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Publishers take down ebook file sharing site

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 17 Feb 2012 12:14 User comments (9)

Publishers take down ebook file sharing site Global publishers Cambridge University Press, Elsevier and Pearson Education Ltd, among others, have taken down the popular ebook file sharing sites library.nu and ifile.it.
The alliance of publishers say the two sites had "created an internet library" with over 400,000 unauthorized ebooks available for free.

Operators of the sites are said to have brought in over $10 million in advertising, subscriptions and donations

The other publishers who were part of the alliance that sent the successful cease-and-desist letters are Georg Thieme; HarperCollins; Hogrefe; Macmillan Publishers Ltd; Cengage Learning; John Wiley & Sons;the McGraw-Hill Companies; Pearson Education Inc; Oxford University Press; Springer; Taylor & Francis; C H Beck; and Walter De Gruyter.

International Publishers Association (IPA), which helped coordinate the events, added (via TheBookSeller): "Today, the international book industry has shown that it continues to stand up against organised copyright crime. We will not tolerate freeloaders who make unjustified profits by depriving authors and publishers of their due reward. This is an important step towards a more transparent, honest and fair trade of digital content on the Internet."

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9 user comments

117.2.2012 01:20

Charge $200 for some of my science textbooks and then they make new "editions" so I can't resell because it's not current. Keep in mind there is barley a difference. Shut down a site that is good for the students paying a shit load for university already. Textbooks are one of the biggest scams you can come by.

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 17 Feb 2012 @ 1:21

217.2.2012 01:49

sounds like they shut down a library.only difference is the library was online.

317.2.2012 03:05

not sure what ifile.it has to do with this story. Anyways, it's still online.

417.2.2012 08:42

It was expensive when I graduated 10 years ago, I can only imagine how much mark up has been done to text-books since. Seriously this a step backwards for our generation.

517.2.2012 10:25

I can definitely appreciate how expensive text books are. I'm pretty sure I still owe a buddy of mine a couple hundred bucks for books I got from him.

But if the books are available for free and the publishers don't get paid why would the publishers bother making them? And if they don't then who will?

I completely agree about making new editions that don't have any changes. Why should we buy a new book when the professor hasn't changed their lectures in 15 years?

617.2.2012 10:43

Or the "kickback/incentive" a instructor gets for using a certain book. Did I say that?

It has been a while since attending a University, but I know there is a scam to get you to not recoup money back from intial investment. I think these publishers are try to set a precedent for the continuation of tablet storage of books.

These publishers remind me a little like Kodak. Time will tell though.

717.2.2012 15:01

Or a set of professors I had that published their OWN textbook, which was just a Xerox copied 50 page manual, bound with plastic, sold in the University's book store. Best part: the book contained "worksheets" that you had to tear out and turn in, making it impossible to resell or recoup any of the costs. Talk about a scam!

817.2.2012 15:03

Originally posted by dude845:
Charge $200 for some of my science textbooks and then they make new "editions" so I can't resell because it's not current. Keep in mind there is barley a difference. Shut down a site that is good for the students paying a shit load for university already. Textbooks are one of the biggest scams you can come by.
This is 100% accurate. One time was forced to buy a newer edition (the 7th edition in 10 years) and it actually had MORE errors than the older edition. Just a scam business, all of it.

925.2.2012 01:52

I have had to buy a $200 book for first semester, then $150 book for second semester where half of second book is exact copy of part of first book. I HAD to buy it as Pearson has a code in the book you need to put into their shite website to be able to do the homework assignments. They expire after the semester so you can't use the code over again.

I don't see Anonymous taking down this horrible homework website... but I would like them to...

www.myitlab.com

All my fellow students hate it for Excel as it TRULY sucks but we are stuck buying books because of that shitty little card with the code.

THIS is why I HATE Pearson. It is all about the money, as they did not fix the errors in the next version of the book!

In an online quiz, question x answer is wrong and can be proven wrong when you look at Chapter x page x, first para line 3 says something else is the right answer. but you have to answer it wrong to get the marks... WTF is with that?

meh... when I finish college, I will have firewood to burn. Call the schoolbooks firewood...

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 25 Feb 2012 @ 1:54

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