Comments on: Book Publisher Sues ‘Dummies’ Downloaders

By: Bjorn Hudson

Bjorn Hudson — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:04:45 +0000

Sounds like Wiley needs to read their own book. LibraryPirate was kind enough to provide the torrent for it here.

http://librarypirate.me/BitTorrent_For_Dummies_by_Kris_Krug_Susannah_Gardner-s-3507.ts

By: robin

robin — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 22:01:43 +0000

Having read the actual complaint from Wiley ( http://bit.ly/uNyeY8 ) (which you should have linked to imho), I’ve come away with the following impression of Wiley:

‘We neither understand what these kids are doing nor how they’re doing it, but dammit it’s wrong. We should be earning more money in the manner in which we did 20 years ago but we’re not, and dammit that’s wrong. I’m telling you, things are wrong and dammit that’s wrong.’

And technically Mr. Wolf, all one ever downloads from a ‘torrent site’ is a tiny bittorrent file, not a single 1 or 0 of which is infringing. Bittorrent you see is nothing more than a file-transfer protocol (see HyperText Transfer Protocol HTTP or File Transfer Protocol FTP or the approx. 49 other different ones). It’s difference is in it’s peer-to-peer nature rather than a server-client one. Each and every transfer protocol is used by individuals to ‘infringe’ the works of publishers.

In the spirit of Jonathon Swift, may I modestly propose we shut down the internet?

By: TeufelWolf

TeufelWolf — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:19:08 +0000

Technically your article is not correct. When you use a torrent site you are not just downloading, you also end up hosting all or part of the file, and uploading it others. That act of host and uploading makes the user more liable then someone who just downloads the same book from usenet, NZB index site, or a file dump.
Hosting and sharing also broadcasts your IP address to anyone who can access the same torrent. There are dozens of companies that monitor everything that goes up on torrent sites.
If you live in a litigious country like the US, most of the EU, Canada you should be careful using torrents.

By: Jeff Roberts

Jeff Roberts — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:05:10 +0000

Thanks, David, for pointing out that Demonoid has a Montenegro domain name but that it is in fact hosted in the Ukraine. I’ve corrected above

By: david

david — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:41:25 +0000

Demonoid is not a ‘Montenego-based site’. It has a .me domain (used to be .com but switched once ICE started it’s domain seizure program) but it’s hosted in the Ukraine.