Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Sorry, but I don't think that it makes sense at all. There's nothing illegal about exclusive distribution deals, and in most of the western nations we live in, the government does not interfere in free trade.
It's not as if there's any shortage of books to read. If one book isn't available on the platform you want to read it on, read another.
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Except books are not any product.
Culture can not be reduced to the status of an unimportant industrial product.
If there are books that you need to read for your thesis, or for your culture, you should be able to do so without facing absurd commercial barriers.
Capitalism is clearly an enemy of culture, as philosophers have seen for a long time. First it replaced classical culture with utilitarian culture, now it brainwashes children with TV and commercials, dumbs people down...and publishers now sell 1 million new books every year, destroying any hierarchy among books, authors. We see the consequences on this forum: people here love books, they do not love geniuses. They read books like teenagers watch movies. For entertainment, not for becoming more intelligent. With the help of massive propaganda, capitalism does in the cultural field what it does everywhere: sell as much as possible. Quantity, not quality. And selling as many new books as possible is more important than selling great books, because copyright only lasts some time. Selling old books with no copyright becomes impossible with e-readers. Selling only great/important new books is impossible for greedy capitalists: they want to make as much money as possible. They can not limit themselves. They have no ethic.