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."
I propose an end to book sharing as well! (Score:5, Funny)
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Bad analogy? It was, I admit it. What is happening today is a precursor to the end of the current library model, though. We already see this with the ebook market- publishers need to decide if their works can be lent or not on Barnes & Noble (I own a Nook, so that's what I'm familiar with). Many books cannot be lent.
Other media companies (movies, music, and gaming is starting as well) are doing their best to eliminate the second-hand markets, and to end sharing of the media with others. Academic bo
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Libraries mean you need never compensate an author for his work
Why is that - because the libraries have ripped off the copies they keep on their shelves? Do they have an inside contact at the publisher who sneaks them out in a backpack during lunch?
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Which were still paid for by the original owner. And most donated books are not put into circulation, they are sold to raise money to buy the books they want.
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Uh, OK. You may not be aware of this, but when a person donates a book, he no longer has the book! Weird, huh? Furthermore, if someone else already has the book you want, you either wait, or the library must obtain ANOTHER paid-for copy of the book. And if the library in the next town over also wants the book, it has to get its own paid-for copy.
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Uh, OK. You may not be aware of this, but when a person donates a book, he no longer has the book!
You sure about that? [instructables.com]
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(Parody: When the author sells an ebook online, he still has it, even though he sold it! Weird, huh?)
I'm still not seeing a difference here:
Library gets a copy of a physical book (originally paid for by whoever bought it first) and loans it out as many times as it wants, forever.
Electronic library gets a copy
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A physical library never* copies the book. If one copy is donated the library owns one copy and can only loan it to one person at a time. If a user steals the book the library no longer has it and must obtain another copy before they can lend it out again. A user could copy the book themselves but doing so is generally a PITA so few people do unless they are really desperate to have a copy of an out of print book. One copy made and sold by the publisher equals one copy in circulation.
An electronic "library"
Re:I propose an end to book sharing as well! (Score:5, Insightful)
You may not be aware of this, but when a person donates a book, he no longer has the book!
There is only one copy of the book. The internet is the computer, the local disk is only a cache for optimisation purpose. The same way that all your so called 'legit' files have copy all over the disk, ram and cpu. Essentially, the book is multiplexed and no user are accessing the same byte at the same time (not guaranteed but simultaneous access is very unlikely).
Why users sharing a computer system should not be able to access the same data? Why peoples in the same room should not share a book?
Yeah, computer allow to do amazing things that are not possible with paper. It's called progress, and you can't do shit about it.
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I'm not donating a photocopy of my book to the library. I'm giving the actual legally purchased book to them. At that point they can lend it as they please, or sell it to make money to buy in-demand books.
the original ebook was (likely) paid for. however, it was copied to the library. Maybe the original owner deleted the copy, maybe not. no way to know or prove. And short of mailing them the harddrive or flashdrive with the ebook, no way to transfer without doing it via copying. That's just how digital com
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And yet publishers still complain about used book stores, and accuse them of being thieves. I have also seen complaints from big publishers (and one really stupid author) about their books being found in public libraries depriving them of income.
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In the US yes, not so much in Third World countries. Been to many places that there is a local building with a couple shelves of well worn donated paperbooks to serve as a local library. The locals read the books and make sure they get returned. Honduras comes to mind.
Public lending right (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I propose an end to book sharing as well! (Score:4, Funny)
I propose these houses of corruption be banned
In the UK, those houses of corruption are in the process of being closed down. As our fearless leaders will no doubt inform you, 'Big Society' demands 'Big Spaces', and some of our biggest spaces are filled to the brim with stupidly big books. As part of on-going austerity measures, and in the name of weaning the UK off fossil fuels, those big books will be reused as part of a new initiative to create a carbon neutral winter fuel allowance for the elderly [metro.co.uk]. Once cleared of the big books, the expectation is that Tesco and Sainsburies will become the custodians of those big spaces. Without big tins of baked beans on big shelves in big spaces, big society could never claim to be full of beans. It is a perfectly simple idea, and yet there are still people who are protesting all of this! Why can't they understand the flawless logic in this argument?
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I hear most are donated by people who have read them. Do they not realize the economic devistation they are causing the public!?!
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Even a donated book was paid for by the original owner. And most donated books don't go into circulation, they get sold to raise cash to buy books.
