There are three in my town of <9,000 people. One benefits the homeless shelter, one helps fund things for people living in the old folks home, and the other is for disabled veterans. I know the employees make money (one of them is 100% volunteers) but no one is getting rich from them.
“Thrift” doesn’t mean it’s a charity either, take for example Value Village. There are also a ton of “consignment stores” that are for profit businesses and will get real mad if you call them a thrift store.
Well yeah, consignment stores and thrift stores are inherently different business models. A thrift store owns the donated items they’re selling. A consignment store offers a storefront for items that people want to sell. Sort of like Facebook marketplace or eBay. The consignment skims off the top for operating costs and service fees, and then sends the rest of the money to the actual seller.
Say you have an item that you know is worth $250 on the market, but you don’t have an easy way of selling it yourself. You take it to a consignment store, and they add it to their shelf listed at $250. It sells. The consignment store takes $25 from the sale, and sends you the remaining $225. You made less than if you would have sold it yourself, but you were willing to pay $25 for the convenience and foot traffic of a storefront. Because again, you didn’t have the means to list it yourself, so you found a place that was willing to list it for you.
I haven’t seen a library with software to lend since I was a kid, I used to go and get a ton of games n random software and rip them all lmao. But there was a lawsuit from software companies (ofc, can’t have any fun in this world) at some point in the mid 2000s against a library district and it all got pulled. The lawsuit was based on the fact they had to share non-transferable, non-shareable license keys to make it work, which is why we still have movies and console games at libraries, because there’s no license key involved.
Yep, loaning physical media with software isn’t a thing anymore for that exact reason. Any software or digital platform we offer (ancestry, language learning, ebooks, etc) we either have a ‘one copy one user’ licence which essentially functions like a physical copy, we’re directly paying for each time something is accessed, or we have a subscription specifically made for libraries. We can loan out things like Kindles loaded with ebooks that we’ve purchased, but there’s still a grey area with loaning out a tablet that has the major streaming services installed (with accounts paid for by the library), so we haven’t gone down that route yet
okay correct me if I’m wrong but this is definitely illegal, right?
Yup. I’ve volunteered at a couple thrift stores, and we’d just toss stuff like this.
SA isn’t a thrift store, it’s a for-profit corporation. Look at what the CEO was paid.
What thrift store isn’t nowadays.
There are three in my town of <9,000 people. One benefits the homeless shelter, one helps fund things for people living in the old folks home, and the other is for disabled veterans. I know the employees make money (one of them is 100% volunteers) but no one is getting rich from them.
“Thrift” doesn’t mean it’s a charity either, take for example Value Village. There are also a ton of “consignment stores” that are for profit businesses and will get real mad if you call them a thrift store.
Well yeah, consignment stores and thrift stores are inherently different business models. A thrift store owns the donated items they’re selling. A consignment store offers a storefront for items that people want to sell. Sort of like Facebook marketplace or eBay. The consignment skims off the top for operating costs and service fees, and then sends the rest of the money to the actual seller.
Say you have an item that you know is worth $250 on the market, but you don’t have an easy way of selling it yourself. You take it to a consignment store, and they add it to their shelf listed at $250. It sells. The consignment store takes $25 from the sale, and sends you the remaining $225. You made less than if you would have sold it yourself, but you were willing to pay $25 for the convenience and foot traffic of a storefront. Because again, you didn’t have the means to list it yourself, so you found a place that was willing to list it for you.
Maybe not? Libraries can lend out pirated media for reasons. Maybe charities can sell it.
Edit: I’m getting downvoted and I’m not sure why. Maybe it was just my library that did this?
I haven’t seen a library with software to lend since I was a kid, I used to go and get a ton of games n random software and rip them all lmao. But there was a lawsuit from software companies (ofc, can’t have any fun in this world) at some point in the mid 2000s against a library district and it all got pulled. The lawsuit was based on the fact they had to share non-transferable, non-shareable license keys to make it work, which is why we still have movies and console games at libraries, because there’s no license key involved.
Yep, loaning physical media with software isn’t a thing anymore for that exact reason. Any software or digital platform we offer (ancestry, language learning, ebooks, etc) we either have a ‘one copy one user’ licence which essentially functions like a physical copy, we’re directly paying for each time something is accessed, or we have a subscription specifically made for libraries. We can loan out things like Kindles loaded with ebooks that we’ve purchased, but there’s still a grey area with loaning out a tablet that has the major streaming services installed (with accounts paid for by the library), so we haven’t gone down that route yet
wait really. that’s cool
Its not everywhere, and I’m sure the corps are trying to chip away at it but yeah.
I’ve never heard of this.
https://www.ala.org/advocacy/copyright/copyrightarticle/librariescreatures