual labour.
| cft wrote:
| It's intersection of these two sets: https://en.wikipedia.org
| /wiki/List_of_United_States_extradit...
|
| https://visaguide.world/visa-free-countries/russian-
| passport...
| rexreed wrote:
| My suggestion to Russian nationals who are engaged in crime:
| stay in Russia.
| keewee7 wrote:
| No? The countries that don't have extradition agreements with
| the US overlap a lot with countries that have friendly
| relations with Russia.
|
| China, Cuba, and Russia would be the ideal choices if you're
| on the run from US authorities.
| zinekeller wrote:
| > China, Cuba, and Russia would be the ideal choices if
| you're on the run from US authorities.
|
| (this is specific to Z-library)
|
| Russia is out. Some books on the platform directly
| contradicts government ideals, and it seems that the
| operators aren't willing to filter it out.
|
| China might be a safe case, but recently they have cared
| for IP (at least for literary things, industrial processes
| are another matter) because they have multiple industries
| that China saw as beneficial (both audiovisual and
| literacy, including comics) so they could evade US
| authorities but might get sentenced by Chinese authorities
| anyway.
|
| I don't know enough about Cuba to comment.
| untech wrote:
| Argentina on the first glance would look "safe" to me, as
| South American nations seem in general not very pro-US.
| Live and learn, I guess. TIL that _all_ South American
| countries have these extradition agreements.
|
| I feel bad for the arrested; even if their values were not
| pristine. Punishments for these kind of "offences" seem
| extremely harsh to me, being grown in a copyright-unaware
| climate.
| ankaAr wrote:
| Where is "not very pro-america"?!
|
| Maybe not the actual government, but from saving in
| dollars to travelling we are very pro-american.
|
| If we divide the world in pro-america, pro-europe, pro-
| rusia, pro-china, for us is Europe and America, and very
| far away the other options.
|
| So, bad luck for this guy. Bro, Che Guevara died decades
| ago...
| CyanBird wrote:
| > Where is "not very pro-america"?!
|
| Brazil left despises the US after the coup. Bolivian
| right wants more US help to do another
|
| Venezuela gov despises the US
|
| Chilean left looks down on the US
|
| Argentinian left is not US friendly, at most could be
| seen as transactional with the US. They really need help
| from world bank and imf
|
| Bolivian left abhors the US, Bolivian right wants US
| support for a new coup
|
| Paraguay is just doing its drug smuggling like they
| always do
|
| Uruguay is in the process of signing a free trade
| agreement with China while US southern command is trying
| to avoid it from happening
|
| Peruvian left is not friendly to US, Peruvian right has
| been working with US assistance against Peruvian left for
| a while to try and kneecap it
|
| Ecuador is famously very anti-US and wouldn't deport
| Assange until he became excessibly annoying to deal with
| in the embassy
|
| Colombia is a US puppet oligarchy. New gov is
| interesting, but it is still an oligarchy
|
| Panama is a defacto neo-colony of the US
|
| Puerto Rico is a literal colony of the US
|
| Centro America with exception of Mexico is a mishmash of
| neo-colonies literally using USD as their base currencies
| or detest the US in some form
|
| So yeah...
| untech wrote:
| Yeah, I was describing a perspective of a russia-born
| person who never actually travelled to the western
| hemisphere and whose knowledge of South American
| countries are formed by ambient osmosis, not active
| research. I know that no South American country supports
| the recent russian invasion (and thank god for that), but
| I was under the (apparently wrong) impression that there
| were non-trivial factions opposing the US. Ambient
| propaganda got to me, I guess. Sorry.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I doubt Venezuela would have extradited them but mostly
| all the countries in the Americas are on friendly terms.
|
| Of course there's your standard disagreements between
| neighbors but, as far as I know, there's no outright
| hostilities going on. Well, outside of some rebels and
| narco groups. Not like the 80s where the Soviets were
| stirring up trouble at least.
| ankaAr wrote:
| Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras?, el salvador.., I
| don't know if those countries have extradition agreements
| with usa.
| roel_v wrote:
| "Does anyone know if Z-library provided torrent dumps? "
|
| They didn't, but pilimi.org does (have to access via Tor to get
| the torrents). That said, there have been 0 seeders since the
| original ZLib bust.
| https://twitter.com/AnnaArchivist/status/1592654308516179970
| (pilimi author) says there should be an http mirror now, and
| I'm probably stupid but I can't find it anywhere. Seems to me
| it's the end of Z-Library. The end of an era, really.
| dartharva wrote:
| Here it is: https://annas-archive.org/
|
| I sincerely hope Anna stays safe though. They can (and will)
| come for her and her team too.
| [deleted]
| woadwarrior01 wrote:
| Now, do SBF.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dartharva wrote:
| Too many Copyright defenders here, mandatory "the intellectual
| property oxymoron" read:
| http://harmful.cat-v.org/economics/intellectual_property/
| SpelingBeeChamp wrote:
| I don't think it was your intention, but your language is
| unnecessarily inflammatory.
|
| People who don't share your opinion are allowed to be here.
| Even if there are more of those people than you'd like.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Wish them luck. Zlib was a godsend. Let's hope they won't be
| extradited.
| mrkramer wrote:
| I had an idea for books shop website where you would buy a book
| and get it in paperback, audiobook and e-book form all at
| once(bundle). Ofc it would be bit pricey but readers could swap
| between formats at will and writers would be more rewarded and
| subsidized. Would anybody use it?
|
| Somebody who pirates books in the e-form maybe would want to
| enjoy it in paperback and audio form as well?
| uni_baconcat wrote:
| I respect the copyright of publisher and author, I also admire
| people sharing expensive knowledge to those who do not have the
| ability to get one. This is a hard choice to me.
| prox wrote:
| I actually bought more books by checking out the book first for
| free (often the sample part of an electronic book is not
| helpful) But I might not be representative.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| The problem with allowing piracy will always be that no one
| really wants to spend money. Just because I have a spare $200
| doesn't mean I want to spend it if I don't have to.
