Piracy Experiment

[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.

[leebase]

Others have had far better success. Not ME, of course, but "other people".

Lee

[ficbot]

I agree. The few times I have performed similar investigations, I was completely dissatisfied with the results. When faced with a legitimate copy for under ten bucks and a horribly formatted free one that requires hours and hours or work to be made readable, I'd much prefer to pay and get a proper copy.

[CrayWolf]

Sounds like the books you found were scanned and OCR'd from print versions of the book, and nobody bothered to edit them. (Not surpising - editing OCR text is a lot of work.)

I'm surprised there aren't more pirate releases of official ePub and Mobi books, frankly. Seems a lot easier.

[abookreader]

How do you know you have a "top site?'

I know a couple of the big names because I hear them ranted about on Author blogs. But I was under the impression most of the big sites were membership and/or invite.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by wvcherrybomb

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'd bet the books were first scanned, then OCR'd and converted to MS-Word automatically. Then, maybe, the person who did that edited the .doc adding all sorts of garbage which he/she thought "looked nice", like coloured headers, the logo of some scanning group as a watermark, lots of blank lines and spaces to align text, funky fonts (and Comic Sans titles, of course), etc.; all of this formatted for an A4- or letter-sized page. Then created a PDF using a pirated version of Adobe Acrobat and thought it was great. Another person thought he/she would do humankind a great favour and created a Kindle version... by just feeding the PDF to Calibre and hitting "convert", hey that was easy! And now he/she added the new ebook to his/her collection of 150000 free ebooks

[ardeegee]

You probably didn't find the right sources, or are reading in a genre that isn't popular with the types of tech-savvy people who post pirated copies of books. In the science fiction/fantasy area, there are tens of thousands of titles available. In one folder alone, I have 17.780 SF/F books downloaded from a single torrent. The good stuff often isn't through http, but on usenet, or a peer-to-peer service.

[Catlady]

I am guessing that the two books you pirated were not available as legit e-books?

[DMcCunney]

You can find all manner of things out there. I've seen a download that offers 13,000 SF/fantasy titles.

The problem you run into is format and quality. An awful lot of these offerings are scans from hardcopy editions, offered as plain text or PDF. They generally aren't proofread to catch OCR errors, and some are in very poor shape.

Even if the text is in decent shape, you still face the issue of getting to book into a form viewable on your reader device. PDF conversions are problematic. In my experience, PDFs created as simple single column files with in-line graphics convert fairly well. Beyond that, things degrade fast.

If you just want to read the book, and have low standards about the quality of the pirated edition that you are willing to read, and are willing to take the effort to convert, you can probably find what you want. If you actually have standards of quality, selection drops rapidly.

I've seen commentary from at least one MR poster who is quite familiar with the darknet, and could find pretty much anything. But he chooses to fire up his Kindle and buy a legitimate copy from Amazon. A few clicks and he's got the book and can start reading. He doesn't have to spend the time and effort finding an illicit copy, then converting to something he can read. The convenience adds value he's happy to pay for.

Ultimately, piracy is an annoyance, not a disaster. The larder market will pay for value like it always has. The trick is to provide value, price appropriately, and make it as easy as possible for the customer to give you money.
______
Dennis

[jhempel24]

I'll be honest, I don't know where you are looking, but about 90% of the books I've actually downloaded were pretty much retail versions.

There are a TON out there that are JUNK though. And yes, it's easier to just buy the book and have it professionally formatted....unless it's through Smashwords, then they format like pirates.

[Fayth]

I was trying to decide whether I could justify pirating some ebooks that I had already purchased as pbooks, but the ones I found must have been the professionally formatted epubs because they were very well done. In the end I didn't keep them because it was obvious there was a good amount of effort put into making new artwork for the ebooks and formatting them very well. I'll have to pick em up when I have more money.

[Salgueiros]

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

[leebase]

Originally Posted by Fayth

I was trying to decide whether I could justify pirating some ebooks that I had already purchased as pbooks

I consider that "format shifting". It may be against the law, but I do not consider it unethical.

Lee

[m3write1day]

Expect a visit from the FBI soon.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The problem you run into is format and quality. An awful lot of these offerings are scans from hardcopy editions, offered as plain text or PDF. They generally aren't proofread to catch OCR errors, and some are in very poor shape.

Even if the text is in decent shape, you still face the issue of getting to book into a form viewable on your reader device.

Wait... are we talking about piracy or legitimate ebooks here?