Library.nu and Ifile.it Shut Down 336
Ralph Spoilsport writes "A coalition of 17 publishing companies has shut down library.nu and ifile.it, charging them with pirating ebooks. This comes less than a month after megaupload was shut down, and SOPA was stopped. If the busting of cyberlockers continues at this pace and online library sharing dismantled, this under-reported story may well be the tip of a very big iceberg — one quite beyond the P&L sheets of publishers and striking at basic human rights as outlined in the contradictions of the UN Charter. Is this a big deal — a grim coalition of corporate power? Or just mopping up some scurvy old pirates? Or somewhere in between?"
Adds new submitter roaryk, "According to the complaint, the sites offered users access to 400,000 e-books and made more than $11 million in revenue in the process. The admins, Fidel Nunez and Irina Ivanova, have been tracked down using their PayPal donation account, which was not anonymous. Despite the claims of the industry the site admins say they were barely able to cover the server costs with the revenue."
Re:Slashdot deletes posts (Score:5, Informative)
Sad
Well, something is. Just not what you think.
Re:MegaUpload bust was highly successful (Score:0, Informative)
It was very similar to selling warez on streets,.
No, it wasn't.
Re:MegaUpload bust was highly successful (Score:4, Informative)
The people who have suffered most is those who used these services for legitimate content, and there were quite considerable numbers of people who did so... Quite a few open source projects used such sites, for instance its not uncommon to have downloaded linux based firmware images for various devices including android phones from such sites.
No, it was Scientologists (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Library E-books (Score:4, Informative)
This has most likely changed in the last couple of years. The service a lot of libraries is known as OverDrive and it offers a lot of recent fiction. I usually download a couple of Dresden File books before going overseas.
Check that library again.
Re:MegaUpload bust was highly successful (Score:5, Informative)
Just roll over, shrug their shoulders, and say "oh well"?
No, Mr. Media Giant, I expect you to die.</Goldfinger>
Re:MegaUpload bust was highly successful (Score:4, Informative)
they can easily make it harder and inconvenient enough for general population.
No, they can't. There is a fundamental contradiction that people like you don't understand: you can't have a population that has free, open access to digital communications, and at the same time restrict what data they are communicating to each other. Every single time the various agencies get together and close down one site, there are a dozen more that spring up to take its place. We have seen this pattern time and time again, every single warez group that has ever been closed down has been trumpeted as a "huge success against piracy", and yet here we are, in 2012, and piracy is everywhere. Remember DrinkOrDie? [wikipedia.org] Operation Buccaneer [wikipedia.org] - one of the largest, most expensive global anti-piracy enforcement actions in history, and yet here we are a decade later and piracy is as big as it ever was. And so it will be with MegaUpload.
but when the circle is small enough companies don't care.
You seem to have forgotten that PirateBay is still running... and if that ever goes down, there will be another ten to take its place. This battle is not winnable while it is still legal to own PCs and develop software. There will always be another Usenet, another BitTorrent, another Kazaa, and another PirateBay.
Re:Slashdot deletes posts (Score:4, Informative)
When a comment is flagged, it gets sent to the editors to review on a case-by-case basis. We then pick from two options: ignore and downmod. Nothing gets deleted, and reporting a comment that is already at -1 won't do anything either way.
Plenty of people have tried to abuse it already, but because it's not automated, they're just wasting their time. Feel free to test it out if you'd like.