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Books Crime Piracy The Courts

Spanish Police Arrest Their First Ever eBook Pirate (torrentfreak.com) 48

Posted by msmash from the bad-man-or-robinhood dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Spain's Ministry of the Interior has announced the first ever arrest of an eBook pirate. The suspect is said to have uploaded more than 11,000 literary works online, many on the same day as their official release. More than 400 subsequent sites are said to have utilized his releases. The investigation began in 2015 following a complaint from the Spanish Reproduction Rights Centre (CEDRO), a non-profit association of authors and publishers of books, magazines, newspapers and sheet music. According to the Ministry, CEDRO had been tracking the suspect but were only able to identify him by an online pseudonym. However, following investigations carried out by the police, his real identity was discovered.
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Spanish Police Arrest Their First Ever eBook Pirate More

Spanish Police Arrest Their First Ever eBook Pirate

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  • For one thing he doesn't say 'aarh matey' nearly enough. Maybe a misguided Robin Hood. I think pirates are more into acquiring booty for their own use.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      Reminds me of the time some enterprising journalist asked one of the Somali pirates on trial about content pirates ;)
    • Yeah, he's a Robin Hood. Taking the books from all those evil fat authors and giving them to all those poor peasants absolutely starving for entertainment...

  • Where did he slip up?

  • The suspect's name (Score:3)

    by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @09:55AM (#53107409)

    His name must not be "Information", because he obviously DOESN'T want to be free...

  • The battle raged long and hard, but as night fell Sidney overcame the Spaniards. 6,000 copies of 'Tits and Bums' and 4,000 copies of 'Shower Sheila' were seized that day. The tide of Spanish porn was stemmed. Sir Philip Sidney returned to London in triumph.

  • Doing a lot of illegal reading, eh? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HetMes ( 1074585 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @10:15AM (#53107555)
    Yeah, we can't have that.

  • Despite the big, commercial-grade numbers (11k), making books available on the internet should be seen as a feat for human civilization. This is another case of state money being used to hamper human development. Who buys and reads paper books anyway, let alone purchase ebooks when the pdf is a free google search away?

    If any state agent is reading this: I urge you to start considering using our funds for the greater good, and not the specific good of publishers making a bigger profit than they have to. Capi

  • If you read the article, the guy went to a lot of effort, and I don't see any tangible benefit that he got out of it.

  • Bloody pirates! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @10:28AM (#53107659)

    As an author, I don't have a problem with someone who wants to read my work for free. That's what libraries are for, and places like the Baen Free Library get it right. If someone asks me, I'll probably send them a copy myself.

    I have a bit of a problem with some misguided soul uploading my work to online sites dedicated to distributing stuff they don't have the rights to.

    I have a major problem if either the uploader or said distributing site is making money off of distributing my work, unless they're giving me a piece of the action. I suspect that very few of those sites are in it for charitable reasons, and are getting money for it from somewhere.

  • It figures (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Daetrin ( 576516 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @10:35AM (#53107717)
    The police put a lot of effort making sure this guy goes to jail for making information available for free. Meanwhile there are tons of fake authors and stores online (some of them even represented on big sites like Amazon) who are selling the works of others for a profit. And no matter how often they get reported the police either don't care or are incapable of tracking them down (despite the presence of a clear money trail.)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That's because Spains industry is collapsing. In order to encourage more investment, they have to look like they're doing something to protect your investment.

    • Re:It figures (Score:5, Insightful)

      by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @11:32AM (#53108173) Journal
      The police put a lot of effort making sure this guy goes to jail for making information available for free.

      It's not information. It's a work someone put a lot of time and effort into creating and this asshat thought he was entitled to give it away to people without compensating the author.

      If you want to produce something and give it away that is your right. You do not have the right to give away or steal someone else's work.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Daetrin ( 576516 )
        I have complicated feelings about the subject of digital piracy. But i'd like to hope we could both agree that people who make a profit by stealing others' works and selling them as their own are the scum of the earth.

        I feel like that's who the police should really be focused on, since they are undeniably causing harm by siphoning money away from those who are actually willing to pay for the product.

        • people who make a profit by stealing others' works and selling them as their own

          From what I read in the article, he did neither of those things. He did not steal (the authors still have their books), he only made copies. He did not sell them, he put them online for free.

        • Understandable, as there is a lot of confusion on this subject. Took me a long time to work out answers I find satisfying.

          Firstly, it's a mistake to equate copying with stealing. Copying is not stealing, copying is copying. Vandalism is not stealing. Littering is not stealing, Nor are speeding, trespassing, slander, forgery, creating a parody, taking photos in public spaces, insulting politicians, and a whole bunch of other activities in any way stealing. Nor is buying from Burger King stealing from

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Daetrin ( 576516 )
            Clearly you've thought a lot about this, but please reference my original post. I was referring to people and groups that sell works online that they did not create themselves and do not have permission from the creator to sell. In some cases it's an "author" relabeling an ebook as having been written by them (plagiarism) and in other cases it's a store that claims to be an authorized distributor but is actually selling pirated copies (fraud.)

            So yes, very definitely stealing. In both cases they are divert

            • Ah, so the problem that bothers you is piggybacking, so to speak. Using other's work to bring attention to ads and products that generate income.

              On piggybacking, I feel our "mother may I" system is a serious drag. I don't like the idea that artists should have control over how their works are used. The artists should receive money somehow, but they shouldn't be able to dictate usage on some far fetched notion that lack of control might somehow negatively impact potential profits. I believe that's the

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Daetrin ( 576516 )
                No, you are not reading what I am saying. My problem is plagiarism and fraud. When someone lifts an author's work wholesale and either relabels it as their own (plagiarism) or claims that they have the right to sell it (as designated by the author or their representative) when they don't (fraud.)

                That is entirely different from copying the whole work without altering it or making false claims ("pirating") or altering the work or making use of a subset of it in an open manner to accomplish some other purpos

    • Oh, Please! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @11:37AM (#53108233)
      He is not "making information available for free." He's putting authors' novels on the internet without being given the distribution rights.

  • Oh the memories... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CODiNE ( 27417 ) on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @12:12PM (#53108547) Homepage

    This reminds me of the old days on BBS systems using dial-up modems. You needed references to get into them, and had to work your way up into the higher quality sites. It was all about maintaining that upload/download ratio. Heck you didn't even care what it was, Kai's Power Tools, Aldus Pagemaker or some old Autocad version... log in, check out new releases, grab something the other sites don't have yet, upload it there, repeat...

    Waaaaay back when 0dayz meant Warez and not exploits. Oh man I need to dig out my old MOD files. The nostalgia is killing me. This username used to be all extended ASCII characters with a custom color scheme.

    Back to the story...
    Never be the top uploader.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The sad thing is that so many of the people reading your comment will have no idea what a MOD file is. Will never have used Protracker or its countless clones, or OctaMed. Will have no idea what a Demo is (in the old-school sense).
      Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to shake my fist and wave my walking stick at these darned annoying kids, and play tracks with names like RADREV.MOD, THEHELLI.MOD, WHOISELVIS.MOD and 8CHANNELDEMO.MED.
      And anyone who doesn't recognize those can take it up with Paula, Agnus and Deni

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