• theshatterstone54@feddit.uk
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    4 months ago

    These publishers’ names are:

    Hachette,

    Penguin Random House,

    Wiley,

    and

    HarperCollins

    Time to never buy any book from them again. I’m moving on to pirating ebooks and audiobooks. Sorry JRR and Christopher Tolkien (may you rest in peace), but I’m not buying any more of your books because they were published by HarperCollins. And I’m also not buying a lot of other books too.

    • Prunebutt@slrpnk.net
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      4 months ago

      I really appreciate the sentiment, but sadly: Individual boycots that aren’t attached to a concertated campaign sadly don’t work. Pirate away, but you can be certain that these publishers don’t know that you exist.

      • hydration9806@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        I would argue this is actually one of the most effective ways to respond. If enough people do it then the company has to react somehow (by pivoting, etc.). Obviously an organized effort would be better, but the “vote with your money” method isn’t anything to ridicule.

        • Prunebutt@slrpnk.net
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          4 months ago

          Name one instance where that worked when it wasn’t connected to a massive public outcry. Do you remember the Call of Duty “boycott”? Ubisoft is still in business, too.

          Also, the majority of book buyers don’t know or care about this verdict.

          Also also: The publishers won’t even be able to correlate the “lost” revenue of individual people boycotting with their shitty behavior. It’s not “Oh, we sold 1000 less copies of this book than expected, because we fought the archive.” It’s more: “Our predictions were off by 1000 copies. No idea if that’s because of some tangible factor, or just ‘noise’.”

          • hydration9806@lemmy.ml
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            4 months ago

            Encapsulated in that “etc.” in my first response is “going out of business”. This type of response would be way too difficult to get actual numbers for, but it has worked countless times. Just look at all the businesses that are no longer in business at all, they went out of business because they were no longer earning enough to stay viable.

            It doesn’t matter if the company connects the loss to a specific action (although it would be nice) since the end result is the same, after enough time.

            Lastly, I just don’t like the idea of my dollars being used by a company to further an agenda that I don’t want to support.

        • matcha_addict@lemy.lol
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          4 months ago

          if enough people do it

          And now will you make sure of that? As the other person mentioned, without a campaign, it’s futile. Most people won’t even hear of this

      • Chahk@beehaw.org
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        4 months ago

        you can be certain that these publishers don’t know that you exist

        I think it’s better this way.

      • Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de
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        4 months ago

        Maybe, but I am boycotting all capitalist entities the best I can. If I need something I try to buy used or from worker co-ops or to check it out from a library or pirate it.

  • far_university190@feddit.org
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    4 months ago

    On the other hand, authors have a right to be compensated in connection with the copying and distribution of their original creations.

    No author lose any compensation, only publisher. Publisher not have that right.

  • Chahk@beehaw.org
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    4 months ago

    I would like to see these publishers take on OpenAI, Midjourney and others, who basically said that copyright laws should not apply to them because AI would be “impossible” without them having free access to everything.

    • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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      4 months ago

      I wish people would stop comparing those uses of copyright to nonprofits like Internet Archive

      While I understand AI training exemptions to copyright are controversial, and think most people here would side with IA on ebook lending.

  • SplashJackson@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    “Just” lost it? I could have sworn I saw this news days ago, but “just” makes me feel like this happened minutes ago