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.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.