Quote:
Originally Posted by ekbell
The Right to Free Assembly [SUSPENDED]
Freedom of Movement [SUSPENDED]
Copyright...[SUS...um..still functional]
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Copyright is needed to keep the publishing business open.
A lot of the business world is still working and still paying salaries.
Many companies are paying full salaries despite massive drops in revenue. Do tbeir employees have a right to work and be paid? Or should everybody go home and live off the dole? If nothing else, publishing is a business that can be just as effectively be done from home electronically. But for that, they need people to pay for their reads, not download them from a friendly Robbing Hoodlum.
Look at movies.
With theaters closed, movie studios have resorted to releasing movies to digital instead of theaters, just to keep *some* money coming in. What makes books so *special* that any bloke on tbe street can start giving away free copies of everything to everybody?
Why not movies?
There's lots of sites distributing movies and books for free to all comers. They are accurately described as pirates but not IA? Why? Because they say so?
Besides, there is no shortage of reading material, free or paid.
Gutenberg is running.
Feedbooks is running.
Apple, Nook, Kobo, BAEN, Google.
KDP and KU are running.
(Amazon opened up all their kids stuff for free to subscribers, even those on unpaid trials. Videos, games, audiobooks.)
If anything, there are more free and deep discount ebooks out tbere today than ever. Offered by the people who do have a right to distribute them.
And the paid is the most important because it is pretty much the only revenue stream left to publishers. So not only are they providing an unnecessary "service", they are taking salary money out of publishers hands.
This isn't about unmet needs; it is opportunism plain and simple.
As for "think of tbe children!" , here:
https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/
Just one of dozens of legally free sources.
See, there's this thing called open source textbooks.
A lot of universities and grade schools are using them.
All digital
All up and running.