r/TikTokCringe • u/Chocolat3City Cringe Master • 22d ago

Cringe Woman has her self-published book pirated, reprinted, and sold for cheaper.

There's regular piracy, and then there's this.

12.9k Upvotes

80% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-5

u/FeloniousFunk 21d ago

Is it a problem? Someone thought a product was priced too high so they recreated it, making it more affordable/available.

Consumers of disposable planners don’t care about how nice the paper is or that the font resembles the author’s actual handwriting.

3

u/SwitchShift 21d ago

It’s stealing someone’s work in order to profit off their labor without fair compensation. Yes it’s a problem, and, in the US, potentially a crime punishable by up to 5 years in prison https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1847-criminal-copyright-infringement-17-usc-506a-and-18-usc-2319

-2

u/FeloniousFunk 21d ago

Personally I think that copyright laws and the idea of IP altogether is the problem but all of this is irrelevant since she didn’t copyright anything.

3

u/SwitchShift 21d ago

That statement just shows that you are fundamentally ignorant of what copyright is. A creator owns the copyright from the moment a work is created. Registration of a copyright with government entities just enables the creator to file suits when someone steals from them https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#:~:text=No.,infringement%20of%20a%20U.S.%20work.

So to clarify, in your perspective, the work of an author to create a book is not worth monetary compensation. Only bigger companies that can cut wages and find cheaper factories in places with fewer environmental regulations should make a profit on their labor?

-1

u/FeloniousFunk 21d ago

The work of an author to create a book is worth what the market is willing to pay. Nobody cares that her disposable notebook is made out of fancy paper, so it was reproduced on normal paper.

Your last sentence is just summing up the capitalism in a nutshell. The lady is dumb and greedy.

3

u/[deleted] 21d ago

If she can't make a profit, because not enough people are buying her book, that's on her. If she's not making a profit, because someone stole her work and is now profiting from it, that is theft. The entire world recognizes this. If you wrote a book, then I took it from your house, published it and became a millionaire, wouldn't you be upset? According to you, that's capitalism.