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Unfortunately, in the eBook world, publishers are basically saying that an instance of an eBook needs to be replaced every year (26 lends at two weeks per lend):
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/889452-264/harpercollins_caps_loans_on_ebook.html.csp [libraryjournal.com]
That's a lot more than a few pennies per lend, to say the least.
Re:I propose an end to book sharing as well! (Score:4, Insightful)
sooner or later (Score:4, Interesting)
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Encyclopedia Britannica sues to have Wikipedia taken down could be a future headline IMO.
So, your opinion is based on ... a complete misunderstanding of the case at hand, of Wikipedia, and of the Britannica? The Trifecta Of Not Getting It! Congratulations.
Actually WP does use material from Brittanica (Score:2)
Distributing someone else's work is NOT a right (Score:4, Insightful)
Library.nu was for book piracy, not films (Score:3)
It's not for sitting on your rear end and downloading some movie without paying for it. Calling downloading a "human right" is an insult to Martin Luther King, Peter Zenger, and everyone else who fought for our right to express ourselves.
Considering that library.nu was a site for book piracy, I think your comment is a bit misguided. Frankly, I suspect Martin Luther King would probably have been okay with someone downloading "Why We Can't Wait" from library.nu.
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Distributing your own creative works IS a right, and it is being infringed upon by removing the medium of sharing in order to fight piracy.
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What backwater do you live in? Most libraries will let you borrow ebooks.
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What makes you think you need to leave the house to borrow ebooks from the library (other than once every three years to renew your library card): http://overdrive.dclibrary.org/ [dclibrary.org]
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And what makes you think free access to books is a right?
Freedom of speech doesn't include freedom to free (as in beer) access to someone's writings.
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You're absolutely correct on a legal level, no one can argue with that.
However, I think a lot of us pose the question the opposite way: what makes you think government-backed enforcement of monopoly is a right? The only reason it's a legal right is because of accidents of history and law... Unless you're taking a Rick Santorum-style approach where you generally think that US law was handed down by God almighty.
When you look beyond mere existing law and ask about fundamental human rights, there is a pretty h
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The logical conclusion of your premise, though, is that knowledge is a privilege.
The media (scroll, book, eBook) doesn't matter; what does matter is whether or not those who cannot afford huge fees to read are allowed access to books - or not.
Re:Distributing someone else's work is NOT a right (Score:5, Insightful)
Think for a moment...if we appoint adjudicators of what content is and isn't free speech, we've already lost it.
Have you heard of the "courts?" They've been doing exactly that for hundreds of years. CP, for example, is not free speech. Saying a politician murdered a prostitute? Not free speech. Saying you think a politician's opinion is wrong and stupid and you would like to see him die? 100% protected free speech (yes, even the "want to see him die" part, so long as you don't encourage someone to kill him or say you are going to do it yourself).
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Saying a politician murdered a prostitute? Not free speech.
Sort of. It's a civil matter of defamation, not a criminal charge, assuming that you believed that statement to be untrue.
It is, however, perfectly legal to broadcast something like "This network has found no evidence that Senator Jones killed a prostitute." even if the effect of saying such things is for most people to think that Jones killed a prostitute but was careful to hide all the evidence.
I borrowed a newspaper today (Score:5, Insightful)
I borrowed a newspaper today. I didn't pay for it, but I still read it.
Also, I have 3 books at home which aren't mine (borrowed, not stolen).
Basically, that's at least 30 euro of lost revenue for the industry.
Yet I don't feel guilty...
Re:I borrowed a newspaper today (Score:5, Funny)
I borrowed a newspaper today. I didn't pay for it, but I still read it.
Also, I have 3 books at home which aren't mine (borrowed, not stolen).
Basically, that's at least 30 euro of lost revenue for the industry.
Yet I don't feel guilty...
30? More like 3 million. Thats how piracy works, haven't you been paying attention?
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And did you scan them, run them through OCR, and then make some money off of "sharing" them with millions of your closest personal friends? No?
I read them, and I "paid" by giving some books to my friends in return. So yeah, it's actually quite an organization we've set up here. And it's decentralized p2p too. :-)
But if you imagine that millions of people are all doing this, you can get an idea of the huge damage to the industry. I'm only a small player. There are people who own and read way more books than I do.
