No, your view is American-centric because as an American, you have the privilege of assuming that everyone you are engaging with is American or operates from an American perspective.
Again. The person the OP screenshotted was an American complaining about American book piracy.
They entered a ongoing conversation.
It is very ignorant to believe that we all live in bubbles where we do not interact with each other on the internet. Because of American publisher companies pushing the same anti-piracy laws and ideologies you push for, people across the global south are losing access to educational resources. As for the point about India and libraries, it is not nearly as spread out and accessible as libraries are in the United States, and libraries do not meet international standards.
Again -- if OP didn't want to engage in a conversation about American book piracy, OP shouldn't have taken that screenshot out of context. Sometimes a conversation can be about an American issue.
Libraries in India are a complex topic, and it depends on where in India OP is for how accessible they are. I don't think either one of us is in a position to assess that, but you seem determined to speak for them.
South Korea is literally not in the Global South. The Global South is an economic classification. Who draws the line at what is a necessity and what is not? What do you get out of admonishing people for finding accessible entertainment?
So it depends on whose definition we're using, however I concede that only a few folks group them in. My point is that the "Global South" is much more diverse in their levels of access, and it's not as homogeneous as you seem determined to cast it.
Most research shows that the people who pirate books are people who wouldnât have been able to afford them or buy them in the first place. Because of that, authors are not losing sales. Also, most piracy consumption comes from BRICS countries.
Now here's where you're wrong. When we're talking about American Book Piracy (which the screenshot in the OP's post was -- and makes up the largest percentage of piracy of American fiction), studies have shown that the majority of book piracy is done by largely middle class, college educated people. The most common cited reason for piracy is not affordability, but instead convenience.
And that's really the rub here.
When American Authors complain about American Book Piracy, someone always chimes in and drags in a strawman to justify their piraxy. "What about the Global South" isn't really an honest question in this context, because the source of the conversation wasn't about that. Of course, since OP did enthusiastically say they don't care about the creator of a work of art ever being compensated for their work, I find myself thinking that they wanted this fight more than anything else.
I'm going to repeat myself for emphasis: You are here defending someone claiming that they don't care if writers ever get compensated for their labor.
I have spent a lot of work writing novels and comics over the years. When someone says they're entitled to my work, my labor, and laughs at it, I don't really care where they're from. No one needs my books to live, but I need to be able to feed myself. If writers can't eat, they don't write. Period. You want books? Well, in the modern capitalist hellscape authors need to be paid for that to happen.
And again. The problem is largely Americans, but even if it wasn't -- the solution is to improve accessibility in those other places, not take from working class people already struggling to get by. And since there are nearly infinite sources of free fiction online legally between Project Gutenberg, Archive.org, and what people freely share on fanfiction sites, I find it hard to sympathize.
(Also, that book piracy raid was a group mass producing physical books to sell for their own profit. That's not exactly some egalitarian operation that got broken up. Did you actually look into it? It was profiteers taking down profiteers and nothing more.)
