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In the spirit of wvcherrybomb's experiment and high-minded furtherance of maximizing the human reading experience, I tried the (drumroll, shudder, gasp, faint…) dread DarkNet. I didn't and still don't know the good sites. I'd never used a bit-torrent client before or gone to a bit-torrent link server before. I learned about bit torrent clients and link servers in about 5 minutes with a phone call and a search.
Once on a server I did a search on ".epub". Lo and behold there were thousands of entries and many of those contained hundreds or thousands of books. I examined metadata for appx 20 randomly selected torrent files and of those selected 5 relatively small files marked "safe" where user comments were positive. Within about 30 minutes I had about 500 MB worth of fiction, appx 700 titles. During this process I experienced a big hassle trying to train my firewall to accept peer and seed requests to/from my BT client and was tempted to turn the firewall off for a half hour completely, which I did. (Shudder. I guess I needed better firewall and BT client software both with finer-grained control.)
Added these downloaded books to an empty calibre test library. Randomly viewed 10 titles from each of the 5 original torrent file sources, then also checked a bunch of titles I was interested in. This process took over an hour and would require a lot longer to check every book, not to mention spend any time fixing format problems. My results: out of 700 titles, perhaps 02% were what I consider readable format quality, defined broadly as being "not too aggravating" on a continuum of aggravating to transparent. Of those I kept about 10 titles that I already own in paperback, after examining them very carefully, then trashed everything else.
This was hardly a rigorous experiment but I feel I can generalize enough from it for some personal conclusions:
1. I won't mess around with bit-torrent sites unless and until I'm much more savvy about firewalls, intrusion defense, and network stuff such as forcing use of static IP address instead of DHCP, and assigning dedicated ports as pinholes through firewall. During this experiment I felt like a sacrificial maiden chained to a cliff waiting for a dragon to eat me.
2. The music I tried during this was OK; trashed it all after testing. Didn't try movies. The books weren't worth the time and worry for a newbie to the bit-torrent process.
3. Additional cost for anonymizing/encryption service and better security software would be necessary before I'd feel more comfortable with the entire process. With that money I could buy eBooks instead.
4. I'd be interested in learning what one of those alleged "good, membership-only" book-piracy sites looks like, how much it costs, what the membership/joining process is, the quality of the selection and formats available. Until that experiment, if ever, I will avoid piracy sites and pirated copies.
In summary, the moral issue doesn't bother me for books I already own in physical form, but at present the risk, cost, and time factors prevent piracy from being convenient enough for me. This is in part because I have high standards for what I allow in my library, in part because I'm a noob, and in part because I'm lazy.
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