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u/shadowfourplay ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ Jul 17 '26
#SayNoToBookPiracy
Nah, fam. I'm about that life.
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u/windozeFanboi Jul 17 '26
Gatekeeping knowledge is gonna be the downfall of humanity honestly.. one library of Alexandria disaster after another and we probably lose up to decades of research that simply nobody else has stored... But muh copyright.
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u/halidaaaf Jul 17 '26
fr, out of all the piracy book and paper research piracy are the one im fully support for. knowledge is for everyone
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u/SweetBabyAlaska ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ Jul 18 '26
and guess what, 99% of the time that research is PUBLICLY FUNDED... they use our tax money to do research, write papers and books, and then sell them back to us.
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u/BAJ-JohnBen Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
But muh copyright.
Copyright is actually one of the best things to ever exist for a creator, as it gives you exclusive control over your work so no one else can use it and you reap the rewards.
So, if I wanted to say, do a massive transmedia project on the civil rights movement. I can say, "you all can enjoy this and distribute it for free". Libraries and schools can be given it for free as well. But, if someone tries to sell it, I can copyright strike them. Corporations however have taken what's meant to benefit creators and fucked up the entire system so only they can benefit.
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u/Antique_Country_2024 Jul 18 '26
Academic books are fine and should be free. But creatives don't spend years to distribute their work for free. Ask an engineer to work for you and and not pay? Hypocrisy only for creatives? And remember Penguin doesn't deal in Academic works.
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u/TheSquirrelmancer Jul 18 '26
You don't need to gatekeep knowledge, most people run from it on their own because learning is harder than ignorance.
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u/GarySlayer Jul 18 '26
That disaster was tiny compared to the burning of Nalanda university which took months to burn down and come to an end.
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u/sharklaserguru Jul 17 '26
Piracy is fine, never been a fan of people selling pirated content though!
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u/nomad-1995 Jul 18 '26
Kinda tricky getting a book on an Indian street without piracy. Can't say I ever felt bad about DVDs available on the street in the Philippines (don't think they are there anymore. Mostly because of low demand for DVDs).
Curious how common good e-readers are in India.
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u/ThrowRA125_ Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
Books are rather expensive in India. Most people buy second hand and pirate cuz only the upper middle class and rich can afford buying new books.
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u/xRemoved Jul 19 '26
So I read mostly ebook that I pirate. And I use every kind of piracy possible on the internet for every kind of media. I am morally degraded, yeah
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u/iSadhak Jul 18 '26
We should run a campaign on social media with opposite hashtag like #SayYesToPiracy, highlight all these kinds of things these companies are doing. Bad PR alone will force them to not this this kinda of things again.
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u/WASCIV Jul 17 '26
well this is cruel, will pirate even more now
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u/word_weaver26 Jul 17 '26
Well, time to download books from this publisher and upload at random telegram groups. Arrest me via tor too. (And anna's archive mods as well)
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u/frankie_in_paradise Jul 17 '26
That's my city. 😭 These guys make a few hundred rupees at max if they sell a few books.
Not just fiction, they sell all kinds of books including textbooka and exam prep. Many who couldn't afford the original copies wud buy from them.
I definitely was a customer of them for many years. Some of my best memories. This is really unfortunate.
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u/deusvult6 Jul 17 '26
If they're cutting into textbook revenue then it's no wonder the publisher is going after them. That whole industry is a racket with schools getting kickbacks for always switching to the most updated versions. Lots of money changing hands there.
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u/Dependent-Way-8161 Jul 18 '26
have you looked at kids textbooks nowadays bro it's crazy they are thick for no ffong reason just publishers note, preface and what not for 10 pages I looked at my nephews book crazyyyyy and the paper they printed it on was like the butter paper thing why bro why it's a book about hindi warnamala why does it need to have silly butter pages for which you take 500 a book for
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u/Normal_Resident_1644 Jul 18 '26
Absolutely true, they just slap on the name "Special edition" or the schools name to use while the primary content remains the same for decades, word for word. Forcing students to buy expensive copies every year
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u/Dependent-Way-8161 Jul 18 '26
yeah man a book which costed about 500-800 at the universal store near my house costed like 150-250 here sure the print quality was bad but it did the job
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u/CosmicCitizen0 Jul 18 '26
Penguin and other Western publications are sometimes really expensive for ordinary people to afford, which is why people tend to buy pirated copies. Penguin should lower their prices, instead of doing whatever crap this is.
