Reading books for free — The ethics of piracy in poverty
Image taken from Pixabay
Reading books for free
Nowadays I read a couple books per week, but I barely earn more than 40 dollars a month, so I couldn't afford, among my many expenses, to spend 3-8 dollars a week buying books, especially when they're so easily accessible on the internet.
A quick search on Google or (my preferred tool) Duckduckgo brings me to dozens of results per book where I can, one click away, just download any format of any book I want. I can send them directly to my e-book reader or put them in my browser and read them online.
I'm reading this one right now: Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline. I went to the movies yesterday and saw the live-action adaptation of this novel and I couldn't skip it. I'm now 65% in and I'll probably finish it tomorrow morning, and I have read a lot of books like that in the last couple weeks, the most notable being Parasite Eve by Hideaki Sena and The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi.
The ethics of piracy in poverty
I once mentioned my fast-reading habits and my ease of mind while I looked for ways to freely access originally paid-for content to a friend, who told me not to publish such things in public. It creates a bad image, he said, and it is stealing, immoral and other bits of bashing that I don't remember. But the main point is that many would consider that I should instead not read these at all or that I should save for weeks until I could be comfortable hand down some coin to each of the authors whose content I consume.
Other legal ways would be trying to register at an online library and wait for my turn to read a piece... and... I can't think of any more ways except actually buying them.
I could've easily read more than 1000 books in all my life. My mum used to read to me, and when I learned to read, I was eating up books right up, reading whole collections. One of my earlier dig-ups from a library was a 21-book collection. We usually went to return the 3 books that I had just read and to retrieve the next 3 until I read them all. But now that I speak English and I want to read in the original language, there is nowhere to turn to other than the internet.
What do you think?
Should I just not read the books? Should I keep it the way I'm going? What do you think about piracy and the ways that we can get content when we aren't really able to pay it?
Leave me a comment below and a vote if you can afford it.
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When I was a kid I thought that the moment I can buy any book I want will be the moment of my fulfillment in life.
And there you go no I can but I don't have time to read ...
And yes that is why heaving something for free from my point of view is very very important
I actually have a lot of time to read, but I still cannot read every book. I have hundreds of books that I want to read and I still have to dedicate at least one day to each, together with my other activities. No human can read all the books in the world and that is a shame.
So much content is being produced every day and I will miss most of it. Sometimes I wish I were an infinitely-expansible AI that could consume and process all the content in the world.
There is a profound power in this truth. But what if we tried? ;)
We'd read a lot of books and die very savvy and not having finished our task :3
This is, in fact, one of the big worries I have about mortality. I hold this deep unreasonable desire to read every book and watch every movie!
i love how inspired you get by content. probably the reason I'm on this dang platform every day lol
because you absorb words and imagery and really take them to heart <3
Why would you read everything. You sholud read only things that matter something. Why would you waste your time in reading something pointles
I love studying humanity, and sometimes what seems pointless holds the key to a certain interesting trait. I've learned a lot about Chinese culture by reading shitty Chinese web novels, and I've learned a lot abotu spammers by trying to read all of their messages.
I pay for books I read, so I’m a bit biased when I say that you should totally buy it. It’s giving the author credit where it’s due and honestly writers earn very little for something they take a very long time to create. Sure it’s going to take longer to read because sometimes you may or may not have the money, but getting someone else’s material without paying for it doesn’t feel right.
I think there are definite gray areas here. One thought that comes to mind is - if your friend has a book and lends it to you, you're not paying for it. Sure they did, but what if that friend lends it out to just 1 friend. Thats ok right? What about 10 friends? Still probably acceptable and nobody would judge that person. What if that person lends the book to a different friend every month, every week - for the rest of their life? Now you're suddenly talking hundreds and thousands of readers benefitting from the book without paying for it. But also that is the fundamental concept of a library. A book is bought and read by masses - thousands - over the years of our lifetime - and even longer - its lifetime. Someone buying a book and putting the content online for other readers is considered piracy, while at the library its considered a friendly community building neighborhood activity and government funded institution. I'm not trying to condemn one thing nor the other, just to shine a light on the interesting paradigms created with how our society views and labels things that inherently seem quite related when boiled down to the logistics. If piracy is wrong, i.e. reading a book you didn't pay for, when is it ok to lend your ownership and when is it not? Is it about the amount of people who it can be lent to? Does it have to be government funded? What makes it right and what makes it wrong? Just pondering :)
Yeah its complicated 😂.
no, it is not complicate and here are some facts to back up what you originally stated and i agree:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/06/pirated-ebooks-threaten-future-of-serial-novels-warn-authors-maggie-stiefvater
http://www.ala.org/tools/librariestransform/piracy-0
http://libguides.usc.edu/c.php?g=235078&p=1561833
It's complicated in the sense, that everyone is in different situations.
not when there are plenty of sites with free information as posted after i wrote this one. not sure you read everyone's posts.