So, your point is that you have no sense of what the discussion is actually about, right? Right.
Don't mock my comment. I know what I am talking about. We're talking about billions of euros/dollars... stolen from the industry by book-s
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[Snip]There are people who own and read way more books than I do.
So, your point is that you have no sense of what the discussion is actually about, right? Right.
Don't mock my comment. I know what I am talking about. We're talking about billions of euros/dollars... stolen from the industry by book-sharing people. And they've been at it for centuries!
Oh Wait, there's those things called Libraries! Burn them down immediately!
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I read them, and I "paid" by giving some books to my friends in return.
I'm missing the part where you made a copy of them. Hence violating copyright and artificially increasing supply thereby diluting demand. Hence violating legal copyright. Lending is just fine. They sold one book to be read, and it is read one person at a time. It is not reproduced and read by multiple people at the same time in different locations. Copyright is about artificially maintaining scarcity. you did nothing to decrease scarcity.
So, your comparison is off.
Its about more than piracy (Score:2)
I cant help but wonder how much money the people behind ACTA/SOPA/PIPPA/MAFIAA are spending to get these sites taken down. Its got to cost some pretty big bucks to collaborate it all across nations and political boundaries. What's the payout for them?
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What's the payout for them?
Our freedoms
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What's the payout for them?
I would assume donations from the concerned parties.
Why is it... (Score:2)
Farenheight 451 (Score:2)
Bradbury was right on target.
But the firemen don't need to burn paper books, they just need to wipe your kindle (of 1984, if I recall (in great irony)), close down the websites and prevent your iPad from accessing anything outside the walled garden.
How long before Publishers and the RIAA are hunting down camps of vagrants, people who recite to others "I am The Grapes of Wrath" or "I am The Beatles" ?
We are headed for some dark times. They didn't have to burn our books. Instead, they gave us electronic toys
Just more proof... (Score:3)
This is just further proof that existing IP laws are sufficient and we don't NEED draconian measures like SOPA or ACTA to stop piracy.
The laws are there. They can be enforced without censorship and stepping all over peoples' rights.
Enter the Readeasy. (Score:2)
Overlapping circles of people who share books.
The thing about forcing certain goods and services into the area outside the law is that if enough people want those goods and services, it becomes socially acceptable to ignore the law. This both weakens the law in general (and thus the fabric of a government of laws) while at the same time turning the law into a tool of oppression for those in power.
It happened during prohibition. It happened during the war on drugs. And now it's going to happen in this war
Money doesn't add up (Score:2)
~40k per month for an OC3 line 155Mbps.
I'll give you a million for your storage solution.
About 1.2mil for ~2000 or so CPU's and a terabyte of active memory worth of servers.
Figure 100k a sysadmin. Would be a good idea to not have a admin to cpu ratio higher than 1:250 so that nearly a million there
You need cooling and a place to house the servers. I'll give you another million.
Oh netwo
Library analogy (Score:2)
Electronic library gets a copy of an electronic book (originally paid for by whoever bought it first) and loans it out as many times as it wants, forever.
In both situations, someone who really wants a paid-for copy for themselves can pay for it themselves; someone who really wants to just borrow one can borrow and return/delete it; someone who really just wants to s
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Library gets a copy of a physical book (originally paid for by whoever bought it first) and loans it out as many times as it wants, forever.
The physical book is not forever.
Not with the kind of punishment it takes in a public library.
That implies purchase of custom bindings or multiple copies of books in heavy circulation.
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Electronic Library (like Overdrive) uses DRM to ensure that only one copy of a purchased book is available for use at any given time, making it analogous to the physical library.
These sites seem like they were more like a library which would photocopy you a book anytime you wanted, not making you wait for the original purchased book to be returned first.
I won't buy files with DRM, but I'm actually ok with using my library's Overdrive system since it's pretty much the digital equivalent of the usual library
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Mankind has to accept that we're in an electronic age, and certain things are easier.
We wouldn't accept having the police follow us into our own home to make sure we don't photocopy a book after lending it from the library; so
They're thiefs.... sorry (Score:4, Insightful)
If you copy media you purchased, you're smart.
