Comments on: German book publishers to sue file sharers

By: Arachne Jericho

Arachne Jericho — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:39:57 +0000

Greg M.,

The problem with that is, unlike music and movie files, scanned books are likely to come in at under less than 1MB, often far under 500 KB, unless it’s an image-heavy book (like a graphic novel). But even those are far more lightweight than your average mp3.

As a result, people discover such bogus files *much* more quickly, and many bittorrent and other sharing sites have comments to allow people to rate down such torrents.

Thus the book pirating community is nearly impervious to this tactic.

By: Greg M.

Greg M. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:39:55 +0000

Personally, if publishers want to bring down the pirate sites, I think they should flood them with bogus files. Upload an ebook with about 50% of the content intact, then replace the rest with public domain text or lorem ipsum.

Insert a comment halfway through like “This file has not been authorized for sharing. Chapters 10 to 20 have been subsisted with chapters from Pride and Prejudice. Please purchase a copy if you would like to read the rest of this book.”

It could get quite annoying for sharers and would force the pirate sites to police for and take down the bogus ebooks. Maybe it would make a difference if content providers could get a critical mass on pirate sites to ensure that 1 of 4 or 1 or 3 ebook downloads didn’t contain the full text.

By: CommanderROR

CommanderROR — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:23:57 +0000

Let them try their luck…this scheme will fail just like their weird idea of selling eboks for Hardcover prices…

By: Yoda47

Yoda47 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:13:42 +0000

Not that I agree with stealing books but my comment is still:

Yeah, it worked so well for the music industry.

By: alex s

alex s — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:07:18 +0000

Hopefully publishers have learned lessons from the music industry. A part of me is doubtful that they have. Suing at random would support my worst fears.

By: TheRealBillC

TheRealBillC — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:53:31 +0000

You have to wonder if publishers ever read. Do they realize what bad feeling and bad press they will get for beating up on children, right or wrong? A lot of file sharers are young people who have neither the money or inclination to buy at the prices publishers charge, but what they do have is time, so they share files. You do not lose sales to this group, since they wouldn’t buy anyway, and prosecution of this group will not be effective. The music industry learned this. Must the publishers, in every country, ignore history? What will work is making books easily available in timely, legal e-versions, without DRM, at a price that most people think is fair. Until publishers offer a legal, reasonably priced alternative to the darknet, the darknet will win.