Arduous is overstating it by a long way. Frustrating, bothersome, annoying, inconsiderate, stupid, yes. Arduous? I used to carry a walkman, several tapes, and spare batteries with me every day; I used to carry a book to read in one pocket and often another, smaller book in another, and even occasionally a newspaper under my arm. Buying a book or any media online is not arduous, even if it's as described.

What it does show is that innovative businesses will, over time, become like the dinosaurs they out-competed, and leave room for something new. Piracy will probably always be there, even when buying is not arduous.

It's arduous relative to today's standards and relative to piracy.

Carrying those books wasn't arduous, except when I travelled around Asia and decided my main bag should be books. Big books. Almost ruined my back.

Words have meaning. Arduous it ain't.

Tiresome doesn't necessarily mean physically tired. Words do have meaning, and you would know if you read those meaning to understand the idea being presented.

Arduous never means "something that is slightly inconvenient" unless one is prone to exaggeration and has the forbearance of a child.

> Tiresome doesn't necessarily mean physically tired.

Not necessarily, no, not at all. I suggest a dictionary. Back in the day, people who cared about reading and the meaning of words would keep one handy, often next to the bed.

> Arduous

> a : hard to accomplish or achieve : difficult

~ https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arduous

Pretty sure this process qualifies as "hard" when compared to standard methods of purchasing digital goods.

Always fun when someone wants to argue about the definition of a word without actually using the definition of the word.

You’re “pretty sure”. Perhaps we should also call it an odyssey, or an epic? They would also fit the dictionary definitions, if we read the dictionary like we’d not bothered to learn proper English. I’m guessing, by your use of Mirriam Webster that you’re an American, so that’s a distinct possibility.

If you knew how to use a dictionary you wouldn’t have left out the helpful examples:

> 1a : hard to accomplish or achieve : DIFFICULT an arduous task years of arduous training

> b : marked by great labor or effort : STRENUOUS … a life of arduous toil. —A. C. Cole

> 2 : hard to climb : STEEP an arduous path arduously adverb arduousness noun

Life, years, climb. No, it does not count as arduous in the slightest. First world problems, is that in the dictionary, I wonder?

... You do realize that examples don't provide a constraint, right?

... right?

Anyway, you seem very confused with internet vernacular; everyone else was able to grasp the context. You appear to be the only individual experiencing difficulties. Just saying.

Yes, there’s no constraint, feel free to use language as you wish. That doesn’t make your argument any better as to what words actually mean, given examples, from a dictionary, when you claim to know how to use one and that I don’t.

Inane, specious, and mendacious are other entries in the dictionary that come to mind. I also have no trouble comprehending the argument before me, it’s simply misdescribed. Can you not comprehend that? Apparently not.

Hey man, I'm just gonna point out why the examples don't provide constraints. I'm surprised you didn't realize this, seeing as you're intimately familiar with the operation of a dictionary. Under the first definition:

> an arduous task

And let's take a look back to the post to which you originally replied!

> but the post above explain an arduous process

Wow, those look really similar, don't they? The quoted usage you find so objectionable is /nearly identical/ to the example you yourself copied. Galaxy brain.

Here's another definition you might want to study. It will really help reduce your confusion with internet interactions:

Hyperbole (noun) > extravagant exaggeration (such as "mile-high ice-cream cones")

I truly believe once you internalize this information you will grasp where you went wrong.

> you will grasp where you went wrong.

Beginning a back and forth over how to use a dictionary with someone who defines how to use a dictionary after the fact to help their point?

> Galaxy brain.

This is not Reddit or Twitter, please refrain from such petty, openly disrespectful and, shall we say arduous, slurs.

It is very telling to me that you first chose to ignore the definition I provided, and now you have chosen to ignore how your example was demonstrably self-destructive. You're grasping desperately for straws by focusing on everything not inconvenient for your initial point.

I'll take that as an admission you know you're wrong.

Here's some more advice for ya: Do your homework next time and come prepared. Or maybe, just maybe, don't try to play the pedantic card. It's clearly not your best game.

Have you considered accessing freely-licensed content instead, and supporting authors who believe in the freedom movement, such as Creative Commons?

Can you direct me to some of these? Perhaps some you recommend? That sounds interesting, but I don't know where to find such content.

There are tons of them available.

Here's the Creative Commons Search portal: https://search.creativecommons.org/

I tried Openverse and Europeana. Some of these appear to categorize eBooks as "images", or perhaps they are just promotional images for unfree books. Tens of thousands of results.

Here's a Google Books search. I was unable to find a "search for license" type thing, but you can search for "Fully viewable" or "Google eBooks only":

https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=-copyright&tbs...

My father loves HathiTrust, and so do many other people who love freedom: https://www.hathitrust.org/

Of course you know the Internet Archive and Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/

Wikisource hosts lots of freely-licensed text, in many, many languages; here's English: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page

Never forget the O.G. PD site, Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/

Also, while it is not the written word, it is based on awesome freely-available books, and perhaps you could consider adding to the library at LibriVox: https://librivox.org/search?primary_key=0&search_category=au...

My classmates at school ate this stuff up when I volunteered that there are sites where you can find awesome public domain reference material that's often better-quality than the paywalled stuff you pay for.

Don't forget the Open Textbooks and freely licensed academic materials. Community colleges and universities will direct you to those.

https://oercommons.org/hubs/open-textbooks https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks

Don't forget niche uses and special interests. Want to overcome your addiction to porn? Download some free eBooks: https://www.covenanteyes.com/e-books/

I’m not sure that most books are at all fungible. Also do many book authors actually publish under Creative Commons?

Have you considered not accepting intellectual property as a legitimate concept to begin with? It makes no sense to even speak of "freely licensed" anything once you do that.

> but the post above explain an arduous process for a purchase, and i would expect that there's not an insignificant number of people who would've given up in the middle.

Honestly, I would have given up at the very first step. It clearly says that the content is available, but vendor is explicitly refusing to serve the content.