Quote:
Originally Posted by wvcherrybomb
So, with all this talk of piracy and the effects of it, I decided to check it out for myself. I had no intention of keeping any books. I simply wanted to see how easy it was and what was really available.
First, it took me about ten minutes to figure out how to do it and download the appropriate software. About another minute to find which two sites host the largest number of ebooks.
I found out that the selection is not good. I searched both of two top sites for about a dozen books on my wishlist. None were available. I then went through quite a few more books before I finally found one that appealed to me and one best seller.
It took a few minutes to download them and another couple of minutes to get them onto my Kindle. So, in less than 20 minutes, I had two pirated books on my ereader. It would be much quicker the second time around.
Now I took a look at these stolen books. The formatting was a big mess. I mean really, really bad! One of them had the title from the top of the page inserted randomly in between paragraphs. The other had some words that were spelled one letter at a time down the left side of page. I suppose if a person were desperate enough they could read them like this but it was quite unpleasant.
I removed the books from my ereader. I removed the books and software from my computer (including emptying the recycle bin  ).
What I learned from this is that piracy of ebooks doesn't seem to be any real threat. While it was very easy to do, there are just not that many books available and the formatting was a mess. Maybe from being converted all over the place? There is also the risk of downloading viruses, trojans, or who knows what onto your computer. Even if you're not morally opposed, it's just not worth it.
The ebook section of the darknet was the complete opposite of the music section, where any song ever made could be found in quantity. Either ebooks are too new to have made it out there, or readers are a more honest lot. |
...very touching your naiveness
