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Russian EBookseller LitRes Gets Competing EBook Apps Booted From Google Play
Nate the greatest writes "The developer of the popular Android app Moon+ Reader was surprised to discover this weekend that he is a filthy stinking pirate. Google informed him via an automated email that Moon+ Reader had been removed from Google Play because the app had switched to using pirate sites as the main sources of ebooks. Or at least, that's what LitRes claims, but when they complained to Google LitRes didn't tell the whole truth. What was really happening is that users of the app are enabling piracy, not the app itself. Thanks to the way Moon+ Reader is designed to let users share links to ebook sources some of the sources are indeed pirate sites (less than your average Google Search). In reality the app was no more a source of pirated content than your average web browser. What do you say when an ebook distributor's anti-piracy plan involves going after app developers rather than pirate sites? Something printable, IMO."
First of all, not everybody on earth can legally buy every book that he or she wants.
Depending on which country that you live in, there are restrictions imposed, prohibiting people from buying the "banned" books.
And in some countries, the "banning" has reached the cyberspace ... that is, not only you can't buy the dead-tree version of the book, you can't legally buy the ebook version, either.
Some of the government even installed bots watching over people who are on the Net.
For example, there are some books - if I want them - I can't get, from the place that I am staying right now.
They are not on display in brick and mortar bookstores. I can't place an order for them either.
And if I go online and try to pay and buy an ebook version (using my credit card) the bot may spot what I do and I may be invited for a cup of tea with some religious / political officials.
People in such position have two options:
1. Move out from that goddamn country
2. Download the pirated version
Option #1 seems obvious, but in some instances, not very practical. For family, business, or for whatever reason, people may not be so easily move from one country to the other.
Option #2, it's illegal, it's immoral, but then, government bots do not often watching over connections to the pirated sites.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
As the summary states, your argument applies equally to any web browser and google search, since those make it easy to find and download pirated material.
I've published two books in both print and eBook versions. Not surprisingly, the eBook versions have better sales. My digital editions are DRM-free, and I never thought twice about resisting the pirates. Most of these are likely to be in countries for which it would be a hardship to pay the book price. People in developed countries would rather have the convenience of a quick download from their usual, trusted site (Amazon, B&N), rather than what amounts to a fraction of a Starbucks coffee. Unlike someone stealing a print edition, I'm not losing anything, and that includes any thoughts about a potential lost sale.
It is proprietary software for the simplest of operations on a computer. Who really cares. Let the business people have their pissing match.
http://fbreader.org/FBReaderJ free and on github.
I'm confused. You think people that upgraded ships were in the wrong? They may have been legally in the wrong, The majority of their business may have been in aiding criminals. However, there are plenty of legitimate uses for such upgrades, including better defense against pirates and privateers, so outright condemnation is innapropriate. Also, I seem to recall reading that pirates were usually ordinary people who got upset with the fact that they were forced into slave labor on a ship after being kidnapped. So, even literal pirates were usually the good guys, if anything.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
They intentionally facilitate piracy. It's one thing to have the ability to back up and copy your own data between devices. It's another thing all together when you allow sharing of data without better control.
Google is intentionally facilitating piracy. Both their Chrome browser (as a software), their search engine and their messaging services (gmail, Instant messaging and and Google Voice) allow users to share pirate data and Google knows this and allows it with little (if any) control.
(Stop blaming the tools and the providers of the tools for how their tools are used!!!)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Competing with what/which/who?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
What do you say when an ebook distributor's anti-piracy plan involves going after app developers rather than pirate sites?
"If I were human, I believe my response would be, 'go to hell'. If I were human." -- Spock
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
No. You're the idiot.
That distinction is entirely imaginary and is dependent entirely upon the intent of the end user.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
But not well.
this just in: OP failed to read TFA; earth continues to spin
My statements regarding pirates being paid is historically accurate, there is only a differentiation based on an alliance. For example, early in his career Francis Drake was called a privateer by England while Spain called him a Pirate. He even flew the Jolly Rodger as his flag. Perhaps you were implying that privateers were not pirates? My English may not always perfect but my history is usually accurate.
