Also, there's nothing strictly speaking preventing you from mailing $20 to the author of the book you pirated; it's just inconvenient.

I'd participate in something that made that more convenient. I imagine dedicating $30 /mo for "contributions to content creators". Then I move bits around on my terms, and at the end of the month, that money is allocated among creators based on how often their content was hashed by my reader.

I think not knowing their address probably

I thought in most countries, sending banknote is illegal?

>I thought in most countries, sending banknote is illegal?

It is not illegal to mail cash within the US, unless you're trying to avoid paying taxes/launder money.

Not sure about other countries, a cursory web search didn't turn up anything useful.

What countries are you thinking of? I can't think of a single one where that's the case

Not parent, but it is forbidden in France: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/id/LEGIARTI000028154450...

But the author is only one of the many people who are involved in the production of a book. Editing. Typesetting. Cover design. Cover art. Marketing. Arguably, all of those things are important and contribute to an author's success.

And when those people give me a low friction way to pay them without supporting DRM, I will gladly do so. Of note, none of those people get paid when you buy a secondhand copy of a paper book. Piracy is no different here.

> none of those people get paid when you buy a secondhand copy

Yes, which is why nobody is saying "buy second-hand books to support your favorite author".

Also, it's probably a small effect, but I'd guess that the existence of a secondary market contributes to at least some primary sales (since the buyers know they will probably be able to resell a book if they need to, making them more likely to buy a primary copy if they want to read it right now).

Somebody paid for a second-hand copy, nobody paid for a pirated copy.

"the existence of a secondary market contributes to at least some primary sales"

Incidentally, many favorite books that I pirated when I was broke and had very little room, I later bought paper copies of.

I also pirate most music, but if I really like a band I discovered via piracy, I will buy their vinyl or see them in concert.

The ability to freely share content scondhand, be it a paper book or in digital form, creates new fans. Some of those fans have money to give back, or will share with people that do.

Doesn’t the publisher pay them a flat fee?

I think all authors and other content producers should have sort of a tip jar where we can send them money without someone else taking a big cut. A lot of superfluous charges are put still put for money transfer today so even something like patreon can cost 8-10% of what they recieve. How can they charge such a large percentage on money transfer that is mostly bits.

I believe Ko-fi is not taking a cut but has it's own tip-jar.

> How can they charge such a large percentage on money transfer that is mostly bits.

Because they provide a platform (making content more visible), payment processing (which can be 3% or more for some payment methods), customer support etc.

If content producers don't need any of that, they can always have a self-hosted website with their own donation button (or physical mailing address for checks and banknotes, cryptocurrency address etc).

> I think all authors and other content producers should have sort of a tip jar

That tip jar would cut out everybody else involved in the production of a book and in getting you to even find out about it existing.

Every author has the option to self-publish and set their own price (including a "pay-as-you-wish" option), but on the other hand, if they prefer the (relatively) lower risk of going with a traditional publisher, you should also respect that decision and not sidestep that by unilaterally deciding that "oh, I'd prefer you would have made this DRM-free and pay-as-you-wish, here's a check for $20!".

The way to solve that is to have the "tip jar" be a smart contract which redistributes inbound money transparently. I don't have a problem with funding the supporting parties, I just don't want the pie to be divvied up behind closed doors where my decision to contribute might end up working against my interests.

If somebody puts together a different tip jar which supports and even wider variety of people, or does so in a more equitable way, I want to be free to choose that one instead.

Let content compete for legitimacy based on how integrated into the wider community it's associated tip jar is.

But what if that’s the way the author has decided to do things?

Not everybody wants a tip jar. Why should you get to impose your views over that of the author who’s book you want to read?

Because I'm the one reading it.

I don't care if they think I should read it in a couch or a hammock or a bathtub, why should I care whether they think I should print it on a page or project it on my ceiling or peer at it through a cloud of malware?

There are people who want to turn the world into a skinner box. I'm not going to fund their project just because I appreciate an author who has made a deal with them at some point.

If I can't pay an author without also paying my enemies, then I'm not going to pay the author. But I'd really rather pay the author.

I think many people are stuck in the cash mindset so it seems okay to them that they pay 2-3% in fees for an electric transfer. Where transporting $100 million and $1 would cost the same I don't understand the percentage fees. This includes credit card processor fees etc. A lot of you I feel sort of have Stockholm syndrome when it comes to stuff like this specially in the US. A lot of this stuff requires government intervention I think as it is impossible for any startup to bring about disruption. In Asian countries where credit cards were not that prevalent new processing systems have brought down the prices to 0.5%-1% which I still think is too high.

Would not make it legal either strictly speaking

I'm not a lawyer, but I think pirating it is actually more legal (in most jurisdictions) than removing DRM.

As long as you just leech, you're not sharing copyrighted content, and therefore arguably not in breach of copyright.

Agreed that torrenting/pirating is practical and simple, but since both downloading pirated books and stripping their DRM are both illegal anyhow, why not learn the minor skills required? After all, somebody somewhere has to post those DRM-stripped books online, so it's at least useful to work on learning the actual trick of doing it instead of depending on others' efforts.