What motivates people to create online versions of (pirated) books for free downloading?
It takes considerate efforts and fair amount of time
to scan hundreds of pages ,run it through OCR software ,
create PDF files /Ebooks… and then distribute it free ?
I fail to see any apparent reward for doing this.
It’s not the same as creating pirated mp3 files which is relatively easy to do.
Some people are just dicks.
There’s no shortage of people who believe all knowledge must be freely available, so they “liberate” books by scanning and posting pdf copies.
Gotpasswords has it. One of the slogans of the cyberpunk movement was “Information wants to be free.”. Some people believe it is immoral to charge for information and that they are acting ethically by making free copies available.