Nitpicking language on a forum is sometimes laughable, and in your case that's exactly what I did. I'm not writing a thesis, I'm posting on /. With that said, I do try to write well. Quotes are often used for emphasis on words. Try reading a bit about the use of quotes here, and perhaps you can learn something. In particular notice this quote. "Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a different meaning of a word or phrase than the one typically associated with it and are often used to express irony.:. It should be obvious to anyone with a basic level of philosophical education that my use of quotes is correct. This is especially true with words like "Law" and "Legal" as we question their relevance to data sharing.
I will never claim to be perfect and can always find ways to improve. You should take that as a hint. I'm not surprised you post anonymously however.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Sounds to me like the Moon+ Reader author should sue LitRes for Unjust Enrichment.
Also, seriously: Google taking action on an illegal app without judicial oversight?
This should be handled in exactly the same way as law enforcement requests: show the warrant first. (Or in this case, the judgement against.)
Society is quickly descending into a feudal corporate arms race. These sorts of shenanigans should be stomped on with both feet. If you can't compete fairly, then you shouldn't be in business.
> I'm not surprised you post anonymously however.
But we all are that you don't. No really.
Is something wrong with you? You may as well suggest that Google facilitates piracy through Chrome as Chrome allows people to set it where you can download pirated material just by visiting piracy websites.
If you want to act like the contrary "voice of reason" in hopes that the mods will upvote you, you should probably read the article and understand the situation before you let your greasy cheeto fingers type away at that disgusting keyboard of yours.
At a very technical level I see the point, however I notice two main differences. The first is that a browser is not built to circumvent copyrights. Browsers can share pirated goods inadvertently, where some software is built to share intentionally and avoid the copyrights. The second difference is that Google is, and all other web sites are, required to honor take down notices. Just to make sure that the previous statement is qualified, "required" should not imply "honored". The same does not always to apply to software designed for content sharing.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
They intentionally facilitate piracy.
A long long time ago, in a galaxy far away, Veronica and Archie and WAIS and FTP and gopher and a bunch of other obscure Internet programs "facilitated piracy" by allowing people to download material that others had put up on the Internet.
But everyone jumped down Napster's throat for "facilitating piracy" as if Napster was doing something that nobody had ever done before. People were shocked, I say, absolutely shocked, to find out that you could use Napster on the Internet to download INFORMATION!
Save the moral outrage about Napster, please.
Nice flamebait. Your post is factually inaccurate. Civil infractions (such as copyright infringement) are not crimes. That is the least of what is wrong with your post, however, as you have completely failed to grasp what the app was actually doing (which was allowing users to share links, something those other readers can do as well, albeit in a more roundabout way in some cases).
The legal definition falls to mans rea in my opinion. If I upgraded a pirate ship to make them faster than the King's ships, my intent was aiding. Similar to piracy today, many people justify it morally. Yes, I can get paid to upgrade ships. If I can upgrade a pirate's ship and make them more effective, well from one serf to another guess which I choose? My intent is clear however, I'm not doing it to just be a great engineer and make shipping better.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
And which law exactly did this app infringe, Mr Smart?
Google has recently started delisting 'pirate' web sites from its search engine. Not all at once which people would notice, but slowly they are phasing this in. http://torrentfreak.com/google-removed-50-million-pirate-search-results-this-year-121228/
There's a huge difference between "exists solely to facilitate piracy" and "can be used to facilitate piracy".
That distinction is entirely imaginary and is dependent entirely upon the intent of the end user.
You're both idiots. Let me explain by example: A nuclear bomb's purpose is to cause destruction. That doesn't mean it cannot facilitate peace. In the same way, even a tool designed solely to facilitate piracy could be used to reduce or prevent it. For example, if movies and other things now available on pirated websites were made available through an "official" site where you could get the same materials, and same quality, but it came with a time bomb that would cause it to cease being usable after a period of time. The problem with DRM is they put it on things you buy, but if they made it available for free, as a "try before you buy" product with the option to upgrade. It's been proven in case study after case study pirates buy more material outright than those who don't pirate. In other words: Your best customers are pirates.
