But lets see the Positive side: Now the Nazis wont have to burn thousands of books, saving tons of co2 in their Plan to take over the world with propaganda. So, yay for the envoirment I guess
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Is there a way to donate to the authors? Because I think pirating and then donating the money (directly) to the author is much more ethical than putting a megacorp or a publisher in between
Even better if you send it with something like Monero which doesn’t even put the bank between you and the author
You mean the authors would actually earn money instead of the “publisher”? How unfair! /s
When mist books were made of paper, the publishers job was quite the deal including printing, delivering, stocks, pulp the rests etc. So they took the lions share of the price together with the bookstore and the author got maybe 10-15% from the final price.
Today it’s just theft.
I’d also point towards alternative reading apps and hardware and drop everything related to Amazon.
Amazon’s ebook store front (as well as the internet in general) is flooded with AI slop. The internet is a place where the signal to noise ratio is dropping rapidly.
Physical media is necessary. Especially books. Especially the kinds of books regimes might want to ban. When it’s time to rebuild, we’ll need firm ground to stand on, and physical books work as long as you can hold them.
Uh, title is a bit clickbaity, editorialized. Amazon isn’t changing books yet, they are planning to make it possible for publishers to do so, I think, and also recoking ownership. And the video is not great either.
Amazon hasn’t changed the content of books yet but publishers already have changed them and that is part of the issue.
Don’t use kindle? They aren’t the only ebook provider
it blows my mind that people buy ebooks when Libby is free.
Seriously. Anna archives, libby. There are so many open source projects out there for the ereader community
It’s time to de-Google, de-amazon, de-Microsoft, de-apple, etc.
Now? As if they were so ethical all those decades before.
You know what they say about the best time to plant trees. It applies to many things.
13+ years ago when I’d say why I hate social media, cloud services, all this convenient dependence, everybody would act as if this was stupid.
My logic was that if there’s a mechanism allowing such influence, no matter how small, its power will grow almost until the death of such an ecosystem. Because the returns of abusing it will always be more than the expenses.
I don’t like this Cassandra feeling really.
Most people have an astounding lack of imagination. Its like they thing that things can’t get much worse because that would be too different to now…
At the same time, they unfortunately can’t imagine things being better. That’s why societies differ a lot between cultures in different parts of the world.
Well that and the fact that some of us define better in such ways that others think may be worse. For example there was a trend some years back where Instagram models were damaging Joshua trees, I am of the complete and unshakable opinion that their blood shouldve water a new Joshua tree and their corpse reduced to mulch for said tree. I aint got nothing against whoring oneself out after all money is money but hurting the Joshua trees is a worthy of death.
Instagram isn’t for sex is it?
Not directly, but plenty of models are basically trying to get work from rich coomers and what not. On the more extreme levels it gets pretty fucking horrific, if ya want to know how bad it can get look up Instagram models who whore travel to the UAE or Dubai. Mind you you’ll probably want to turn Arabia into glass.
Yeah, see, I even have a mental condition which should supposedly make that my problem more than that of most people.
Aphantasia?
I think there’s more than one kind of imagination. It’s like the opposite of ‘thinking outside the box’.
Theirs is more like ‘wow this box is big! I’m gonna get inside a smaller one’.
Not exactly aphantasia, though some kinds of imagination are close to that for me. Rather that something remote is very hard to imagine, while triggers, like sounds and smells and physical feelings and harmonic progressions, make something very easy to imagine.
So if I know that I have to do something or else my head rolls off, the deadline being in 3 hours, I won’t be as concentrated as the typical person.
That’s interesting, I’d never heard of that before. I know that people who are aphantasic often still dream with vivid mental images, so, it like they aren’t able to access them consciously and maybe the triggers help you in a similar way.
That’s why I only read manuscripts. Don’t trust machines. F*cuk Gutenberg
It’s kinda odd that all these years later, you’re still better off pirating than paying for anything digital. All these services solved piracy but we’ve now gone full circle.
Piracy was, is and remains a service problem, as Gabe Newell of Valve (Steam) once stated. Most people are perfectly content to pay a reasonable price to get access to the things they want. But if you make that impossible, they’ll find other options.
Take anime for example: even if you subscribed to every streaming service out there, you still wouldn’t be able to see everything you wanted. Some things aren’t streamable or sold ANYWHERE, or only on a service that’s actively blocked in your region. Which means there is simply no legal way for you at all to get that content.
Music on the other hand solved that dilemma. You can use Spotify, YT Music, Apple Music or a host of other options. You pay a flat fee and you can listen to pretty much every song you want, as often as you want. Nobody’s pirating MP3’s these days, because nobody needs to. It’s now more convenient to just stream it.
