My journey into the darknet

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Yep. I'm in that boat with you. I hate PDFs and anything else I've seen "illegally" are fraught with errors etc.

I don't know where you 2 are getting your ebooks from, but I notice a lot more mistakes in paid-for ebooks than I do in fan-made ones. One I got from B&N a few weeks ago had spelling mistakes on average every 3 pages or so.

Fan-made ebooks get corrected over time, whereas paid-for ebooks don't because there is no incentive to do so.

[kindlekitten]

what's the take on already owning the pbook, wanting it for your elibrary and for whatever unknown misplaced Rowlingesque arrogance, or a lazy publisher it hasn't made it to ebook land... the copy is owned, could be destroyed and scanned in, or someone has already done that work for you? is it the same? just as bad? you get back 2 karma points after a reduction of 5? once again, how is it different than going to the used book store?

[Jaime_Astorga]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I must be doing it wrong then, or else I am very stupid, because the few times I have explored (just out of curiosity) the alleged 'Darknet,' I have found errors in every book. It's just too much work to go through and proofread them all. I would rather just pay to get a proper copy. All those people who say they get perfect, beautiful copies of, say, the Harry Potter books, I have no idea where on earth they are getting them from because I have never seen them.

I know for a fact there are beautiful sets of Harry Potter .pdf's floating around as a torrent. They also existed a few years back. Going to a certain torrent search engine and searching for "harry potter books" confirms that they still exist.

Torrents of mainstream serieses at the height of their popularity with tons of seeders and downloaders are usually the best bet for getting quality content, and these torrents can usually be found in popular torrent search engines. Less popular, individual books can be found in file hosting services, but these are much more likely to contain errors and poor formatting. What venues have you been frequenting in the darknet, that you have been so unsuccessful?

[Logseman]

In my experience, mass-downloading of books equals disaster. Collections of GB's of size can be easily found at the cost that metadata, formatting and sometimes spelling is compromised. I guess it's the price for being in the wild. If only fan-edit groups could appear without dreading the hammer...

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I must be doing it wrong then, or else I am very stupid, because the few times I have explored (just out of curiosity) the alleged 'Darknet,' I have found errors in every book. It's just too much work to go through and proofread them all. I would rather just pay to get a proper copy.

I once had a college prof who had a catch phrase "bad breath is better than no breath." Given the choice between an ebook with a handful of typos and no ebook at all, I don't mind the occasional typo.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I must be doing it wrong then, or else I am very stupid, because the few times I have explored (just out of curiosity) the alleged 'Darknet,' I have found errors in every book. It's just too much work to go through and proofread them all. I would rather just pay to get a proper copy. All those people who say they get perfect, beautiful copies of, say, the Harry Potter books, I have no idea where on earth they are getting them from because I have never seen them.

Quite often I have too. That is NOT to say that I never find errors in retail versions - some of those releases have had disgustingly bad errors. As I'm getting the 'darknet' versions for free, I tend to cut them major amounts of slack, and if the book is one that I need to complete a collection, I'm quite willing to proof it out and reformat it to meet my favorite layout. If it's a one-off of a new author, I usually just live with the errors - if it is a 'darknet' copy. If it's one I spent money on, I get livid and report the problem right back to the retailer.

As for the HP ebooks, I can't imagine you've been looking too hard as I've found great versions in ePub, mobi and html!

Derek

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Yep. I'm in that boat with you. I hate PDFs and anything else I've seen "illegally" are fraught with errors etc.

Well... PDFs... There's your problem right there! Even taking a decent PDF file and extracting using Adobe Acrobat Pro 9.0, I notice that sometimes I get really CRAPPY html, doc and rtf files. On those I find that the only way to create a decent ebook is to extract to txt and run it through my word processor (in my case that would be Atlantis) to create a .doc version with all the spell-checking done and layout improved. Then I run an .html version of that through Calibre and generate the ePub and Mobi versions. It *is* a hassle.

Derek

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Logseman

In my experience, mass-downloading of books equals disaster. Collections of GB's of size can be easily found at the cost that metadata, formatting and sometimes spelling is compromised. I guess it's the price for being in the wild. If only fan-edit groups could appear without dreading the hammer...