As far as the line in the sand being dependent on intent, much of copyright law (not all!) falls under the umbrella of strict liability, which means intent doesn't have to be proven. The mens rea, or the "state of mind" of the criminal, plays no part. It is strictly the act itself which is considered. Either you did it, or you didn't. Intent is irrelevant. For example, if murder was a crime of strict liability, even if you shot a gunman who was about to mow down a bus full of children (a heroic act by most people's standards!) you'd be more of a criminal than the gunman -- he only threatened to shoot. You actually did.
This is why strict liability is so damned evil... it was created for situations where intent was unlikely to ever be proved (for example, improper toxic waste disposal... how can you prove any member of the corporation knew it was in violation? It may be impossible due to shared responsibility to identify the perpetuator of the criminal act as opposed to those who sincerely thought it was on the up and up), but expanded to include everything under the sun. It was also supposed to be a relatively lighter sentence, because there was no mens rea considered. That's also gone by the wayside.
So yeah, in short -- you're both wrong. But you both had the right idea.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
People jumped down Napster's throat because it didn't have substantial non-infringing uses. FTP, web browsers, Google, and other such technologies you and other commenters mention, have substantial non-infringing use. However Napster had basically one purpose. That was to distribute MP3 files around the internet, and in 99.99% of cases these files were being distributed without the consent of the copyright holder.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I heard from a friend of a friend of an enemy that someone once used the Nook reader application to read a pirated book.
But I wouldn't trust a person like me, if I were you.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Yes, it's the same as the photocopier in the library... it can be used to facilitate breaking copyright laws... should the librarian be jailed or the photocopier maker be shut down for this ability?
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
Well, despite the crazy old english pirate tangent s.pertry took on this.... he's kind of right. Occums Razor and all, the simplest answer is that someone made a tool that made piracy easier. It doesn't mean the maker was out to make piracy easier, just that the tool he created (unknowingly?) did so.
Correction: The term in the first sentence should be "mens rea". Gah...
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Yes, it's the same as the photocopier in the library... it can be used to facilitate breaking copyright laws... should the librarian be jailed or the photocopier maker be shut down for this ability?
No, but in a library where there is hard evidence of 99% of people using the photocopier to make illegal copies of books it might be smart to remove the photocopier from public access.
People jumped down Napster's throat because it didn't have substantial non-infringing uses. FTP, web browsers, Google, and other such technologies you and other commenters mention, have substantial non-infringing use.
So does Napster.
Napster had basically one purpose. That was to distribute MP3 files around the internet,
Actually, the one purpose Napster had was to index things that other people were making available.
Or you could just kick people who do it out of the library.
Can you please, please, please learn to spell correctly or have someone with a brain edit your post before you post: it is privateer, not privater.
k, thanks.
My understanding is this thing isn't built to circumvent copyrights. Ebooks do not have to be listed at certain sites in order for the copyright to remain valid. You could have an Ebook which is little more then an organized collection of man pages and howto hosted by a software site. It is built to use regularly distributed content as well as irregularly distributed content at the users discretion.
What you point out is not the same thing I was mentioning. The Occam's razor I was pointing out is that the legality and law related to data sharing is often questioned by the public. Many people don't see the laws as justified and/or moral laws, therefor the laws are often loudly ignored.
What you point out is possibly a second blade on the razor. Multiple edges are common when discussing parsimony. I don't claim to know the authors intent with the software. I understand plausible deniability enough to question public statements if they are given.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Either choice is acceptable. The owner (google) of the library (play store) is perfectly free to choose whichever option they want. I've read the terms of service (https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html) and they allow for removing apps that "encourage or induce infringement of intellectual property rights", not just because of outright infringement. What exactly constitutes "encouragement" isn't spelled out, but leaves a lot of leeway for interpretation on Google's part.
Are you really defending that it's the software - and not the person who owns the software - who should decide what the person's machine should and should not run? Nobody wants their computer deciding what is and what is not an illegal operation. If you want that I hope you know you're an asshole.
Punishing Moon+ Reader from working with "pirated" content is unethical. How is the software supposed to know what is and what is not legal in the country it's being run? Next thing you know they'll sue Ford because someone found out their cars can be used to commit crimes. I kid, I kid, Ford is too big to be punished.
Punctuation should be inside parenthetical
Stopped reading there.
Circumcision is child abuse.
