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Along with an increased level of digital media and the
digitalization and monetization of print has come an increased level of piracy
and illegal sharing of copyrighted documents. This, in turn, has led to a
number of issues in the E-book industry that affect authors, publishers,
editors, and literary agents. The ease with which books can be digitized and
shared has never been higher. Compounding this issue is the fact that most of
the files are very small and can be shared easily.
There are a few websites well known for book piracy, though
many of them host other pirated materials as well. These sites both illegally
host book uploads and damage the economy of the publishing industry as a whole:
·
EbooksHeaven
– Ebooks Heaven is a site primarily created and run for the sole purpose of
sharing copyrighted books and digitized print material.
·
BitMe –
BitMe is a private tracker (only accepting new members through either rare open
signups or through an invitation from a current member) which specializes in
torrents for textbooks and academic texts.
·
The Pirate Bay
– Pirate Bay is one of the most well-known torrent sites. While they do not
focus only on books like some other trackers do, Pirate Bay has an extremely
large and extensive collection of fiction, non-fiction, and textbook torrents.
·
Kickass Torrents
– Kickass Torrents is a search engine for torrents which catalogues torrent
files hosted on other websites and condenses them into one location. They have
an extensive book selection in their list of torrents.
·
4-Shared –
4-Shared is a website that hosts uploaded files. It is often used by pirates to
host their uploaded E-books. Books are often hosted as PDFs or epub files. The
site has been known to remove hosted content, but only if it has been flagged.
·
Scribd –
Scribd is a large E-book repository. They operate as a legitimate business, but
have an upload/download service that makes it extremely easy for pirates to
share copyrighted material with very little to no consequence.
·
Textbook
Nova – Textbook Nova is another torrent tracker providing torrents for
textbooks and academic texts.
·
Bibliotik
– Bibliotik is one of the premier E-book sharing sites on the Internet. It is,
like many of the others, private. This one only shows a blank login page for
non-members.
·
Demonoid
– Demonoid is another torrent hosting site which features pirated movies,
books, and music. They have an extensive section in which book torrents are
shared. Though the site features a log-in and account section, anyone can
download from the site.
Administrators of these websites often modify the
‘robots.txt’ file on their server to prevent search engines from cataloguing
the items that are located there. This makes it very difficult for copyright
holders to determine where their work is being shared. Though private trackers
have less web traffic (and, thus, less users) than public trackers and other
websites, there is nothing preventing a user who downloads a file from hosting
that file on any other site. Any site that hosts torrents or offers easy upload
capabilities is going to have its share of printed and copyrighted book
material being shared; legally or illegally. This sharing cuts into profits and
damages the integrity of the work being done by authors and other members of
the publishing chain.
