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The Amazon Kindle War Against Piracy

(goodereader.com)
101 points kozmonaut | 4 comments | 27 Sep 25 06:02 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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buyucu ◴[27 Sep 25 07:57 UTC] No.45393947[source]▶
I just use libgen / Anna's Archive. No need to pay money to Amazon.
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ugjka ◴[27 Sep 25 08:08 UTC] No.45393995[source]▶
So how exactly pirating the books give money to the writers?
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1. blagie ◴[27 Sep 25 08:25 UTC] No.45394070[source]▶
The cycle has been:

Piracy -> Friendly ways to buy -> Unfriendly ways to buy -> Piracy -> ...

Unfortunately, giving money back to writers involves hopping through piracy. At that point, a new, consumer-friendly service will sprout up. Everyone will use it.

Over time, the service will want to profit-maximize, and will adopt anti-consumer techniques. Leading people to go to Pirate Bay. Leading to friendly services.

Rinse, repeat.

replies(1): >>45394140 #
2. lotsofpulp ◴[27 Sep 25 08:41 UTC] No.45394140[source]▶
How many times has this happened, such that it can be called a cycle?

There are other possibilities, such as people simply not writing as much anymore, or higher quality writers existing the market due to lack of sufficient return.

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3. al_borland ◴[27 Sep 25 09:49 UTC] No.45394439[source]▶
It’s happened to some degree with music, movies, and TV shows.
4. blagie ◴[27 Sep 25 19:24 UTC] No.45398650[source]▶
Bad DRM led to Napster led to Netflix lead to a fragmentation of services led to a resurgence of piracy.

Similar thing happened with music, only rather than piracy, it landed on legal / free (e.g. Youtube). Youtube is just starting to do the consumer-unfriendly thing (but it's got a long ways to go before piracy comes out competitive).

Similar in books.

I'll mention: A lot of these are consumer-unfriendly in some ways (e.g. Netflix DRM), but friendly in others. $20/month for all the movies you can watch beats piracy.