I’d really like to see someone do the same for books. An unlimited digital library that lets you download anything you want for a flat subscription fee. I’d pay 10 bucks a month for that for sure. Because that would make it more convenient than pirating is right now, with a more consistent experience.
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Music is definitely not a solved problem. About 30% of my favorite older tunes aren’t available on streaming at all, as I discovered when I tried to find a way to casually share with some friends.
Music is easily solved.
- Qobuz store
- Bandcamp
- 7Digital
- Tidal media downloader
- Deemix
Screw streaming. Local is always better. Purchase and/or download FLAC. I’ve got nearly 1 TB of music on my NAS and my collection is regularly growing. From Qobuz and Bandcamp, anything you purchase is owned, and DRM free.
Edit - though for me as a Linux user, Qobuz has actually turned this from something perfect into a service issue. Used to be able to just download a tar of your album from them after purchase. Now you have to use their (Windows only) application downloader, or individually download each track as a single download. It’s fucking irritating. I don’t buy from them now because of it. That said, they can’t edit or alter anything I’ve previously bought and stored locally.
They also treat artists like shit. I switched over to Tidal simply to get access to Joanna Newsom’s music, as she won’t tolerate Spotify’s terms. Tidal isn’t much better, but it is slightly.
I was looking forward to blockchain cutting out the middle man in paying artists. Too bad it has so far not happened that way.
Block chain was ruined by the early adopters.
I really like Tidals algorithm for new music. I struggle to find new music I like so find it immensely helpful and it is much better than spotifys.
Sure, no platform will have everything. But for me personally, on YouTube Music, I’ve always been able to find what I was looking for. But I’m admittedly not what you’d call a music aficionado.
Bruv real libraries will let you download books for free
Yes, a lot of them do. But their digital selection often is pretty limited and comes with restrictions.
For example: our Dutch national online library lets you ‘borrow’ 10 e-books at a time. You get 21 days to read a book, but you can extend that one time by another three weeks. After that, you have to ‘return’ and ‘check them out again’ if you want to continue reading. With my particular reading habits, that’s a hassle and wouldn’t work for me.
But the biggest issue is: they only offer a limited selection. Basically, NONE of the books I’m reading now are available through that system.
I want to be able to read every book I want, no time restriction. And that’s not possible with the current digital library system they offer.
Like… if the book is digital, why do you have to borrow and return? This makes no sense. They want to replicate a bad experience that doesn’t need to exist, what’s the point of that?
Pleasing the copyright holders. I don’t know how it is for the Dutch national library, but with a system used by many libraries in the US there’s a cost to the library based on the number of times it’s checked out, so more revenue for the copyright holder and the digital middle man. Allowing you to have the e-book indefinitely would be, at least in their minds, no different than giving it away. 🤷
This could be solved in other ways. For example, the software can simply track what % of the books are actually read without this extra step of borrowing and returning. Just like when you listen to music on streaming services.
Imagine if you had to select the specific album in a streaming service and choose to borrow it for x days, having to “return” it and borrow again if you wanted to keep listening, and being limited to 4 albums at a time.
Good point in pointing out the discrepancy between music streaming and book borrowing. Online libraries in the US are managed by some kind of digital rights software, which seems to essentially allow libraries to own a limited number of digital copies of a book. Streaming services like Tidal and Spotify seem to pay out a tiny amount of money to artists each time content is streamed. Is it something about library budgeting that doesn’t allow for this? Is it just historical baggage that hasn’t been rethought?
The music streaming model is honestly terrible for musical artists, so I’m not saying that’s necessarily the direction we should head. But you’re right that I’m not limited to listening to a song just because someone else is, and it would be extremely helpful if the same applied to library books.
As it is, when I have time to read I put in the request to borrow a book, and then it becomes available 1 to 10 weeks later (whether or not I’m ready to read it at that point). Then I only get 2-3 weeks to fit reading it into my schedule. It doesn’t work out half the time as I get busy with other things… So how is it not easier to pirate it or buy it? I love and support my library, but golly this digital system is dysfunctional.
ever heard of zlibrary?
I am aware of them, yes. It’s not the book download site that I use personally, but you can never have enough options.
which do you use?
I usually use Anna’s Archive or Lib Gen, depending on what’s actually up and working. Anna scrapes Zlib as well as other sources. Usually that’s where I can find the really obscure stuff.
An unlimited digital library that lets you download anything you want for a flat subscription fee.
A library? We solved that centuries ago.