If you copy media you didn't purchase, you're cheap.
If you copy media you didn't purchase AND you make a profit off of it, you're a thief.
We do have to be careful that this doesn't turn into a slippery slope but, c'mon, making a profit off of other artists material which you don't have the rights to is just good old fashioned stealing no matter how you slice it.
Oh great... (Score:3)
These were absolutely essential for my scientific work, because I'm living in a very poor country and (if at all) academic publishers only allow authors to put papers and book drafts on their web page that cannot be used for quoting.
Now I'm really, really getting angry! As if Springer books priced at $150 or even $240 plus months of complicated ordering by the university to our library weren't already painful enough.
Thanks a lot, all you IP-property assholes. Eat shit and die!!!
(And yes, I have also published books including typesetting them in their entirety in LaTeX because the publisher was too lazy/saves costs/rips off academics. And no, I haven't seen a dime for any of this work...)
Pirating File Sharing vs File Sharing sites (Score:2)
Re:MegaUpload bust was highly successful (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MegaUpload bust was highly successful (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MegaUpload bust was highly successful (Score:5, Insightful)
There are very few cases of copyright theft: when media cartels deny an artist the right to use their own work, even if there is no contract between the artist and the cartel. The rest which you seem to be talking about is copyright infrigement.
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:MegaUpload bust was highly successful (Score:5, Insightful)
Infringing copyright isn't theft. Copyright theft is when a record company takes the rights to their musicians' work. If I held a gun to your head and made you sign your copyrights over, that too would be copyright theft.
The publishing industries should stop listening to the advertiser's mantra "sell the sizzle, not the steak" and try to understand what the phrase means. You can't sell me a sizzle, but the sizzle might help you sell me a steak.
What's the difference between downloading a CD's worth of songs and checking the CD out from the library? It has dozens of movies, hundreds of CDs and thousands of books -- all free.
Since the invention of moveable type, the content sold the book. The music sold the record. Plays, concerts, and movies were the only exceptions. Study after study shows that music pirates spend more money on music than non-pirates. Attack piracy and you attack your best customers. I can think of little more foolish.
However, I agree that those making money from piracy or counterfeiting are in fact stealing. In that case, something is indeed lost.
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Many libraries do have ebook lending programs. They have a set number of licensed copies they can "lend". You must wait for people to "return" the ebook before you can get a copy. Yes... you have to wait. The main advantage I see is that I never have to pay overdue fees to the library since my book just expires when its "returned".
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Yes. Otherwise, there would be no possible way publishers would allow libraries to lend digital copies. Think about it: reverse the earlier question. What's the difference between a library that "lends" infinite, permanent digital copies of books for free to anyone with a login, and a pirate site? A library that can distribute ebooks with no limitations whatsoever is no different than a pirate site, essentially, and renders the idea of copyright moot. If you think that the very idea of copyright is in and o
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I guess no website can have advertisements because of the piracy boogeyman. Someone, somewhere might be copying something! We should waste extreme amounts of taxpayer dollars trying to stop what amounts to jaywalkers.
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MegaUpload was (to me at least) more a place where documents and other things got put by whistleblowers. There was very few pirated content on MU, it wasn't the place to go for your latest movie or video game.
Shutting down MU did more damage to whistleblowers, the Anon community and similar groups than to pirates. There was also a host of information on there that has now simply disappeared and needs to be re-uploaded elsewhere.
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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:5, Insightful)
I really don't like copyright infringers. They give the rest of the internet users a bad name. I've downloaded share of illegal content but I've since stopped doing it for the exact reasons you point out. If I don't think something is worth the price the copyright owner is asking, I just simply don't watch/listen/read it. There's enough other media on the internet for free, or with price and terms that I do agree with that I don't need to pirate stuff if I feel it isn't worth the price. Sure I may not get to see all the new movies, but I really don't feel like I'm missing much.
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What box set is that?
Game of Thrones, Season 1
Episodes: 10
DVD: $34.99 or $3.50/episode
Blu-Ray: $44.99 or $4.50/episode
Chuck, Season 5 ...perhaps some older material and bigger box sets...
