[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I would venture to say that a vast percentage of those sites are actually torrent sites.

I would venture to say that a significant portion of those illegally downloading books don't know what a torrent is.

Aside for the difficulty in hashing a file that was never uploaded, some of those sites e.g. The Pirate Bay are probably not going to be all that cooperative.

There is no illegality where law enforcement gets anywhere near 100 percent enforcement coverage.

In real life, I'm sure most antitrust violators do get away with it, so long as they price within a range rather than all the same. Suppose I was to tell you that antitrust enforcement is worthless, because all conspirators have to do is meet privately and avoid discussing sensitive subjects in emails, and to burn anything in writing. Would you buy that? Then why should I buy that only torrents matter?

A lot of the rest will be copies-of-copies, which means they won't be byte-compatible. e.g. it won't help copyright holders trying to take down a home video that has music playing in the background...

This illustrates one of several subtle advantages book publishers have over the music industry when it comes to reducing piracy. I realize there are ways to make book files not byte compatible. But there also are thoughtless perpetrators -- who imagine they are being helpful to readers -- who will upload exactly what they downloaded. That can and should be reduced.

Also, what child pornography hash list? I can imagine more inefficient ways of recognizing and blocking child pornography, but I would have to resort to things like "throwing darts at a list of names".

That was a guess as to what is being done. I'm sure you could catch some perpetrators that way. I thought of it, so others smarter than me have as well. I'm also guessing that none of the law enforcement methods are what you call efficient.