Comment on Releases 0.9.462 - 0.9.468: Change Log

  1. Jordan Ida (Jordan_Ida) Wed 20 May 2026 11:14AM UTC

    Thank you, NeaPoulain and Snowgrouse (above).

    You make valid points.

    I guess I equate it to leaving the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition. One isn't asking to have one's car stolen, and one doesn't "deserve it," but why make it easy?

    We're allowing them to download the book, as a single file, in Kindle compatible format. We're handing them the keys, aren't we?

    Make the thieves work for it. Make them copy-paste.

    Oh! And btw, thank you admins. So cool that this place is a non-profit sustained by volunteers, so I should have led with that.

    Last Edited Wed 20 May 2026 11:16AM UTC

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    1. grommile Wed 20 May 2026 06:13PM UTC

      A rendition of the Clawed Girl from They Bleed Pixels, in a style almost entirely derivative of Rich Burlew's. My own work.

      Make the thieves work for it. Make them copy-paste.

      Only one thief has to do the work of writing a tool that injects a handy button into the page to fetch your fic a chapter at a time, strip the page header/footer, and repack it to EPUB. All the others can just use a copy of the tool once it's been written.

      There are valuable lessons to be learned from observing the video game industry from the 1980s to the present day.

      The first lesson is that copy protection attracts crackers, simply by existing as a challenge for them to defeat. Many of the crackers may not actually want a copy of the protected work; they simply want the self-image boost and/or peer approbation that arises from defeating the copy protection in the first place.

      The second lesson is that making copy protection stronger has a long and dishonorable history of inconveniencing honest users more than it inconvenienced crooks – which, in turn, encourages honest users to become crooks, because illicit copies are more convenient to use than legitimate ones.

      (In the 00s and early 10s, many people who bought games full price would actually install cracked copies, because the cracks disabled the CD check.)

      AO3 does not really have the resources to run a Red Queen's Race.

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      1. NeaPoulain Wed 20 May 2026 08:33PM UTC

        Worth nothing the tool that repacks websites into epubs already exists in multiple browsers.

        +1 to all the rest.

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    3. Forested_Woodlands Sat 23 May 2026 04:26AM UTC

      Emo_furry_photo_that_refused_to_load

      quote of the year

      make the theives work for it. make them copy-paste

      yes so many ppl r way too lazy to even doa simple copy and paste.
      anywasy yeah u make a valid point tho

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