Quote:I there is someone who invest time to write a book, it's his decision to take money for this book or not. We have to respect this decision. If there is someone who made it for free, we should spent money to show him, that his work is valuable.
I think this applies to those who ask very low prices for their work. Mike Driscoll comes to mind, most recent book 'ReportLab' only $14.99, and offers all 4 of his books for $29 and often for free.
80 bucks for a pocket reference that is 4 years old is ridiculous. Im not surprised that there are pdf's of the book all over. A pocket reference is kind of pointless anyways, as there are tons of web pages with listing python fundamentals that have the exact same thing, except it would be up to date. It wouldnt even have the changes of python 3.6 in there. Its that old. I wouldnt blink an eye at pirating it, as its way out of date.
His name shall be John.
John often goes with the approach to pirate it, and then pay if its decent. If he hates the content, he does not have to waste his time returning it. Online returns sucks anyways as you have to pay to ship the damn thing back most of the time.
Often he will pirate a game that caught his attention on Steam. If its from a small group of programmers, and he likes it, he will more often buy it just to support them. If hes hate it and just delete the pirated copy anyways, he is obviously not going to buy the game.
That is exactly what I've done numerous times.
Thanks for the 2 cents <;
Phil
Well, I am downloading books too. Where I live, those books are not for sale so what I should have to do?
I think that the knowledge shouldn't be paid but it is. If the documentation for all programming languages were not so hard to grasp for novices... In theory, everything that is in the book is on the web for free but often is not so easy to understand it. It is written for professionals not for people who just want to learn and see how to do it.
It's not the moral the question here but what choice do you have.
Understood Wavic. A perspective which is not my first perspective living in the bubble of the USA.
We are lucky to have these resources available to us if we choose to go find them.
Do you know about PackitPub?
packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-learning
Hasta luego,
Phil
Your question is more general. There are not just the books for free on the web violating the copyright law. The whole movie, music and other industries have to evolve, not to protect their products pushing a law after another. A good example is Netflix and the website you have mentioned. Yes, I know it well.
https://python-forum.io/Thread-book-Vari...rs?page=17
I am too busy right now and I am unable even to look at packtpub so I can't post for new free books. A love these guys.
I just thought of this thread when i "got" a book online yesterday. I think it falls under the circumstances that it should be free, but is not. I got a book that was written in the 50's about a strategy on playing a board game. And yes it still applies today. However the book is considered the best and is out of print. The author is dead. And the only way to legitimately get it is to pay Amazon or similar 60 bucks for a digital copy. Needless to say, you know what i did. I dont care what the law says, i consider it free if the author is dead and was written almost 70 years ago.
that is for published books after 1977. For something in the 50's its protected for 95 years from the date of publication. They are just asking for it to be pirated.
Way TOO long. I think it should be life of author plus 10 to 20 years max.
When I was a young programmer, I worked for a well known (and very old -- Little Brown, founded in 1837 --) publisher. While there, I helped design their royalties system. The copyright and royalties at that time were all dependent on how good the author's lawyer was. Some books carried copyright and royalties for generations. Some expired at death. Today, the government decides the longevity of copyrights. In 1976, Revision of the U.S. Copyright Act extended copyright to 75 years. I thought this ridiculous when the bill was passed, this was done in anticipation of adherence to the Berne Convention rules (Paris, url:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/ber...rview.html ).
Included in that bill is the following clause:
Quote:It states that "the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright." To determine whether the use of a work is a fair use, the following four factors are to be considered: purpose and character of the use, nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the whole, and the effect of the use on the potential market.