Writer Stephanie Meyer isn’t too happy with the Internet. The first 12 chapters of her eagerly awaited book, a counter-view novel to Twilight, has hit file sharing sites. Despite knowing who was responsible, Meyer’s anger seems only to be for her Internet fans, while she plans to cancel the book.
Paulo Coelho, author of books such as “The Alchemist” and “The Witch of Portobello”, sold over 100 million books last year. In part, he puts this success down to BitTorrent, as he saw a huge increase in sales when his books appeared on sites such as The Pirate Bay. We talked to Coelho to find out more about this remarkable story.
Authors are becoming less concerned with piracy, and having pirated copies of their books listed on BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay is even considered to be an honor to some. Particularly for book authors, piracy seems to be a useful promotional tool, rather than a threat.
Pirates are innovators, they signal market problems and lead the way to new business models. Nevertheless, they are tagged as thieves by many. We invited Matt Mason, author of the book “The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism”, to write an article on the “pirate’s dilemma” for TorrentFreak.
In the recent past we’ve seen the record and movie industry sue everyone from little girls and soccer moms to college kids for illegal file-sharing. Imagine what would happen if book publishers started to take on public libraries.
The latest news from around the web, not covered on the frontpage
For years the RIAA has tried to convince the world that piracy is killing musicians. Supported...
RUTracker, Russia’s largest BitTorrent tracker, has been dealing with the effects of a DDoS attack over...
A coalition of 70 groups, including Reddit and WordPress, are asking Congress to stop working on...
In the aftermath of the MegaUpload shutdown, file-hosting sites continue to change their services. After Uploaded.to,...
In the wake of the Megaupload raids and attacks on domains in the US and elsewhere,...
Below are TorrentFreak's most discussed articles of the past month. Join the discussion if you like.
Left Quote“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.
Peter Sunde Left Quote
A selection of some TorrentFreak's classics dug up from our archives.
Continuing a long-standing New Year's tradition, we present an up-to-date list of the world's most visited...
Privacy is important on the Internet, and BitTorrent users are certainly not excluded. Already, hundreds of...
With anti-piracy outfits and dubious law-firms policing BitTorrent swarms at an increasing rate, many Bittorrent users...
With the entertainment industries lobbying for increased powers to spy on BitTorrent users, many downloaders are...
BitTorrent can be fun, as long as you get decent speeds. Not satisfied with your current...