|
| If you give people the choice between free and $x amount, 99%
| of people will choose free. You see this with just about
| anything that let's people name their own price.
| shahidkarimi wrote:
| I will make it live again.
| josh_fyi wrote:
| I was delighted when my book showed up on Z-library! I of course
| was never paid for authoring that book; indeed I paid a
| subvention to publish it with Harvard University Press. At some
| point, the rights were sold to the giant publisher Brill, which
| was charging $30 per chapter for a book that has no value by
| chapter.
|
| Luckily, some kind soul at University of Marburg uploaded it and
| Library Genesis still has it.
|
| https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/141915/
|
| https://libgen.is/search.php?req=Joshua%20Fox&column[]=autho...
| RHSeeger wrote:
| If you didn't get paid for writing the book, how did the
| copyright transfer to someone else (so that they could sell
| it)? Or the transferable rights to print/distribute it, if
| that's what we're talking about here.
| josh_fyi wrote:
| I signed away rights to the President and Fellows of Harvard
| College (the legal name in this context for Harvard). That
| was not a problem as it was clear to me that this would not
| be a money-maker for anyone. The business-side was handled by
| Eisenbrauns, a small publisher. When the owner retired, the
| business sold to Penn State. Later, the Harvard Semitic
| Museum (the part of Harvard in charge of the series) sold the
| rights to Brill. I am guessing that Harvard Semitic Museum
| saw this as a chance to get a little bit of money out of
| their asset, and Brill saw this as a cow to milk to death,
| the way the price for legacy software is raised to sky-high
| levels as the product dies. And indeed, I am guessing that
| Brill is not making much -- no one did.
| https://www.sspnet.org/community/news/brill-announces-
| collab...
| harshreality wrote:
| Is that contract valid? What did _you_ receive of value in
| exchange for signing away your copyright?
| bombcar wrote:
| I assume getting it into print was the "item of value"
| Joshua received.
| sitkack wrote:
| I know two instances of authors uploading their own books to
| libgen. Both esoteric academic books that they were not paid to
| write.
| kragen wrote:
| three
| Balgair wrote:
| Reminds me of how Orwell preferred to write introductions to
| _1984_ only for illegal reprints behind the iron curtain. I can
| 't find the exact quote but he said that he'd write it for that
| audience alone as he knew without a doubt that they would read
| his introduction. If I ever actually write a book, I hope I
| have enough courage to do the same and only write introductions
| for cracked copies. You know the audience actually cares if
| they are willing to risk the fuzz just to read.
| keewee7 wrote:
| IIRC Z-library is a LibGen mirror that is faster than other
| mirrors but is also much more monetized with more ads, limited
| free downloads, and premium plans.
|
| Something else weird about this story is why did they move to a
| country that has an extradition agreement with the US? There are
| plenty of countries that would ignore US pressure to arrest them.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| If you have no idea what you're talking about, post your
| comment as a question instead of a statement full of inaccurate
| misconceptions
| AkshatJ27 wrote:
| > Z-Library is a popular (and illegal) library. They have taken
| the Library Genesis collection and made it easily searchable.
| On top of that, they have become very effective at soliciting
| new book contributions, by incentivizing contributing users
| with various perks. They currently do not contribute these new
| books back to Library Genesis. And unlike Library Genesis, they
| do not make their collection easily mirrorable, which prevents
| wide preservation. This is important to their business model,
| since they charge money for accessing their collection in bulk
| (more than 10 books per day).
|
| (http://annas-blog.org/blog-3x-new-books.html)
| [deleted]
| bjord wrote:
| it seems like their collection began as a libgen mirror, but
| expanded far beyond it (and was definitely heavily monetized)
|
| the move might've had something to do with mobilization in
| russia, though I'm just guessing
| ajot wrote:
| I don't know their specific reasons, but I know of some
| transnational companies that since the start of the russian
| invasion dissolved their russian division and told their
| employees to choose from a list of countries to relocate.
|
| Argentina is very easy to migrate to (the preamble to our
| constitution marks the spirit of a nation "free for all men
| that want to live here") and quality of life isn't that bad.
| henry_viii wrote:
| Sad day. I always talked about Z-library with reverence.
| Z-library was the only way I could access textbooks I was
| interested in when I was growing up in a developing country. I
| owe it to Z-library for becoming the software developer I am
| today.
| prisoner655321 wrote:
| A sad day for equal access to information. I'm glad that they
| made money from Z-Library, they deserve that money for the
| service they provided.
|
| It's some bullshit that they were arrested in Argentina on behalf
| of the US government. From what I can tell they aren't even US
| nationals. I know the US scooping up foreigners and locking them
| away is nothing new (see: Gitmo) but it remains a travesty of
| justice nonetheless.
| yewenjie wrote:
| TorrentFreak report has some extra details -
| https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-indicts-two-russians-for-runnin...
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| A small thought experiment:
|
| - Book sales in 2021 were about _9_ billion dollars. [0]
|
| - Wage theft in the US is estimated at _50_ billion dollars. [1]
|
| Can you imagine if the resources of the justice and labour
| departments would prioritize citizen wage over publishers'
| revenue?
|
| Would you rather have funds allocated towards social justice or
| have them spent on intimidating foreign nationals completely
| outside US jurisdiction?
