But lets see the Positive side: Now the Nazis wont have to burn thousands of books, saving tons of co2 in their Plan to take over the world with propaganda. So, yay for the envoirment I guess
But lets see the Positive side: Now the Nazis wont have to burn thousands of books, saving tons of co2 in their Plan to take over the world with propaganda. So, yay for the envoirment I guess
Piracy was, is and remains a service problem, as Gabe Newell of Valve (Steam) once stated. Most people are perfectly content to pay a reasonable price to get access to the things they want. But if you make that impossible, they’ll find other options.
Take anime for example: even if you subscribed to every streaming service out there, you still wouldn’t be able to see everything you wanted. Some things aren’t streamable or sold ANYWHERE, or only on a service that’s actively blocked in your region. Which means there is simply no legal way for you at all to get that content.
Music on the other hand solved that dilemma. You can use Spotify, YT Music, Apple Music or a host of other options. You pay a flat fee and you can listen to pretty much every song you want, as often as you want. Nobody’s pirating MP3’s these days, because nobody needs to. It’s now more convenient to just stream it.
I’d really like to see someone do the same for books. An unlimited digital library that lets you download anything you want for a flat subscription fee. I’d pay 10 bucks a month for that for sure. Because that would make it more convenient than pirating is right now, with a more consistent experience.
Music is definitely not a solved problem. About 30% of my favorite older tunes aren’t available on streaming at all, as I discovered when I tried to find a way to casually share with some friends.
Sure, no platform will have everything. But for me personally, on YouTube Music, I’ve always been able to find what I was looking for. But I’m admittedly not what you’d call a music aficionado.
Interestingly, I am now going through some album series that are not on Youtube, but are on Spotify. It is frustrating because I can’t use Spotify on my phone (browser is incompatible), but I can Youtube, so music discovery is desktop-only. Good thing all of them are on Soulseek, though.
Bruv real libraries will let you download books for free
Yes, a lot of them do. But their digital selection often is pretty limited and comes with restrictions.
For example: our Dutch national online library lets you ‘borrow’ 10 e-books at a time. You get 21 days to read a book, but you can extend that one time by another three weeks. After that, you have to ‘return’ and ‘check them out again’ if you want to continue reading. With my particular reading habits, that’s a hassle and wouldn’t work for me.
But the biggest issue is: they only offer a limited selection. Basically, NONE of the books I’m reading now are available through that system.
I want to be able to read every book I want, no time restriction. And that’s not possible with the current digital library system they offer.
WB/Discovery+ just screwed people in the UK for watching cycling. It was £7 a month to watch before, which I was happy to pay. They just put an end to that and now bundled the cycling with their premium sports service for £29. I’m not paying all that when I only want cycling and none of their other content.
I cancelled my subscription, asked them to delete my account, purchased a fire stick and now paying for some dodgy IPTV service to watch it there for a fraction of the price.
That’s a sliding scale, though. Streaming comes at a fixed price.
ever heard of zlibrary?
I am aware of them, yes. It’s not the book download site that I use personally, but you can never have enough options.
which do you use?
I usually use Anna’s Archive or Lib Gen, depending on what’s actually up and working. Anna scrapes Zlib as well as other sources. Usually that’s where I can find the really obscure stuff.
A library? We solved that centuries ago.
Yes, about service problems and Steam - I understand why it happened, but sanctions on Russia causing my inability to not buy, but even find in store some games kinda affect it. One small nuance is that family members of those, well, making decisions in Russia are often in the western countries feeling themselves very well (including Steam games), and those who are not do not, I think, have problems dealing with this. And, btw, topping up your Steam wallet is possible, just via intermediaries with some additional expense.
OK, this is not about Steam, this is about sanctions efficiency.
EDIT: On the subject - I pirate MP3’s. I like having my music stored locally and not dependent on various services. I may start some day using some of those services, probably.