From: Kev Jackson Date: 2006-05-16T18:21:45+09:00 Subject: Re: Ticked Off Jeff Rose wrote: > Austin Ziegler wrote: > >> Okay, I'll admit it. I'm really pissed off. I don't pay attention to >> what goes on on the #ruby-talk IRC channel these days all that much, >> but something happened this afternoon that thoroughly pissed me off. >> >> [0515/16.53] hatezilla: seriously, pick it up. if you're iffy, get >> on emule and search >> for "ruby for rails" ... there's tons of pdfs floating around if you >> know where to look >> >> I consider David Black a friend of mine. I am *seriously* pissed off >> that some pissant little freak would advocate this action at all. I >> was similarly annoyed that people reacted as badly to Dave Thomas's >> announcement that the Rails 2nd Edition would be the same price. These >> people have done a *lot* for the Ruby community. >> >> They deserve your financial support. Don't be a pissant thief. Even >> temporarily. There are "sample chapters" for a reason. >> >> -austin > > [snip] > Life is not that black and white, and downloading a PDF to peruse, > or to read in its entirety, is barely different from checking out a > book from the library or borrowing from a friend. [snip] I kind of agree with this - 'check out the pdf and then buy the book attitude'. I also have a lot of sympathy for authors who get ripped off - but if anyone tries to tell me that 'copying a pdf' is the same as stealing a book from a store, I cannot agree with that - they are fundamentally different in that one is physical and one isn't, one is theft while the other is copyright infringement - one can get you a slap on the wrist, the other locked up (under current DMCA style laws). They are the same in that both deprive the author of revenue (in fact I'm not certain, but shop thefts probably don't deprive the author, although they do deprive the store). I live in the developing world, and the fact is that there are no bookstores that carry Prag Prog titles here - they simply cost too much for the bookstores to carry. Sadly this means that most developers here don't even think about spending 25-50% of their monthly salary on a book when they can download a pdf from a p2p network. It will get harder over time as the government here is cracking down on software piracy and copyright issues, but that basically means that smart people are deprived from resources that are available to other people just because of personal finances. There are special copies of addison wesley and apress/wrox, but no prag progs. I know that some publishers (AW/apress) have a special 'third world' editions - usually printed on lower quality paper - which is *much* cheaper than the copy you can get from Amazon/Borders. For me personally I'd like to get hold of AWDwR and Rails Recipes, but they aren't available in shops here and the Amazon price is a little too much for me (personally) - I will try to get my company to buy them - we already imported Ship It! from Amazon Japan. And yes the sample chapters are great - the pragmattic project automation sample chapter is the perfect documentation for CruiseControl. I do get paid enough to buy books (ebooks/dead-trees), so when I see a good book I try to get it - again though for most things here that means importing (which takes a while as it has to be inspected by customs). Ebooks are ok, but credit cards are a real rarity too, so payment methods are sometimes a problem for potential customers. I don't want to piss people off and support people who rip off the developers/writers who have done so much for the ruby community, but I wanted to enlighten you all to the realities here - it's easy to demonize people for 'stealing' a pdf, but sometimes their circumstances warrant it - I'd never criticise students trying to learn new stuff so that they can support their families (and yes this is extremely common here). Thanks Kev PS - most developers here do not own a PC, so this isn't a 'they can afford to pay for toys, why don't they buy our content' thing - it's simply that they generally have to pay for essentials first and when they want to improve their situation, they will take advantage of anything on offer to land a better job that pays more - this includes using p2p to get access to 'cracked' software or ebooks so that they can learn after hours