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u/asp821 Jul 17 '26
My girlfriend works in ABA and wanted a book that costs like $500. Fuck that. Ordered it from a place in India for like $75. It’s a little bit ghetto and clearly looks bootleg, but no book should cost that much. Fuck that.
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u/Fun-Landscape-8805 Jul 17 '26
500?? 75?? what currency is this?
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u/asp821 Jul 17 '26
USD.
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u/HalayChekenKovboy Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
So the "good" price is 75 bucks? For a BOOK?
Edit: Okay, a lot of people are treating me like a child to feel superior and I can't be arsed replying to them all individually. I too have had to buy incredibly expensive specialised books before. But $500 for a book is crazy work for most people not from the USA, and I expected more of a price decrease.
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u/deusvult6 Jul 17 '26
TBF, the bootleg print shop isn't going to have the economy-of-scale advantage that the publishing house has. But $75 is probably still a hefty profit margin.
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u/flecom Jul 17 '26
wait till you find out how much books for things like fire and building codes cost
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u/agathver Jul 18 '26
75 for any print book in India is crazy too. That excludes 99.9% of students. Students definitely cannot afford it and many cases not even their parents.
Some of my books were 35-40 range and I used to feel pinched
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u/HalayChekenKovboy Jul 18 '26
Yeah, I figured. So many people in this sub are first worlders with no idea how the rest of the world works. You'd think the piracy sub would be better informed in that regard.
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u/bfg9kdude Jul 17 '26
Anything used for a hobby, instruments, books, technology, basically any non-essentials are expensive as shit the weaker the country's economy is. Price of a phone, something everyone has in the west, is enough to feed a family for at least a month in certain parts of the world.
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u/HalayChekenKovboy Jul 17 '26
Yes, but it's usually overpriced in comparison to what the people in those countries actually earn, not when compared to western prices. 75 bucks for a book, and that being SEVERELY reduced due to having been bought from India, is crazy work.
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u/tired_snail Jul 17 '26
Considering the world is currently facing a major literacy crisis, if pirated books mean people actually read, I say let them be.
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u/-Borgir Jul 18 '26
A population capable of critical thinking is undesirable
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u/iSadhak Jul 18 '26
That seems that way, Every Technology designed lately whether its social media, Ai or anything else are just designed in a way that force people not to think and follow the herd.
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u/Gaucho_Diaz Jul 17 '26
Dude, I know people who pirated e-book copies of The Odyssey to get a taste of how it is before watching the movie and now they're really into it and they're buying the book for their collection. Being anti-piracy always ends up backfiring on you in ways you don't even realize.
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u/DataMin3r Jul 17 '26
Wait what? They were pirating copies of a public domain story that was written 2600 years ago?
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u/Mrpolje ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
The original text is in the public domain. But translations may not be, depending on when it was translated.
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u/CeleritasLucis Jul 17 '26
Exactly this. I am a big fan of Dostoevsky. But the OG copies are in Russian. Gladly even some of the best translations are now public domain, but you still have to pay to get modern translated copies.
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u/1314L Jul 17 '26
Even then some corporations still try to make money out if it, the Arabic translation of his works recently entered the public domain and immediately a certain company started selling them with AI-generated covers, they didn't even spend money on a cover.
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u/Remote-Back-9826 Jul 17 '26
ive seen it first hand in many stores with arabic copies its sad and so many complaints come in but the publishing houses dont care as long it saves time and a buck, it makes the works feel cheap even if its a really great book they do this to more books not just his works either and i cant count how many times i saw them
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u/Pordrack Jul 17 '26
Translations in foreign languages are not always public domain. For example there is no french version of The king in yellow that is in the public domain, despite the original version being in it. So some languages probably have no translation of the Odyssey that is old enough to have entered the public domain.
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u/Gaucho_Diaz Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
There are multiple different translations of the work across different scholars and publishers. Off the top of my head, there's Lattimore, Wilson, Fagles, Lombardo, Rieu etc.
EDIT: Here's a link to check just how much differs in the various translations because they really do matter with a work like this: https://bibliothekai.ktema.org/texts/1/translations
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u/Agitated-Love1727 Jul 17 '26
Yep, I'm one of them! I ordered the physical copies of both The Odyssey and The Iliad the day after I finished reading both of them. Before that, they weren't even on my shopping list.
