• SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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    10 hours 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.

  • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    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.

  • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world
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    2 days 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

      • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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        2 days ago

        Yeah or what happens when it rains? Or someone drops a book into what appears to be an upper gutter running through the middle of the street?

          • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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            1 day ago

            Is the gutter locked at night? Also there appears to be a questionably secured window unit air conditioner. Which in the worst case might fall onto a gentle reader. But more likely condensation would drip onto the stack of books below.

        • eskimofry@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          it which universe is crime illegal but you don’t have a system to catch and punish people because you expect people to be flawless or an agent of circumstance?

    • MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      In this case it would be they scan it for the Amazon price list and take anything that has a positive rating.

  • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

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

    • eskimofry@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      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.

      • filcuk@lemmy.zip
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        1 day ago

        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.

        • keegomatic@lemmy.world
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          14 hours 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.

        • eskimofry@lemmy.world
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          15 hours 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”

        • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
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          14 hours ago

          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…

          • filcuk@lemmy.zip
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            12 hours ago

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

            • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
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              10 hours ago

              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.

              • filcuk@lemmy.zip
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                6 hours ago

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

                • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
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                  3 hours ago

                  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

        • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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          1 day ago

          Right but it’s still not stealing any more than those little library boxes people put outside their residence

        • Nelots@lemmy.zip
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          1 day ago

          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.

          • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
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            1 day 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.

        • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
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          1 day 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.

        • Ifera@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Both points are true. Honestly, I pirate stuff wildly, but donate to the authors or buy their stuff and donate it to my local library if I like it enough.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

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

            • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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              1 day 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.

          • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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            2 days 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.

          • 0ops@lemm.ee
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            1 day 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

        • brisk@aussie.zone
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          1 day ago

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

            • brisk@aussie.zone
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              1 day ago

              Hah. Our textbook market isn’t quite as captured. They run from $50-$350. I have about 100 textbooks and a bit under 200 books total.

          • Guy Ingonito@reddthat.com
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            1 day ago

            If I did not have the money to pay for the books or they are too hard for me to find then no loss would have occurred because purchasing was never happening.

            If I did have the money and the books were eaay to find but still pirated then a loss did occur.

        • eskimofry@lemmy.world
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          1 day 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?

      • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        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✨

          • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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            2 days 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?

        • 0ops@lemm.ee
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          1 day 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

        • Platypus@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          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.

          • TheEmpireStrikesDak@thelemmy.club
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            1 day 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.

          • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            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.

            • Platypus@sh.itjust.works
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              2 days ago

              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.

      • wavebeam@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        i often buy books on a DRM’d store or a paper copy, but then download the epub to put on my e-ink tablet so i don’t have to deal with the shitty DRM’d app it would be stuck in.

      • CybranM@feddit.nu
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        2 days ago

        You don’t deserve the downvotes, you’re right. If everyone used the “iTs NoT sTeAlInG” argument then no digital works would ever be profitable and everyone would lose.

  • ZeldaFreak@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    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.

    • Zenith@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

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

      • Sturgist@lemmy.ca
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        2 days 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

      • IndiBrony@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I’m in the UK and these are all over the place, especially in more rural areas, and we’re famed for our lovely weather! 😂

      • Dasus@lemmy.world
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        2 days 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.