Massive wave of ebook piracy?

[Grimm]

Originally Posted by fairy_dreams

A court ruling just closed down Limewire (a prime site for music pirating) and I suspect that other major torrent sites will follow the same fate.

Ebook piracy will always continue (e-readers are making it more popular), but perhaps this will be curtailed?

Not going to happen. Limewire is severely dated technology and it took YEARS of legal action to get to this conclusion. Keep in mind Limewire is a fully enclosed peer to peer software package like Napster and Kazaa. Those are indeed easy to shut down because they do have centralized servers.

Other torrent sites like Demonoid or ThePirateBay do not operate off portal software like Limewire nor do they have central servers that can be shutdown (and ThePirateBay is not US based, therefore the US courts really can't touch them). All you need for them is a torrent client such as uTorrent. Everything is spread out amongst the peers/seeders without going through any centralized servers. Turn on PeerBlock, load up uTorrent, and good luck to anyone trying to stop you.

Not suggesting anyone should or should not do this, just showing how easy it is to use and how difficut it is to stop with pure torrents.

As for pirated books, honestly I think it's a very, very, very small segment of ebook users. Face it, the music industry got hit hard with this because music is more popular than reading. I truly don't see pirating of ebooks as having a big impact on the industry (not right now, at least).

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by Grimm

Other torrent sites like Demonoid or ThePirateBay do not operate off portal software like Limewire nor do they have central servers that can be shutdown (and ThePirateBay is not US based, therefore the US courts really can't touch them). All you need for them is a torrent client such as uTorrent. Everything is spread out amongst the peers/seeders without going through any centralized servers. Turn on PeerBlock, load up uTorrent, and good luck to anyone trying to stop you.

How do people find the torrents though? Through Google. What would happen with sites like rapishare or megaupload, if Google started removing pages containing links to them from search results? What would happen with torrent downloading?

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

How do people find the torrents though? Through Google. What would happen with sites like rapishare or megaupload, if Google started removing pages containing links to them from search results? What would happen with torrent downloading?

I am not sure what would happen with torrents and piracy (the alternative always popped up in the past), but I am pretty certain that any attempt to censor the Net would backfire for Google. They are already accused of "knowing to much" about everything and everybody, and "Big Brother" moves are definitely something that they do not need. Unless they (as a company) have suicidal tendencies, which I seriously doubt is the case.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

How do people find the torrents though? Through Google. What would happen with sites like rapishare or megaupload, if Google started removing pages containing links to them from search results? What would happen with torrent downloading?

People would start using the address bar.

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

People would start using the address bar.

That's the point - how would they learn what to enter in the address bar? If you enter anything but proper URL, it's used as the search term and goes through the same search as if you entered it into Google, so results with rapidshare in them would be filetered out as well.

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by Ankh

They are already accused of "knowing to much" about everything and everybody, and "Big Brother" moves are definitely something that they do not need.

Well, they're about the biggest ones who do know where to find all this downloadable material, and tell everyone

[Grimm]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

How do people find the torrents though? Through Google. What would happen with sites like rapishare or megaupload, if Google started removing pages containing links to them from search results? What would happen with torrent downloading?

You find the torrents by going directly to Demonoid or TPB; search right on the Demonoid or TPB websites. You don't need to use google once you know about the sites. As for how you find those sites in the first place, well, google is the biggest but not the only game in town. Couple that with the fact that word of mouth is huge in bringing traffic to these sites, especially with the younger generations and little would be accomplished if google decided to censor and eliminate links to those sites (which I doubt they would do anyway).

My point is, people using Limewire are using really dated tech, but they probably already know about others still in use like Frostwire or actual torrent sites just from their experience with Limewire. The torrent cat is out of the bag and for sites that don't use any kind of centralized servers, they have little to fear.

That, and tech is expanding, I believe magnetic links were brought up earlier, so there is that as well.

The tech will ALWAYS be a few steps ahead of those who want to shut them down.

[Grimm]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

How do people find the torrents though? Through Google. What would happen with sites like rapishare or megaupload, if Google started removing pages containing links to them from search results? What would happen with torrent downloading?