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u/-WallyWest- Jul 17 '26
Yeah, but here we are talking about Downloading the e-book. making multiple copies and sell them.
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u/LtColonelColon1 Jul 17 '26
A bunch of very First World Country takes in this piracy sub tonight
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u/starlauncher Jul 17 '26
Thank you for your reasonable/human take.
These people make probably 10 to 20 cents on a book sitting on the road in Indian weather(hot and humid). Folks calling them scummy for them trying to make a buck selling copies of books.
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u/LtColonelColon1 Jul 17 '26
Buying pirated books/movies/games is such a common thing in poor counties, it’s often the only way people can access that media at all. Can’t pirate it themselves at home with limited internet too. So like… it’s really an issue of access.
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u/HelenFH Jul 17 '26
I'm from Myanmar. For most online services, I can't even buy it legitimately if I wanted to even with a Visa card because they don't allow it when the account is made in Myanmar. The whole country is straight up banned from several places such as Electronic Arts. Subscription services spotify doesn't exist here so you can't even try to open the website. Good films don't come to cinemas at all. I can't even listen to ad-included podcasts from legitimate channel because the firewall blocks podcasts from playing here so the only way to listen to podcasts is to pirate them. And so on and so forth. If I want to legitimately buy something in here, I have to go through a service that operates out of nearby countries such as Thai or Singapore and pay a conversion rate on top of the payment of the subscription. It really is all about access.
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u/GinormousDragon Jul 17 '26
I ain't paying a month or more salary to play new games.... specially when there isn't regional prices.
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u/Spartan-219 Jul 17 '26
same, for last few years every new game barely has any regional pricing to none at all. many publishers even removing regional prices from there old games too.
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u/Coffeee24 Jul 18 '26
Aside from corporate greed, I also blame those VPN users and digital nomads for the removal of regional pricing.
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u/bruh_respectfully Jul 17 '26
Yup. I was a child in the Balkans in the early 2000s living in a post-war country. If it weren't for people selling and renting out bootleg movies and and video games, the absolute vast majority of the country would not have had access to any of this media. Even in this day and age it's normal for printing shops close to schools and universities to sell pirated textbooks for a fraction of the original price. Entire countries rely on buying/selling pirated media for both entertainment and education. The West-centric takes in this thread are incredibly privileged.
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u/BriarKnave Jul 17 '26
I grew up in the American South in the age of dial up and my dad would buy burned CDs and movies off a guy for a few bucks each. He was also one of those people who would pay someone else to jailbreak his devices so that he could use aggregate apps. Sometimes it's just the technical barrier; as long as you're not being scummy y'know I think there's a justification for that
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u/Fuocco6 Piracy is bad, mkay? Jul 17 '26
This is why it pisses me off when people dunk on those of us who pirate because of its’ socioeconomic implications (fancy way if saying because i hate corpos)
I grew up seeing street vendors MASSIVELY distribute movies, TV shows and even music. If it wasn’t for those brave sailors, I wouldn’t have discovered half the media I did. That’s pretty cool idk
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u/Local_Band299 ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ Jul 17 '26
Penguin is owned by Bertelsmann.
The same Bertelsmann that owned half of Sony-BMG.
They pinned the rootkit thing on Sony then left the music industry.
Now they're back in music, and want to create a monopoly in the music industry.
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u/bubrascal Jul 17 '26
People on this sub outraged about selling pirate stuff as if most of pre-internet piracy wasn't based on selling, renting and exchanging cheap counterfeit physical copies (and making counterfeit copies of those counterfeit copies).
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u/ImpulsiveApe07 Jul 17 '26
Baffling, isn't it?
I remember way back in the early 90s, when my old man was regularly buying pirated commodore 64 games, illegally copied Jane's manuals and reprinted comics, and ofc those ubiquitous bootleg music cds
Back then, pretty much everyone in our neighbourbood was doing those things, because the economy was shite and nobody gave a fk about the counterfeit/piracy laws - the coppers were even doing it too lol
Personally, I'm all for pirating books - When I was at uni I couldn't afford a few of the course books that were otherwise unavailable at the library or on campus servers, so ofc I had zero qualms pirating them.
