Textbook Torrent is back - more headache for publishers

[Alexander Turcic]

In a completely unsurprising move, Textbook Torrent, a textbook-sharing BitTorrent site, went dark after receiving sudden mainstream popularity. A group of publishers had contacted the hoster of the site, Dreamhost, claiming they have facilitated the P2P transfers of copyrighted textbooks, which you know, is true. Now, only a month later, the site is back and hosted at a more BitTorrent-friendly location, as the TorrentFreak blog reports.

To make matters worse for publishers, the textbook tracker has become public, meaning there will be no more ratio tracking and anyone with a BitTorrent client can download at free will. But before starting a download frenzy, remember, if you get caught illegally downloading copyrighted material, your e-book reader may not do you any good anymore, because not every prison cell provides AC power plugs...

Related: Is ebook piracy on the rise?

[nesagwa]

Um, downloading files illegally isnt punishable with jail time.

Why do you think people get sued instead of getting sent to prison in all these filesharing cases.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by nesagwa

Um, downloading files illegally isnt punishable with jail time.

You can't make a blanket statement to that effect - it depends on "intent". If you download for the purpose of commercial resale, that it then criminal copyright violation and you can go to jail for it.

Downloading for personal use only, however, is a civil offence, and "merely" carries a fine.

[nesagwa]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You can't make a blanket statement to that effect - it depends on "intent". If you download for the purpose of commercial resale, that it then criminal copyright violation and you can go to jail for it.

Downloading for personal use only, however, is a civil offence, and "merely" carries a fine.

Well yeah, thats the obvious exception, but I honestly doubt kids will download these textbooks and then try to sell them to other people.

Kind of defeats the purpose

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by nesagwa

Well yeah, thats the obvious exception, but I honestly doubt kids will download these textbooks and then try to sell them to other people.

Kind of defeats the purpose

Market stalls around where I live are full of people selling pirated DVDs; wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if people did the same with textbooks .

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If you download for the purpose of commercial resale

There's no such thing in the US. If you actually sell unlicensed copyrighted works, then the act of selling is criminal infringement. But "downloading with the intent to sell" doesn't exist.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Market stalls around where I live are full of people selling pirated DVDs; wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if people did the same with textbooks .

Are you talking about market stalls where people would sell pirated physical textbooks? Who in their right mind would start making xerox copies of an entire textbook and then try to sell it. Sounds like a huge waste of time.

If you're talking about a pirated ebook, then what idiot would pay for a pirated digital book when they could just go download it themselves. I think that's the point nesagwa was making. Selling a pirated digital textbook kind of defeats the purpose of putting them up on torrents in the first place.

Pirated DVDs in a market stall are physical products, we're talking about digital textbooks. Completely different thing.

[nesagwa]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Are you talking about market stalls where people would sell pirated physical textbooks? Who in their right mind would start making xerox copies of an entire textbook and then try to sell it. Sounds like a huge waste of time.

If you're talking about a pirated ebook, then what idiot would pay for a pirated digital book when they could just go download it themselves. I think that's the point nesagwa was making. Selling a pirated digital textbook kind of defeats the purpose of putting them up on torrents in the first place.

Pirated DVDs in a market stall are physical products, we're talking about digital textbooks. Completely different thing.

Well and the mindset of college is different from your random burned DVD/CD seller.

Everyone in college is hurting for money, buying 5 or more textbooks that can cost upwards of 200 dollars in some cases (compounded by editions that make frivolous changes just so that people will have to buy the new edition rather than a used older edition) at a time, twice a year is a heavy burden.

The reactions I came up against the when offering this site to people were either AWESOME! Free text books for me or I dont feel comfortable doing that, Ill go buy it from the book store. Im not sure a student willing to pay for books would buy pirated ones in the first place.

I remember people I went to highschool with selling burned CDs when napster and cd burners were the new big thing for a dollar each (which barely covered the cost of the CD then.) But the main reason were technological limitations at the time. Now just about everyone college age knows how all this stuff works (or at least knows someone that does and helps them with it.)

[pieter]

If you illegally download a textbook about guns with the intent to shoot somebody and then you actually do it, then it might even be punishable by death.

[Danny Fekete]

Gosh, this is just awful.

Free knowledge and broadly-available education is, what, the worst thing you can have in a democratic society, right? Someone said that. Who said that?

It's definitely true.

[stgben]

Originally Posted by Danny Fekete

Gosh, this is just awful.

Free knowledge and broadly-available education is, what, the worst thing you can have in a democratic society, right? Someone said that. Who said that?

It's definitely true.

Absolutely agree. Charging hundreds for college textbooks, as a cost for education, is morally reprehensible. I'm glad to see Textbook Torrents providing those who cannot afford the outrageous prices with an opportunity to learn.

[Bimble]

You have to admit, textbook prices are pretty insane. Part of that is due to used book sales, part of it is due to new editions that get regularly released to counter used book sales, and part of it is all the useless extras that get bundled with many of them. Well, and part of it is that it's a relatively small market so they have to charge more to make money, and that with all the publisher consolidation there's little competition to control prices. Oh, and there's the fact that professors tend not to check the prices of textbooks when they select them for their courses. So, um, yeah, there are a few reasons why textbook prices are inflated.

Piracy isn't going to fix the problem, really, just bypass it for some students. The real fix would have to start with the faculty - students need to talk to them and get them to either pay more attention to pricing, or to look at textbooks distributed outside traditional publishing venues (like some creative commons textbooks that can be freely downloaded or printed cheaply - there aren't a lot, but there are indeed some like that being used at ivy league schools, written by professors, and that underwent peer review before release).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Market stalls around where I live are full of people selling pirated DVDs; wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if people did the same with textbooks .

I've been to a car boot sale and there was one woman there selling illegal copies of CDs.

[JSWolf]

And just go on eBay and you can find all kinds of people selling eBooks that they do not have the right to sell.

[Danny Fekete]

Originally Posted by Bimble

The real fix would have to start with the faculty - students need to talk to them and get them to either pay more attention to pricing, or to look at textbooks distributed outside traditional publishing venues (like some creative commons textbooks that can be freely downloaded or printed cheaply - there aren't a lot, but there are indeed some like that being used at ivy league schools, written by professors, and that underwent peer review before release).

I strongly agree.


I apologise for my earlier snarkiness. It was unproductive. What I might better have said was:

I'm only now beginning to discover the world of open education, which is enormous, powered by internet technology, and of tremendous potential and sustainability. For those interested in what Bimble is talking about with regard to the CC textbooks, have a look at the Connexions Project or Baraniuk's TED lecture (~20 minute video). At the academic, legal, and popular level, there is genuine intellectual discussion, organisation, and action building around the idea that education and its folderol can be pursued and published under schemes that depart from current capitalistic structures---that money does not need to be the currency by which the education industry advances.

I own that piracy, rather than being conceived of as isolated instances of personal ethical failure, is more constructively viewed as a symptom of an obsolete economic model rigidly maintained. In an environment saturated by digital technology, where what was once a discrete physical commodity can now be duplicated and transmitted perfectly and without cost, established notions of property and remuneration, and the ethics with which we discuss them, must be reëvaluated.

(Edit: I would also add, for the purposes of clarifying our discussion and with reference to JSWolf's comments above, that I distinguish the sort of piracy he mentioned, in which a product is acquired and then duplicated and sold without authorisation for monetary gain, from that in which a product is duplicated and freely distributed.)