Slashdot Mirror
Offline Book "Lending" Costs US Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from a tongue-in-cheek blog post which puts publisher worries about ebook piracy into perspective:
"Hot on the heels of the story in Publisher's Weekly that 'publishers could be losing out on as much $3 billion to online book piracy' comes a sudden realization of a much larger threat to the viability of the book industry. Apparently, over 2 billion books were 'loaned' last year by a cabal of organizations found in nearly every American city and town. Using the same advanced projective mathematics used in the study cited by Publishers Weekly, Go To Hellman has computed that publishers could be losing sales opportunities totaling over $100 billion per year, losses which extend back to at least the year 2000. ... From what we've been able to piece together, the book 'lending' takes place in 'libraries.' On entering one of these dens, patrons may view a dazzling array of books, periodicals, even CDs and DVDs, all available to anyone willing to disclose valuable personal information in exchange for a 'card.' But there is an ominous silence pervading these ersatz sanctuaries, enforced by the stern demeanor of staff and the glares of other patrons. Although there's no admission charge and it doesn't cost anything to borrow a book, there's always the threat of an onerous overdue bill for the hapless borrower who forgets to continue the cycle of not paying for copyrighted material."
Yes, completely hilarious.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Why does anyone care about being quiet in a library nowadays? Just check out the books you want and go read them at home. There's nothing keeping you there.
In earlier ages, the reason why you were supposed to be quiet in a library was because some people were there to do research and couldn't check out all the reference books they could possibly need. Who needs that, now that we have the Internet? And if your library has the materials to support the sort of hard-core research that requires dead-tree copies of things that aren't on the Internet yet, they probably have quiet research rooms.
The abusers this time are publishers, not book burners. Publishers take most of the money. They give authors only a very small percentage.
Publishers should be eliminated. In the age of digital book preparation and copying, publishers aren't needed. In fact, they are destructive.
TQ's demo crashed my entire computer on exit, which meant I didn't even attempt to buy it until Steam offered it and expansion for $10. I assume they'd worked out the bugs by then.
No problemo! Just reimage your winblows game only drive using your linux partition, like you did before you installed this game.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.