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/197710/annual-book-
| store...
|
| [1] https://www.epi.org/press/wage-theft-costs-american-
| workers-...
| dr-detroit wrote:
| leephillips wrote:
| What these criminals were doing _is_ wage theft. As someone who
| earns money from books, I would like to personally thank the US
| Justice Department for their excellent work in shutting down
| this operation, that was stealing my wages.
| [deleted]
| dimva wrote:
| Wage theft is committed by millions of employers, this "theft"
| was committed by just a few people. While I agree with your
| general sentiment, the resources required to prosecute wage
| theft would be vastly greater than to prosecute this case.
|
| That being said, they should definitely prosecute wage theft
| much more than they are now. Maybe the fear of jail time if
| wage theft were actually prosecuted a few times would deter
| most other potential wage thieves.
| burkaman wrote:
| I don't really agree, prosecuting _all_ wage theft would be
| an enormous effort, but this story is not about prosecuting
| all book "theft", just one case. The argument is that the
| resources spent on this one case would have been better spent
| on investigating and prosecuting wage theft, not solving the
| entire issue.
|
| Also, wage theft seems to be a much simpler thing to
| prosecute. You don't have to investigate the owners of
| anonymous websites or track down any foreign nationals, just
| show up to a job site, see how long people are working, see
| how much they're paid, and prosecute if the numbers don't
| match. Obviously I'm exaggerating, but it's a much more
| tangible, sort of "old-fashioned" crime, one I would imagine
| the FBI is pretty good at solving.
| retconn wrote:
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > Wage theft is committed by millions of employers...
|
| Yes, and of those there are a handful doing it to millions of
| employees. Wage theft is not a few night shifts rounded off
| at SMEs. Plenty of traded companies doing it, no reason why
| you cannot target low numbers of big fish.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _there are a handful doing it to millions of employees_
|
| Has someone credibly identified them?
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Both Walmart and Amazon are notorious for disregarding
| minimum wage laws as an example of 'big fish'. With the
| fines usually applied this is just the price of doing
| business for these companies.
|
| https://thehill.com/regulation/court-
| battles/275064-supreme-...
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/2/22262294/amazon-flex-
| wage-...
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Will never happen just like how undocumented migrants are
| exploited by meat processing plants while being de-facto
| shielded from deportation... because corporations and money
| talk.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| In my country wage theft is committed on migrant labour.
|
| Western Europe is not much different than Quatar in that
| respect only nobody cares.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| You are right that it happens, but people do care and
| enforcement is improving in at least several countries like
| the UK and Norway.
| tomp wrote:
| Are the immigrants' passports confiscated so that they
| cannot leave?
|
| If you genuinely believe that, why don't you move to Qatar?
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| The world starts caring when the Olympics or World Cup come
| to a country. I hadn't even heard about Qatar prior to them
| hosting the World Cup.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| The Olympics and World Cup have come to Western Europe
| (e.g. England, France, Norway, Spain) over and over again
| achenet wrote:
| Never been to Norway or Spain, but England and France are
| generally okay w.r.t. migrant labor. Not saying there
| isn't some hostility to foreigners, because ceterus
| paribus you'll get many more job interviews with a CV
| that says "Jean-Pierre Petit" than "Mohammed Karkar" in
| France, but there is no "temporary worker visa" that we
| can use to basically exploit peoples from poor countries.
| If you get a visa that lets you work, you generally get
| the same protections/wages as locals :)
| jiveturkey wrote:
| Sleep deprivation of just 10 min per night across the entire
| USA adult population of 330M is 3.3Bn minutes, is over 6
| thousand YEARS of sleep related fatigue, etc. _PER NIGHT_
|
| Can you imagine if we attacked that problem in earnest?
|
| My point, obviously, is that 50 billion is nothing on a per
| capita basis. This arrest is very high leverage, and very
| effective use of resources.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Your argument that this problem is too distributed is valid
| but a little out of touch. Wage theft disproprionately
| affects lower income people.
|
| There is about 39 million americans below poverty line.
| That's about 1200 dollars a year. I am sure it would actually
| make a hell of a big difference to many people below the
| poverty line.
| nivenkos wrote:
| But piracy affects the capitalists that run the US
| establishment, whereas wage theft benefits them.
| lc9er wrote:
| I have family that works for DOL's Wage & Hour division. The
| amount of wage theft is _staggering_. They are chronically
| understaffed and overworked. Plus, every time a Republican
| administration comes into power, their enforcement power gets
| severely limited, except in the most egregious cases.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| When people get paid more, the government gets more tax
| revenue. Smart government would double this division's
| resources, but governments are anything but smart.
| comprev wrote:
| Government may get more revenue but the individual
| politicians get influenced through financial means provided
| by the companies stealing the wages.
|
| Corporates want their pound of flesh for lobbying expenses.
| ironfootnz wrote:
| In theory yes, but if you don't pay and use the money for
| Lobby, you get power, which equals to more rights. That's
| the foundation of a democracy or let's say society from the
| times of Pharaos.
| agumonkey wrote:
| non naive suggestion: new nation scale govt structure
| should be discussed and tried.
|
| hybrid patterns, seasonal structures, whatever
|
| There are lots of low hanging fruits, which is good because
| it means space for progress but govt are extremely good at
| diluting any improvement efforts. Yet most people want
| higher efficiency / sanity governments.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| One party wants a disenfranchised base that will keep
| voting for them. If they are made whole by the government
| they might start having wrongthink.
| woodruffw wrote:
| This would run counter to the "starve the beast"[1]
| strategy that's formed the core of conservative governance
| in the US for the last 50 years.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
| akira2501 wrote:
| If you believe in small government then you're going to
| enact policies that accomplish this. Re-branding this as
| "starve the beast" seems nothing more than a propaganda
| exercise.
|
| Further.. almost every business employing people in a
| State must be setup with that State's authorities. Is
| there some reason States can't handle wage theft? Is this
| naturally a federal problem, or even best solved at that
| level?
| munk-a wrote:
| I _strongly_ disagree. If you 're in favor of small
| government and in control you would, absent political
| concerns, simply shutter government organizations you
| don't believe in. "Starve the beast" is an entirely
| different tactic where you don't want to be seen as
| destroying popular services and so, instead, undermine
| their ability to function efficiently until they become
| unpopular enough to cancel. It comes with an
| understanding that the majority of the political will in
| a country appreciates these programs when they're well
| funded and that their cancelation is only politically
| actionable when they've been starved to ineffectualness.
|
| "Starve the beast" is also really only a realistic
| strategy in a corrupt duopoly like America has since the
| defunding of popular programs is generally political
| suicide - unless you can reduce everything to "Us vs.