Most of the better quality files tend to be individual stories. Like you, I've yet to find a 'collection of...' file that has individual books as well formatted as I get from searching out the titles on an individual basis. And yes, I tend to, if I can find them, download each title in html, mobi/prc AND epub, with rtf, txt and pdf being the least desired formats.

Derek

[jabberwock_11]

I don't think that anyone is claiming that downloading ebooks from less than legal sources is anything other than pilfering. Our statements of frustration and indignation are not ones of justification, but of an over boiling. It has gotten to the point where the situation, as some of us see it, is simply not tolerable. Seeing as most change begins with circumvention of established practice, we are acting like the canaries in a coal mine...the tip of the spear of folks who are no longer willing to wait for the publishing industry to catch up with the times. It is not justification, simply explanation. If I steal bread because I am hungry it is STILL stealing, even if I have a defensible reason.

I also have to point out that most folks here have zero problems with scanning their own paper books to make ebook versions; however, they take exception to the idea of having someone else do the work for them (as was pointed out by an earlier post). If I own a copy of a book and download that same book off of the darknet is it any worse than scanning it myself, and if so why? If you already own something should you have to pay for it in another form even if there is a free version of what you already own available? Should we all turn ourselves in to the Sony police for making mix tapes of their precious CDs? There are gray areas in this whole matter and no matter how you look at it there are plenty of defensible reasons for downloading ebooks without the express license to do so. Remember that VCRs were considered controversial when they first allowed people to copy tv shows and movies...that is until it was declared legal by a court of law. We may be in the wrong, but things change and so do ideas.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I must be doing it wrong then, or else I am very stupid, because the few times I have explored (just out of curiosity) the alleged 'Darknet,' I have found errors in every book. It's just too much work to go through and proofread them all. I would rather just pay to get a proper copy. All those people who say they get perfect, beautiful copies of, say, the Harry Potter books, I have no idea where on earth they are getting them from because I have never seen them.

So... where does one purchase a "proper copy" of ROWLING_HARRY_POTTER_AND_THE_SORCERERS_STONE.EPUB?

Often, the choice is not between "typo-ridden free darknet copy" and "well-proofed, well-formatted legit purchased copy," but between "typo-ridden free darknet copy" and "typo-ridden legit purchased copy that can't be edited by the buyer" or between "typo-ridden free darknet copy" and "scan it yourself."

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Even taking a decent PDF file and extracting using Adobe Acrobat Pro 9.0, I notice that sometimes I get really CRAPPY html, doc and rtf files.

Acrobat does a lousy job of exporting to TXT and RTF. The trick I've found is to run the PDF through Finereader and let it "OCR" it (never mind that it is already text) then save it from Finereader in whatever document format you want, with more flexibility on the output.

[Desertway]

I don't understand why you think that the publishing industry owes you anything. Is the right to ebooks some sort of right under natural law, or the constitution? You are actually angry that they are not providing you with what you think you rightfully deserve.

Regarding the Darknet, when you increase the quantity and availability of a particular good, you decrease the value of said good, whether this be a physical object or intellectual property. So yeah, you are screwing people.

Authors are invested in their work (education, time, sweat, emotional toll), as is the infrastructure by which books are distributed (agents, publishing houses, bookstores, ebookstores). This human and physical capitol needs to be financially compensated. It matters not whether the product is material or intellectual.

[kindlekitten]

I don't think that is in dispute. the main argument (outside from the few that feel they need to take take take) is that publishers, as well as a few authors need to get their heads out of their fifth point of contact regarding ebooks. if they refuse to join the 21st century then the message seems to be that they do so at their own risk

[Ben Thornton]

What I think a lot of people object to is the "dog in the manger" behaviour of publishers, who own the rights to things that people want, which they will neither let people have, nor benefit from themselves. It seems to me a pretty well established moral objection, which is behind the argument that "orphaned" works should enter the public domain.