With copyrights under the DCMA there are no strict liability issues. A site must honor a take down notice under the law, at least in the USA. Most other countries comply with US law or have similar laws of their own (Often coerced by the US.). This means that a one time sharer is not punished unless they ignore the notices. The multiple strike policy similarly effects people that repeatedly share copyrighted materials, not one time offenders.
Trust me, I don't mean to imply the system we have is perfect, or even good. I also don't mean to imply that the RIAA, MPAA,and politicians don't want strict liability. I'm just pointing out that there is no strict liability with data sharing presently.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
ITT some languages are inherently evil
An ellipse is "a plane curve such that the sums of the distances of each point in its periphery from two fixed points, the foci, are equal." Quite how that is useful in this discourse escapes me. Perhaps you meant ellipsis. Anonymous Cowards in glass houses...
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
+1. My gods why do you keep asserting things you don't know?
What law does this and web browsers and FTP clients and your computer's TCP/IP stack break?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I paid good money for what I consider one of the best ereaders on the google store. Now i have no access to it through Play if I ever need to reinstall it on any of my devices. I couldn't give a rip if some people were using it to pirate cause i wasn't. My license for the app is through Play so I have to pay again to get if from another source. So everybody that used the reader is now screwed. I most certainly won't be using Google's reader cause it sucks.... way behind moon reader in features and customization. But I guess that's okay since it supports DRM. Crap move Google... go after the sharers and not the users.
Oh, and lets get precise. They did NOT remove a "service". They removed a software offering.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
its like the people who blame guns when someone uses one to cause murder. pathetic. Dont blame the tools used, blame the tools using them.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
A couple of questions since I have never used the software. Do they honor DCMA requests and remove copyrighted materials when the owner makes the request? Do they have a mechanism for bypassing or removing copyright protection?
The first question is how the Internet generally works. If there is no way of honoring a copyright owners request, the dilemma should be obvious.
The second question requires a look at how e-books are distributed and some logic. The common platforms of Kindle and Nook, and software like Google and Apple's book software, have built in mechanisms for protecting owners materials. The fact that these can be broken does not imply that it should be broken or is intended to not function. If this software author used the same specifications agreed too by copyright owners, then there are no issues. People are breaking the copyrights on their own.
If the software ignores the copyright headers, there is a different and obvious legal issue.
I'm not against you breaking in to your device and making back up copies for your use. I am however against you breaking in to your device and giving away someone's work. The first thing mentioned is the most common argument against protection on media. I would agree to the statement that "what we currently have does not facilitate common sense when dealing with the people that purchase products". The second thing mentioned is not even close to the same thing as the first.
As an example, I recently purchased a book for my iPhone which I have in hard copy in my library. The book is good enough to have in both locations, so in my opinion the author deserves the income. If it was a crap book, I'd probably not want both copies. I believe that many people look at all copyrighted materials as the .99c songs. What we should consider more is the larger money items like books, and how that impacts an author's livelihood.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
If we go that far (not that i dont agree with you because I do) we need to blame windows, for running illegal software, as well as apple and linux. hell if we didnt have access to the hardware for a general purpose computer, we wouldnt be able to steall all these files right!!?? Lets ban computers!!!!
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I believe the more relevant piece of Napster versus the rest of the Internet is that there was no way to control anything on Napster where the DCMA allowed for some level of control on the Internet.
If you host a Warez site and receive a take down notice, you can ignore it and be prosecuted or remove the material. Yeah yeah, they have to hunt you down and all that.. but it happen(s/ed). Napster's biggest problem was that it was not possible to control what got shared.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I can fucking use word to do it.
You know when bill gate brought the first code of his to the computer group.
everyone bar none copied it.
This should have never changed and anyone who wants to compute should just lived with it not
bend and change the rules until your fining and imprisoning people for what had been just the way we did things.
All you johnny come lately's really suck cock you put people in prison just to make money your way instead of
just being human.
The computer seen today is really shit I think it is time to out law selling any fucking thing what so ever on the net.
I know ... and damnit, that's what Youtube is for.
I have most of my songs from Youtube.
I don't know what those Napster guys were thinking!
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Well, I'd been meaning to check out Moon Reader, ever since Aldiko blocked the third party plugin that was providing Dropbox sync. This will likely push me over the edge.