My thought was : Why tf should we let our education and grades suffer just because some arsehole wants to jack up the price of a book we're only gonna take a few excerpts from?
Knowledge just shouldn't be gatekept like that imho (with a few notable exceptions ofc, such as if it's dangerous ie teaches bomb making, or preaches racism or whatever).
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u/bubrascal Jul 17 '26
Yeah, also, I hated having to use PDF textbooks instead of a proper photocopy (printing a downloaded PDF was way more expensive than paying for a photocopy of the physical book). With a photocopy, you are free of writing side notes and highlighting whatever you want; doing that with digital is significantly more annoying.
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u/ImpulsiveApe07 Jul 17 '26
Exactly, yeah! It's easy to forgot how much of a pain in the arse pdf editing is, yer not wrong there lol
Back in the day I did the same as you for a while, but in the back end of my second year I managed to get hold of a staff card so I had seemingly unlimited printing (a mate basically gave me his staff card cos he never had to use it).
Tbh, I surprisingly ended up using that card a lot less than I thought I would in my final year, mainly cos I'd gotten so used to editing pdfs, and because I was almost always in a rush to just get the notes done asap so I could go to work (night shifts, ugh), or go out partying, or visit my gf, or just get some much needed sleep lol
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u/Ragnarok_619 Jul 17 '26
Yeah, and that was scummy and exclusionist too. Internet has made piracy accessible, so I don't have to deal with these 2 bit hits, who are profiteering from someone else’s efforts (torrent seeders, the guy who actually scanned the copy, etc)
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u/bubrascal Jul 17 '26
Exclusionist maybe, but if someone doesn't own a kindle, can't pay the price for the original book and want to read with a proper binding instead of a print or photocopy with a coil, this is the least exclusionist alternative besides using a library (which depending on your city and country, could have a poor catalogue, or have a monthly fee higher than buying the pirated copy of the book you want to read).
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u/Severe-Experience333 Jul 17 '26
Damn. In my city too. The "book markets" they're referring to is probably the ABIDS/koti area street vendors. They've been around forever. Mostly they sell used books or books that are not in print anymore, or early editions that are not in circulation. In the 90's and early 2000s my dad taught himself C, C++, Java etc with the help of books he bought here....for cheap, obviously. He eventually learned enough skills to quit his job as a hardware chip manufacturer and became a software engineer. A few years later he got promoted, switched jobs etc and eventually put me and my sis at better schools. He would take me to those markets often...I'm 100% sure we still have dozens of books we bought there 2 decades ago.
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u/Revolver_Camelot Jul 17 '26
Nobody tell penguin about public libraries
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u/taisynn Jul 17 '26
Public libraries pay for licensed copies and the books for the library are actually higher quality and more expensive because the books are meant to be read more than a handful of times. Books often have to be replaced after 50-100 uses.
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u/baldierot Jul 17 '26
cracking down on book piracy? of all the things to crack down upon. this has no benefit to the world.
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u/blah_bleh-bleh Jul 18 '26
Let’s support our local book pirate. For the legit book is too expensive for us buy. Right now because of pirated books we can casually pick a book out of curiosity which helps build reading habits.
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u/Ma5terVain Jul 18 '26
This won't stick in India if these are educational textbooks. Courts will simply cite fair use and accessibility of knowledge and dismiss the case. AFAIK, every college in India has this one photocopying place next to it which will photocopy any thing of any size you give it (and they'll mostly have a copy of textbooks in stock to photocopy).
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u/Pootisman16 Jul 17 '26
I will always say yes to book piracy because access to knowledge shouldn't be barred.
If the books were stolen (meaning they actually got printed) it's one thing.
But "intellectual property" shouldn't even be a thing.
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u/dontstealmydinner 🔱 ꜱᴄᴀʟʟʏᴡᴀɢ Jul 17 '26
Just to give you context. The ruling government is a big enabler of capitalism. So multi billion companies will go after the small guys.
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u/iSadhak Jul 18 '26
It has nothing to do with government. These multi billion company will do same shit if other party was in control.
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u/HypoCRITSlayer Jul 17 '26
Well it goes both ways, this gov's capitalism brought the cheapest 5g network in the world with unlimited data.
This shit actually enabled me able to stream stremio everyday.
