4 ms·

I don't know about that. More[1] and more[2] authors[3] these days are giving[4] away their books for free online as a form of advertising. 1: http://www.rifte

• stfu 14y ago
  Not to forget that even mainstream bestselling authors actively endorse and co-operate with Piratebay: http://torrentfreak.com/paulo-coelho-supports-the-pirate-bay-090415/ http://torrentfreak.com/paulo-coelho-supports-the-pirate-bay...
• Matt_Cutts 14y ago
  I agree that more authors are giving away their books online for free (John Scalzi, for example). My point is that it's unusual for authors to do it by pointing to a torrent. Of the four examples you mentioned, the authors provided links in a wide variety of formats (ePub, HTML, TXT, Mobi), but I didn't see any torrent links. All the links I saw in a fast scan were direct download links. I think that's much more common than an author posting a link to a torrent.
  • mbrubeck 14y ago
    It's less common but hardly unprecedented. 1. Charles Stross (one of the four examples above) used to point readers to BitTorrent for his free book downloads: http://web.archive.org/web/20090514034859/http://www.antipope.org/charlie/accelerando/ http://web.archive.org/web/20090514034859/http://www.antipop... (And he complains about automated scanners flagging legit files as copyright violations: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/imbeciles.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/imbecile... ) 2. Unni Drougge use The Pirate bay to post a torrent of an audio version of her best-selling novel: http://www.p2p-blog.com/item-1029.html http://www.p2p-blog.com/item-1029.html 3. Larry Lessig releases his book "Free Culture" as a torrent: http://lessig.org/blog/2004/03/free_culture_is.html http://lessig.org/blog/2004/03/free_culture_is.html (And of course, a USC student had his network account disabled for downloading this completely legal torrent: http://boingboing.net/2006/08/25/universities-put-hol.html http://boingboing.net/2006/08/25/universities-put-hol.html ) 4. Dan Morrill posts a torrent link to his book about selling e-books: http://torrentfreak.com/my-book-please-081017/ http://torrentfreak.com/my-book-please-081017/ 5. Megan Lisa Jones self-publishes a novel through BitTorrent: http://ibla.us/2011/content/thoughts-on-the-bittorrent-promotion-and-monetizing-a-book/ http://ibla.us/2011/content/thoughts-on-the-bittorrent-promo... 6. Caris O'Malley posts a pirate torrent link of his own novel and encourages readers to download it: http://hipsterlibrarian.com/2011/08/04/illegally-download-the-egg-said-nothing-today/ http://hipsterlibrarian.com/2011/08/04/illegally-download-th... 7. Wired editor Chris Anderson links to a torrent search for his book "The Long Tail": http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/02/books_want_to_b.html http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/02/books_want_to_...
    • ommunist 14y ago
      You forgot about free movies, free games and, gosh - free Linux distributions! IMHO - Google crossed the line and should be punished by everyone using Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo.
      • Semaphor 14y ago
        Sadly neither of those give me the search results I'm looking for. I've tried several times to use DDG especially but 90% of my searches were followed by searching again with !g.