Torrents and torrents..

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by ahi

I'm not sure when you got the impression that anybody here disagreed with that.

I don't.

- Ahi

Check the post I originally responded to: #21. It certainly implies that at least one poster did disagree.

[DawnFalcon]

There are MR bundles out there on the Kad P2P network, incidentally.

(What? If you poke, there are websites you can search it from, heh)

And well, of course the site's admins and uploaders are entirely entitled to do as trhey wish, but I won't use sub-par interfaces if I can help it (heck, I use Greasemonkey is impose a quite-different view of this forum which suits me, both vB and phpBB work with minimal tweaking in it) and I'm not writing a script just to transform a single site.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

It has everything to do with what I was discussing.

The question is not whether someone has the right to download public domain books in torrent form if they desire, but whether people who upload public domain books have the obligation to provide those books in torrent form for those who wish to download them as torrents.

The existence of the right does not create the obligation.

You're completely missing the point. Nobody claimed they had any such obligation.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Check the post I originally responded to: #21. It certainly implies that at least one poster did disagree.

You misunderstood me, obviously.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by ahi

That prep-time, minus the 30 seconds. If you are downloading a few dozen books, it starts to get a bit silly that you are spending more than half your time clicking like a monkey over and over again... when it would take a fraction of the time to get a "The Complete Mobileread Library" torrent and specify the subset of it you actually want to download.

- Ahi

Whose waiting 30 seconds? I often choose 3 or 4 books at a time; most of that time is spent browsing. I choose a book, click download and then move on to the next one. At most I am waiting on the last book I download. Even then what is more common is that I am organizing the books in my computer and ebook reader to make them easier to find later (I store books in a top down folder structure where the top level is genre, then author and finally books),

I really, can't see how I would save much time if I had a method of selecting what books I wanted to download and then downloaded them all at once.

Personally, this whole torrent business suggests a hording mentality. I don't see most of the free sites going anywhere anytime soon, so I see no particular need to download everything I can get my hands on.

--
Bill

[ahi]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

Whose waiting 30 seconds? I often choose 3 or 4 books at a time; most of that time is spent browsing. I choose a book, click download and then move on to the next one. At most I am waiting on the last book I download. Even then what is more common is that I am organizing the books in my computer and ebook reader to make them easier to find later (I store books in a top down folder structure where the top level is genre, then author and finally books),

"I don't mind that additional time and effort." != "There is no additional time and effort and/or nobody else minds it either."

Does "To each his/her own" only apply when the savage head of typographic expertise rears its ugly head?

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

I really, can't see how I would save much time if I had a method of selecting what books I wanted to download and then downloaded them all at once.

Personally, this whole torrent business suggests a hording mentality. I don't see most of the free sites going anywhere anytime soon, so I see no particular need to download everything I can get my hands on.

That doesn't mean that you wouldn't (save much time) and that there isn't (a need).

- Ahi

[demoric]

Torrents of free legal books are available at project gutenburg.

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenb...nd_DVD_Project
and
http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

I see the value of having a bulk download. I won't even try to read them all however I can make a copy for friends and it saves them the time of hunting down the books online. It is also nice to say I like authors X,Y, and Z this CD has some of their works for free. In this exchange of data I have had friends read authors who I wouldn't normally have given a try. Then I read those authors on their recommendations.

Personally I don't understand the mental stroking of ones ego by saying I have read 300 books, or I have a copy of 2,000 different novels. I just enjoy reading.

[orion2001]

Getting back to the ops initial question, if you search the torrent sites or google for "LRF Gutenberg torrent" you should find a torrent that acidzebra here at MR created using some scripts and Calibre. Ironically, the first link in Google is to an MR post where he announced it but the link to the torrent was deleted in the post . Anyways, the quality is quite good although the ones you will find here on MR are usually better due to the manual effort taken by individual uploaders.

Since you own a Sony device, this would probably be the best for you as you don't have to bother with doing any file conversions. I found it really useful.

