I feel like proportionality is related also to the scale. If a student pirates a textbook, I’d agree that 100x is excessive, but this is a corporation handsomely profiting off of mass piracy.

It’s crazy to imagine, but there was surely a document or slack message thread discussing where to get thousands of books, and they just decided to pirate them and that was OK. This was entirely a decision based on ease or cost, not based on the assumption it was legal. Piracy can result in jail time IIRC, so honestly it’s lucky the employee who suggested this, or took the action avoided direct legal liability.

Oh and I’m pretty sure other companies (meta) are in litigation over this issue, and the publishers knew that settlement below the full legal limit would limit future revenue.

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imron 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

> handsomely profiting

Well actively generating revenue at least.

Profits are still hard to come by.

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griffzhowl 7 days ago | parent [-]

Operating profits certainly but if you include investments the big players are raking it in aren't they?

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__loam 7 days ago | parent [-]

Investment is debt lol. Maybe you can make the argument that you're increasing the equity value but you do have to eventually prove you're able to make money right? Maybe you don't, this system is pretty messed up after all.

	▲	griffzhowl 7 days ago \| parent [-]
		As long as you have more money coming in than your costs, then it's technically a profit even if that money comes from investments. It's not the same as debt from a loan, because people are buying a percentage stake in the company. If the value of the company happens to go to zero there's nothing left to pay. But yeah, the amount of investment a company attracts should have something to do with the perception that it'll operate at a profit at some point

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waynesonfire 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

what a fascinating software project someone had the oppertunity to work on.