| Them"ism.
| shakezula wrote:
| It's a term that was _coined by_ fiscal conservatives,
| it's not a "rebranding as a propaganda exercise".
| woodruffw wrote:
| That's not my branding, or a re-branding at all: the
| first known use of the term was by a Libertarian party
| member. It's _the_ term of art for this style of
| financial governance, one that is used somewhat proudly
| by its disciples.
|
| It's a problem for both state governments _and_ the
| Federal government: wage theft might span from state tax
| fraud, federal tax fraud, unemployment insurance fraud,
| federal contract falsification, etc. Making it into a
| states ' issue is overly simplistic.
| bob234 wrote:
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Wage theft in the US is estimated at _50_ billion dollars.
| [1]
|
| That report is from 2014. What does it stand at today (whether
| in absolute or relative terms)?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > completely outside US jurisdiction
|
| > The pair was arrested on November 3, 2022 in Cordoba,
| Argentina at the request of the United States.
|
| The government of Argentina disagrees.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Extradition agreements is not the same as US law being
| applied in Argentinian soil.
| ckw wrote:
| So copyright is incentivizing only $9 billion of spending on
| books... This seems suboptimal. You'd think it'd be possible to
| design a different government scheme that yielded say, twice as
| much book publishing, but with no restriction on copying. Same
| thing for music.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>Would you rather have funds allocated towards social justice
| or have them spent on intimidating foreign nationals
|
| I would rather the justice department, and labor dept choose
| their targets for non-political reasons, neither for "social
| justice" nor corporate protectionism
| rfrey wrote:
| It must be one of the triumphs of capitalism that forcing
| employers to pay their workers what they're owed is
| considered a partisan action.
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| > I would rather the justice department, and labor dept
| choose their targets for non-political reasons
|
| You want the justice department, a branch of the goverment,
| to not be political?
| luckylion wrote:
| > You want the justice department, a branch of the
| goverment, to not be political?
|
| This is like asking "you want the fire dept to not be
| political?"
|
| Of course you don't want the executive branch to not be
| political. They are the _administration_. If the IRS just
| goes after whoever the current reigning party doesn 't
| like, you'll soon no longer have a functioning democracy.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Yes. That should not be a shock, there are lots (in fact
| most) of government that is not suppose to be political,
| specifically when it comes to the enforcement of law.
|
| The entire premise, the entire legitimacy of the legal
| system is the blind scales of justice.
|
| It seems you want it to be political, that is would be a
| nation of despotism, oligarchs, and tyranny
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| > that is not suppose to be political
|
| their execution shouldn't but their priortiies are
| entirely political mandates.
|
| When people felt unsafe in the 90s and the DoJ increased
| minimum sentencing was that not a political incentive?
|
| Protecting business over people, as it currently stands
| in their priority list, is a political decision.
|
| Changing the status quo is not "political" and remaining
| as is isn't. Their current directives are poltiical
| assignments, and rerouting resources in a more worthy
| endevour is the same.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >When people felt unsafe in the 90s and the DoJ increased
| minimum sentencing was that not a political incentive?
|
| No that was a change in legalization, which legislation
| is political, but the 90's saw TONS of anti-crime laws
| passed which required the non-political arms of the
| government to act
|
| that is how it is suppose to work, the people elect
| representative who pass laws, and then those laws are
| enforced by the non-political arm.
|
| These entities have become political in the wake of over
| criminalization since now as a function they have to
| "choose" which laws to enforce and which not to because
| other wise nothing would get enforced as a matter of
| course.
|
| The solution to this is not just acceptation that
| enforcement should be political, but instead removing the
| political choices from the non-political arms placing it
| back into the political space of the government (i.e the
| legislature) . One key way to do that for the Federal
| government is to return said federal government back to
| its constitutional bounds which today it FAR FAR FAR FAR
| FAR exceeds
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| > The solution to this is not just acceptation that
| enforcement should be criminal, but instead removing the
| political choices from the non-political arms placing it
| back into the political space of the government (i.e the
| legislature) .
|
| The assumption that there are too many laws and "non
| political" arms need to pick and choose which ones to
| apply is true. But I would consider that just part of
| reality.
|
| Economics is just the study of resource allocation, the
| goverment only has so many federal tax officers and they
| need to focus on something. If they focus on big accounts
| it doesn't make not paying VAT legal. It just less likely
| you get caught.
|
| Laws existing as a framework to express the current
| priorities of the goverment (aka tax avoidance bad) is
| useful even without enough officers to enforce it 100%.
|
| > One key way to do that for the Federal government is to
| return said federal government back to its constitutional
| bounds which today it FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR exceeds
|
| The libertarian angle is cool and all, but the political
| voice of the people has consistently voted for bigger gov
| not smaller, so you want to apply your own politics to
| make things "non poltiical". Which is not very consistent
| Clent wrote:
| What do you mean by 'social justice' and the implication it
| is a bad thing?
|
| I postulate, labor justice is social justice.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| "Social Justice" is a loaded political term generally
| aligned with Left Authoritarianism and often devoid of
| actual justice
| dredmorbius wrote:
| And who was it who loaded that term? The social justice
| advocates, or their opponents?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Both. Just like many other political labels, they start
| out as one thing then more and more people start using
| the labels and soon their orginal meaning is lost and
| have become something else
|
| This is caused by both advocates and opponents of the
| various causes, positions, and world views
| wellareyousure wrote:
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| _In 1993, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action
| treats social justice as a purpose of human rights education_
|
| The declaration was signed by the US as well.
|
| So social justice is an objective of US as a whole, as a
| democracy, as a Country, hence is not a political view since
| 1993 in USA.
| wesapien wrote:
| a broken democracy but a highly functional oligarchhy
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _declaration was signed by the US_
|
| It was never fully ratified [1]. It _was_ ratified by
| Russia and, somehow, Afghanistan.
