Torrents and torrents..

[ahi]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

Ultimately, I see little utility in having a bulk download of legal ebooks. Lets face it, most books will download in less than a minute (unless you are still using a dial-up connection). So I see little need to download a bunch a Public Domain titles. I can always download them later.

The one exception might be in promotional downloads by publishers and authors. If they are offering an ebook free for now, if I think I might ever be interested in it, I download it, now. It might not be legally available next month.

--
Bill

The utility I see in bulk downloading is that the download-prep time (which, per book, is considerably longer than the actual downloading) can be avoided.

Downloading one by one is like loading 200 files onto your liseuse, one at a time, unplugging and plugging back in the USB cable after each book.

- Ahi

[HarryT]

Not oppressive at all, Ahi. One of the purpose of our eBook library is to encourage people to visit MobileRead. Perhaps they'll come to download a book, but like it and stick around. We want people to do that, not download the books from a torrent. Call it a marketing ploy, if you wish.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No, it wouldn't . We've discussed this at considerable length in the past, and most people who create books here are vehemently opposed to "bulk" book downloading.

I'm sure.

Sorry, but what relevance does that really have? It's amusing that people are willing to go so far, but then stop. If people want to get books in a bulk package, and you make them fiddle arround on your website getting individual books...well, guess what? They're going to go to the darknets, or not download.

(I don't get ebooks from here because the interface is simply clunky, too slow and lacks proper, saveable filtering options (genres and formats, for starters), there's no easy reference to legal status of the books (because what's PD there dosn't mean it's PD where I am) and so on.)

Depending on the client, torrents can be checked for updates, you realise? They can go and actively grab new versions of a book, rather than someone again having to manually check your website. There are other ways to do that, certainly, but none really convenient. Good luck on developing another push technology, incidentally.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No, it wouldn't . We've discussed this at considerable length in the past, and most people who create books here are vehemently opposed to "bulk" book downloading.

I can't see why not, but do you have a link to an old discussion (no need to rehash it again).

[ahi]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Not oppressive at all, Ahi. One of the purpose of our eBook library is to encourage people to visit MobileRead. Perhaps they'll come to download a book, but like it and stick around. We want people to do that, not download the books from a torrent. Call it a marketing ploy, if you wish.

Well... the most I'm willing to agree with is that it's no more oppressive than the author or publisher forcing their formatting decision on hapless paper book and PDF readers.

- Ahi

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's precisely the point, Ed. We want people to read the descriptions we've written, peoples' comments, add their own comments, etc. Bulk downloading "anonymizes" the whole thing, which we really don't want.

Isn't it a question of what the readers want though, otherwise you're basically doing the same thing the Publishers are. Trying to force people into a model that they don't want to be in, for no real reason.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Isn't it a question of what the readers want though, otherwise you're basically doing the same thing the Publishers are. Trying to force people into a model that they don't want to be in, for no real reason.

Caesarus non est nekkidus!

- Ahi

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The other problem with torrents is that many of us here regularly update and improve the books we've uploaded. We want people to get the latest version of those books from here, not from a torrent where they may be out of date.

Again, that's the reader's choice. News flash Harry, trying to force people into this sort of stuff is exactly how the Publishers ended up with their books on the torrent sites in the first place. If you don't want to allow people to bulk download material from here, then somebody else will.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

Ultimately, I see little utility in having a bulk download of legal ebooks. Lets face it, most books will download in less than a minute (unless you are still using a dial-up connection). So I see little need to download a bunch a Public Domain titles. I can always download them later.

Convenience, mostly. I can see how downloading a large group of Public Domain books at once, instead of having to hunt around for individual titles, would be nice. Sure, you may not be interested in all of them, but it's a lot easier to sort through the collection once you have it on your local PC than to try and sort through various sites looking for specific stuff. As you say, book downloads are not very big so grabbing a large set wouldn't take up that much bandwidth.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

We want people to do that, not download the books from a torrent. Call it a marketing ploy, if you wish.

What makes you think that you can dictate how people download material? That certainly sounds a lot like the nonsense that the Publishers try to get away with.

[edembowski]

Originally Posted by ahi

Yeah, but should eBooks that aren't bound by the oppressive dictates of authors and publishers be bound by the oppressive dictates of their compilers?

- Ahi

That depends entirely on the collection, and what rights are granted with it. For example, the Baen Free Library is a copyrighted set of books, but the Project Gutenberg is not. Baen in well within their rights to limit what you can do with it.

If you take the text from Project Gutenberg, you can convert it, repackage it and distribute it as you see fit.

- Ed

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by edembowski

That depends entirely on the collection, and what rights are granted with it.

I'm pretty sure ahi is talking about public domain books.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

What makes you think that you can dictate how people download material? That certainly sounds a lot like the nonsense that the Publishers try to get away with.

Not at all, Shaggy. Anyone else is very welcome to do whatever they wish with the books that one can download from MR - they are in the public domain. What we here at MR, however, choose to do with them is our concern, and we have taken the decision not to provide the capability of bulk downloads, for the reasons that have been outlined.

If you wish to set up your own bulk download site for MR books then go right ahead and do so. The books are in the public domain and you can do whatever you wish with them.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

What makes you think that you can dictate how people download material? That certainly sounds a lot like the nonsense that the Publishers try to get away with.

I disagree completely. Harry has put hundreds of hours into proofreading and formatting ebooks which he then uploads here so that anyone can download and read them free of charge.

When someone provides something to you for free, you take it how they give it. This is not DRM or silly restrictions like that: this is simply stating that the giver has the right to decide when and how to give you the gift.

If you think having to take a little bit of time to decide "I want this book," rather than downloading a massive torrent that you would only read a tenth of is too much trouble, then that's your prerogative. That doesn't mean the uploaders need to follow your wishes.

As a reader of ebooks - rather than a bulk downloader - I have no problem. I can still download an entire series much faster than I could read the first volume.

[edembowski]

I agree, but there are non-public domain books that allow redistribution as well. Cory Doctrow has published books that he retains copyright for, but it's published under a creative commons license. In the case of Baen, I don't believe the restrict redistribution of their free library but they certainly do on their non-free library.

- Ed