Except a physical library can only hold so many books, they don’t have most of the books I want and you need to return them. A physical library is not useful to me.
Most people are perfectly content to pay a reasonable price to get access to the things they want. But if you make that impossible, they’ll find other options.
That’s a sliding scale, though. Streaming comes at a fixed price.
Yes, about service problems and Steam - I understand why it happened, but sanctions on Russia causing my inability to not buy, but even find in store some games kinda affect it. One small nuance is that family members of those, well, making decisions in Russia are often in the western countries feeling themselves very well (including Steam games), and those who are not do not, I think, have problems dealing with this. And, btw, topping up your Steam wallet is possible, just via intermediaries with some additional expense.
OK, this is not about Steam, this is about sanctions efficiency.
EDIT: On the subject - I pirate MP3’s. I like having my music stored locally and not dependent on various services. I may start some day using some of those services, probably.
WB/Discovery+ just screwed people in the UK for watching cycling. It was £7 a month to watch before, which I was happy to pay. They just put an end to that and now bundled the cycling with their premium sports service for £29. I’m not paying all that when I only want cycling and none of their other content.
I cancelled my subscription, asked them to delete my account, purchased a fire stick and now paying for some dodgy IPTV service to watch it there for a fraction of the price.
If you’re into audiobooks, I strongly recommend libro.fm instead - it’s all DRM free downloads, so you never lose access.
Anything similar for ebooks?
Do you have a friend code we could put in if we do sign up for libro.fm? I don’t mind getting people free stuff for recommending awesome products!
For sure, thanks! https://libro.fm/referral?rf_code=lfm723891
Also downpour.com! I ditched Audible a long time back in favor of sites like these that don’t lock authors into crappy exclusives, provide DRM-free audiobooks for sale, and have actually decent deals with authors.
At the very least back up your Audible library in a DRM free format with something like Libation.
I am still using Audible because their web player works in my restricted office, and the authors get a couple of pennies from dragon, but have my library safely exported to ensure continued access and prevent fuckery like this.
Thank you for this! I made an account and may get the membership!
I just buy physicals of the reference books I really want and pirate the digitals of anything else that isn’t sold DRM-free. I WILL own what I bought, whether they like it or not.
I’ve got an old Kindle, but not too old, which I jailbroke just yesterday with Winter break. I recommend that method for those considering getting drm free usage out of their device (instead of it contributing to ewaste).
Been using 10th gen kindle, 5.17.1 firmware, as my daily driver. It’s not jailbroken, use calibre server to download my alternately sourced ebooks, convert to .mobi as needed.
I looked at Winterbreak. Decided not to fool with it as I can still sail with stock.
Any advantage to a jailbreak other than future proofing against side loading being disabled?
I think that’s pretty much it. Future proofing seems to be the idea I’m getting, that and customisations/custom firmware. I used to have custom screensavers on one many years ago, which I’m going to do again.
Why not too old? I bought 4 gen 4 & 5 kindles off ebay for like $20 on purpose. I hate backlights and they still work great.
Not a recommendation, saying mine is not too old. Random info as part of discussion.
Is there a text version of this?
Yes, I prefer to read over watching a video and being forced to go at someone else’s pace.
The changing the Books part hasn’t been archived in the Catf wiki yet, but the non downloadable books is already fully written
I’ve heard a jailbreak was recently released for all kindle models: https://kindlemodding.org/jailbreaking/WinterBreak/
I’ll be trying it out soon!
It would be nice if that stuff worked more like git where yeah maybe the release version gets changed but you can always work back through the history to see earlier versions.
Not git specifically but just deltas from one version to the next instead of replacing the whole thing with a flattened text.
Yes, but you say it like the Author himself changed it.
In the specific Example, the book is from before 2000 and the author is long dead. That book is a piece of culture now, displaying the writing style from a place in time where it was normal to discriminate against people. By changing a book, regardless of if it was actually amazon or just some manager that bought up the rights for the book, it is manipulating the Past. Amazon should not allow to do such things
Flashlight replacing rifles in E.T. was shitty to. Imagine if huck fin was changed it to Skibiddi Jim lol. Amazon can fuck itself just as hard as “the author” in changing the story. I paid for it it’s mine if you fuck with it that’s vandalism.
Oh I didn’t think I implied that at all. Certainly didn’t mean to. I was just commenting that making cultural artifacts that can be revised into delta-based distributions instead of flat is useful for many reasons. But it’s no benefit to the corps and most users don’t care so of course it won’t happen.
OK, tanks for clarifying that
Yes, it would be great.
