In a recent post, Nate the Great uncovers a dastardly plot:
Nate the Great has posted an article on his blog (the digital reader), in which he writes about a site that pretends to be a blog, but in fact appears to be a vehicle to defraud authors and publishers of their royalties….. Read on:
GoodEreader.com – your friendly neighborhood ebook pirate
If you follow ebook news, you might have heard of a site called GoodEreader.com. At first glance it looks like a news site. It has a blog, podcast, and a monthly magazine, and they even opened an e-reader store last week. But all of that is all a facade that they are using to hide their true activities.
click = big
GoodEreader.com are a pirate ebook website that’s been operating for a couple years now. It has been quietly known in ebook circles that they actively pirate ebooks, but no one wanted to do anything about it. We’ve all just been ignoring the matter, and it’s time that changed.
Here’s how they run their operation. They sell subscription access to a closed set of forums (that’s where you download the ebooks). You can buy a subscription by the day, month, year, or lifetime. I bought a monthly subscription ($12), which was a waste. It took me less than 2 minutes before I found pirated ebooks.
click = big
Name an author or series and you’ll find the ebooks. John Grisham? Yep, including cover images obviously ripped from Amazon. Harry Potter? That was easy. Ooh, here’s a bundle of 23 ebooks by Ian Rankin.
And it’s not like this is an accident or oversight on the part of the website’s staff. I checked, and most of these ebooks are uploaded _by_ the staff. They are willfully pirating ebooks. You can even ask them to pirate an ebook for you (it comes with the more expensive subscription levels). In fact, there’s a forum dedicated to the requests.
I bet you’re wondering how have they been getting away with this scheme for as long as they have. That’s probably because they’ve been very careful to maintain the facade. They add posts to their blog on a fairly regular basis. It’s almost never new news, though, becuase that might get someone’s attention. No, what they usually do is rewrite someone else’s story from the day before. BTW, as a second step to support the facade, they never give credit. I’m pretty sure that was deliberate; if they linked to another news blog then that source might look them over and realize they were committing piracy.
Interesting, no?
As I have every reason to trust Nate, I haven’t invested $12 to check what he says, I am sure it is exactly as he describes it. Odd business, isnt it?
Share with us:
Do you have any thoughts on this apparently piratical site, or the whole idea of downloading illegally copied and distributed ebooks?
Link: http://www.the-digital-reader.com
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November 13th, 2010 at 5:59 am
Those who wasted their money on those kind site are idiots. Just use google and you can find all the ebook you can read without paying a cent.
January 24th, 2011 at 12:53 pm
Sir,
“Just use google and you can find all the ebook you can read without paying a cent.”
If one reads schlock, true, but otherwise: what rubbish!
Try finding, anywhere, anyhow, the true greats, – those about whom many books, forever, are and will be written, – Beckett, Bernhard, Pinguet, Claude Simon, etc.
Simon Bookman
January 24th, 2011 at 1:38 pm
@ Simon
I have not really used Google’s ebook store very much, as I have found so many other, better ones out there, which are easier to use as well. This includes work by the authors you mention.
Unless a book is still copyrighted all over the world, you can normally find a legal, copyright source as copyright laws vary from country to country… Those of Australia, for example, mean that copyright dies much sooner than in the USA, so check out the Australian Gutenberg site, for example….
January 24th, 2011 at 4:18 pm
Sir,
Beckett & Bernhard died 1989, Claude Simon 2005, Pinguet 1991: how Gutenberg?
Simon Bookman
January 24th, 2011 at 4:41 pm
@ Simon,
I stand corrected, not for the first or probably last time either.
However, I stand by my original statement “Just use google and you can find all the ebook you can read without paying a cent.”, but would widen it to include other free ebook websites. Personally I almost never purchase ebooks, nor do I use torrents, but I find enough intriguing and worthwhile ebooks to read all over the place. I simply hunt around, and am frequently amazed at some of the ebooks I find and enjoy.
As I gather you are not a follower of things such as the NYT top 10 books (nor am I) and similar, I believe firmly that you will find ebooks to please you if you do but hunt.
January 24th, 2011 at 8:06 pm
Sir,
Try finding, anywhere, anyhow, Beckett, Bernhard, Pinguet, Claude Simon, you.
For a man of no discretion, no time, and oodles of time left, worth while and intriguing is always good enough.
Simon Bookman
January 24th, 2011 at 11:33 pm
Sir,
Try finding, anywhere, anyhow, Beckett, Bernhard, Pinguet, Claude Simon, you.