Oh, and rapidshare and megaupload aren't torrent sites. They're web storage. Two totally different creatures. Stuff gets removed from those sites all the time due to copyright violations precisely because those sites store the files as one file. Torrents allow for bits and pieces of the file to be taken from amongst the seeders, each piece is downloaded to your pc, then rebuilt into the full file. There's no one person or server to target to try and stop it. Add in PeerBlock as I mentioned earlier, and you're pretty well protected from even being targeted as a seeder.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by Grimm

There's no one person or server to target to try and stop it. Add in PeerBlock as I mentioned earlier, and you're pretty well protected from even being targeted as a seeder.

If I understand correctly Canadian legal practice wrt piracy, the passive download of copyrighted material (from Rapidshare or from Usenet, for example) will not put you in jail, putting copyrighted material to the public server will.

The participation in torrent sharing, in any way, shape or form, is considered participation in the distribution (your machine is offering bits and pieces of copyrighted material to others, never mind the seeder status), and you are a target, if there is someone willing to bring you to the court. The copyright law is protecting any part of the copyrighted material, even things like the plot of the novel.

[Krystian Galaj]

True; I meant mainly rapidshare, megaupload, and those hundreds of other storage sites - links to those are spread mainly through Google. Torrents wouldn't be so much affected by Google, though many of the biggest ones still require registration to search, and many people won't do it, and prefer Google-search.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

How do people find the torrents though? Through Google. What would happen with sites like rapishare or megaupload, if Google started removing pages containing links to them from search results? What would happen with torrent downloading?

Google does remove such things from its listings. You can read about them on a daily basis here: http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi

Anyone who objects to their work being made available can easily have search results linking to it removed by following the instructions at http://www.google.com/dmca.html

So there really is no point in writers stamping their feet about it just because they don't understand how it benefits them. Just have it removed and let other writers get the benefit instead.

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Does everybody here have friends who like all the same books? I mean I loved "hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy", but most of my friends found it strange.

None of my real-life friends share my reading tastes. I've only found like-minded readers online. Many times I've used their recommendations to find new authors.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

None of my real-life friends share my reading tastes. I've only found like-minded readers online. Many times I've used their recommendations to find new authors.

I find that it is usually a situation of "I like this book because of .../My friend likes this book despite of ...". This is why recommendations don't work for me.
I think that I haven't switched to ebooks yet because of the way I buy pbooks: the cover. I go to the book shop and I pick up the books with interesting covers. Sometimes they are written by authors that I know, sometimes they are written by new authors, and sometimes they are written by an author that I know, under a different name. Seeing the cover on the computer screen doesn't make me want to buy the book.

Also, if I have doubts about buying the book, I usually read a few phrases in the middle of the book. If it makes me think "I really want to know how they got in this situation", I buy it.

[SpiderMatt]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

How do people find the torrents though? Through Google. What would happen with sites like rapishare or megaupload, if Google started removing pages containing links to them from search results? What would happen with torrent downloading?

I can tell you exactly what would happen. Google would be charged with censorship and competitors would crop up to serve users what Google omits. In fact, there are already search engines that focus solely on indexing content from locker sites and/or torrent sites, thus they're typically much better for finding that kind of content than Google. Google brings up a lot of extra results that might seem relevant compared to your search terms but really aren't what you're looking for. So the effect would be moot and Google would lose a competitive edge. As it stands, Google already removes the occasional search result when companies complain and invoke the DMCA. To keep from being charged with censorship, Google puts up the full DMCA notice, which users can read and see the links that were removed. There's nothing to gain by Google not indexing these websites and it would be illegal to force them not to.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

That's the point - how would they learn what to enter in the address bar? If you enter anything but proper URL, it's used as the search term and goes through the same search as if you entered it into Google, so results with rapidshare in them would be filetered out as well.

Well, a person who has done some pirating in their time will know the websites. And a beginner probably got the idea from hearing somebody talk about pirating, and would have also heard about the best sites (we all have favorites).

And for the rest:
1) new websites can emerge (they can redirect to the interesting ones)
2) if they actually get to a point where they manage to block any online information about these addresses, I'm sure spam emails can easily be delivered to every mailbox, everywhere.