Quote:
Originally Posted by Sparrow
I'm thinking the people who'd download and read the pirated text must be too hard up to buy it.
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A lot of what's circulating on the darknet isn't available in any legitimate ebook form. But as
Charlie Stross has pointed out, "I don't think most of the ebook sharing subculture is even about reading the books in the first place — it's about collecting, and participating in a gift sub-culture where your kudos is governed by how much stuff you can give away." I think Charlie is right on target with this. It's what drove the crazy race to put out each ebook version of the Harry Potter books more quickly than the previous volume.
And I think this is the reason that ANY reasonable attempt at providing good ebooks at a reasonable price with a reasonable TOS will have nothing to fear from the darknet. Ripping off "open" ebooks gets you no credit in the gift-giving sub-culture, and most people would far rather pay a reasonable price to be able to find what they're looking for easily and not have to worry about picking up a virus (or navigating past erm... rather unseemly ads) than go rummaging around the seamy side of the net to save a couple of bucks. Really.