* Sued for medical bills because insurance didn't cover what they said they would.
* Dumped my fiancé after horrendous fights and my emotional stability.
* Apartment complex broke my contract by letting her out of lease while holding me liable for the whole contract.
* Finally evicted and living in a spare room of good friends out of the goodness of their hearts.
* 3 month wait on unemployment in Indiana because employer disputed it.
* School is paid for, but due to medical condition when I failed school, they refuse me admittance calling it an academic issue - oxycontin, perocet, and hydrocodone = finals fail.
* My right arm can only bend in certain areas but load bearing above my head is less than 5lbs. Disabled enough for free schooling, but not enough for SS disability.
* 10% unemployment in this area.
So yes, maybe i'm "classy". However, you have no idea of my circumstances. Its not like I could afford it anyway. The lawsuits for garnishment for my medical bills have netted 0$. Cant get work. And im relying on my friends for food even, until food stamps are granted.
Given your circumstances, why do you even have an opinion about $500 professional cooking books?
Sorry you got dumped on --- I'm really just commenting to point out that this is priced along the lines of TAOCP --- but really why are you even thinking about this stuff?
I meant what I said. Cooks Illustrated is excellent, and they publish so many books every year that you can get (absolutely great) older editions for ultra cheap.
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.
I'm a geek though, and more bothered by the illogic than the morals. "I'm unemployed and failed school and broke up with my girlfriend so a 6-volume set of books on modernist cuisine should cost me $0".
If he had just thrown "and my dream is to become a chef" into the mix my nerd cortex would have been at peace.
So because Im poor, I shouldn't keep reading about all sorts of things on the forefront of technology, or at least form some sort of an opinion? And money is hardly an indicator of intelligence.
Yeah, my situation sucks. Really sucks. However, I will still keep learning and doing, even if I have to skirt the law here and there to do as such. And if your point of not using torrents is because it's "bad", guess that makes me bad. I've downloaded all sorts of material, quite a bit which is not offered in any format.
And yes, when I was better off, I did buy stuff that I could easily have gotten for free. But your high and mighty attitude would never excuse it for any reason, an attitude I despise.
When I was broke I read lots of books but certainly didn't care about what a patent trolling dong from Microsoft thought about Sous Vide (still don't). Maybe that's what t.ptacek meant?
Patent troll or not, you (probably --- I don't have the books) have to respect the effort. The guy has a zillion dollars and has chosen to spend some of it to make the largest possible impact on cooking. That's pretty cool.
You should read the section of SuperFreakonomics devoted to him before dismissing him as a patent troll. If that book is to believed (and I'll take the word of Levitt and Dubner, distinguished authors who visited his lab, over that of Michael Arrington any day) he's a pretty swell guy.
That's because "patent troll" is a derogatory term made up by people who are opposed to the very idea of patents. It comes from people who are frustrated by the patent system (often rightfully so) but aren't intelligent or knowledgeable enough to propose real solutions that don't undermine the basis of our economy and instead want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It's the tech equivalent of calling someone a communist. It's a valueless ad hominem.
* Lost my job
* Sued for medical bills because insurance didn't cover what they said they would.
* Dumped my fiancé after horrendous fights and my emotional stability.
* Apartment complex broke my contract by letting her out of lease while holding me liable for the whole contract.
* Finally evicted and living in a spare room of good friends out of the goodness of their hearts.
* 3 month wait on unemployment in Indiana because employer disputed it.
* School is paid for, but due to medical condition when I failed school, they refuse me admittance calling it an academic issue - oxycontin, perocet, and hydrocodone = finals fail.
* My right arm can only bend in certain areas but load bearing above my head is less than 5lbs. Disabled enough for free schooling, but not enough for SS disability.
* 10% unemployment in this area.
So yes, maybe i'm "classy". However, you have no idea of my circumstances. Its not like I could afford it anyway. The lawsuits for garnishment for my medical bills have netted 0$. Cant get work. And im relying on my friends for food even, until food stamps are granted.
So go ahead, heap on the criticism.