Go recharge on one of the more fun threads! 
2 Likes
Thanks so much!
1 Like
Imma just sayā¦i would be a goner if there werenāt any websites that pirate anime/manga.
Other than that, pirating sucksā¦ but the anime/manga websites can keep going 0.0
4 Likes
Thatās another view. 
1 Like
I love buying books! I donāt own a kindle and I prefer reading physical copies of books. Looking for a physical copy to buy will always be my first choice if I want a book. However, this can be a costly and cumbersome hobby 
- some books are impossible to find - I picked up an interesting sci-fi from a discount bookshop, even though it was the 3rd in a series, and looked everywhere for the first 2ā¦couldnāt find them, not even to be ordered on request.
- some books are unreasonably expensive - where I come from, $20-30 is a lot to pay for a book, even a nice hardback (which I will indulge in occasionally), even more so for small paperbacks.
- pretty sure Iāve pirated books for my degree, because I had neither the time nor the money to go hunting for everything on my reading list (though I did buy a big chunk of them which were readily available in bookstores).
- I mostly read in English, at my own, usually slow, pace, so loaning from a library (in a non-English-speaking country) is not an option.
- these days I read mostly on trains, so lugging around heavy books is inconvenient.
So, pirating comes in handy when all else fails. It sucks that so many people abuse it, but I think itās necessary to so many others.
4 Likes
I can see the viewpoint of it being a necessity for certain reasons like school or price being too much. Iāve heard others complain about pricing of books. Sometimes I have to think about is the book worth it to me (maybe the cover has beautiful art and Iām like goodness that would look great on my bookshelf, I need it). Then Iāve heard some people complain that the authors donāt make that much off the books, so the increased price is to basically give them a livable wage.
1 Like
And then the books end up in discount shops, like the one I frequent, couple years later for half the price Iām not sure how the pricing/reselling works tbh. The shop I go to sells exclusively English-language books and theāre all new - not second-hand. You get some hardbacks in there with prices on the cover of like $30 or so and we buy them for a couple bucksā¦
Granted, these arenāt the uber popular books which sell out effortlessly, which probably makes them the kind of authors that could really use the money from every saleā¦So I feel like the pricing strategy is skewered in some sense, or the market is messed up. Or both lol.
1 Like
I was thinking about publishing houses, should they pay their authors more livable wages (if theyāre not)? You know, so the books arenāt exorbitant. But then againā¦ Nobody wants to gamble with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to come out on the losing side (not making a profit), not even companies.
1 Like
Yeah, itās a fine line, Iāll bet. I would imagine the big publishing houses are run kinda like corporations now andā¦corporations are massive hoarders lol. But itās hard to separate excess profit that could go into wage increases, fromā¦idk how to call it, operational profit? Itās a huge grey area and thereās always gonna be needs that are better met by pirating the contentā¦
That being said, many people are definitely just outright lazy or stingy or what have you, and simply refuse to spend the money even if they can afford it without consequences. I wish those people could be banned from pirating books, lol.
2 Likes
To add: Itās not a limited resource. Itās just potentially a loss of a sale (that you wouldnāt have gotten anyway). It doesnāt disappear as soon as someone obtains it.
Or, at least, perhaps Iām sympathetic because I grew up in that environment. Existing where everyone elseās conversations are dominated by recent media, and being socially excluded because essentials are all you can afford, isnāt a fun experience. Itās a mind-numbing state of existence that I wouldnāt wish on anyone. The experience of being suspended indefinitely.
And also because amount of money is strongly correlated with amount of exploitation of other humans, whether recently or historically, and those being the prerequisites to experience a shared form of human connection is a little sour to me. But thatās economics and a very vast topic.
4 Likes
This is why I put it as justice vs mercy. Justice is black and white, mercy is anything from shades of grey up to forgiving something that shouldnāt be forgiven.
1 Like
In the US, movies used to be a nickel: a price range the poor could afford. This was before the advent of spending too much to put the movies on the screen.
There is a chance that many of us could get together: those who think their works wonāt make it, to get with some of these companies and sell their book for cheap, as a form of charity, let it be printed in India, China, Chile, hell wherever. It wonāt automatically get to the poorest of the poor, but itās no longer whether my book gets stolen, but more that when it is, itās a local issue and no longer mine to deal with.
The thing is that without someone āon the groundā you donāt really know what youāre getting into.
It might bring back the ādime novelā. (Novella range book sales.)
1 Like
This part!
This part too!
I just read your answer in the linked topic and can see this viewpoint about āsimple leisuresā and how they should be open to everyone.
