Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
I know this won&#x27;t be a popular take on HN, but while I can understand and to a certain extent sympathize with pirating movies (the intentional friction and arbitrary geographic limitations on access imposed by the multinational movie-industry conglomerates), I can&#x27;t see stealing some poor author&#x27;s work in the same light.<p>Sure, people get hung-up about DRM (which can easily be removed by widely-accessible tools), but e-books can be purchased pretty much anywhere in the world. I&#x27;m in Sweden but buy most of my e-books from the US. But often buy books directly from publishers (hopefully they, and the author, get a better cut that way).<p>The fact these people were trying to personally profit (some other HN:ers have documented this), while trying to present themselves as some sort of &quot;information wants to be free&quot; info-warriors doesn&#x27;t make the whole thing any better.<p>An enormous amount of work goes into producing a book - through a close friend who works in book-publishing I know a couple of authors who pretty much starve for a year or two to produce their work - and then the editing, typesetting, designing, proof-reading etc is all an enormous and personal investment.<p>In spite of what people think, authors are not all budding J.K.Rowlings with movie-deals and a couple of billion in the bank, and if we don&#x27;t buy their books, they won&#x27;t be able to produce the next one for people to pirate.