[xevb3k]

I feel like there’s so much to say about this comment, that I don’t even know where to start.

So firstly I agree, $40 seems like a lot. I personally couldn’t justify it at the moment. Particularly when the reproduction cost is nearly zero.

But $40 also doesn’t seem like a lot to pay for a book that will probably not sell more than a few thousand copies. Most likely revenue generated won’t fully cover the time and effort required to create such a book.

But... the author is also a professor at MIT. I feel like if this work wasn’t somewhat publicly funded, it really should have been.

In the end, I’m left morally confused. But it feels like something is wrong in the world when a book like this is available only to a select few, when for the same capital outlay it could be available to everybody.

[billsix]

> In the end, I’m left morally confused. But it feels like something is wrong in the world when a book like this is available only to a select few, when for the same capital outlay it could be available to everybody.

Only to a select few? For $40? The book costs less than most console video games.

[xevb3k]

When I grew up, we never ate at a restaurant... just would have been an extravagant expense. My parents probably earned <15000USD combined. This book would have been far too expensive to consider.

This is in the western world... imagine how many people in the world can’t afford this book. On a global scale... very few people could afford this book (or a 40USD video game).

It makes me kind of sad that you’d so casually suggest that this is not the case. Makes me think that perhaps people in the tech world don’t have a great understanding of how poor many people are...

[billsix]

there is an extraordinary amount of freely available content online for people who want to learn, improve themselves, and to make more money.

To those who cannot afford it, here’s 2.5 years of my side work for free http://billsix.github.io/bug

[xevb3k]

Of course there is. But that’s neither what you said, nor the topic being discussed.

What you said is more than a select few could afford a $40 book.

The topic being discussed is, the morality of charging so much/piracy.

Good work plugging your github though!

[billsix]

More than a select few can afford this book

[xevb3k]

Over 80% of the world population lives on less than $10/day. The percentage of the world population who can afford this book is very small.

Maybe 10%, 5%? Other than repeating this obviously wrong statement, would you like to provide some evidence that >20% of the world population can afford this book?

[sillysaurus3]

Another way of phrasing that: The book costs as much as work that took dozens of people years to make.

Also if you were to somehow poll everyone reading this and ask "Did you buy this book?" you'd get some number, x. But if the book were priced at $5, then $5y would be much greater than $40x.

I bought a bamboo fineline pencil for $50 the other day. It's a tool that will serve me for at least a year. It's unclear whether this book would.

I want work like this to exist, and for the author to be rewarded for it. But ultimately, in an era when words are infinitely and instantaneously copyable, the economic value of words seems to drop.

Given the choice between stealing knowledge and not stealing knowledge, when you wouldn't have paid for it anyway, where's the harm?

[mjfl]

The harm is less people writing books like this in the future. Every dollar this book gets in revenue not only goes partly to the author, but goes into the record as profits for that "genre" of books. Every dollar of revenue for this book increases the value of the advance the author receives for the next book, increases the probability that another author writing the same kind of material will get accepted for publication. The harm you create by stealing this book is that the market for that knowledge is destroyed.

[sillysaurus3]

Technology destroyed the market, not users of it.

I think you could've made the same sort of argument against movies or music before netflix and napster, but here we are, and the markets still seem thirsty for new content.

[billsix]

> I think you could've made the same sort of argument against movies or music before netflix and napster, but here we are, and the markets still seem thirsty for new content.

Because reasonable adults are paying for content which they want, directly via movie tickets, indirectly via e.g. Netflix and Spotify.

[xevb3k]

Libraries, the same arguments apply to libraries. Which by your logic are not morally justified.

[mjfl]

Content is stolen if and only if a user tries to steal it, so I don't understand how you are absolving them of responsibility. People pay for Netflix and I guarantee you that if people stopped paying for it, Netflix originals would stop being made.

[billsix]

> Given the choice between stealing knowledge and not stealing knowledge, when you wouldn't have paid for it anyway, where's the harm?

As a working adult, time spent reading a book is both more limited and more valuable than $40. If you wouldn't have bought it anyways, why is it worth your time stealing and reading it?

Although it was an unpopular opinion at the time, I agree with Metallica's outspoken moral opposition to Napster circa 2000.

[xevb3k]

The arguments you make could equally well be applied to libraries.

Libraries “steal” money from authors by making books more freely available, in largely the same way that piracy does.

They also make books available to people who otherwise couldn’t afford them.

[billsix]

Reductio ad absurdum.

[xevb3k]

“If you wouldn't have bought it anyways, why is it worth your time stealing and reading it?”

This is literally the same thing as getting a book from a library. The exact same argument applies.

Throwing Latin around doesn’t progress a discussion.

[bigpicture]

> But... the author is also a professor at MIT. I feel like if this work wasn’t somewhat publicly funded, it really should have been.

This is published by MIT press, but the author (Friedman) is a professor at Indiana University.

[djur]

I would like to see more publicly funded, freely available educational material out there, but it seems worth pointing out that MIT is a private university.

[alew1]

It is, but the research that happens there is still funded in large part by public grants.