|
| [1] https://indicators.ohchr.org/
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| That's hardly news.
|
| But you're looking in the wrong place.
|
| It was called the "Vienna Declaration and Programme of
| Action" it was not an agreement to be ratified, but a
| course of action for the UN members to follow, which
| includes the US.
|
| Of course in United States social justice is seen as a
| political stance, it's not surprising from the country
| that has signed and not ratified
|
| - Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
| Discrimination against Women
|
| - International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
| Rights
|
| - Convention on the Rights of the Child (they do not
| actually think of the children, apparently)
|
| - Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
|
| I get that the rights of people with disabilities can be
| a divisive argument, but they also refuted to sign for
|
| - Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination
| of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
|
| - Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on
| Civil and Political Rights
|
| - Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on
| Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
|
| - Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and
| Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
|
| and if that wasn't bad enough, they have also not signed
|
| - International Convention on the Protection of the
| Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their
| Families
|
| - International Convention for the Protection of all
| Persons from Enforced Disappearance (CIA really loves
| making people disappear, they couldn't possibly
| disappoint them)
|
| How is it possible that we call it "the greatest
| democracy in the World" while they are not even a real
| Democracy is the "greatest mystery in modern history"
|
| So, yeah, social justice is political only in USA and
| probably in some South American dictatorship lead by
| former nazis and militarily installed by yours truly the
| USA
|
| Not even Putin would say in public that social justice
| it's the patrimony of a specific Political side, because
| it would be a (politcal) suicide, even for a guy like
| Vladimir Putin who recently spoke about it citing Martin
| Luther King (of course it's all propaganda in his side,
| but still...), while in the USA, where MLK was born and
| was killed, his ideas are still considered "agenda" and
| not "Country's own values".
|
| Again: not surprising, just sad.
|
| > It was ratified by Russia and, somehow, Afghanistan.
|
| to put it mildly, in that list, as you can see, USA is
| the country that ratified fewer treaties.
|
| Even Iran ratified one treaty more than US.
|
| Actually there is one that did worse: Bhutan, with zero
| of them.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _yeah, social justice is political only in USA_
|
| You're shifting your goal posts. You said "social justice
| is an objective of US as a whole" and hence "not a
| political view." That's false.
|
| > _Even Iran ratified one treaty more than US_
|
| Which shows the difference. Ratification, in America, is
| not performative. Those treaties can become the basis for
| lawsuits against the U.S. in U.S. courts. If you're
| arguing women have a better time in Iran, or civic and
| political rights are better protected in Russia, because
| they ratified those chapters, I've got a bridge to sell
| you.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > You're shifting your goal posts. You said "social
| justice is an objective of US as a whole" and hence "not
| a political view." That's false.
|
| If you're saying that US usually says one thing, and does
| another thing entirely, you're right.
|
| When someone signs an official document in representation
| of their Country, they are actually saying that the
| Country's objective align with the things written in the
| document.
|
| They signed a document that stated that social justice is
| not political, it's a human right.
|
| You're now saying that's false in the US.
|
| So either you or the US are lying.
|
| > Which shows the difference. Ratification, in America,
| is not performative
|
| like the ratification of
|
| _International Convention on the Elimination of All
| Forms of Racial Discrimination_
|
| in 1994?
|
| Are we there yet?
|
| > Those treaties can become the basis for lawsuits
| against the U.S. in U.S. courts
|
| Lawsuits, like the first of a long list a guy named
| Donald Trump had to face for his act of racism, in 1973,
| for refusing to rent houses to black people?
|
| That totally blocked him from becoming President of
| United States and from running again at the next
| elections.
|
| Because in USA nothing is performative.
|
| Trump BTW was at least honest in treating things the rest
| of the World consider global as internal political
| arguments; when he felt that climate change wasn't
| important to his administration, he withdrawn from the
| Paris climate accord.
|
| Seriously, you're talking like the US is the only country
| with the rule of law, where the ratification of an
| International treaty has actual legal consequences.
|
| How come that Countries like Italy, France, Germany, even
| MONGOLIA, ratified all of them or more than 90% of them
| and US did not?
|
| Are you saying that in Finland they have no justice
| system or engage in "performative treaty signing" as a
| cultural tribal tradition?
|
| > If you're arguing women have a better time in Iran, or
| civic and political rights are better protected in
| Russia, because they ratified those chapters, I've got a
| bridge to sell you.
|
| I've simply argued that they committed to the cause and
| failed.
|
| US hasn't even tried.
|
| If, as you say, they didn't out of fear of _" lawsuits
| against the U.S. in U.S. courts"_ does that mean that you
| think US know that they do not meet the requirements?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you 're saying that US usually says one thing, and
| does another thing entirely, you're right_
|
| No. I am saying you said "social justice is an objective
| of US as a whole" and hence "not a political view." Then
| you said "social justice is political only in USA." Those
| are opposing views you've flip flopped on.
|
| > _signed a document that stated that social justice is
| not political, it 's a human right_
|
| No, it did not.
|
| > _like the ratification of International Convention on
| the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in
| 1994?_
|
| You're launching off solely titles. Read the text [1].
| Article 5 enumerates rights. The rest is condemnations
| and the establishment of a commission. China, Saudi
| Arabia and Israel are also a signatories [2]. None of
| them give Article 14 jurisdiction, the U.S. included,
| which made it a toothless ratification.
|
| [1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-
| mechanisms/instruments/...
|
| [2] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-
| mechanisms/instruments/...
| [deleted]
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>USA is the country that ratified fewer treaties.
|
| yes, by design. We have a strong belief in our
| Sovereignty, We the people have no desire to be ruled by
| the UN or treaty, and International Treaties are
| generally viewed unfavorably by the public (correctly
| so). In fact most Citizens of the US (including myself)
| hold the UN in utter contempt and would support a
| withdraw (including our money) from the UN
|
| Also no Treaty supersedes our Constitution.
| christophilus wrote:
| I agree with you, but it's always easier to go after a
| centralized target who is doing a thing at scale. Is there a
| wage-thief who's doing it at scale?
| glogla wrote:
| I'm sure e.g. Walmart would have few billions in their name.
