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[–] 220 points 1 year ago (4 children)

That's pretty smart until you learn that "the thief sells"

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  • [–] 138 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Me, stealing every pdf I can find:

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  • [–] 105 points 1 year ago

    This is clearly a indoor Bazar with doors that lock on both ends, they leave them out cause it's not technically outside and ain't nobody breaking in to steal some books, shits heavy and probably doesn't sell for all that much on the black market

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  • [–] 33 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Here people even "steal" books from public bookcases and sell them.

    For people who aren't familiar, let me explain: These public bookcases are a weatherproof shelf, old phone booth or something in the streets. The concept is you can take any book and leave any book. There are no written rules and you can keep a book if you like or just read it and put it back. In recent years people started to scan the barcodes and checked what books they can sell. There is a debate going on if people should mark these books or not, so they can't be sold.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Who tf is buying normal books from the local black market in 2025 is my real question here

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    It's more of an online market. eBay, Amazon to a certain extent, there's loads of book specific ones and some that are for used items generally and allow books. And unless marked it's not the black market at all. I mean obviously the book is stolen, but it's just entering the used market as opposed to being sold through a fence or whatever

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The climate isn't good enough for this where I live all the books would get ruined

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    I live in SW Finland on the coast of the Baltic Sea. It's wet and cold 90% of the year.

    We still have this sort of book exchange in the entrance way to my local shop. A tiny bookshelf/night desk. Not too common though, I can't think of any others right now.

    But like the weather shouldn't be the issue, that's just an engineering problem at that point. I imagine like a glass doored fridge with some dehumidifiers placed inside should probably work in most places to protect books.

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  • [–] 79 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    I also don't steal. I download my books from online copies, which is copying, not stealing.

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  • [+] -32 points 1 year ago (12 children)

    Cool, you hate creatives and feel entitled to their work on the basis of semantics

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago* (9 children)

    on the basis of semantics

    It's not semantics when "stealing" results in the loss of the original by the owner while "copying" just results in a new one being created.

    TL;DR: ✨die mad✨

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  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Publishers don't lose money when I download their products, but I wish they did.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago*

    Too bad. Because it's being redistributed through a third party, you aren't even stealing a negligible amount of electricity, bandwidth, or CPU time from them. Damn, when you think about it, it's just not "stealing" in any capacity, is it?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    That’s a semantic point. The truth is that artists deserve to be paid for their work. Whether you “copy” or “steal”, you’re getting the work without paying the creator. That’s fundamentally shitty behavior.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Is it stealing if I buy a second hand book? I'm still getting to enjoy the work without paying the author (even if the original person paid). Multiple people can own a physical copy at different times (with the author only getting paid once).

    Just like downloads. I don't feel bad about downloading stuff that's out of print. No one is making money from it now anyway, so what harm. If anything, digital copies help to stop these books being lost.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    Okay, but I literally just expressed how they're fundamentally, pragmatically different while you keep reaching for the word "semantics". You can still disagree that it's wrong to copy – that's not what I'm trying to litigage. To call it only semantically different from stealing is asinine.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I never said it was only semantically different, only that you were making a semantic argument: namely, citing the semantic distinction between copying and stealing as grounds for one being acceptable and the other not (“stealing” is wrong but I’m “copying”), ignoring that the injustice against the work’s creator is not pragmatically different. Practically speaking, the author is equally robbed whether you “copy” or “steal”; therefore, arguing that copying is not stealing obscures the heart of the matter behind a semantic distinction.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I mean that's literally semantics but whatever, if that's the definition you're going with then sure. If you ask me, you breached a contract and got a product out of it anyway, I'd call that stealing. I don't think scarcity even factors into whether it's stealing when it's all about whether it was a legit transaction. Lack of scarcity may help justify it when the distributor is a shithead but it doesn't make you not a thief.

    -a proud thief, steal your shit, especially from Adobe fuckem

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  • [–] 38 points 1 year ago (15 children)

    The epubs in my PIRATED MEDIA folder begs to differ

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    Piracy is not theft. You have not deprived anyone of something they would otherwise have.

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  • [–] -4 points 1 year ago* (13 children)

    I have deprived the authors and publishers and bookstores of the money they would've made.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    You were never gonna buy all those books in the first place.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago

    This. As a hillbilly with no access to books growing up, with my education practically stopping at the 4th grade and no stores in sight to purchase books from, I would have never had access to the things I read without piracy.

    I half believe that’s why it’s an issue in the first place.

    I started my reading adventure at 640x480 on windows 98.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Maybe. I pirate a shit ton of stuff, a lot of it yeah I would never have bought but a lot of it I would, or at least I would've rented. I enjoy crime though

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Libraries, lending to a friend, donating to someone, buying used... All the same as piracy?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Libraries pay for their books.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    A fraction of what an author makes through selling. And libraries end up selling those books after some time anyway, "ripping off" the author twice.