[bill_mchale]

Here is the thing, bulk downloading is generally an inefficient use of bandwidth. If I download 50 books and only read 5 of them then I have roughly used 10 times more bandwidth than I actually needed. All that wasted bandwidth does in fact have a cost. The more torrents that are running, the more bandwidth being occupied, which means the ISPs have to upgrade their infrastructure; you know we are paying for those upgrades. Granted the cost, when we are talking books, is pretty small compared to audio and video files, but that doesn't mean its not wasteful of bandwidth.

I am frankly dubious of the claims that anyone saves any significant (if any) time by using torrents. Sure you don't have to spend as much time browsing through books online, but if you plan on reading some of them, you will need to on your own computer. No one has yet actually really demonstrated that it really saves them time (Saying it saves them time is not the same as demonstrating it).

--
Bill

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

Granted the cost, when we are talking books, is pretty small compared to audio and video files

Not really "small", more like "insignificant".

[=X=]

While I agree a bulk blanket download is not enticing, however Torrents can have a big benefit, they can download books on a torrent list which is a text file. So you can have something like

Fantasy Recommendation
Patricia's Selection
Greek Mythology
Spiritual Reading
Creative Common book

And the torrent will download those selections. As for versions, update the text file and the file user will get an updated version.


Personally I find the upload and download process in MobileRead to be atrocious. It's by far the worst site I've come across. The search engine is not very good and it is hard to find the right book. Also the download process is painful. Can you imaging trying to download all of the Robert E. Howard books for his Conan series. The only real solution is to download the omnibus or do what I did and go to PG and Feedbook to download them. (Note they also tedious but still much better).

Now I'm not trying to bash MR, this is a great site, but the sharing of books is a terrible experience. Which is a shame because the books here are so well crafted.

As for an contributing member, even if it's a small amount of boos, I've have no problem torrenting my books.

My opinion when giving to the community it should be done without restrictions or conditions.

=X=

[tompe]

Originally Posted by AprilHare

As we all know, filesharing gets a bad rap from the Powers That Be for allowing people to share illegal stuff.
But it can share legal stuff too!
Can people recommends any torrents of legal books (out of copyright for as many people as possible in USA or Canada for instance - please be specific!) that we can safely, happily, download?
I'm thinking Project Gutenberg ebooks in EPUB format, for instance.. a few gigabytes of those would set me up forever..
Wouldn't it be nice if we could download MobileRead books in bulk too?..

http://www.legaltorrents.com/

seems to have books also.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

Here is the thing, bulk downloading is generally an inefficient use of bandwidth. If I download 50 books and only read 5 of them then I have roughly used 10 times more bandwidth than I actually needed.

Here's the root of the disagreement: the rest of us are not on 14.4 K dial-up.

- Ahi

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Jellby

I guess some people would appreciate some pages being added to to Wiki, in the manner of the Notable eBook Uploads page, that would collect in a succint and ordered way the works of particular authors or genres.

Yes, anyone can add such pages and entries into the wiki. It is unreasonable, IMHO, to demand that volunteers that uploaded books to make an extreme extra effort to produce bulk downloading choices because the users are too lazy to pick and choose. Some of the uploaders depend on the download count to determine what items people like so that they can decide what to do next, what formats to support, etc. Bulk downloading throws all of that valuable feedback out the window. Downloading a 1000 books when you really only want or will ever read a few of them seems like a total waste.

Note that we are working on improving the ability to browse and find specific books using a database approach. But I have no idea when it will be done.

<rant>
there is an old adage that beggars can't be choosy but I guess, in this modern, age this is no longer the case. Beggars are not only choosy but demanding.
</rant>

Dale

[ahi]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Yes, anyone can add such pages and entries into the wiki. It is unreasonable, IMHO, to demand that volunteers that uploaded books to make an extreme extra effort to produce bulk downloading choices because the users are too lazy to pick and choose.

How about demanding that Mobileread staff make the almost certainly minimal effort of downloading all public domain tagged attachments in the eBook forums, and start a torrent with them?

Is that unreasonable too? If not, what does that other thing you mentioned have to do with anything?

Asking mobileread to do something simple that some users/readers would see as a benefit is really no different than wanting Sony or Amazon to do the same. Neither are obliged, but both should probably care about the people they supposedly mean to serve.

- Ahi