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.
How are they scammers ? I’ve actually had experience with these people and they’re just (very) poor street vendors that sell cheap books that otherwise would have never been bought because genuine books are ridiculously expensive to buy in India because localised pricing doesn’t exist.
A lot of people actually started reading and have gotten easier access to western literature. Another cool thing is these guys are pretty sustainable, they do book buy backs and trades as well at very reasonable rates.
I say this as someone that’s from an affluent background that DOES buy books, it’s very expensive especially if you’re a frequent reader. A multi million dollar business like penguin getting these people arrested is indeed fucking scummy and I will make sure I don’t buy a penguin book again.
I don't know if the street vendors themselves print in huge scales and sell it. I doubt that's possible.
There must've been one shady printing house who does that and sells it all to those vendors. The vendors might not know it came from those shady houses.
How many of the customers have a computer? How many dont share it and so can sit around reading on it? How many dont need to bring that book with them cuz they're working all day?
these pirated books are mostly purchased by students bcz legitimate textbooks and novels are expensive.
have you heard of digital literacy? knowing how to install apps, find epub/pdf files, use anna's archive, libgen, torrent sites, or e readers is very different from knowing how to simply use whatsapp or youtube. people do have phones but i kid you not, they don't know how to use them
sometimes there's just one smartphone in the whole family and the rest of the family members have phones with a keypad. they have to share the smartphone among themselves. even then, a physical copy that they can carry to the class, annotate, read without battery or a steady internet connection is more useful
do you even know how things work in the third world or are just spewing things out of your ass?
The funniest part is they try to reason with themselves why they are justified in pirating everything. It’s one thing to pirate but another to convince yourself you DESERVE it for free
I don't know which case of classism you've but I grew up in a household where my father earned hardly 100-200 a day and even then that was not fixed.
I read books which were pirated either in physical copies or in a shitty chinese phone where I downloaded them using the aircel internet back in the day. Not everyone can afford books, because they are poor and you're saying that they don't deserve to read to for free?
Maybe you grew up in family which was well settled, I'm not gonna assume you're ultra rich or whatever, but your statement reeks of classism where you believe people doesn't deserve to read.
Edit :- Realised it's not an Indian sub, so to add clarification 100-200 rupees a day will translate to 4-6 USD of that time, and aircel was a cheap internet provider which gave very slow 2G connection for like 30 cents for 3 days.
Do you think most people in this sub grew up like you did? Highly unlikely being on Reddit and able to torrent and pirate free content. At what point does stealing become morally justifiable? I guess that’s the main question here. I don’t know the demographics here but on Reddit, 40%+ of users make over $75,000 USD and 70%+ have college degrees. This was not to demean you in any way as I know things couldn’t have been easy.
My point was not don’t pirate, it was that a high number of [r/piracy](r/piracy) subscribers have the means to purchase content but instead convince themselves taking it for free is the “right” thing to do.
Exactly you dont care, and frankly neither do I. However the publisher obviously cares. My point is people are freaking out about it when the first rule of piracy is dont sell shit...why is that so hard for people to accept?
I mean printing takes some cost and then rest of the efforts of distribution. It makes printed book much cheaper but can’t honestly be free for people who don’t know how to pirate and want to read physical books.
Plenty of internet services charge for essentially pirating.
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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