Episodes: 13
DVD: $29.99 or $2.31/episode
Blu-Ray: $39.99 or $3.08/episode
Star Trek TNG, all episodes (cheapest I could find at Amazon.com)
Episodes: 17
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Someone has a sense of entitlement - "I don't want to pay for this, so instead of doing without or being responsible I'll just take it" - and so they make more and more run-arounds just so they can get their stuff for free.
If that's the pirates' mind set, then why do all the studies show that music pirates spend more money on music than non-pirates? No, the pirates didn't bring SOPA and the other evils, YOU, the publishers, did.
What on earth do you expect the reactions of the media giants to be?
I always exp
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Do you have a link to someone complaining they are not getting paid for uploading?
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http://www.wjunction.com/102-file-host-discussion [wjunction.com]
Everyone is afraid of being scammed by new companies because there have been so many since the busts and after every other site shutdown. And just look at the forum in general - file uploading sites have official discussions and support persons, they're clearly seeing what kind of files people are uploading and on what kind of stuff the forum specializes in (file uploads, torrent seedboxes, remote de
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All you've done is make sure that the dark nets are... dark.
Just like the war on drugs has not had any perceptible impact on drug use, the war on piracy will simply make criminals out of people who want to read a book, but probably won't stop them from doing it.
Re:MegaUpload bust was highly successful (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not made anyone a criminal for "reading a book" this is a crackdown on a site flagrantly facilitating copyright infringement. Boohoo.
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Basically just a bunch of kids that try to profit off of people that actually did the leg work. I don't know of any release groups that ask for money. They do it for the challenge and to be first. I've not noticed a single hiccup in anything. From SickBeard to CouchPotato.
That of which we do not speak is still going strong. The people complaining about MU and everything else being shut down are the same type of people that have difficulty with torrents.
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The other people who have suffered are those idiots who used those cyberlocker services to store and share their own data that they had every right to do so with.
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You've gotta be pretty naïve to believe that MegaUpload was a respectable site that was going to stay around for a long time and that you could trust with your files.
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.
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Check your local library's web site. Many public libraries now have the capability to check out e-books for up to three weeks. My local library has them in .mobi, .pdf and recently added Kindle formats.
Plus if you go into the library your friendly librarian might be able to recommend material you would never have thought to read. That's how I found "The Windup Girl"
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:4, Insightful)
Most of it? It's a temporary dip. The pro-culture-theft crowd was saying the same thing when Napster was shut down, I'm sure the idea of average Joes using something as technically complicated as torrents seemed at least as ridiculous back then as the idea of average Joes running their torrents over untraceable, unstoppable darknets seems now.
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Actually the purpose is to crush the competition, gain control on innovations and facilitate a police state. Reducing piracy is icing on the cake.
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-GiH
Re:Slashdot deletes posts (Score:5, Informative)
Sad
Well, something is. Just not what you think.
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I understand why Slashdot has started implemented the ability to delete posts and I agree they should have the capability.. Two ssues I see is if they now are looked at as a moderated site. Sometimes different legal rules apply to moderated vice unmoderated site. Also just hope they don't go overboard on the deleting.
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It's true - sure we no longer have to endure the GNAA posts, but there were only ever a few of those per story, and they never got modded up. Seems like a solution looking for a problem.
Re:Slashdot deletes posts (Score:5, Insightful)
The flag is so subtle that I hadn't even noticed it...
Wasn't there a big shitstorm over *one* post being deleted a few years back? I think it was due to a court order or something of the like... maybe about the HDCP keys or something? Bah.
I think the fact that posts *cannot* be deleted makes people consider what they are going to post a little more carefully. Aside from the usual spam and idiocy, I generally find the commentary here to be of a higher quality in general than places like Reddit or the comments section in other news sites. I feel that this is going to go into the shitter now.
No, it was Scientologists (Score:5, Informative)
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I still see no evidence that posts are actually *deleted* when flagged. The FAQ seems to suggest that they are modded to -1:
How do I report abuse?
Below and to the right of each comment is a small "Anti" symbol; click on this, and (optionally) explain why you consider the comment abusive. (Slashdot discussions are and should be robust; only cry "Abuse!" for comments that are utterly without redeeming value -- spam, racist ranting, etc. For everything else, use the other moderation options.) Reported comments will be reviewed and moderated by the editors, if appropriate.
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.