Quote:
Originally Posted by nekokami
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. |
Yeah, this is actually a continuation of the early days of the 'warez' subculture. In those days, groups of crackers would race against each other to be the first to crack a piece of software, and post it on the BBSes. The most respected ones were the groups that could do '0-day' warez - i.e. cracked and distributed on or before release day. I imagine it's much the same subculture with respect to ebooks. Groups that release early and often gain more respect (without it mattering too much which software was released).
So yeah, I imagine it's more about quantity and speed than about quality, or even popularity.
EDIT: Oh, look at this, there's even a Wikipedia entry!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebook_scene