By filing a mass-BitTorrent lawsuit the company followed mostly in the footsteps of several movie studios, who together have sued more than 250,000 people in the US since early 2010. And the publisher didn’t stop at just one.

In recent months Wiley has filed more than a dozen mass BitTorrent lawsuits involving a few hundred John Doe defendants in total. The Does are all accused of sharing digital copies of titles including “WordPress for Dummies,” Hacking for Dummies” and “Day Trading for Dummies.”

Talking to TorrentFreak, Wiley’s attorney William Dunnegan said previously that one of the main goals of the legal campaign is to obtain the personal details of the alleged infringers and offer them the opportunity to solve the matter through a settlement.

“Our intention is to stop the infringement and let individuals know that they are violating the law and depriving the creators of the works of rightful compensation. Our preference is to educate, settle, and prevent further infringement,” Wiley’s attorney William Dunnegan told us.

However, this strategy doesn’t always work. While the courts and Internet providers have been cooperative in assisting Wiley to obtain the personal details of the alleged book pirates, a new filing suggest that some defendants are not taking the publisher’s settlement offer.

In a one of Wiley’s cases four defendants have now been named in an amended complaint.

New York residents Jeff Ng, Ralph Mohr, Robert Carpenter and Xiaoshu Chen are no longer anonymous Does. Wiley is proceeding to call for a full jury trial against the quartet in which they will face accusations of copyright infringement and up to $150,000 in penalties for each offense.

Contacted by TorrentFreak, Wiley’s attorney William Dunnegan declined to comment on the recent developments in these specific cases. “We are proceeding with these cases as a part of Wiley’s overall copyright enforcement and education program,” was the comment we got instead.

If one or more of the three cases indeed proceeds to a full trial it will be the first time that actual evidence against BitTorrent infringers is tested in court. This is relevant because the main piece of evidence the copyright holders have is an IP-address, which by itself doesn’t identify a person but merely a connection.

In a past RIAA court case experts described the evidence gathering techniques “as factually erroneous”, “unprofessional” and “borderline incompetent.” In addition, academics have shown that due to shoddy technique even a network printer can be accused of sharing copyrighted files on BitTorrent.

If the evidence is indeed tested in court, it should be a case to watch for sure.

That said, there’s also the chance that the lawyers are using the threat of a full trial by jury as a pressure tool to convince the defendants to settle. After all, the RIAA’s litigation campaign against individual file-sharers has shown that even when a jury awards hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, lengthy trials cost more than they bring in.

Source: Major Book Publisher Demands Jury Trial Against BitTorrent Pirates

Today delivered another surprise when the site suddenly began redirecting to Google books.

Initially it was unclear what motivated the site’s owners to take these drastic actions, but a statement by a coalition of the world’s largest book publishers including Cambridge University Press, Harper Collins, Elsevier and John Wiley & Sons, seems to have cleared up the mystery.

The publishers obtained an injunction against Library.nu and the cyberlocker ifile.it from the regional court in Munich. They claimed that both sites were operating an unauthorized “internet library” that made available more than 400,000 high-quality e-books. In addition, the publishers said the sites made $11 million in revenue.

The court agreed with the publishers and the owners of the sites were served with an order to halt their infringing activities.

As a result, both sites have voluntarily pulled their services offline. Library.nu now redirects to Google books and ifile.it has put up a message stating “no upload servers currently available.”

However, this doesn’t mean that the picture painted by the book publishers is accurate. TorrentFreak spoke to the owner of ifile.it who told us that they can barely cover the server costs with the revenue they make.

“The site only had premium accounts since November 2011. It was free since 2006 and still is free for those who want to use it for free,” the owner told us.

The legal team of the publishers estimated the revenue based on page impressions as well as estimated income from premium accounts, but this figure is laughable according to the ifile.it owner, which makes sense considering the site’s modest size.

The owner further said they always try cooperate with publishers and that the site is still fully operational for registered users.

Responding to the news, the book publishers declared victory.

“This action reflects our commitment to protecting secure, safe, and legitimate use of the Internet,” said Stephen M. Smith, President and CEO of John Wiley & Sons.

“It is also evidence of the growing strength of the international community of content creators and providers taking all available legal measures against large illegal platforms,” he added.

Jens Bammel of the International Publishers Association, the umbrella organization responsible for tracking down the owners of the two sites, described the file-sharing sites as criminal outfits.

“The global publishing industry has once again shown that it can and will stand up against large-scale organised copyright crime,” Bammel says commenting on the news.

“We will not tolerate free-loaders who make unearned profits by depriving authors and publishers of their due compensation. This is an important step towards more transparent, honest, and fair trade of digital content on the Internet,” he added.

Despite the preliminary success, there are no guarantees that both sites will remain inactive. ifile.it, for example, is still working as usual for registered users.

Update: response added from the ifile.it owner, who noted that they only shut down anonymous uploads.

Source: Book Publishers ‘Shut Down’ Library.nu and iFile-it

John Wiley and Sons have sued 27 Does at a federal court in New York for downloading and sharing copies of its “For Dummies” books using BitTorrent. The complaint (pdf), obtained by TorrentFreak, shows that all defendants allegedly shared the books on October 18 and 19 of this year.

Wiley argues that through the massive piracy that occurs on BitTorrent, their company is suffering severe losses that might cost several authors their jobs.

