| > I can't see stealing some poor author's work in the same light. I sympathize with this sentiment. I have writers in my family. Anyone who wants to be making money in writing is either (1) doing something else, like being a celebrity, and selling a book directly to their pre-existing audience (2) writing for TV, movies or went to law school. So few authors make money on their books, that the existence (or non-existence) of piracy has no impact on the aggregate experience of authors. > if we don't buy their books The truth is there is no audience for the vast majority of paid-up-front books, games, movies, music or other creative media. There is a large audience for TikToks. Part of the journey is coming to terms with this. The reality is people are writing because they like to, and the money doesn't matter, and the piracy doesn't matter, and they are not on Hacker News complaining about it anyway. That said, I believe these sentiments, expressed elsewhere, about being American and being poor or whatever. The commenters have limited empathy and bandwidth. |