Do I think it's bogus that Google pulled the app with seemingly no warning or no review? Yes. But, thanks to the fact that Android allows users to sideload (unless further blocked by horrible carriers like AT&T) this developer at least has recourse to continue providing his app by direct channels, and users can continue using it. Had this happened to a developer on the iOS app store (as it does all the time) that developer would have no recourse at all.
I hope that this gets resolved quickly, and I hope that this developer winds up getting more attention from this publicity in the end.
Napster's biggest problem was that it was not possible to control what got shared.
Of course it was. Find the offending site and issue a takedown. You can't copy over the net what isn't there, even if a convenient indexing service tells you that it is. Just like you can't ftp a file that has been taken down. It was not uncommon to find Veronica data that wasn't there, either. Or google links that are dead.
If Napster is bad, then Google is worse because they do it on a more massive scale. And FTP did it originally.
This app didn't have anything to do with pirated ebooks. The whole fuzz is about a feature that let users add custom ebook sources instead of restricting it to one or a few pre-approved sources. Then someone found out that some users added pirate sites as sources so they could download pirated ebooks inside the reader app instead of just using the web browser. Then they blame the ebook reader app...
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
So a mechanic who works on a criminals getaway car is a criminal? What about a murderers physician? People like you make this country a shitty place to live.
Watching this get modded into "-1 disagree" is really making me lose hope for this site.
All other websites are NOT obliged to honor take-down notices. This only true if they are US-based, or in a country with an equivalent law. Contrary to the view of many Americans, just because something is law in the US doesn't mean it is the law everywhere else!
No legal actions have been taken. None of the legal terms that you've just thrown around have any relevance.
Wouldn't it make more sense to keep the photocopier where it is and inform the content owners (for a small fee)? I suspect that determining illegal use would be tricky as you'd have to keep track of whether the amount being copied would qualify as fair use or if the person had negotiated rights to make copies.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
http://ebookoid.com/ has millions of ebooks for few, no need for an app to download
This, a thousand time this. Unfortunately my mod points just expired.
Incorrect entirely and 100% go read the rules buddy ..
The internet companies begged for an automated mechanism with the defense being .. they are not police of content and could in no way PREVENT users from uploading content that possibly infringed.. the mechanism was never meant to be fully automated, and was rather a system put in place to prevent endless legal wrangling.. at the internet companies sorting out with lawyers what is required every time an idiot sent them a letter..
The problem with the system is that there are no lawyers involved.. and thus its content creator owner generating a legal document (in theory) there is NO provision of the DMCA which says that any random person can blanket the net with take downs and they must be honored with no due diligence on anyone's part.
Whatever the facts are,and I am sure the Russian software provider is using dirty business tactics to suppress competition, Comrade,the reality is you can't permit a gateway to turn into a gatekeeper who keeps you out of your market place. We should have learned that from the Apple store fiascoes . We give them the power to be arbitrary dictators by building business model which rely for their success of failure on them taking a shine to us or not. That's crazy. Don't let Google in that position or Apple or Amazon or anyone. A lot of word of mouth, a little SEO and the web is your distribution channel. If a market segment can't find your app that way or can't use it b/c they live in a walled garden, then don't include success with those users as a critical part of your business plan. Business plans with single, gigantic holes in them fail.
If you extend that argument one can say it is legal to steal, until a legal action is taken? (as long as you don't get caught).
<pedantic>
1. ... (it's 'altogether', dammit.) - Punctuation should be inside parenthetical
2. "Your" is possessive, as opposed to a contraction of "You are" makes no sense when describing "inability."
3. privateer is spelled incorrectly
</pedantic>
<pedantic class="extra-pedantic">Punctuation should be outside of parenthetical remarks unless they form a complete sentence, which this probably doesn't. I cannot parse your second point as a valid sentence. You also missed other spelling errors ("ellipse" vs "ellipsis"), and phrasing errors (I assume that GPP did not actually intend to suggest the person he was replying to had misplaced incomplete sentences, but that is what he wrote). </pedantic>
Not seeing much difference between your post and the OP from an editing perspective. Something about glass houses and rocks.
Indeed.
As the developer of an open-source e-reader app, I have to say this scares the crap out of me... our current dev version has the same type of functionality, though I've always made sure to not include any site in the settings that is not 100% legit.
