Pirate library must pay publishers $30M, but no one knows who runs it(arstechnica.com)

But surely there’s an argument to be made that the people whose work goes into creating the texts you want to read have a claim to be recompensed for their labour. Authors, translators, proofreaders, layouters, illlustrators, printers and binders have mortgages or rent to pay and families to feed, and the servers and warehouses that store the texts are not free either. Where do these costs factor in to your »words are free to copy«-hypothesis?

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MindTraveller@lemmy.ca

12 points

3 months ago

But all those people aren’t publishers. The publishers are the ones owed money by Libgen, and the publishers can eat my shorts. The translators, editors, layouters, illustrators, printers and binders already got paid their wage/comission by the publishers. And besides, printers and binders aren’t making digital books, so bringing them into the conversation is bad faith nonsense.

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peregrinus@feddit.org

0 points

3 months ago

Okay, so where on your theory does the publisher of a book get the money to pay the workers who produce it? (And isn‘t a significant part of libgen scanned print books? My printers and binders have played a role in all of those.)

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MindTraveller@lemmy.ca

8 points

3 months ago

They can pay the workers using the gigantic piles of money they have lying around from decades of exploiting customers and workers. And in fact, they already did, because the books Libgen is pirating already exist. You think Pearson is leaving wages unpaid until they hit a sales quota? No way, those books already got made and the workers already got paid. Some of those books are decades old, and Libgen is the only place you can get them aside from rare booksellers and libraries, and the court still awarded damages to a company that no longer even sells the product. It’s crooked.

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