Piracy Experiment

[Belle2Be]

Originally Posted by wvcherrybomb

Well, things have changed considerably since I started this thread. I am no longer the naive grandmother that I was just a week ago.

Some very knowledgeable people have contacted me and let me know I was going about it all wrong. Torrent sites were not the place to find ebooks. I was led in the right direction and conducted my not-so-scientific experiment once again.

This time, I was able to find every single book on my wish list as well as any other book I could think of. All were available in multiple formats - which doesn't really matter since I use Calibre - and all were perfectly formatted. Another big plus was that they are all obviously DRM free.

So now my opinion has changed. Once a person knows the right direction in which to go, almost any book can be had free and easy with formatting indistinguishable (at least to me) from that of purchased books. This is a much bigger problem for publishers and authors than I had originally figured.

I'm surprised someone contacted you about it, it's not against the rules to share that kind of info?

[wvcherrybomb]

Originally Posted by bucsie

Ah but it wasn't so easy to get there on your own, other people had to guide you. So I see it as less of a problem than other copyrighted-media workers deals with. For a newbie, an mp3 or a TV show is real easy to get compared to an ebook.

Exactly. I was going to point that out in my original post but didn't want to make it so long that people wouldn't read it.

I don't know whether or not I would have found it on my own since I never Googled past the the sites that I originally found. Since it was the first thing I came up with, I suspect it would be for many others too. If they believed that was all there was, there would be no reason to look further.

Originally Posted by Belle2Be

I'm surprised someone contacted you about it, it's not against the rules to share that kind of info?

It was not on MR.

[Penforhire]

Belle, unless I misunderstand, it is against the rules here to publically facilitate piracy. So posting in a forum is off limits but PM's are not. It is a question of MobileRead's liability. If I'm wrong then hopefully a moderator will set me straight.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by wvcherrybomb

Some very knowledgeable people have contacted me and let me know I was going about it all wrong. Torrent sites were not the place to find ebooks. I was led in the right direction and conducted my not-so-scientific experiment once again.

This time, I was able to find every single book on my wish list as well as any other book I could think of. All were available in multiple formats - which doesn't really matter since I use Calibre - and all were perfectly formatted. Another big plus was that they are all obviously DRM free.

So now my opinion has changed. Once a person knows the right direction in which to go, almost any book can be had free and easy with formatting indistinguishable (at least to me) from that of purchased books. This is a much bigger problem for publishers and authors than I had originally figured.

Well, now I'm really puzzled. Thought I'd seen some ... interesting ... stuff, but maybe not.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Belle, unless I misunderstand, it is against the rules here to publically facilitate piracy. So posting in a forum is off limits but PM's are not. It is a question of MobileRead's liability.

Yes, that's the way I take it to be. Also, while you can't name sites or detail exactly how to pirate files, vague references aren't censured. For instance, one could say that one good way of finding a book is to-- if you have access to a print version or a sample from Amazon or Google books-- pick a reasonably unique sentence from the book and paste it into Google and see what happens. If, for instance, a theoretical poster had been searching today for an ebook (purchasable or otherwise) of The Neverending Story with no luck, the theoretical poster could look at the sample pages from Amazon, choose the words "coreander looked at the boy for a while", plug that theoretical string of text into Google, and theoretically see what theoretically happens.

[wvcherrybomb]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

plug that theoretical string of text into Google, and theoretically see what theoretically happens.

Theoretically speaking of course.

I would have never thought of that.

[Xanthe]

Learn something new every day.

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by ruel

TPB is not nearly the best torrent site for ebooks, not by a long shot.

Given the hype that TPB had gotten over the years, I would wander over there every now and then to see what was what. Their ebook and audiobook section was always very poor - unless you were looking for a current bestseller (which I never was); my searches usually turned up negative. And if I found a listing for an author I read, it would usually be only one or two books by them, and were things I had already bought. I would say to myself, "Fifty million billion people supposedly use this site, and there isn't ever ONE book listed for (fill-in-whatever-author's-name)?". Always seemed odd to me, not to mention a waste of my time.

But a lot of sites are like that - the concentration is usually on things that young males like: current movies, current music, current software, and wallpaper images of cars or nude women.

[GA Russell]

CARS!!!!!

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by Maggie Leung

I do not need to live in an ideal world to respect other people's choices. If I use a book without an author's permission, I'm actively violating his choice. It comes down to each user choosing whether to violate an author's choice.

It also comes down to whether you believe that the author has a right to impose his/her "choice" on something you've purchased after the fact. I'm not talking about "you shouldn't do that because the copyright laws don't allow it" but because you think that your purchase of an item give you the "choice" of what to do with that item that supersedes the author's. For many, I think, it is a form of civil disobedience protest - they don't recognize the right of an author or a publisher to direct the future of their particular purchase. They don't see the author's choice as something more important than theirs. It doesn't matter what the law may say; they view it as a special-interest law. They don't see it as an issue of depriving authors of income at all, or even a morality issue.

That is why, perhaps, the moral condemnations posted here and in other places doesn't sway them. And that is why those of you (speaking generally here) who use that argument are not getting amount of affirmations of your argument that you might have expected, and why, when you start making comparisons to people breaking into your home or people stealing cars, you get quizzical looks. You think you're comparing apples with apples and see the lack of universal agreement as a moral failing, while others see your examples as comparing apples with oranges and irrelevant to the topic.

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

CARS!!!!!

Yeah, sure.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

But a lot of sites are like that - the concentration is usually on things that young males like: current movies, current music, current software, and wallpaper images of cars or nude women.

So are you saying I might have to resign myself to not finding anything by Barbara Pym???

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by Catlady

So are you saying I might have to resign myself to not finding anything by Barbara Pym???

Actually majority of the scanners I have come across are female and usually over 40 so you should find some of her books.
But not in torrents as book sharing crowd is a lot older and they prefer the old internet tech then all the new fads as they would say that have come up.

[bucsie]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

plug that theoretical string of text into Google, and theoretically see what theoretically happens.

But, theoretically speaking, aren't the ebooks usually archived or in whatever format that is not .txt? Can google find those not in txt or pdf format?
Theoretically...

[TGS]

Originally Posted by Catlady

So are you saying I might have to resign myself to not finding anything by Barbara Pym???

Strangely, and disappointingly, Barbara Pym seems to fall between two stools - not a "classic" and not contemporary enough to be the top of anyone's scanning list. Unless someone knows better...

Iris Murdoch on the other hand seems to be well served.