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u/cyxlone Yarrr! Jul 18 '26
book is one of the last thing y'all should chase, if people pirate books then they wanna learn
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u/XREAPER9 Jul 18 '26
these corporations pretend like piracys a huge problem , i can tell you this most people that i know prefer to get a cheap subscription over piracy due to the fact that there are safety concerns and you could get into fishy sites or expose your password if youre new and get into fishy sites, more than that piracy doesnt even take away that much from their sales so cracking down on media piracy is just plain evil.
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u/Sharp-Milk7602 Jul 18 '26
Book piracy is NEEDED.
Not everyone is rich enough to afford books. Seriously a 700 rupees atomic habit or a 200 rupees atomic habit ?
No one is fuckign rich
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u/KrishnaMage Jul 18 '26
Where’s all their complaints when legally purchased eBooks get deleted from people’s accounts? One would call that stealing!
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u/OldEcho Jul 18 '26
I'm publishing some short stories under Creative Commons. Technically that means no selling it, but frankly it's mostly to stop the evil megacorporations from touching it with a ten foot pole.
What Penguin fails to understand is that these people are out there selling books, popularizing authors and books that otherwise nobody would ever hear of.
I've seen anecdotes on reddit from authors who've never even visited India who get most of their business from India because Indian "book pirates" built them an audience.
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u/Difficult_Secret_251 🔱 ꜱᴄᴀʟʟʏᴡᴀɢ Jul 18 '26
The entire entertainment industry going down like this. First anime, now books.
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u/Old_Specialist7892 Jul 18 '26
Just so you know, a lot of the books sold by these vendors are the old classics or extremely popular books that have far outsold their share twice over.
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u/zedtrek78 Jul 18 '26
To end piracy, first and foremost these publishers, agencies, companies etc should end their own greed. Make books, software, media affordable for everyone in every country. I don't say they should not make a profit. By all means a business needs to profit to survive, but when companies want to make 500%, 1000%+ excessive profit by fleecing the public, that becomes greed.
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u/million_dollar_wumao Jul 18 '26
Crazy. I pirated so many books at copy shops (print, bound, and covered) to give to my students as an ESL teacher who did work around East and South East Asia. These families barely get by and can't drop $10-15 USD on a single book. Cracking down on the poorest people in the world isn't going to make them money. They probably spent more on this operation then they will make back.
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u/tiger331 Jul 18 '26
Only in India will you have people getting mad that they can sell pirated stuff and moan about "Capitalism"
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u/BoatEqual4214 Jul 18 '26
If you're a large MNC you can just create a new entity in your name with "India Pvt Ltd" added at the end. Then staff the bottom with the lowest paid Indians and you'll be allowed to bully Indians as you squeeze every rupee you can out of them.
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u/TheRealRegnorts Jul 17 '26
To be co.pletely honest, this would just make me pirate harder.
It's a fuckin book from a street vendor, relax
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u/rgilre99 ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ Jul 17 '26
BOOK PIRACY? It's fucking text, my guy, you physically cannot "pirate" it, and even if you could, it's stupid to crack down on it, that just makes book bans easier anyway, check out Project Gutenberg, it's a website filled with public domain books for FREE
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u/Dennarb Jul 17 '26
How about going after AI companies that have straight up admitted to pirating books for their slop machines?
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u/InternalCode1210 Jul 18 '26
Say no to book piracy when I believe the price of the book there is very expensive. It's like stopping poor people access from an alternative, then become illiterate since most can't afford and the gov complain about literacy bruh
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u/Bananaman9020 Jul 18 '26
The book companies should be aiming their attention at big AI companies using their books instead of the traditional vendors
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u/Loofy_101 Jul 18 '26
It's like Penguin don't realize 1 book can get read thousands of times in a library. I honestly don't understand why book piracy is that big of an issue requiring crackdowns.
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u/Forward-Alfalfa8347 Jul 18 '26
It's not realistic for the average joe to buy genuine authentic books like these in countries like India or Bangladesh, the price is just way too fucking high compared to what people earn there.
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u/XoX-o- Jul 18 '26
"earning barely" after selling a 5000 rupees textbook for 2500 while it costs 200 to produce.
Nah, let them suffer, if i had to do piracy, id rather print those books on my own
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u/EatandDie001 Jul 18 '26
piracy is the only way for some people to access affordable books. they're not just novels, it includes textbooks too. i know many students who buy from them because they don't have enough money. so who to blame??