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| > Is there a wage-thief who's doing it at scale?
|
| FAANG got caught having a wage cartel where poaching affected
| possible salaries between workers.
|
| They got a measly 50 million dollar fine.
|
| Wage theft pays off in america, and Amazon and Apple being
| trillion dollar companies proves it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _FAANG got caught having a wage cartel_
|
| I remember Apple and Google did. Was there a broader
| conspiracy?
|
| > _got a measly 50 million dollar fine_
|
| This $415mm settlement [1]? Its suit covered "almost 65,000
| employees who worked for the seven companies between 2005
| and 2010." The fine was thus about $6,400 per covered
| employee (about $8k in 2022 dollars). The alleged cut to
| "potential employee compensation [was] 10 percent to 15
| percent" [2]. That didn't pertain to every single employee,
| so the actual cost per violation is higher. That doesn't
| seem egregiously low.
|
| [1] https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-
| others-...
|
| [2] https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/lawsuit-
| accuses-appl...
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| > I remember Apple and Google did. Was there a broader
| conspiracy?
|
| I wrote FAANG cause I didn't remember all involved, which
| was my bad. It was Adobe, Apple Inc., Google, Intel,
| Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay that got caught in the
| anti trust suit.
|
| Enough big players to seriously affect job opportunities
| and labour costs from rising.
|
| > This $415mm settlement [1]?
|
| That was the latest judge sentence, which I hadn't heard
| of, I can ammend my previous comment. The original
| sentences, affecting mostly the smaller players like
| Pixar where much smaller while the Apple and Google one
| kept being pushed back. 400 million is still quite low in
| exchange for a 5 year long wage freeze essentially as
| moving jobs is the best way to increase your salary.
|
| The toal pay seems to be lower, 3,400 for Pixar, intuit
| and lucasfilm employees and only 5,770 for apple and
| google employees. Over a 5 year period thats a pretty low
| salary raise.
|
| Considering a job change every 2 years can end up with
| almost 100% salary difference over a decade. That means
| in the 5 years, the salary raises saved the company up to
| 50% in salary costs.
|
| With the headcount of both of those companies and their
| average salary. Even if the percentage of workers who did
| not move between companies, I would argue 400 million is
| still low.
|
| I am also gonna ignore lawyer fees which are usually the
| only winners on such big lawsuits
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I would argue 400 million is still low_
|
| Low, but not so low that it makes wage conspiracies worth
| it.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It definitely makes it worth it if you merely risk but
| are not guaranteed to lose about as much as you underpaid
| and avoid compounding increases.
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| If there average payout is 5,770 per employee and the
| average salary jump while changing jobs is 10-20%.
|
| The math is pretty in favour of having a wage conspiracy,
| thats without even considering the cost of not being
| caught.
|
| Chance of being caught * average salary * cost of
| poaching * average salary rise due to poaching * number
| of employees / fine
|
| Maybe my napkin math is wrong but the chance of being
| caught has to be very high and the average salary or
| number of employees very low for it to make any sense.
|
| And being google and apple in california, the employee
| and salary is not gonna be low...
| jrnichols wrote:
| My industry got it pretty bad too. California passed Prop
| 11, which wiped out a wage theft lawsuit, and also ensured
| that we do not get to clock out for meal breaks.
|
| https://missionlocal.org/2018/10/prop-11-ambulance-
| company-h...
| zb1plus wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. It is disgraceful how our tax dollars are
| used to prop up failed business models and oppress the little
| guy. Just another example of how supposedly democratic states
| only serve the interests of the elite.
| [deleted]
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| >It is disgraceful how our tax dollars are used to prop up
| failed business models and oppress the little guy
|
| U.S. Government Spending, FY 2022 Top 10 Spending by Category
|
| $ 1.22 T Social Security
|
| $ 914 B Health
|
| $ 865 B Income Security
|
| $ 767 B National Defense
|
| $ 755 B Medicare
|
| $ 677 B Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services
|
| How do you explain this data?
|
| Source:https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-
| guide/feder...
| denvrede wrote:
| Genuine question: I always hear about the gigantic military
| spending in the U.S. I would've expected it to be on top of
| this list. It can't be only 7. no?
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| When talking about spending, some people exclude programs
| like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, income security
| programs from their list of spending because it doesn't
| need to be approved every year - it is classified as
| 'Mandatory Spending' and is 63% of the budget.
|
| The remaining spending, has to be approved every year is
| classified as 'Discretionary Spending'. When you just
| look at discretionary spending, the military budget is
| the biggest piece. But if someone says the US spends most
| of its budget on military spending, it is false and
| deceptive.
| karaterobot wrote:
| A lot of military spending is disguised (not to say
| maliciously) as funding to other agencies. For example,
| that number is probably just the Pentagon's budget, and
| wouldn't include things like Veterans Affairs (which is
| about $300 billion) or foreign aid (around $50 billion)
| or the Department of Homeland Security (around $50
| billion) or our nuclear force ($35 billion), etc.
|
| Even some of NASA's funding is for monitoring nukes.
|
| The point is that it's actually kind of hard to calculate
| how much we spend on defense, because it's hard to know
| what to count, but it's certainly more than it looks
| like. Over $1 trillion is a safe guess.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Are you expecting a source better than the US treasury to
| appear?
|
| An unfortunate reality of the US is that policy
| discussion is almost wholly disconnected from quantified
| reality: we're not even arguing about facts, anymore.
|
| If we started examining facts, the populace would become
| aware that the US pays more for less than other
| "developed" nations -- largely due to corruption in
| healthcare, construction, and manufacturing (eg,
| military).
| bombcar wrote:
| US military spending is HUGE compared to other countries
| budgets. It is not that big compared to the US budget -
| in WW2 we spent about 45% of GDP on military stuff - if
| that was done today we'd have a budget of about _ten
| trillion dollars_.