For a man of no discretion, no taste, and oodles of time left, worth while and intriguing are always good enough.
Simon Bookman
January 25th, 2011 at 7:34 am
Well, here is one by Beckett……
http://ebooks-freedownload.com/2010/03/samuel-beckett-waiting-for-godot.html
I don;t have the time just now to search for the others, but they are probably out there as well…. just a case of taking the time and using the internet creatively to search.
Have fun
January 25th, 2011 at 9:20 am
Sir,
You just do not get it: for nearly 2 years, on almost a daily basis, taking the time, using the internet creatively, via Google, Yahoo, Dogpile, Bing, Altavista, MetaCrawler, etc, via torrent, and eMule, ED2K and de-centralized Kad, Limewire, Kazaa, Bittorrent, Bearshare, Ares, Morpheus, etc, the above prose and far more has been sought: false leads, fake files, endless threats of infection, dangerous sites, ads of endless seediness, criminality, and hype, joining forums, garnering junk mail, making requests, idiot answers, mocking abuse, leadless suggestions, all on a very slow, very expensive, very unreliable wireless, but all to no avail, sir, NO avail.
Godot, found anywhere, is drama, a play.
Simon Bookman
January 25th, 2011 at 9:24 am
I am sorry you seem to have had such an unhappy experience in attempting to find free versions of the few authors you appear to be interested in.
I know that Godot is a play, I have worked on several productions of it in London, but it is by Beckett.
January 25th, 2011 at 9:28 am
Sir,
Not few: nearly 200 authors.
Try finding Beckett’s Watt, you, as a very simple, final, example.
Simon Bookman
January 25th, 2011 at 11:35 am
I am not sure what it is you are trying to achieve here, but I wish you success in achieving your aims, but obviously I am not able to help you further, apparently.
January 25th, 2011 at 11:54 am
Sir,
You concede, then, after so long a pause, that, (the 200 other authors aside), because the major not peripheral works of Beckett, – a Nobel laureate, one of the most written about, therefore one of the most influential, yet most incompletely understood, men in the complete literary history of man, a man who in his lifetime, while he was very alive, had a journal devoted to him, – cannot by any means, even your own, be found anywhere on the whole immensity of the internet, that perhaps your statement “Just use google and you can find all the ebook you can read without paying a cent”, is perhaps a trifle overstated, incorrect, in a word, wrong.
Six snides: (your “sorry”, your “seem”, your “such an unhappy experience”, your “free versions”, your “few authors”, your “appear to be interested in”), two boasts, and one petulance, ah, and all in 49 words, what economy!. Then, not sure (!) what I am trying to achieve, you wish me a success that you are not able to help me with, obviously, apparently.
Sir, we are very done.
Simon Bookman
January 25th, 2011 at 1:51 pm
Here are a couple of links I found after about 5 minutes search, may help you get started.
http://www.epubbud.com/book.php?g=7YJGPBGB
http://www.avaxdownload.com/70f/dl/samuel+beckett+ebook+malone+dies.html
A whole lot of his writings here…. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D1286228011&field-keywords=samuel+beckett&x=14&y=18&tag=associatizer-20
And so it goes on…. Seems to me there are plenty of editions of his work to find on the internet. And no doubt the same would apply to the other handful of authors who appear to be your main concern.
Not sure why you are feeling so angry about it all, but it is your prerogative to be angry if you wish to be.
January 25th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Sir,
The first, above, is in Spanish.
The second is a con, for money, a dead lead with no book at the end of it.
The third is amazon, books for sale.
You just DO NOT get it, do you.
Simon Bookman
January 25th, 2011 at 2:09 pm
Apparently not. It would seem that you are not going to find what you want on the internet in electronic form, so it only remains for you to go out and buy paper versions of these books, I would suggest.
So let us leave it at this, and go our separate ways.
May 8th, 2011 at 8:06 pm
Calm down, gentlemen!
I bid anyone to chalenge me in finding any kind book!
Simon, you seem to interested in finding something, perhaps I already have it!
Reply with you exact demands.
May 8th, 2011 at 8:08 pm
and grave apologies for the typos . . .
May 9th, 2011 at 9:20 am
@ Mark,
Yes, Simon did seem very worked up about it all, so much so that I had to close the comments on this page for a while, as it was becoming silly and aggressive, which seemed to me not be be useful for any of us.
February 22nd, 2012 at 11:33 am
OMG!!! LMAO!!! Simon is crazy!!! He has WAY too much TIME on his hands!!!
March 31st, 2012 at 4:20 am
Is Simon from the 19th Century??
March 31st, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Simone’s got issues.