When you are treated like a thief (and get additional harm like being forced to install spyware) because you did the legal thing and purchased a book you know that you are in the wrong side of the lane.

Same happened with music (Sony had rootkit bundled in their CDs), DVDs (the FBI warning screen), games and so on. You get punished if you try to be a good behaving customer.

If paying results in a worse experience than having to steal, then the business is indeed questionable.

Paying is always a worse experience than stealing, until you get caught.

It's very hard to get caught and prosecuted for piracy though, which is why the "experience" is so much better.

> Paying is always a worse experience than stealing, until you get caught.

Nah.

Take netflix for example: you pay your subscription and you get to watch movies. ez pz.

Now take the pirating route: you have to find torrents, such torrents have to have seeds, you need disk space, you need a torrenting app, you might have to leave your computer turned on for a long time etc etc.

Netflix is sucessful because they managed to make paying better than pirating.

I don't think the writer of this blog post would accept "Netflix for ebooks." Netflix still has DRM, and you definitely don't own any of the content you watch on Netflix. For someone whose whole point is that they won't buy anything but a DRM-free epub to load into Calibre, I doubt that a such an alternative (which already exists, by the way, in the form of Kindle Unlimited, Scribd, or any number of library apps) would be an acceptable solution.

Nope.

Popcorn Time exists, and it's just as easy as Netflix. Much better catalogue too. It also downloads while streaming, so if you have to stop in the middle, you can more easily pick back up where you left off because it's already downloaded. Also you can then share this downloaded file with whomever you want because it's DRM free, but you can't send a Netflix movie to someone else, which was the author's main quibble anyway.

Much better UX for movies with piracy, even with Netflix, which is a great service.

Yes, and I agree.

But while it's widely known, it's still less easy to use than netflix.

That's only because sharing movies isn't as easy (files are quite large) and law enforcement goes after pirates. If piracy sites could flourish without being disturbed, it would be absolutely impossible to compete with them. And this is the exact situation you have with book piracy.

If that were true, Netflix would not have been the success we know. When the user experience of buying anything is easier than the illegal counterpart, that's how you win over piracy.

Please see my reply to the other respondent about Popcorn Time.

Regardless, my broader point is a complete rejection of the idea that "businesses should just make getting X easier than piracy" is a reasonable point to make at all. The onus is not on the business.

Do you know what else is an easier experience when you steal? Clothes shopping. The UX is much better when you just walk in to a clothing store, pick out what you want, and then walk out. No waiting in a queue to checkout, no receipts, etc. etc. Clearly the onus is on clothing stores to make the experience of paying for the good easier than just walking out with them, right?

What about restaurants? Wouldn't it be so much nicer if you could just go in, sit, eat your meal, and then not have to pay? No having to deal with tipping, splitting the bill, arguing over charges, etc. Just walk in, eat, and leave. Clearly then the onus is on restaurants to make the "paying for your meal" experience easier than dining-and-dashing, right?

Who else would the onus be on then? Ultimately if you don't like something that's happening to you, then it's on you to address it. The cops most likely aren't going to give a shit about someone seeding a torrent of your pdf, and while publishers haven't completely recouped sales since the advent of internet piracy, services like Spotify have definitely slowed the bleeding.

And yet he mentions his good experience with GOG, No Starch, etc. I think he's just used to publishers who don't use DRM.

That is, until there's a piece of content he wants that's not available from one of those vendors.

The problem with those vendors really comes down to selection, and they have a smaller selection. Like it or not, if there's something highly desirable and current, and he _must_ have it, he's going to have to deal with the inevitable pains of DRM, or resort to piracy.

I'm sure the bean counters at content producers have done the calculus of losing a certain percentage of prospective paying customers vs. convenience, and have decided that certain inconveniences are worthwhile.

Bit of a contradiction here, since he also says (before mentioning GOG, No Starch, etc.):

“So I bought it. For the first time in my life, I bought an ebook, because it's 2020, so why not.”

I find the "it's 2020" statement strange in more than one way.

Yeah, ebooks are higher tech than paper, but I find the experience to be worse than paper.

I have no problem reading long-form content on a screen, but I'd rather be reading a long scrolling HTML page than a "paged" ePub or PDF.

I just set up an Obooquity server on my network so I can access my eBooks from any device, and I dislike the experience. FWIW, I dislike physical eBook readers and mobile eBook reading apps too.

DRM aside, I feel like "it's 2020", and the fact you have to flip pages to read eBooks to be somewhat ridiculous.

Just an assumption on my part, but the 2020 statement might be referring to the current state of the world, i.e., thanks to ongoing quarantines in many places, it’s easier to buy e-books than physical ones.

I don't know about hardware readers, but there are apps that let you scroll instead of paging. In Calibre, for example, you can switch to "flow mode".

He also mentions Z Library, which is indeed an ebook piracy website.