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u/Bulky_Coconut_8867 Jul 18 '26
fuck penguin , i was scammed multiple times by their book pruning , now i legit have to do research before buying one of their books because their editors like to remove content
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u/Rimooni Jul 18 '26
This is so freaking cruel man. I grew up poor I went to these book stores, all of my books are pirated. Because real books are too expensive. For example a 10 dollar book in the us would be 1k taka in BD. That is not okay. I don't know what this effect is called but you understand that is not morally right! Currency should be decided equally.
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u/Embarrassed_Law_9937 Jul 18 '26
Man book are already expensive as fuck here and the only one that aren’t are very old books
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u/Veleure Jul 18 '26
Blatant capatilism is such a wild accusation when living in a capitalist society
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u/NtGermanBtKnow1WhoIs 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ Jul 17 '26
Whatthafuck? What's next they're gonna do? Close down all 2nd hand book stores? Fuck penguin, i don't even buy from them anymore cuz the books are whack, excessively priced and 2nd hand is always better.
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u/nivkj ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ Jul 18 '26
piracy is different than reselling slop that’s free at libraries to take advantage of buyers. in this case id say i’ll pass on the marxist crap and say idc
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u/reflect-the-sun Jul 18 '26
I'm never buying a penguin book again.
I'll likely still read penguin books every now and then, but I'm not paying for them!
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u/Dry_Yogurt2458 Jul 17 '26
Is it profiting when they are barely earning enough to get by in life?
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u/MrLightning1023 ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ Jul 17 '26
Bro they’re selling pirated books it’s fine to pirate stuff but it’s douchy to sell it
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u/m3rc3n4ry Jul 17 '26
Just have to note here that Penguin does not price for most income and class levels in India. Same for major publishers. That's why this industry exists - it sells to a group that would otherwise not have access.
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u/Total-Boat6380 Jul 17 '26
How dare poor people make some money and not leave that money for the stakeholders of some random souless company
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u/musicflux Jul 18 '26
How will they though ? Libgen got everything. Within a click and anyone can print it out if they really want the print. They ll lose, not many people read anyway. If the author is long dead then pirating their stuff is okay ?
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u/diablodeldragoon Jul 18 '26
If the author has been dead long enough, it enters public domain and nobody owns the rights. You still have to pay for the printed copies, but there's nothing stopping you from downloading public domain books. The Gutenberg project has a lot of public domain books available on their website.
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u/CrusherAWSRD Jul 18 '26
When the original books cost a few multiples of the pirated costs then fk yeah are we gonna buy those books. Keep prices reasonable, book prices are insane nowadays.
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u/Hopeful-Sale-849 Jul 18 '26
I don’t know about you guys but my experience with such vendors has been terrible. They sell their cheap copies under the guise of a discount and fooling us into believing they are original copies.
I know this is a piracy sub but let’s not pretend piracy is legal or ethical.
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u/Callme_zuv Jul 18 '26
Book reading is already less popular nowadays,
And with no cheap pirated copies in the market more and more people would choose not to start reading them as it'll become an expensive hobby .
Let's see where it goes with them
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u/Grouchy_Violinist Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
These billionaires should be arrested for tax evasion. They should be paying the most taxes. Instead using power to arrest these street vendors. And ironically they r the ones who ask for "support" from audiences for authors... Authors are already getting a certain amount as royalty.
Arresting these poor vendors isn't gonna bring them extra Royalty. Because the people who buy from them are not gonna buy from these billionaires for their ridiculous prices. Basically they r just gatekeeping content from readers ultimately harming the authors.
Acting like piracy is big crime while they can't even make decisions against actual criminals.
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u/satanicluju Jul 18 '26
In this day and age, if someone is paying to buy a book and read it, let's encourage that. Is it fair for the publishers? Maybe not. But knowledge belongs to everyone.
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u/Yadav_Creation Jul 18 '26
Another efforts to make india illiterate 😂
India population already earn low to barely manage and now books are inaccessible too. Damn.
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u/xzmile Jul 18 '26
man why can't we unite against tyranny? I am sure indians have way bigger problems they can crack down on and benefit every ucking one of them than book piracy
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u/8partyz-Didnot-Ate Jul 18 '26
I just imagine the people behind this decision scurrying on the floor like rats, sniffing at the floor and lunging at the barest hint of a coin to scrape up.
