Thomas, can you expand on the "don't torrent books" statement?
1) Above, someone who's interviewed Myrhvold says the book is probably being sold for printing costs.
2) It's often suggested that Myrvhold wrote this book to advance the field rather than to make money.
3) A legal alternative would be to check the book out from a library. Is this really a greater societal benefit?
I'm not suggesting the torrent is legal or a panacea, but are there not times when it's appropriate? A cookbook is a harder case than TAOCP, but their information content makes them easier to argue than music or movies. Should one just do without the information one can't afford? For bright but poor students to remain ignorant?
Do you feel that there's always a better alternative, or that the collateral damage is too great?
If Myrhvold wanted to give the book away for free, he'd have put it on the web. Maybe he still will! The rest of this comment is just rationalizing. Going to the library to read the book is inconvenient (no library is going to let you check this book out; most libraries won't even have it for a couple years). The convenience you want costs $500. But you don't want to pay $500 for convenience, so you take it instead.
Don't kid yourself; you're not torrenting books to get access to the knowledge inside of them. You're torrenting them because you don't want to pay the convenience fee the publisher and author decided to charge.
Don't expect universal sympathy for this endeavor on a site dedicated to people who earn their living creating and selling intellectual property. I'm actually surprised people here are as supportive of piracy as they are.
> If Myrhvold wanted to give the book away for free, he'd
have put it on the web.
I agree. Not that he should be ashamed of this, but from this I'd conclude that his primary goal is not the advancement of knowledge as some have stated. Possibly he thinks maintaining a for-profit system of IP is more important, or possibly, because of his public stature, he doesn't feel it's possible for him to make it freely available despite his desire for the information to spread.
> Don't kid yourself; you're not torrenting books to get access to the knowledge inside of them.
This is technically true, but only because I've yet to read torrents any books that I don't already own. I was recently excited, however, to find a torrent of one of the most expensive books I own, Angelo Corvitto's "Secretos del Helado",(in Spanish and 150 Euro, but the best book I've seen on making ice cream), as it enabled me to refer a high school student in Montreal to a passage that I thought would help him in his endeavors. He, I warrant, was "torrenting books to gain access to the knowledge inside of them", and despite the ethical ambiguity, I'm glad that he is able to do so.
> Going to the library to read the book is inconvenient (no
library is going to let you check this book out; most
libraries won't even have it for a couple years).
Yes, this is true. I've checked out different volumes of TAOCP by interlibrary loan at least three times, and I've been grateful for the privilege. I've read the El Bulli series sitting in a library (City College San Francisco has an excellent cookbook library), and am aware of the difficulties. This book will not be available by that means. How does that affect the ethics of reading a hypothetical illegal copy of this book?
> Don't expect universal sympathy for this endeavor on a
site dedicated to people who earn their living creating
and selling intellectual property.
I don't. I think it's a complex and thorny issue, moreso than you make it out to be. I've yet to come up with a position that would make the interlibrary loan and the used book purchase fully ethical, despite their legality. Personally, I'm working on a book that will be roughly equivalent to an expanded version of the ice cream chapter of Myrhvold's. My personal leanings are to make draft PDF's available for free, and price the book high, in the way that some academic authors do. But there are definitely tradeoffs.
> I'm actually surprised people here are as supportive of piracy as they are.
Yes. At a certain point this might make one reconsider one's own position. :)
I'd love your answer to the last question in the parent, though: is it that there is a better alternative, or that the collateral damage (reducing the market for future works) is too great?
ps. I'm not asking for an excuse to torrent this book. Oddly, I'm one of the few people who will likely buy it.
1) Above, someone who's interviewed Myrhvold says the book is probably being sold for printing costs.
2) It's often suggested that Myrvhold wrote this book to advance the field rather than to make money.
3) A legal alternative would be to check the book out from a library. Is this really a greater societal benefit?
I'm not suggesting the torrent is legal or a panacea, but are there not times when it's appropriate? A cookbook is a harder case than TAOCP, but their information content makes them easier to argue than music or movies. Should one just do without the information one can't afford? For bright but poor students to remain ignorant?
Do you feel that there's always a better alternative, or that the collateral damage is too great?