# Motivations for distribution of pirated books online

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivations-for-distribution-of-pirated-books-online/426185>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [November 12, 2007, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivations-for-distribution-of-pirated-books-online/426185 "2007-11-12T22:26:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![justqwerty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/59ef9b/32.png) [@justqwerty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/justqwerty)\
**Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivations-for-distribution-of-pirated-books-online/426185/1 "2007-11-12T22:26:10Z")

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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.

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**Author:** ![Amp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Amp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amp)\
**Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivations-for-distribution-of-pirated-books-online/426185/2 "2007-11-12T22:27:21Z")

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Some people are just dicks.

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**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\
**Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivations-for-distribution-of-pirated-books-online/426185/3 "2007-11-12T22:52:40Z")

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There’s no shortage of people who believe all knowledge must be freely available, so they “liberate” books by scanning and posting pdf copies.

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**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\
**Post date:** [November 13, 2007, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivations-for-distribution-of-pirated-books-online/426185/4 "2007-11-13T03:25:12Z")

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**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.