    I think we all need to realize that there are so many things we do that could be compared to piracy, yet piracy is the one that's made to look like the worst thing you can do. It really isn't.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I have a physical book collection worth thousands of dollars. The only party that has profited off me is Elsevier.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    One cannot be entitled to castles in the air just because they imagined it.

    edit: if some person spent some effort and got a copy online for free, were they ever considered to be a prospective customer in the first place?

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Can anyone from Iraq confirm?

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    They should learn to read and find out the shit Sheherazade said about them.

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    We do this at a used book store. It's books that we don't think we can sell inside for whatever reason, and we put them on shelves outside. There's a big awning so they don't really get rained on unless it's raining sideways. We sell them for a dime or a quarter, and there's a slot for overnight drops in case people want to get books at night. Every morning there's at least a couple of bucks from the previous day/night.

    We donate the proceeds to public radio, and over the years we've donated over $100,000.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    But what if the thief steals the books not to read them, but just to fill their house with books and make themselves seem erudite and intelligent?

    I'm imagining the most extreme version of this, where a man is living in a house that is a veritable library. Yet, they're actually illiterate.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    Yeah but the vandal does vandalize. In my country there are tons of shitheads who like to see the world burn and destroy someone else property when nobody is around. Like in some neighborhoods in certain cities you can’t have a mini library in your front yard, since a certain type of teenager will ransack it and set the books on fire.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I think that's just one way of saying they're not prints worth stealing

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  • [–] 37 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Sure looks like a regular Street, you know, with a roof and stuff.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    The vandal does not read, either.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    But the arsonist, tho...

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Those poor books 🥲

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    The fence? He is friends with the thief and the reader.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Middle school me would have taken advantage and proven them very wrong

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago
    [–] 10 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I have stolen books and then read them, so ...

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    [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (17 children)

    At one point you could get swaths of ebooks on pirate bay. Probably still could. With seeders. Soo…we know that’s not true.

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  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago (16 children)

    piracy is not the same as stealing. You having a copy of a bible as a PDF is fundamentally physically different from having a physical book.

    Publishers have perverted the concept of ownership by hiding the fact that there is no scarcity of digital items compared to physcial ones.

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  • [+] -6 points 1 year ago (15 children)

    I'm tired of people pretending like piracy does no harm.
    If 100% of readers pirate an authors book, they get 0% income. It really is that simple.

    Pirate your shit if the publishing sucks, but also support the author.
    Donate, buy their merch, buy the ebook of their site directly.

    Don't be a cunt.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago*

    People who pirate in my experience typically do so because they would never have bought the thing otherwise. Pirates are enabled by technology to have things they wouldn’t otherwise get to have. There isn’t often any “lost sale.” Only free advertisement.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    piracy causes harm to the concept of projected profits and "lost sales" which are neither rooted in reality nor coming from a well grounded expectation of success.

    Being greedy causes all this entitlement to things that "could have happened"

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Depends. They certainly lose a potential sale from some people, but many people who pirate books never would have read it if they needed to pay for it. Be that because of a lack of money or a lack of interest. Same with games and shows. So no lost sales there.

    You could even argue that pirating helps with sales by causing people who never would have read the book otherwise to discuss it with friends or strangers online. I personally think that argument is a big stretch, but it's not entirely wrong.

    But yeah, more pirates should be willing to support authors of books they like. If you think they deserve it, buy the ebook even if you've already read the whole thing.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    HBO knows the benefits of pirating. For many of their shows, they tend to be very lax about allowing trackers and streams for the first episode of a season, but then militantly take down everything for the second episode. Of course you can still find episode 2 if you know where to look, but the point is it's harder. They want people to view the first episode and get hooked, and then pay for a subscription when they can't find the next one.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    It's absolutely not that fucking simple. There are so much of economics you are glossing over, and why basically all creators don't oppose piracy, just the labels, publishers, owners.. The meatheads..

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    You disagree that 0 purchases result in 0 revenue?
    Please show your math on this

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Yep I make games for instance, 0 revenue for my studio, publisher and owner and steam and yadda takes everything. Zero point zero dinaros for me.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    What does your example studio being bad at making deals have to do with piracy exactly?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    It just doesn't work like that. In any creative endeavours almost all income is investors that then own the product. Your salaries are speculation and if you get a commission you are very lucky and in the 1%

    Its OK to admit you know nothing about it instead of bicker and gnab because you always know better as a professional guesser

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    OK, but there are barriers of entry to piracy. You have to be tech literate enough to know what to do, and you have to be on top of the latest developments to know where to even go to get the files... and you must have heard about the book from somewhere, presumably some people had to buy and read it first.

    There will never be a text published with 100% piracy rate. It's a fantastical scenario.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    The beat generation would like a word.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Mom says it's my turn to post this next week!

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    It also has a roof because it doesn't rain indoors 🧠

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago

    That's where they hid their wmds! The unknown unknowns were under the books the whole time!

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