alt Hacker NewsI live in a country where the selection of available books, especially in English, is very limited. Buying online from foreign markets comes with a long list of administrative hurdles and limits.
If it were not for Anna's Archive and Z-Library, I would've never been able to read the books that shaped who I am today, or keep my passion for learning alive.
Thanks, AA and ZLib! (Also, thank you to the authors whose books and knowledge I consumed without being able to pay them back.)
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I can feel for both camps.
Some of my published work is pirated heavily. That's not my main income source, so I just shrug and let it go. If anything, I'm probably happy that people are reading my work. Especially if it's people that can't afford it, I'm glad they enjoy my work -- those books got pretty high reader ratings, and it seems to me many readers are actually reading the pirated version.
But I do have friends that depend on this income source, and fighting piracy has become a part of their day job. It's not a fun thing to do, they'd rather spend time working on their next story, but they still have to do this everyday. I feel for them.
Look, fair enough from your perspective. But a lot of those books probably wouldn't exist if the author couldn't make some money from their work.
I can't find the post but years ago on Reddit an author posted stats showing when her book turned up pirates online, real sales for it collapsed.
Because of this I make a point of buying books, programming books especially. Yes I download pdfs, I use them as previews. This has led to buying way more than I would have.
Anyway, I appreciate this doesn't apply if you live somewhere that these books can't be purchased. But everyone praising these sorts of sites tends to look at them from only a positive perspective.
I'm glad your username specifies your location. My biggest pet peeve online these days is someone telling a story about "my country" but never specifying which country that is.
So you’re saying your entire current life is because of the proceeds of crime?!
I’m kidding. Knowledge should be free. It was never created in a vacuum. It belongs to us all