[TFNA]

> I don't understand why this is a movement that is ethical to get behind. Someone spends months or years of their life dedicated to writing a book. And people celebrate the fact they can get it for free.

Academics have never really made any money off their published research, but rather are paid via their institutions or grants. The publishers make money, but academics themselves are aghast at the publishers taking their edited collections and monographs, doing no proofreading or even no typesetting (that obligation is often on the authors and editors now), and selling the book for hundreds of euro. That’s why authors will almost always send you the PDF for free if you email them.

The celebration is easy to understand if you are a researcher. Getting ahold of publications that your institution doesn’t hold or subscribe to is always a hassle, it really slows you down during the writing process. The shadow libraries turbocharge research. Over the last several years, shadow libraries have gone from a niche to something that pretty much everyone in my field uses daily.