At its height the site had more than 70,000 members, with over 20,000 peers trading files at any given point in time.

The site managed to fly under the radar for a long time, but as it expanded the press and book publishers started to take notice. This unwanted attention led to numerous takedown requests and legal threats were also directed at the owner of the site, who saw no other option than to turn the final page in October 2008.

After it closed, students were left with no other option than to buy their books or to find other sources where they could share them. Oddly enough, the gap left by TextBookTorrents was never filled in the two years since its demise, despite the fact that eBooks have become mainstream and eReaders more affordable. This absence didn’t go unnoticed to a duo of college students, who launched the site Torrent My Books a few days ago.

“We were disheartened when we heard that TextbookTorrents was shutting down way back when, and since we did not see any sites coming up to replace it, we decided to take it upon ourselves to do something,” one of the founders explained to TorrentFreak.

The purpose of TorrentMyBooks is to be a place where people can share books freely, not just textbooks, although that is the main focus. The main difference with the late TextBookTorrents is that the site doesn’t have a tracker. It just provides an index of book related torrents where users can add to and download from.

The appearance and feature set of the site is similar to many other sites. Visitors can browse through the different sections, and the homepage of the site shows the more recent titles added to the various categories. TorrentMyBooks currently lists just over hundred torrents, but the founders hope there will be thousands of titles available soon.

“The motivation for creating the site is based on a personal experience of mine in college,” half of the duo told TorrentFreak. “One semester I needed to take an Art History class and it required the students to buy a textbook which cost roughly $150 USD. Fast forward to the end of the semester, I go to the school book store to sell back the book. I am told flat out that it is out of date and they cannot buy the book.”

“I was appalled that an art HISTORY book goes out of date. How does a book about the history of art change so much that you need a new edition? The only reason I can think of is that publishers have a monopoly and are able to force students to buy a new edition,” TorrentMyBook’s co-founder says.

It is pretty clear where the motivation of the site’s founders come from, but then there’s always the follow up question that deals with the morality of the operation. Here, the site’s co-founder – annex textbook vigilante – pictures himself on the right side of the argument as well.

“The morality of torrenting books is not clearly defined. You can’t really put a price on sharing knowledge such as books. That’s why most libraries are free. I also do not mind paying for books but publishers like to take advantage of students which does not seem right to me. Also, as a student, I do notice that people are looking for a cheaper alternative to books.”

Then there’s one hurdle left, the legality of the operation. Considering the history of TextBookTorrents and the piracy paranoia among book publishers as of late, the founders of TorrentMyBooks can expect plenty of DMCA notices, or worse. This is something they considered before starting the site, but nonetheless they will carry out their ambitions.

“One must be worried about the legal implications. However, we are going to be diligent in creating the number one source for books,” we were told.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

On July 1st 2008, Jeff Young, a writer with The Chronicle of Higher Education, wrote an article entitled Textbook Piracy Grows Online, Prompting a Counterattack From Publishers. The article focused on TextBook Torrents and it quickly gained traction after being picked up by Slashdot and subsequently, many other mainstream publications. In this explosion of publicity the site’s membership grew rapidly, but almost inevitably, the anti-piracy hawks began to circle.

Within days, Textbook Torrents’ host and domain registrar received takedown requests. At the time, Geekman, the admin of the tracker told TorrentFreak: “We received a DMCA notice from Pearson Education a week or so prior, which we complied with, but it was a group of publishers that contacted our host.” On July 5th Dreamhost suspended Geekman’s account and refused to speak with him and it took a week to even transfer the domain. It took a month for the site to return.

“I want to see the textbook industry change such that we are no longer needed,” Geekman told TorrentFreak when we asked him in early August about his motivation to bring back the site.

Now, just 2 months later, visitors to the TextBook Torrents site this week were faced with the grim reality that the site has gone. “TextBook Torrents won’t be coming back,” Geekman told TorrentFreak. “I’ve been at it for two years and it has been an awesome two years, but i’m ready to step back and hopefully allow somebody else to rise up in our place.”

Geekman told us that he felt that when it became clear to the copyright owners that simple threats to the site and its host wouldn’t be sufficient to close down the tracker, he himself became the next logical target: “We got word from several credible sources that there was a lawsuit in the works against myself personally,” he explained.