“Defendants are contributing to a problem that threatens the profitability of Wiley. Although Wiley cannot determine at this time the precise amount of revenue that it has lost as a result of peer-to-peer file sharing of its copyrighted works though BitTorrent software, the amount of revenue that is lost is enormous,” Wiley’s attorney writes.

“For example, BitTorrent users on a single site, demonoid.me, have downloaded one of the works that is the subject of this suit, ‘Photoshop CS 5 All-In-One FOR DUMMIES,’ more than 74,000 times since June 6, 2010,” the complaint adds.

Other pirated books listed in the complaint include familiar titles such as “AutoCAD 2011 for Dummies,” “Day Trading for Dummies”, “Calculus Essential for Dummies” and “Word Press For Dummies”. Interestingly, the popular “BitTorrent for Dummies” is not included.

Aside form the direct financial damage through copyright infringement, Wiley also claims that “counterfeit” copies of their books may result in damage to the company’s image.

“The damage to Wiley includes hark to its goodwill and reputation in the marketplace for which money cannot compensate. Wiley is particularly concerned that its trademarks are used in connection with unauthorized electronic products, which could contain malicious viruses.”

“Wiley is also concerned that these unauthorized electronic editions of its works may be of inferior quality to the original versions,” the complaint reads.

The 27 defendants are all accused of copyright infringement, trademark infringement and trademark counterfeiting, and the publisher demands to be compensated for the damage they have caused.

The court papers end with an overview of the 27 IP-addresses through which these titles were shared. These are all located in the State of New York according to the attorney.

Although Wiley’s suit can be classified as a mass-BitTorrent lawsuit, the complaint is quite different from the ones we’ve seen thus far. Also, Wiley has hired the law firm Dunnegan LLC which has no track record of filing similar cases.

At this point it is not clear whether Wiley is determined to take the 27 defendants to trial, or whether it will offer them settlements as we’ve seen in nearly all other cases thus far. However, there is little doubt that Wiley’s move to make a stand against book piracy will be watched closely by other book publishers.

Source: Major Book Publisher Files Mass-BitTorrent Lawsuit

Perhaps of more interest is the technique used by the publishers’ organization to gather their data. In the report they write that they had to code a specialized tool to scrape the Pirate Bay database for book titles, since there were no ready-made tools available.

Peter Sunde is now arguing that they were breaking the law by scraping the site multiple times without permission. “The Pirate Bay actually owns the copyright to its own database of torrents,” Sunde writes on his blog. Sunde further refers to the Pirate Bay’s Usage Policy, which the book publishers organization has violated.

In true MPAA style, Sunde is determined to fight for his intellectual property. “I called them up and asked them to present more information about the technical things, so we can send them an invoice if they don’t want to be dragged into court,” Sunde told TorrentFreak in a comment.

Meanwhile, the true reason behind the real book publishers’ study remains vague. As we’ve pointed out many times before, piracy can actually boost book sales. One of the prime examples is best-selling author Paulo Coelho, who said he sold thousands of extra copies because he pirated his own books. Coelho’s success later inspired the publisher and Leander Kahney – the author of the two books – to do the same, with several others following this example. Particularly for book authors, piracy seems to be a useful promotional tool, rather than a threat. For now, that is.

We can’t foresee what will happen if someone launches a Kindle ready pirate site. More on this later, for sure.

Source: The Pirate Bay Clashes with Book Publishers

In 2001, I sold 10,000 hard copies. And everyone was puzzled. We came from zero, from 1000, to 10,000. And then the next year we were over 100,000. [...]

I thought that this is fantastic. You give to the reader the possibility of reading your books and choosing whether to buy it or not. [...]

So, I went to BitTorrent and I got all my pirate editions… And I created a site called The Pirate Coelho.

He’s convinced — and rightly so — that letting people download free copies of his books helps sales. For him the problem is getting around copyright laws that require him to get the permission of his translators if he wants to share copies of his books in other languages.

So is Coelho just seeding torrents of his books? That’s just the beginning. He took it one step further and, as quoted above, set up a WordPress blog, Pirate Coelho, where he posts links to free copies of his books on filesharing networks, FTP sites, and so on. He says it had a direct impact on sales:

Believe it or not, the sales of the book increased a lot thanks to the Pirate Coelho site…

In his speech he talks about how the Internet is changing language and books, and how online “piracy” and BitTorrent have helped him not only be more widely read, but also sell more books! It’s a must watch.

Via P2P-Blog

Source: Alchemist Author Pirates His Own Books

The inquirer writes:

The cashless site runs on a simple points system. Members receive one point for sending a book, and pay a point when they receive a book. Books sent internationally and books on members’ favourite books lists are worth two points, which provides extra incentive to supply these. Members also earn a point for every ten books they list on BookMooch. Membership is free.

There is a problem, and thus a significant difference from the real BitTorrent: The books have to go from A to B, and that costs money.

So if you’re a real bookworm with a not-to-delicate book taste, it is probably cheaper to have an additional library membership. But the idea is great, and if it has the potential to become the biggest library in the world. BookMooch founder John Buckman even thinks about launching “MoochFests”.

I was thinking of “MoochFests” where a group of people meet physically, say at a cafe, to exchange a pile of books they’ve all decided to mooch from each other. That would be a way to avoid postage, but more importantly, meet people with similar book tastes and possibly make friends.

BookMooch

Source: BitTorrent For Books?