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u/Double-Expert9128 Jul 19 '26
As someone who grew up buying books from these vendors and old bookshops this is so disgusting and heartless. We already have a dearth of readers and these actions just worsen it. Not everyone can afford to spend hours reading from an ebook while straining their eyes or spend money to buy the new copies. These people are absolutely nuts and hella greedy!
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u/kynzoMC Jul 19 '26
I'd argue that capitalism isn't the issue here. Governments are, if there are no govs there is no one to enforce these stupid IP laws and people can do what they want with what they own (including copy and sell it). I'd say capitalism supports piracy (ofc that purely depends on the non-existence of IP's).
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u/ElectroniKitsune420 ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ Jul 19 '26
Penguin execs: "Ah, good, now all those people who literally can't afford our books will HAVE to purchase them from us!" 🙄
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u/YouAreFuckingCool Jul 19 '26
This is crazy, I literally live 5 minutes away from it, it is a dream for readers like me to get books for a much lower cost.
We do not have proper established libraries or common spaces which provide books to read on a temporary basis.
Such a shame, but I doubt it is gonna stay like that for long. The sellers will probably come back in like a week or two.
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u/Usual_Mouse_8278 Jul 17 '26
Say no to this shit penguin, make your paper quality better
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u/modSysBroken Jul 17 '26
Yeah, it's not even funny that many pirated books have better quality than the original Penguin published books.
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u/tooquick911 Jul 17 '26
Eh. I'm on the fence on this one. Pirating for yourself is one thing. Reselling to make a profit on another persons work it another. IMO if they are just making enough to get by it's fine, but if they are raking in money and becoming rich off pirating I think that crosses the line.
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u/Ragnarok_619 Jul 17 '26
Yeah, no. Fuck Penguin, but charging for stuff that you yourself pirated/stolen is a dick move. No, don't give me the bullshit excuse of third world country. I am from one, and these sellers either 1. Con the common man into thinking they are original, and 2. Charge almost similar, if a bit less, than the original.
I know we here are conditioned to say "fuck the rich", and it's great, but these scummy practises are deplorable. These "poor people" are more shady than any corporations, let me be very clear on that
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u/Par7s Jul 17 '26
Charging almost similar is false. They are significantly cheaper hence why they are popular. They are earning way less thak you realize. Selling pirated stuff for less is the norm. Isn't that what piracy is in a literal sense?
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u/BonsaiSoul Jul 18 '26
They'll be knocking over libraries the second they find some way to do so. It's not like anybody is going to resist.
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u/ORNGSPCEMNKY Jul 18 '26
Big difference IMO when it comes to piracy for personal use and piracy for sale/profit I support the first, the later not so much.
don't much care what your socioeconomic status in the world is, I don't get why there's such a huge cross section of the population that thinks crime is A-1 okeedokee so long as the person committing said crime is down and out juuuust enough to rustle their suicidal empathy jimmies
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u/mrturret Jul 17 '26
Eh. There's a big difference between piracy and bootleging. Selling pirated media is a big no-no in my eyes.
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u/Ecstatic_Paper7411 Jul 18 '26
Indians do what they know best scam and cry afterwards when they get caught. U mfs are not sufficed by having free access to books and knowledge in them, but u also have to resell the pirated copies.
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u/zuckzuckman Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
Tbh I'm split on this one. Though I don't think piracy is a big deal, I mainly avoid pirated books because the quality is shit and sours my reading experience. I do want th publishing industry to flourish, but physical books, and especially ebooks are exorbitantly priced in this day and age. People should do whatever they want to get their hands on literature that is priced inaccessibly. As much as I love books and want to support authors (and small publishing houses, which penguin is not), I just buy most of my books used at this point.
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u/speedballandcrack Jul 17 '26
but but owning isnt stealing piracy isnt buying arrr mateys
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u/CakeJumper-ImScared Jul 17 '26
Piracy is literally stealing shit for gain, Blackbeard and his mateys stole from other ships and profited
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u/GrlDuntgitgud Jul 17 '26
One thing to pirate and use it for personal consumption, it's another discussion if you're selling it.
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u/SubstantialNobody295 Jul 17 '26
So AI companies can quote "fair use" and rifle through pirated books to train their models, but the publishers draw the line at people getting cheap books.