Quote:
Originally Posted by doubleshuffle
I know. And yet the users who are interested in the books I upload here get them for free. And that's the reason I put many hours of work into them. (Of course we could have a philosophical discussion if ad-financed content is really free etc.)
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Yeah, I don't mean to diminish the value of the work put in by contributors to the MR library. My point pertains to the the owners of MR as equivalent parties to the Amazon 'repackagers'.
It's a question of the degree to which 'middlemen' are justified. Just as the individuals selling PD works on Amazon are middlemen deriving benefit from what they consider as value added (minor formatting, if any, and the ease of access and cloud benefits from posting the books on Amazon, assuming there are no copyrights being infringed upon) on their end, the owners of MR can also be considered as middlemen benefiting indirectly from PD works posted on their website due to value added by their 'unpaid employees' (the contributors to the MR library, again assuming there are no copyrights being infringed upon).
The former benefit from direct payments, and the latter benefit indirectly through greater footfalls and increased ad revenue.