|
| Also much of what is classified as military spending
| could probably be moved to other categories - the VA, for
| example.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Wow. Imagine the Manhattan Projects you could make with
| ten trillion!
| artificial wrote:
| The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but grew to
| employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2
| billion (equivalent to about $23 billion in 2020). We're
| nearing $100 billion with Ukraine. $31 billion to
| California EDD (unemployment) fraud.
| thestevesie wrote:
| Its large compared to other similar countries.
|
| So why doesn't the US just spend that money so we can be
| more like X trendy country I heard about on Y
| blog/podcast that is a fraction of the size of the US and
| does "EVERYTHING" better?
|
| Well, the case is that they have more money to spend
| because the US is subsidizing their military. So many of
| these countries are able to get away with tiny military
| budgets because of the US's large military budget. (all
| of those countries are also unrecoverably in decline)
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| the US does not subsidise other countries, not to the
| degree that you think anyways.
|
| It's also not a matter of spending more money. The US
| spends a lot more per capita on healthcare than everyone
| else, so money is not the issue.
| slongfield wrote:
| US military spending means that other countries don't
| need to spend as much.
|
| For example, the US Navy does a lot of anti-piracy work
| to stabilize world maritime trade. This has obvious
| benefits to the United States, but also benefits others
| (e.g., the Danish shipping company Maersk).
| kneebonian wrote:
| It may not be direct subsidiaries but I'd be willing to
| wager a pretty penny that there are a lot of European
| countries that feel comfortable with spending little on
| defense and aren't worrying about Russia because they
| know the US has their back.
|
| Not to mention keeping Taiwan from being brought under
| the CCP umbrella, the efforts the US Navy puts into
| preventing and reducing piracy. In fact most of the world
| that doesn't worry about imminent invasion from it's
| neighbors doesn't worry mostly because the US has
| provided almost global security by virtue of having the
| largest most capable military on the planet.
|
| I won't pretend it is perfect or that we have global
| peace but like during Pax Romana although they were still
| squabbling with the Sassinids, the average person's risk
| of dying as a result of military conflict is very small
| when compared historically, especially since almost every
| military action in the past half century has been not
| between modern nation states but between guerrilla and
| partisan forces which results in considerably less damage
| in life and property than a full scale conflict between
| two capable actors as the Iran Iraq war proves.
| pas wrote:
| not really, US healthcare spending is average for US
| income. (the problem is the distribution of that income)
|
| https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2020/02/13/its-still-
| not-...
| jwilk wrote:
| Why 7?
| calibas wrote:
| According to a different official government site, it's
| $1.2 T on National Defense...
|
| https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| Thanks for that link. It also shows medicare as increased
| to $1.5 T
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Yeah but we paid into a social fund for Medicare and
| social security. It's not tax revenue it's our savings.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| Is that what they told you? You don't "pay into" social
| security, you _pay for_ other old people's current social
| security. And you certainly do not "pay into" Medicare.
| Also the "social fund" of Medicare and social security
| certainly benefit "the little guy" more than anyone else,
| which was the whole point I was making. Also, who is
| "we?" Some people would rather have that cash for
| themselves or invest it on their own. And technically all
| taxes can be called a "social fund" so I don't see hiw
| this point even begins. If you go to jail for not paying
| into a "social fund" it's tax revenue.
| kneebonian wrote:
| It wasnt't supposed to be tax revenue. Doesn't mean they
| didn't treat it that way anyway.
| primroot wrote:
| "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the
| security of property, is in reality instituted for the
| defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have
| some property against those who have none at all." - Adam
| Smith
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| We're not talking about security of property here but about
| who benefits from government spending.
| candiodari wrote:
| > but about who benefits from government spending
|
| Elon Musk? And, if you count foregoing taxes as spending,
| Jeff Bezos?
| cies wrote:
| joxel wrote:
| At least the anti-democracy party didn't name themselves
| after democracy. That would've been an even worse joke.
| aliqot wrote:
| hey guys save this convo for reddit please. we're better
| than this.
| cies wrote:
| the point im trying to make is they both hopelessly anti-
| democracy.
|
| they all love lobbying (= anti-democracy to me: the
| deeper pockets have more influence) there in washington
| joxel wrote:
| Like most things, anti-democratic activity is a spectrum
| rather than black or white. It seems fairly obvious to me
| that there is a large gulf between the two parties on
| that spectrum.
| cies wrote:
| > It seems fairly obvious to me that there is a large
| gulf between the two parties on that spectrum.
|
| Disagree from a distance (non-US'er). They both have
| their VERY undemocratic behaviors: just one is the name
| sake :)
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| It also doesn't help that true democracy isn't something
| people actualy want. So democracy has basically been
| redefined to mean a republic that makes decisions that
| benefit or are demanded by the most people.
| cies wrote:
| > It also doesn't help that true democracy isn't
| something people actualy want.
|
| Source?
|
| > So democracy has basically been redefined to mean a
| republic that makes decisions that benefit or are
| demanded by the most people.
|
| I claim that with lobby being allowed, democracy is a
| facade to hide plutocracy's ugly face.
|
| "a republic that makes decisions that benefit or are
| demanded by the rich/companies that can afford lobbying"
| is what I think the word democracy currently hides.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Visit any courtroom in America. It's poor people who commit
| small crimes who end up in prison. Wall St. fat cats who push
| opiates on the masses get away with murder and get a slap on
| the wrist.
| codedokode wrote:
| Don't you think that the punishments are too severe? Severe
| punishments should be for violent crimes, not for stealing
| several thousands dollars from authors.
| 35amxn35 wrote:
| Yeah extradition treaties and bowing down to the US or the
| Interpol are how the One World Government begins. Mix that with
| cheap massive surveillance tech imported from China and every
| country going cashless and we're in FOR A RIDE.
| rglover wrote:
| You might even say it's Biblical.
