Piracy Experiment

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by m3write1day

Expect a visit from the FBI soon.

The Female Body Inspectors?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by queentess

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

I was referring to pirated versions, but legitimate purchased copies may also be dreadful. The industry is still learning to do it right.
______
Dennis

[twowheels]

Originally Posted by wvcherrybomb

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.

Maybe things have changed with music, I don't know I haven't downloaded any songs in years, but last time I downloaded music the ID3 tags were a mess (misspelled, incorrectly categorized, etc), the files were encoded at a low bitrate, or worse, re-encoded over and over and then distributed at a high bitrate, etc... it wasn't worth it to me. I found that it was easier to just subscribe to Rhapsody for $15/mo, which gives me unlimited streaming access to their catalog of well tagged and well encoded music of any genre, as well as the ability to fill three portable devices for offline listening (one for each of my kids, and one for me).

I wish that Amazon would do something similar... I'd subscribe in a second.

[Caltsar]

I remember that back in the days of Napster, I'd download music (over dialup! *gag*), and there were poor quality, poorly tagged CD rips. Some were as bad as the eBooks you find now. While I'm not familiar with a lot of the sources for good eBooks, the quality of pirated eBooks is so bad that finding a good version isn't usually worth the effort and it's easier and better to simply buy it.

Perhaps if you know the right sources, it might be worth the time and effort for pirating, but my experience in looking for books I already owned in paper form has been pretty bad. (Good versions have since been officially published as eBooks, and they are formatted MUCH better)

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by 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.

There's a lot of different versions of the more popular books, and it isn't always obvious which version you have. The main problem, I think, is the people that collect files without ever looking at them redistributing the bad ones even when better versions have been available for years.

You get the same sort of thing with old radio shows. Very bad and even incomplete recordings are still circulated even though they were fixed 6 or 7 years ago. Then the people who download those just repost them somewhere else, and they spread further and further.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

The Female Body Inspectors?

Excuse me, 1994 called and it wants it's joke back

[rcuadro]

There are perfect copies of eBooks out there and they are really easy to find...

[Quexos]

True but there aren't that many. A few are retail worth and you bump on them by chance more than anything else.

Originally Posted by rcuadro

There are perfect copies of eBooks out there and they are really easy to find...

[rcuadro]

Originally Posted by Quexos

True but there aren't that many. A few are retail worth and you bump on them by chance more than anything else.

Not true. I can find about 99% of the recently released books the day they are released with out paying for it...

[gollu]

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.

Sorry to tell you that, but your experiment was not very scientific. Darknet is a success because it's full of content and it's easy to get through. You don't always get what you are not paying for, but for an experienced leacher it'd take half an hour at most to find out if a certain content is available and at what quality.

[Quexos]

Really ? then you won't have any trouble finding, hmm ... say the complete set of 5 books by Jean M. Auel, retail quality of course, called the Earth Children's series (The clan of the cave bear, The mammoth hunters, The valley of horses etc ...) in epub of course. If 99% of the stuff is out there, then this one should be easy considering it's very popular.
So do you take my challenge ? PM me the results if you wish (or write them here if it's not against the rules )

Originally Posted by rcuadro

Not true. I can find about 99% of the recently released books the day they are released with out paying for it...

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by Quexos

Really ? then you won't have any trouble finding, hmm ... say the complete set of 5 books by Jean M. Auel, retail quality of course, called the Earth Children's series (The clan of the cave bear, The mammoth hunters, The valley of horses etc ...) in epub of course. If 99 of the stuff is out there, then this one should be easy considering it's very popular.
So do you take my challenge ? PM me the results if you wish (or write them here if it's not against the rules )

Did this just become a requests thread?

[Quexos]

Nah, it's just a challenge to prove a point Though I'll be happy to be wrong

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

Did this just become a requests thread?

[CommonReader]

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.

Cute. At least publishers should be relieved that there still seem to be people out there who are unable to find and download pirated content.
There are plenty of sites out there that offer anything from Pynchon, Updike, Gaddis to the usual vampire crap in good quality. No need to install software either, as there are plenty of filehosters that offer their services for that purpose.
In Germany you can even find pirate sites that offer more selection and quality than some internet bookstores. They have higher listings on Google as well.
I believe that authors should be paid for their books and avoid such sites but there is absolutely no difficulty to find illegal copies for download unless your tastes are very esoteric.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by Quexos

Nah, it's just a challenge to prove a point Though I'll be happy to be wrong

OK - took me approximately 3 minutes to find what you described above. Haven't downloaded them so can't actually verify that they are retail quality (whatever that means).

I will not give any links to their whereabouts for obvious reasons.