Interesting way to put it!
Yeah, the theft aspect seems to be the common concern of gray area here.
3 Likes
Well, itās extremely important because the way humans are wired is we want justice for things done to us and mercy for what we do to others. We downplay our faults, we up-play our victimizations. We make our regular or ideal view of ourself the standards for good and bad and everything that steps a hair out of that line, we crack down on with the vengeance of hellfire.
It is what we are, and is natural.
If we are going to do better, we will be called to be highly unnatural beings.
3 Likes
Like I said in the other thread, my country often has a huge income disparity. Add to that a huge population, and itās a storm where millions (I kid you not. Millions) live from meal to meal - sometimes less than that. Shelter is a luxury. Clothing is a luxury.
It shouldnāt be, and there are government schemes to combat this, but education and literacy is also limited. Often the teachers in the smaller, cheaper government schools are also not that educated themselves. And a lot of the cheap education is simply bad. But some (a lot) of these people reach out to books as an escape or for fun, and it helps them develop better skills in terms of communication, morality and a lot more. It helps them dream higher and think beyond just the next day, like a lot of their peers might, and it gives them ideas on how to pursue those dreams.
Simply put, books can change lives.
And limiting access to them with money is really bad, because youāre also limiting access to apply education or educate yourself more.
Another thing I found out through the other thread - free libraries are a thing. Well, not in India, and the only libraries we have are available to people who earn enough to be able to spare money for their subscription.
Books in general here cost ~500. Thatās more than some families of 6-7 people earn in a day. Thatās how limited access is, and piracy solves that problem. Of course, itās simply a band-aid on a much bigger issue, but a band-aid is better than nothing, for now.
@AMayu said it much better than I can, because sheās got more exposure to these issues.
4 Likes
Books are truly an escape for so many, and that tis into a conversation about literacy and how even that is a privilege.
Oh wow, I never heard of a subscription library! Yes, free libraries are a thing in the U.S.A. and I believe many other places (but I also just learned about subscriptions to libraries, so I am not the fountain of knowledge, clearly). Something we talked about earlier in the thread is how access to these libraries can be limited to certain towns and cities because they are, unfortunately, not everywhere. Though, I personally feel that they should be!
2 Likes
It is! Literacy should be a basic necessity now, because it can change so much for so many, but unfortunately, even that is available in limited amounts to quite a lot of people, which is truly sad because the potential for impact is enormous.
Yes exactly! I never even knew free libraries are a thing till a few days back, and Iām pretty sure there arenāt many, if at all, of those in India. Access to free books through a library could change a whole lot for many people. And it would reduce accessibility problems by a whole lot.
1 Like
Itās such a sad reality 
.
1 Like
Thereās still parts of India that arenāt really easy to accessā¦ And even when they are, India gets a type of flooding that is unseen most elsewhere.
This idea that you can wholly weather-proof roads is a joke. It wonāt happen because you would have to stabilize the whole landscape down to the bedrock and beyond to have a chance of withstanding the force of water.
Look, a mini-grand canyon (1/40th the scale) was carved out around Mt. St. Helens in a single day. Even been told all our lives that the Grand Canyon was a slow carving (and people still hold to that) so we can complacently say that we need to āweather proof roads for climate changeā instead of taking the approach youād have to really do.
The real way to save infrastructure is to go all military on roads and rebuild in a rapid military way that you replace with more solid infrastructure as you have time. (After Katrina, they checked the supports and put in metal grid bridges for temporary use on highway 90. It was sound, just a bit freaky.)
Pic is a link:
And the only reason 1st world nations are doing better is that they get hit with tons less water. Both USA and Europe have roadways that really havenāt been updated more than cosmetically since the 50s, when they finally got the men home from war and had to keep them busy.
We live under a huge pretense that our world is sound. It never has been.
And Iām sorry, if everything g that is being hit is not older than the 50s, you donāt have a long enough scope to see what 100 year events will do to your building.
And people do it deliberately:
You have to have transportation to get the physical books there. This only increases the strain on digital media.
2 Likes
Iām not going to explain my thoughts again because I already did so in the previous thread, but I will drop this video here:
also just have to add that author who posted the tweet is the epitome of what people who have zero idea of what the world looks like outside the US/Europe/other developed nations, speaking as though they have any authority on what people there āshouldā and ācanā do. Itās ignorant and embarrassing and shows your incapacity for empathy.
(Also, YouTube really just opened up and decided to suggest this video to me, lolā¦ have they been spying on my activity on WW?? )
4 Likes