Of course, when anyone invests a huge amount of work into a project, there will be some pain to endure when it comes to an end, and Geekman is no different. “It does hurt. Textbook Torrents was my baby and one of my proudest projects, both personally and certainly as Geekman. At the same time, running the site had become very demanding. Since the attention last summer the site nearly doubled in size in 4 months from 60,000 to over 100,000 members. In all honesty, it was all I could do to keep up with media interview requests.”

Geekman told us that he was sorry to have to shut down the site without notice, but in the absence of others immediately stepping up to take over the running of the site, he had no alternative. He also said that he was disappointed that nobody stepped in with a replacement site when TextBook Torrents was down for 3 weeks in August, but hopes that someone will do so now.

When asked if book publishers have learned anything from the whole affair, Geekman said he doubted that: “Intellectual property corporations are notorious for missing the point. Like I’ve said before, we were out to make a statement, to give out as much free stuff as possible, and I think we’ve made that statement – perhaps not as loudly as we could have given another few months and a little more perseverance – but certainly people have heard, and are talking. Piracy will never be sustainable for the textbook industry, but perhaps this is the first step towards a more sustainable model in the future.”

When a torrent site goes offline, especially when it’s quite a quick shutdown, it’s inevitable that users get nervous that somehow they could be implicated if the site’s logs fall into the wrong hands. However, ex-users of the site have absolutely nothing to fear in this respect: “Textbook Torrents files, including logs and backups, have been permanently removed from all servers where they were stored,” notes Geekman, “We no longer have any data on the site or its users.”

All donations made to the site have been secured for the possibility of mounting a legal defense, should the need arise. However, once it’s established that Geekman is in the clear, whatever money is left over will be donated to a textbook or education-related non-profit organization. For his part, Geekman says he will ceremonially take the last $12 for himself, to cover the only thing he ever paid for on the site – the domain registration.

“I’m an activist, I’ll freely admit it but I believe activism is about a lot more than parading around holding a sign,” Geekman told TorrentFreak. “There are far more effective ways to get peoples’ attention.”

There can be no denying that TextBook Torrents did just that.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

All this attention led to thousands of new visitors to the tracker, but the publicity also had a downside. Geekman, the administrator of Textbook Torrents told TorrentFreak that their host, xlHost, and their domain registrar, Dreamhost, both received a takedown request a few days after all the press coverage. “We received a DMCA notice from Pearson Education a week or so prior, which we complied with, but it was a group of publishers that contacted our host,” he told us.

Although the tracker was pretty popular, with around 20,000 peers trading files at any given point in time, Geekman said he had never received takedown notices from big publishers before. “We had a couple of emails from individuals before, but nothing from organizations. One was an editor complaining about being cheated out of his 10¢ per copy commission.”

On July 5th Dreamhost suspended Geekman’s account, and despite his many efforts to contact them, they simply didn’t respond to his inquiries. It took more than a week before he was allowed to transfer the domain. Now, more than a month after the site went down, Textbook Torrents returns, and it’s not planning to go away anytime soon.

Geekman plans to focus on making the site’s resources redundant, to reduce vulnerability and to make sure the site remains online. In addition he will work on the legal issues and improve the privacy of the site’s users. One of the most drastic changes is the decision to stop the logging of IP-addresses, which means that the site will stop ratio tracking. Making the tracker public will ensure the privacy of the users, in case the server is compromised.

“I want to see the textbook industry change such that we are no longer needed,” Geekman says when we ask him about his main motivation to bring the site back, while mentioning cheap books and responsible business practices as examples of positive change.

He doesn’t think publishers should give away their books –even though some authors profit from doing so– but he does think most books are too expensive. “The companies may be corrupt, but they have a right to make money. They can’t be expected to give their material away for free. After all, there is a significant amount of work involved in the production of a textbook. We need a middle ground,” he says.

“I’m not naive enough to say that if something can be distributed in a digital form it should be free but there needs to be some adaptation here,” Geekman added. For now, however, all the publishers see is a threat to their revenue stream, as Allan Ryan of Harvard Business Publishing put it: “We have been fairly vigorous in monitoring these sites and in requesting that they take down our copyrighted content.”

They sure have something to monitor now, as Textbook Torrents has made its return…because you still can’t torrent beer. Currently, the site can only be accessed directly via the IP-address, however, the domain should be working again shortly.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.