This debate has been had for a long time, ever since Napster and all through the Pirate Bay arrests and the ease with which piracy can be had on the Steem blockchain where there is no DMCA that can remove the appended transactions.
I think that there's a lot to talk about. For example, with torrents, you're not really lending it, or giving it to friends, but to anyone who may want access to it for free. It would be, maybe, the equivalent of granting access to a private gallery to anyone just because they happen to walk by your stand and ask if you have free tickets to expensive stuff lying around.
I know it's different, but there's a lot of analogies that can be made for and against many kinds of piracy. I really love to explore these topics, but now it's 5 am and I'm going to sleep. Byebye! <3
I'm not even considering the possibility of buying the books since I don't have the money for it. It's a choice between reading it later (by waiting if I ever find an online library that has it available), reading it now (by pirating it) or not reading it, since I really don't have money to spare even for myself (there are a lot of needs I have that I can't afford to cover, so I have to prioritize).
But I do get your point. I'm going against the author's and/or publisher's legal wishes when I acquire and use their product without paying my fee.
Then get it from the library, don’t get me wrong I’m not judging you or anything. It’s just that if there are viable options before you can pirate the books then you should take them. Like getting it from the library, if not then you have no choice to pirate the books.
i'm with you!
i agree with Moara ...
No one can afford to buy all the books they want to read. Libraries are the best option. I think piracy in any form should be a "no".
Hope you make so much on steemit so you can afford all the books that interest you.
I'm hoping that too! :) But I don't think it's feasible for now, maybe in the long future when I'm one of the older and bigger ones on the platform, but nowadays even the newbies I help end up surpassing me :P We shall see where this journey takes us. For now, my only choice is taking all the freebies I get.
Maybe you can mentally loan them and find a way to give back once you can. In your situation I don't really see any alternative. A shame for someone who loves books to be blocked from reading, in my opinion.
Yeah, I could actually write down every book I read and keep a note for later for when I have more resources, but then I'd have to give back to sooo many authors, lol. I have read more than 100 pirated books on my Kindle and even more on my computer.
no libraries? there are free books online all the time ... maybe you can send her yours to borrow? lol
Actually you can read popular books for free without breaking the law!
openlibrary.org is perfectly legal and is basically a free online library. You may have to wait a while to get the book you want but I've read a lot of great books on it. Check it out!
I actually started a project on Steem to help expand OpenLibrary by donating books. You can check it out at @steemitbooks (if you scroll down in its blog there is a list of legal free downloads and one, Warbreaker, is an awesome fantasy book)
I wouldn't publish anything for free unless I were getting massive donations. I'd have to spend a month writing and proofreading. Then I'd have to hire designers and editors and that would cost me more than 2000 USD. This is even for digital copies.
That's unless I did a cheap mediocre job and used some free templates, I but then my month dedicated to writing would be in vain as the end result wouldn't look up to par to the time invested.
I'm really all for free stuff but I'm not confident to get a return without investing money into looks and marketing.
If I’m reading your comment right you’re saying that free stuff is normally low quality. That’s so true and why I recommend OpenLibrary over other sites. OpenLibrary scans each book that it loans out. So you can read books that were originally sold like Ready Player One or Mistborn: The Final Empire (one of my favorite books) on OpenLibrary for free.
The list of free books (now that I'm on my computer here's a link) are almost all public domain books that weren't originally free and are now classics. The book Warbreaker that I mentioned was written by Brandon Sanderson who is a bestselling fantasy author. He just wanted to release a book into the CC. It's a very well written book! (download link)
Also, look up the web serial Worm by Wildbow if you like superhero stories. It's one of the VERY few web serials worth reading.
Trust me, I know that most free stuff isn't good quality :P I'm just listing some of the stuff I've enjoyed while I was in the same situation.
Oh, I now see what you're talking about. I had misinterpreted you before. And I will check out some of those then. Right now I pirated another one called Pines, by Blake Crouch, but as soon as I'm done with it (or bored of it), I'll peek into Warbreaker.
I actually read a couple arcs (maybe 3 or 4) from Worm but I was very bored from the flatness and predictability of the plot, but I do get where the lovers come from, since it has many neat characters and some attractive superpowers and narration resources.
Nowadays I try to read philosophical sci-fi more than anything else. I'm into robotics, cryptography, bio-engineering and a lot of philosophy. I'm also a bit into fantasy but I'm more into writing it than reading it, since I've already spent years reading hundreds of books in the genre.
