Piracy Experiment

[GA Russell]

I guess I didn't understand what pirating is all about.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by viviena

I don't want people going away thinking that 'torrent' is synonymous with 'illegal activity' though. Torrenting is also a very effective way to distribute legitimate material. Examples are clearbits, GameUpdates.org for game demos, patches, and mods, and LinuxTracker.

And don't forget Project Gutenberg's e-books, which can be downloaded via torrent.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

I guess I didn't understand what pirating is all about.

You have something you like, you want to share it. You benefit from others sharing their stuff with you, so you share your stuff with them. As simple as that. Money has nothing to do with it.

[wvcherrybomb]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

Is it just me, or does it seem like every single discussion for months now is nothing but an ugly endless argument?

It's NOT just you ...

[Anke Wehner]

Originally Posted by viviena

I don't want people going away thinking that 'torrent' is synonymous with 'illegal activity' though. Torrenting is also a very effective way to distribute legitimate material. Examples are clearbits, GameUpdates.org for game demos, patches, and mods, and LinuxTracker.

Jamendo uses them for music by indie bands who are into "let people download for free and pay if/what they want".

Originally Posted by GA Russell

I guess I didn't understand what pirating is all about.

There are different kinds of pirates. There are people who offer collections of ebooks (which they probably pulled from filesharing sources) for sale. There seem to be websites that offer loads and loads of downloads but require signup, but for all I know they scam their customers in addition to the whole piracy business.

But I'm pretty sure the brunt of "piracy" is made up of people like ardeegee explained. The high-quality, carefully checked ebooks certainly are the works of fans, who want to spread their favourite book - same principle as someone trying to lend their favourite book to everyone they know, from a pure reader's-perspective. Only with more reach.

There's probably also a portion of people who see it as fight for their principles ("Information must be free!"), and I hear there are people who just like to collect files for bragging rights.

But, yeah, usually no fees but whatever your provider charges you for your internet connection, unless you're ignorant and think someone offering 100 ebooks for $10 on some ebay clone is legitimate.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Quexos

This is not retail (or if it is, its been tampered with). Retail text is always justified and here you can clearly see the text is not. A typical example of a lower quality copy compared to the actual purchased copy.

How long would it take to justify it?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I will say that I haven't managed to spot a UK edition of the Harry Potter ebooks. There are astonishingly good versions of the US editions out there though.

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Is there much of a difference, other than weird spellings of colour and the like?

I think it's most obvious in the first book, with "Philosopher's Stone" being replaced by "Sorcerer's Stone". This also leads to some other changes being required. Let me see if I can remember one...

Oh yes, in Chapter 16 of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, in the UK version there are these two paragraphs:

“And in our first year,” said Neville to the group at large, “he saved that Philological Stone —”
“Philosopher’s,” hissed Hermione.

which had to be change in the US version to

“And in our first year,” said Neville to the group at large, “he saved that Sorcerous Stone —”
“Sorcerer’s,” hissed Hermione.

Which is a lot weaker in my opinion.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by viviena

Besides the changing of spelling, words and idioms were changed if they seemed too British, e.g. from British jumper to sweater, came top of the year to had the best grades of the first years, etc. The changes were done so that apparently American kids could appreciate the books without becoming boggled down in foreign words. An extensive list of changes can be found at the HP Lexicon.

Recently this has been in my mind a lot, as I've also been searching high and low for ebooks in British English, with no success. Partly my insistence on BE is due to my desire of matching ebook versions with their pbook copies, but also because the British English editions are the ones with which I grew up, and I appreciate their local flavour. (Damnit Bloomsbury, release a BE edition already, I want searchable, digital copies! )

Given the list of changes I would have thought it would be easy enough to change them back?

[astra]

Many so called pirates, a.k.a. lammers are here

[viviena]

Originally Posted by Anke Wehner

Jamendo uses them for music by indie bands who are into "let people download for free and pay if/what they want".

Ooh, I think I might check that out.

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Given the list of changes I would have thought it would be easy enough to change them back?

I never thought of that. I suppose I wouldn't mind doing that if I had to quote the occasional passage, but when it comes to reading for pleasure, I'd probably rather read my paper books. I'm not sure if the website I linked to covers every single change, and I'd hate having to carefully and laboriously proof-read the texts to make sure sentences still make sense, as well as tweak spellings.

[Iphinome]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I think it's most obvious in the first book, with "Philosopher's Stone" being replaced by "Sorcerer's Stone". This also leads to some other changes being required. Let me see if I can remember one...

Oh yes, in Chapter 16 of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, in the UK version there are these two paragraphs:

“And in our first year,” said Neville to the group at large, “he saved that Philological Stone —”
“Philosopher’s,” hissed Hermione.

which had to be change in the US version to

“And in our first year,” said Neville to the group at large, “he saved that Sorcerous Stone —”
“Sorcerer’s,” hissed Hermione.

Which is a lot weaker in my opinion.

That can be jarring, worse for me, my order of the phoenix is the US edition and my philosopher's stone is the Canadian edition.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by viviena

An extensive list of changes can be found at the HP Lexicon.

Thanks for the link. I hadn't realised that they had been messed about quite so much. It makes me even more surprised that there isn't a British English version anywhere in the torrents.

[wannabee]

Great, just sent a report to my managers arguing against DRM on our entire range of ebooks about to be released and found this thread less than 24 hours later. I know anyone can circumvent DRM if they want to but my argument was the majority of readers are honest.

Another point. I accept that pirates pass on pirated material but if it was your hard earned money that bought that ebook or Adobe program how quick will you break that DRM and pass it on for free?

[abookreader]

Originally Posted by Quexos View Post
This is not retail (or if it is, its been tampered with). Retail text is always justified and here you can clearly see the text is not. A typical example of a lower quality copy compared to the actual purchased copy.

I really don't know what all the squabbling is about "Retail" but the fact that it has to be justified is not true. This is my copy of the Clan of the Cave Bear bought from Amazon on October 7, 2010 for $1.59 - put in Calibre and now living as a Mobi file. I'll post my receipt if you insist. As you can see, not justified.

It really makes no sense to me that somebody would buy a current book, scan it, and then assemble an ebook from the scan for the sake of pirating when DRM can be broken in under 5 seconds. Maybe there's an advantage to it that I'm not understanding. Older books where the torrents have been around since the time when eBook were not readily available are a different thing obviously.

[abookreader]

btw, I'm not a formatting expert by any means but a couple of months ago somebody posted a hack for the Kindle 3 to get the possibility to turn full justification off on the Kindle. That is what I use because I prefer ragged edge when I read.

Most of my books show up as not justified now on the Kindle.