I hope Moon+ will be back in ther Market soon and that Google thinks twice before removing another app based on complaints from LitRes.
PageTurner Reader: open-source e-reader for Android with cloudsync. http://pageturner-reader.org
One thing you are ignoring is that the kindle software will load ebooks that are not drm protected, you are not forced to buy ebooks from Amazon to read using the kindle software as long as you can get the ebook of interest on the device you can read it.
Realistically if I wanted to pirate ebooks all i need is a browser a search engine and a copy of the kindle software.
The issue with this software is it allows users to share links some of which can lead to commercial ebooks on pirate sites and some links are to non commercial ebooks. People create content all the time with the intent that it be freely shared. I like to write music, some people like to write story's, poetry, manuals and other stuff.
I honestly don't see a problem with this app if anything it seems like an improvement to the many other ereader programs out there. You seem to be arguing for approved sources and texts , do you really think that is a positive move?
The most positive thing we can do as people is the sharing of our culture and ideas.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
With copyrights under the DCMA there are no strict liability issues. A site must honor a take down notice under the law, at least in the USA.
I think the site must honour a take down notice if (1) the take down notice is formally correct, that is contains all the elements required by the law, and (2) the site wants to guarantee that they cannot be sued successfully for copyright infringement themselves.
English is beautiful in part because it is a mongrel collection of other languages and is never afraid to borrow a word or idea from somewhere else if it is needed. Part of the beauty is in the lack of stupid restrictions, and the fact that you can write the same sentence in more than one way, changing around word order, syntax, choosing from several different words with the same meaning etc.
Believe it or not, there are ebooks that are legally published outside of B&N, Google Play books, Amazon, and iBooks. Project Gutenberg has a ton of them, and some are legal in the US but not anywhere else, and some are legal in Australia and not anywhere else. A great number of articles are published under permissive licenses, and I have released content myself that would fit this category, albeit it in PDF form as opposed to eBook. However, if I get around to publishing another update for it, I will probably include an eBook update.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
... from Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004TN7QPG
In my view this is the best eReader that I have seen. All others force you to turn a page at a time, but Moon+ Reader allows you to scroll smoothly. Kindle doesn't even allow you to choose your own font!
My two penn'orth.
Moon Reader doesn't just allow you to add custom OPDS sources. At least one update from the Google Play store came with TUEBL pre-installed as a source. That's pretty sketchy since many of the app's users would have no idea TUEBL is any less "legitimate" than Gutenberg.
Hands down the best interface.
I get what they were doing, and understand it's not direct piracy. However, I disagreed with Napster for the same reason I disagree with these guys. They intentionally facilitate piracy. It's one thing to have the ability to back up and copy your own data between devices. It's another thing all together when you allow sharing of data without better control.
This is hardly comparisable to what napster did.
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
Yes, there is a huge difference, which makes you a big hunking idiot.
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
Are you suggesting Slashdot intentionally facilitates idiocy?
When eBooks are considered the same as dead tree books then there might be a reason to gripe about illegal copies floating around on the internet.
I can't check a current eBook out of my local library. The books available are old/odd/obscure. Why is this?
I can't buy a used copy of an eBook for a buck. I can do that with physical books at used book stores.
eBooks are priced the same or even higher than printed versions. Heck, sometimes they're OCR copies even though the publishers have the electronic version right there. The publishers are shooting themselves in the foot with this by making legitimate purchases undesirable.
Economics are the reason behind this. Publishers can't skim all kinds of money off the top when the costs are "Convert once to electronic version, pay royalties to author". They can gripe about piracy all they want but they're trying to protect their monopoly and keep as much money for themselves as possible.
I think you're confusing English with perl...
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
And as far as we know, the developer of this app hasn't stolen anything or broken any laws. He simply encouraged piracy which violates the TOS.
Impressed by the idiot moderation and the even more idiot arguments.
Is this like Napster, or more like Winamp, both of which arguably existed to help those in the pirated music subculture, but with the former designed to facilitate the infringement, while the latter kinda was neutral but in an environment in which most users would, nonetheless, be copyright infringers?
I can't tell, because of the idiots who think that Napster and Google do the same thing, and have made this argument impossible to follow as a result.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I'm suggesting a strong possibility...
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.