Thanks for the suggestions, Carn. I'll make sure to keep an eye on OpenLibrary.
yes!! hero to the rescue, i knew there had to be because my mother uses some of these free websites.
what an article sharon... thought provoking... blurring the lines between what's right and what's wrong... it's like a poor boy who steals food because he doesn't have money to buy food... is he a criminal or is it society which is in the wrong? hard to answer with conviction....
Maybe he's a criminal for a society who is in the wrong to judge him so (but their wrongness doesn't make him any less of a criminal, since this tag is put there by society itself)
i love book. new information collect from book.
Yep, that's true. I love book too. :)
times have changed traditional ideas of copyright and distribution simply no longer apply https://www.wired.com/2007/12/ff-byrne/ "David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars" and that article is from 11yrs ago. see also Aaron Swatz. new paradigm how do we deal with it guess what no one is quite sure. what lies ahead though depends on thinking and action of peeps like you cryptosharon. best wishes i believe you have what it takes in terms of intelligence and sense of fairness. and good luck to all of us we'll need it
Thank you for your kind thoughts. I'll make sure to read more about the topic to be more informed. I'll probably start with your article. I have a lot of interest in publishing, so I'll be needing this knowledge. <3
I'm running a promotion for my novel THE VATHIRIEL BLADE on Amazon tomorrow (April 13). It will be free all day but only in Kindle format. So if you can use Kindle digital files, it is a free book :)
https://www.amazon.com/Vathiriel-Blade-Mark-Brantingham-ebook/dp/B01AECG46W
But April 13 was Friday, tomorrow is Saturday 14 :O
And yayyyy! I'd love to read your book. :)) I'll get it for sure.
Would you like me to make a post about it?
Yes sorry. Sat April 14. I was just checking to see if you were paying attention :) Oh and a "hell yes" on making a post about it. That would be great. You can mention that it is normally 2.99 but is free for just one day (tomorrow).
Alright, I wrote the post. I'll be publishing it as soon as I see some good bots for it. I'm going to bid a little to take it to a couple trending pages, but I don't think that it'll be anywhere near your level.
I hope that this helps you out and gets you some clients :)
Alright, published: https://staging.busy.org/@cryptosharon/free-e-book-one-of-my-favourite-writers-is-giving-his-book-for-free-only-on-saturday-april-14-2018-the-vathiriel-blade-by-mark
I hope it doesn't misrepresent you, your novel or your intentions.
I didn't manage to get any bots, lol. I'll try to go the organic way and promote it on Discord.
Love this and I, too, have wrestled with this dilemma. There's a great site called: Project Gutenberg. It holds over 56K books for free. Most of them have surpassed their copyright so you're not doing the author a disservice and some of these older books are literally amazing.
As for taking the odd free download: I don't see the harm in it personally. If you were not in a position to buy it in the first place, the author loses nothing by you downloading a freebie.
In fact... as a writer, it feels good when people read your stuff, right. I heard one artist (painter) say that the greatest compliment he ever had was having one of his paintings stolen. :D
Ha! I've never seen someone steal any of my paintings or writings, but here on Steemit with all the plagiarists, I know that they don't require a lot of quality. They like it, they take it and publish it under their own name. So I don't know if I'd take it as a compliment or as an insult (that they could claim to have a mind as great as mine... laughs in arrogance. lol)
Nah, Siriusly, I don't know what I'd feel but it's probably not the greatest compliment for me. :P
My problem with Project Gutemberg and the like is that I've tried to read old stuff and I think that Shakespeare is the only author older than 100 years that I can stand (that I've read so far). Also, my tastes go around sci-fi and post-modern fantasy. I think that these styles are recent enough not to have any proper examples in such a gallery. Unlucky!
But these days I've been trying to research a lot about writing styles, so I might head to Project Gutemberg anyway to check a lot of their books and compare the styles of the writers. :)
Lol... yes, plenty of plagiarists on steemit haha.
Yeah, some of the old stuff is tiresome to read. They got away with writing long, drawn-out sections on scenery, making it a bit slow for me. Shakespeare: oh, he's awesome but difficult to read. I remember the torture of this at school. His stuff was written for performance and I think that's how he's best enjoyed. Reading him is just painful for me :D
Sci-fi. I hear ya. I love the stuff, and speculative fiction. Maybe there'll be some early examples around in Guttenberg. Have you read any Philip K Dick or Margaret Atwood? They're great in their respective genres.
cheers
yay! another hero to the rescue, so glad there are those that exist that have this info on hand! i prefer paper books so i buy or borrow from library. :p