Hard disagree that it is inherently "mean" to pirate a book regardless of its status. If you can afford to support someone you should, but IMO we should value most of all unrestricted access to knowledge without shame.
Also this book first came out in 1986. One hopes the author is still not dependent on its sales.
Yep. Personally I’m generally in favour of copyright as it was originally drafted: only valid for 7 years, with an optional extension to 14.
I’m all for creative people making a living from their work, but 40 years copyright is too long. To say nothing of the absurd rules today of 70 years after the death of the author or whatever it is.
My example is Disney's 1959 Sleeping Beauty. Had today's copyright regime been in force, Tchaikovsky's 1890 ballet would have still been under copyright, so Disney couldn't have made it.
Also a lot of history books were funded by government money or NGOs. Which is understandable considering that it may very well take years of research to write one.
I disagree that purchasing the book is automatically the “right” thing to do. If someone cannot afford the book, it is my view that society should not expect them to pay. I believe that this view towards knowledge will lead to a wiser society, and we deviate from that path at our peril.
> IMO we should value most of all unrestricted access to knowledge
This is not "unrestricted access to knowledge". This is a creative work produced by a creative under the assumption that their work would be paid for.
You don't have the right to take someone else's work without compensating them on their terms. That's theft.
Even worse, it's unnecessary theft. You're not advocating for someone pirating a book on exercise so someone can get in shape and extend their life - you're advocating for pirating a book, cheating the author out of revenue, for entertainment alone. People are not going to die because they couldn't get their hands on a copy of "Dark Sun."
And, even if the book was actual utility - the contents for the majority of actually useful books are already made freely available online in the form of research papers, websites, public domain books, or Creative Commons licensed content like LibreTexts or OpenStax. "unrestricted access to knowledge" is effectively already here - you're just being entitled to other people's work, and that is truly shameful.
Books, especially digital copies, are not property in the same way that a house is property. If someone could download a duplicate of my house and live in it without having any impact on my own house, that would be great.
We invented the idea that information is property, and I think restricting access to knowledge via copyright is a net harm to society. Authors need to survive, but IMO we should seek solutions that provide for authors while also allowing unrestricted access. We have seen for well over a decade now that "pay what you can" schemes to fund music and books can work very well. There are three billion people on this planet with an opportunity to gain internet access in the next 50 years. Should we paywall every book written in the last 150 years to benefit publishers? Or make a free public library of every book available to benefit humankind? This is the question we face, and I know what my view on it is.
We also invented the idea that a house is property. That’s not some fundamental law of physics. Some people even think that restricting access to your house is a net harm to society. Perhaps you should experiment with a “pay what you want” scheme for your spare bedroom.
Or, a "pay what you want" system for your employer.
I've never met a single IP pirate (thief) who is willing to reciprocate and let other people take their work (i.e. their labor to their employer) for free.
In fact, the people who are the most vocal about piracy are also those who are most vocal about getting their employer to give them as much money and benefits as possible.
Published works, not "all information". It's up to society to decide if we want to prioritize publishers or humanity. I don't believe our restrictive legal regime will persist around the world in perpetuity. It is too harmful to humanity, and someone will break ranks with "harmonization" even if the USA does not.
Open source is something different. Of course, if you're hoping to confiscate Oracle or Mathematica source by force of law, that IS theft. If you're creating new bodies of code, or even encouraging proprietary code owners to open-source their stuff, I think that's great.
> Books, especially digital copies, are not property in the same way that a house is property.
Yes, this is why the concept of IP/copyright was invented in the first place. And, as people familiar with the copyright system know, the "property" in "intellectual property" does not mean the same thing as for physical property, and that the reason for its invention was not to give people "ownership" over/"property" of information (that's slang that is inaccurate but useful, assuming that the hearer is informed enough to tell the difference), but to give them a time-limited monopoly over the duplication (the "copy" in "copyright") so that they can make a profit proportional to the number of people who have enjoyed their work, before it passes into the public domain to enrich the cultural commons (which is also explicitly part of the copyright system since its conception).
The reasoning for this is because the cost of duplicating IP approaches zero, so some economic system needs to exist that allows people to make money off of IP, and...
> We have seen for well over a decade now that "pay what you can" schemes to fund music and books can work very well
This is disingenuous and wildly misinformed at best, and flat-out intentionally deceptive at worst. No, "pay what you can" schemes do not work very well. They constitute a tiny fraction of the economy, with a corresponding tiny fraction of people who can actually make a living off of them, because they simply do not scale - in addition to being fundamentally unfair for obvious reasons. The vast majority of people who sell IP do not use these schemes. They do not work, except under specific circumstances, for a very small number of people, and absolutely do not scale to anywhere close to the economy. Anyone with even a small amount of internet exposure knows that systems like this are highly uncommon and very rarely provide for the creator's financial needs.
> Should we paywall every book written in the last 150 years to benefit publishers?
Nobody in this thread has suggested this. This is a ridiculous strawman.
> Or make a free public library of every book available to benefit humankind?
...and this is a ridiculous false dichotomy.
> restricting access to knowledge via copyright is a net harm to society
Beyond a large number of people disagreeing with this as an opinion, the majority of available empirical evidence points to this being objectively incorrect. Society has been greatly enriched through books created and sold under the copyright system.
Even worse, you're ignoring the massive amount of information made freely available on the internet, through scientific papers, and through IP that is voluntarily made available for free consumption by the authors (copyleft content, open-source code). And all of this information is more than you need to live a "good" life or learn almost anything you want to. The vast majority of content locked behind copyright is either entertainment or esoteric knowledge that isn't relevant or needed by anyone who can't afford it (e.g. high-energy particle physics textbooks). Approximately zero people are going to die because they can't get their hands on a copy of Introduction to High Energy Physics.
Finally, you do not have the right to the works of other people's hands without reimbursing them on their terms. That's theft. You can make your own work available for free, if you wish, but you do not have the ability to take other people's work.
The solution is already here. It is copyright. If you want to tune the knobs (e.g. reduce the length of copyright from "70 years after the author's death" to "15 years" or something), then that's fine and reasonable. But these arguments for both IP theft and what is essentially book-socialism directly conflict with both morality and empirical evidence.
Also this book first came out in 1986. One hopes the author is still not dependent on its sales.