| trabant00 wrote:
| Z-library was not about freeing books, they where pirating for
| profit. The free account was limited in downloads and they had 2
| tiers of premium accounts, don't remember the sums or details.
| They where profiting on the works of others too, they did not rip
| the books themselves or anything like that.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| The free tier was something like 5 books per day and was
| throttled by ip. How many books do you usually read _per day_
| that this argument holds any kind of meaning?
|
| They throttled it, sure ... but that wasn't really a rate in
| which you'd run into unless you're just downloading everything.
| Which you still could just by cycling your ip.
|
| You also didn't need an account unless you wanted to send the
| book directly to your Kindle. You're all around just
| misinformed on the topic
| ezconnect wrote:
| Free tier is 10 books per day. They really have a nice search
| and related books view making discovery easy. Lot of people
| will miss z library.
| madars wrote:
| Docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65760207/united-
| states-...
| revskill wrote:
| First time heard about Z-library. The home page design seems like
| a scam page though.
| slbtty wrote:
| It is a gate to the great knowledge.
| lakomen wrote:
| 1st time I heard about it. I'll try to find the tor site.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| An alternative is Library Genesis.
| auggierose wrote:
| What I was always wondering about, given they are clearly
| illegal, why did they bother adhering to book take down requests
| (and pointing out you could still access the book in question via
| Tor...)? Was there some jurisdiction out there where that made
| them legal?
| ddevault wrote:
| Man, fuck this.
| hknmtt wrote:
| "The pair was arrested on November 3, 2022 in Cordoba, Argentina
| at the request of the United States" ...
| jiveturkey wrote:
| Does anyone know if when FBI/DOJ seizes domain names, do they
| only do so when an arrest is imminent? It's quite obvious in this
| case that it was allowed to remain operational while they were
| investigating. I wonder if that's the general MO for domain
| seizures. Because there are just tons of domains that should be
| seized that are still operating. Why don't those get taken down?
| No way FBI/etc aren't aware of these.
| elashri wrote:
| > As alleged, the defendants profited illegally off work they
| stole
|
| How did they profit? If they even admitted that
|
| > Defendants Operated Z-Library, Which Offered Free Download of
| Copyrighted Works
|
| This is a complete nonsense
| jerojero wrote:
| Maybe ads on the platfom? I'm not sure because 1. i use libgen
| 2. i run adblock.
|
| But it wouldn't be surprising that such a popular platform
| would have ads. Z-library was a site for pirated e-books, no?
| fragmede wrote:
| shh! do you want lingren to get taken down as well? whether
| accurately or not, the takedowns is attribute to a sudden
| burst of popularity due to social media sharing of the site.
| jerojero wrote:
| Z-library was popular amongst everyone, hackernews is a
| really niche website. But I believe with that website going
| down people will start looking for alternatives.
|
| If everything fails, we can always go back to download
| books through IRC.
| gnrlst wrote:
| I believe they also offered premium plans and for the longest
| time had a big banner on their site saying something like: "if
| you know of high risk payment processors, please reach out"
| luckylion wrote:
| Their system was set up to make money, much like iptorrents.
| Yes, you can use them for free, but they create very low
| artificial limits to funnel you into paying for premium
| services.
|
| Your outrage is misplaced, these are not the pirates freeing
| books, these are parasites making money off of the pirates'
| work.
| fragmede wrote:
| downloads were limited to a small number per day. if you wanted
| to download more there was a small fee ($1?). They tracked her
| Amazon account which had made $14k in purchases over the years.
| dmw_ng wrote:
| Curious where you heard the detail about Amazon
| fragmede wrote:
| The original arrest warrant.
|
| > Since March 20, 2019, the 1502 Account has placed more
| than 110 orders totaling over $13,628.32,
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nyed.4
| 8...
| 0xR1CK wrote:
| They accepted payment to get around quotas (and probably ran
| ads). Even if it was a tiny percentage of people who engaged
| with them this way, or even if they profited at all, they took
| money in exchange for accessing an illicit resource. That is
| likely the main reason the teeth have come out to bite.
|
| If anything though this might push that resource to the hands
| of people who can maintaining the massive library voluntarily
| and distributed with less ethical/morally-dubious implications.
| andai wrote:
| Anyone know what payment processor they used? Did they take
| USD etc? That's probably how their real identities got
| exposed.
| crtasm wrote:
| I don't believe they ran adverts, can anyone confirm?
| stevespang wrote:
| prirun wrote:
| A friend recently gave me a printed copy of Legend of Drizzt. It
| was about 2 inches thick (3 books in 1), the printing was too
| small for my crappy eyes, lighting in my room at night is not
| great, and the printing went too close to the interior edge, all
| making it hard to read. So I bought a Kindle.
|
| The Kindle worked much better. I got the Kindle Unlimited
| subscription at no extra cost for 3 months (then $10/mo
| afterwards), thinking I'd get access to any books on Amazon that
| were available in the Kindle format. You know, "Unlimited".
| Wrong! Kindle Unlimited means "whatever Kindle books Amazon wants
| to give you", not "Unlimited". They need to rename that to
| "Kindle Limited", "Kindle Picks", or whatever. Of course, this
| series was not part of KU.
|
| I bought the first few books in the series, even though I already
| had the printed book, at $8/book, which is kinda pricey
| considering there are 36 books in the series, so it was going to
| cost ~$300 to read the whole thing. Then I found out I could
| download the books from the public library system. It's actually
| a pretty good model I think, because at least in Indiana, all of
| the public libraries are in a state-wide consortium, so there are
| about 5 copies of each book in the series available to "rent" for
| anyone in Indiana. And it's free.
|
| The e-book business model of $8/book makes no sense to me, at
| least not for fiction. I don't want 36 already-read e-books
| sitting on my Kindle - it just junks things up. What I _would_
| like is to be able to take a photo of a book I already have,
| including the ISBN number, and get an electronic copy in my
| Kindle library for free. That would be so awesome, esp
| considering that as I get older, reading from a Kindle is way
| easier than dealing with a physical book.
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