So, I don't think that it is a straightforward "I'm going to steal it if you won't sell it to me" situation, but one where people feel that publishers are in the wrong in withholding material, and that they have some justification in obtaining it when there is no attempt by others to benefit from it.

My point is that there is a rational moral position that one could adopt in support of using the darknets to obtain material that nobody is prepared to sell you. We can debate whether that position is the best one to adopt or not, but I think it unreasonable to belittle it as childish, or as craving justification for known naughtiness.

The whole point of copyright is to grant people temporary exclusive rights to the benefits of some work, in exchange for it becoming public domain afterwards. The point is not to sit on the rights and not let anyone access the work at all. So, I think that there's something worth exploring here, as those supporting new rules for "orphaned" works advocate.

[TGS]

I need to preface what I say by making clear that I have no strong views one way or the other on people obtaining materiel from, what we might for convenience agree to refer to as, the Darknet.

Originally Posted by Ben Thornton

What I think a lot of people object to is the "dog in the manger" behaviour of publishers, who own the rights to things that people want, which they will neither let people have, nor benefit from themselves. It seems to me a pretty well established moral objection, which is behind the argument that "orphaned" works should enter the public domain.

If I understand correctly there might be three sorts of material from that get downloaded from the Darknet in descending order of naughtiness*:

1. Material that is available in a variety of media and or formats but the individual wants to get if for nothing if they can
2. Material that is available in a variety of media and/or formats, but the individual wants it in a different media and/or format
3. Material that is not currently available - new or second-hand - in any format

I guess in all case we are talking about material that is in copyright and that someone owns the rights to.

Originally Posted by Ben Thornton

So, I don't think that it is a straightforward "I'm going to steal it if you won't sell it to me" situation, but one where people feel that publishers are in the wrong in withholding material, and that they have some justification in obtaining it when there is no attempt by others to benefit from it.

This is the situation that, I guess, corresponds with 3 above.

Originally Posted by Ben Thornton

My point is that there is a rational moral position that one could adopt in support of using the darknets to obtain material that nobody is prepared to sell you. We can debate whether that position is the best one to adopt or not, but I think it unreasonable to belittle it as childish, or as craving justification for known naughtiness.

This seems to amount to the the argument that if someone exercises their rights in a way that I don't like there might be a rational moral position which would give some moral warrant to me negating their rights.

You might be right on this - but if you are I don't see how we separate 1 and 2 from 3 - some rights-holder who wants me to pay £130 for a copy of an academic book may well be exercising their rights in a way that I don't like, and if we accept the argument that the exercise of rights in ways we don't like justifies the negation of those rights, then I would be justified in downloading it from the Darknet. If the book could have been had for £10 I would have happily paid it, but it's ridiculous to charge me £130. There's no way I can afford £130 so I'm going to have it away from some file hosting site if I can find it.

You might argue that the exercising of rights which results in a book costing £130 has, in itself, a different moral status from the exercise of rights that results in a book not being available, and that, therefore, how we respond to those exercising of rights can justifiably be different. But you would have to argue this, I don't think it's self-evident.

Originally Posted by Ben Thornton

The whole point of copyright is to grant people temporary exclusive rights to the benefits of some work, in exchange for it becoming public domain afterwards. The point is not to sit on the rights and not let anyone access the work at all. So, I think that there's something worth exploring here, as those supporting new rules for "orphaned" works advocate.

Unless there is legislation to specify how rights are to be exercised, or a judiciary later clarifies through case law the proper exercise of particular right, then, if we put our faith in a rights-based legal/ethical system, it probably behoves us to continue to respect rights however they are exercised.

Of course, what we haven't really looked at is the argument that not only is 3 justified, but so is 2 - which is a position I think a number of people occupy, and in comparison with which I find 1 even more difficult to distinguish.

Now, it might be that this whole argument is about how pissed the way in which a publisher exercises their rights makes us feel. Believe me, it doesn't compare with how pissed paying £130 for a book makes me feel.

*In using the word naughtiness I'm not being (entirely) flippant - I probably think that any downloading from the Darknet falls at the naughtiness - rather than the gross moral turpitude - end of the moral scale - none of it matters very much and most of it doesn't matter at all.