Is it wrong to give away someone else's work for free?

Uh... yeah, actually, it is very very different. YouTube videos have the ability to reach millions of people. That's absolutely different. Not to mention the fact that if she has enough followers, she could be making a profit from this. Also, not that it matters because it's still completely different, but teachers don't generally read entire books to their classrooms. If kids are required to read a certain book, either they have to buy it or the school buys it for them, so there is not business being stolen. Unless we are talking about children's books, which is a whole different category and there are completely different rules in that game.

I suppose that's true, but if it's out there on YouTube then it's available for anyone who searches for an audio version of that book.

I actually talked more with this particular woman about what she's doing, and she said that she doesn't keep the streams up forever. Just until she finished the book. So that actually is a bit different, and I have less of a problem with it. I still think it's not right, but I'm less concerned about it if she deletes the videos afterward. But this conversation isn't just about her anymore, but just people who do this in general.

I'm self-published, yes.

 

I did some internet reading on copyright rules and what I saw doesn’t surprise me.

The laws are written in a way that there are loopholes.

People are taking advantage of those loop holes. For example, a certain percentage of an intellectual work that’s copyright protected is allowed to be shared online without repercussions.

But let’s say a person shares a third on one video and the other two thirds on two other videos. They just shared shared everything. Is it right or wrong?

We used to see this with whole movies on YouTube where a poster would split a movie up into a dozen or more sections and post them. But I think YouTube has cracked down on it and I no longer see that happening.

BUT

The laws are also written in a way where if a creator of intellectual material takes the time to press their point and take things to court, that person has a good chance of winning.

Even if the work is split up he/she would have the valid point that the work is being shared in total and he/she wants all the parts removed from the public domain. I think the author would win if the issue was to be pressed.

——-

With this individual mention in the OP I think she’s clearly in the wrong, she’s sharing the whole book at once without permission. I think YouTube might catch it and pull the video. Or the author might apply some pressure and get the video pulled.

——-

As far as movies and books being shared in total in academic settings, I have no clue about the laws covering that. It sounds like a good subject for more research.

 

Yeah, that's all true and correct.

Actually, I checked out her channel and she doesn't read the whole thing all in one video. At least not on YouTube, I'm not sure what she does for twitch. On YouTube, her videos are a few chapters at a time, but she does share the whole book. I'm very confident that if the author of the books knew and protested with YouTube, there would be no hesitance for them to take them down and issue her a strike. But that probably won't happen, because the authors likely dont know about it.

In posting this thread, I was mostly curious about people's opinions. Being an author who has gotten works copyrighted, and a YouTube creator myself, I know quite a bit about the laws already. I was just curious if other people agree with me that it's wrong, because she didn't seem to think it was, and that was confusing to me.