Textbook Torrents offline — permanently
p2pnet news view | P2P:- Geekman runs Textbook Torrents, a directory of online books.
Or, rather, he used to.
But, “Publishers have taken steps to enforce their copyrights and keep the site from encouraging the trading of their books, said p2pnet last month, quoting the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Now, “Textbook Torrents is now permanently offline,” says a statement on the site.
But not all is lost.
“I will be posting a list,” says Geekman, continuing:
“Posting. That means that emailing me asking for a list, or for particular content that was on the site, won’t get you anywhere. We have deleted all content from the site, including the database and all backups. I can’t send you anything. I have, however, received a number of more-helpful emails offering links and so forth, so I’ll be posting that list when I get the chance. As well, I’ve had no less than seven offers to restart Textbook Torrents or start a new textbook tracker. Way to go, guys! Hopefully at least some of you will manage to get new sites online. If you need any help, drop me a message and I’ll do what I can.”
Says the earlier part of the message »»»
There are a number of reasons for this [the close down], but I would be lying if I claimed that the concern of legal action wasn’t a major factor in the decision. However, it was by no means the only reason. Upkeep of a site this size is a lot of work, increasingly so as time progressed. What’s more, two years is a long time to be running a site of this nature.
I am at heart an activist, a crusader for the underdog. When I see something that I believe is wrong, I do what I can to fix it, if only in some small way. I believe this is what Textbook Torrents has stood for, and what we have done. The amount of attention that we have garnered would not have been possible by simply running around with a sandwich board and shouting slogans. We have opened people’s eyes, and gotten them talking. At its true purpose, the site has been successful beyond my wildest dreams.
What we have started here does not stop with one site. It is real, and it is now up to you to continue. Take what you have learned and experienced here and go forth. If you’re able, start new sites. Find new ways to open new eyes. Keep the revolution going. It is not a revolution of one, not even of eight staff members: it is a revolution of 100,000. We have done nothing here but provide you with a venue to voice your discontent, and the ideological sentiment that we all share need not end with Textbook Torrents. Indeed, it must live on.
For my part, I have other causes that need fighting for. There are all kinds of ways to fight all kinds of battles, and it is unlikely that I will find myself running a BitTorrent tracker again. I will step back from this and hope that you will carry on in our place.
Thanks for everything, folks. Thanks for making Textbook Torrents everything that it was, and for adding your voices to mine. Now it’s your turn.
Geekman
(Former) Textbook Torrents administratorI will be posting a list of places to acquire free textbooks. If you know of such a site, run one yourself, or are planning to start one, email me and I’ll link to you.
Stay tuned?
p2pnet – Textbook Torrents vs The Publishers, September 5, 2008
Chronicle of Higher Education – Textbook Piracy Grows Online, Prompting a Counterattack From Publishers, July 1, 2008
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It`s really easy!Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Geekman will be back.
Yarr never never leave a Pirate behind! Its the Code
October 15th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Doubtless some people (Dr. Seuss characters seem particularly prone to this for some reason!) would find this to be a “victory” for copyright and “Intellectual property”. Unfortunately for them, it’s just another indictment of the whole premise supposedly justifying IP.
Of course (as we saw in earlier posts) those who defend the current IP regime also seem to believe that the only thing creating a “financial incentive” is State-granted monopoly power well past the lifetime of the author. God forbid that (woefully infrequent) expiration of copyright terms ever “take” something from corporate CEO’s grand-children.
Yet another instance where the supposedly “sacred” right to State-backed monopoly power fails to live up to it’s justification of “promoting science and the useful arts”.
October 15th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
hear hear, some good truth here
As we already know this attack and war on the populace, mainly the poor, is not going to work.
Very simple: we are many, they are few, we win.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
He demonstrates what is going on well. All this started back with Napster being taken off line. The net filled the missing hole with dozens of similar sites. It is said that nature abhors a vacuum; so does an unmet need.
I hope to hear of literally dozens of text book sites where one can download a text book. The prices of these are outrageous and it seems the updates exist for only two reasons. One is to make as much money as possible by continually making minor changes. The other is to remove the used book market.
Professors across the nation are getting the word that they have less students because of the expensive process now in place used to educate. Does it have to be this way? No it doesn’t. People were educated back in the 1800’s with chalk and blackboard. I’m not saying that chalk and blackboard are the only ways nor the desired ways but expenses can be controlled depending on how badly it is wanted to be done. At present the publishers, the schools and unis have little reason to attempt controls on prices because there are enough families saving for 20 years to pay for the education or the students are getting loans to cover the costs.
With the present financial disaster looming, some of that is fixing to change. People themselves always loose out in the competition between government and corporation borrowing as they are all clamoring for the same piece of the credit pie. Worse with the hit on financial side, the hit on the increases in everyday living, while pay has not went up but jobs have gone elsewhere, there is less and less money to make education a possible. More and more families will see this bind, no matter how bad they wish better for their children.
So lets see some more of the Streisand effect. That which is attempted to be controlled is rejected by the average Joe. Where one place is silenced, a dozen more pop up to take its place. It’s called civil disobedience and it has a long history of being one method that the citizenry will adopt to fight what is unjust laws and poorly thought out processes sponsored by the government. I can not help but think of the Boston Tea Party when I hear of things like this. It’s where we have our roots at in the States and you can bet those in power don’t want to pay any sort of homage to that idea on their own watch. Since we are returning to the day of laws for the corporation and not for the people as it was originally set up for, I think those in the establishment will definitely be against this sort of change. So it is up to us to push it for all it is worth. Its the one way we tell them they screwed up between election times.
It was priceless to see this in action with the McSame campaign complaining about DMCA take downs. After all, he’s one of the ones that voted to see it come to be. Love to see these politicians getting bitten on the ass with laws of their own making. One could say it has a great sense of irony.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
IMSLP, all over again.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
“So lets see some more of the Streisand effect. That which is attempted to be controlled is rejected by the average Joe. Where one place is silenced, a dozen more pop up to take its place. Itâs called civil disobedience and it has a long history of being one method that the citizenry will adopt to fight what is unjust laws and poorly thought out processes sponsored by the government. I can not help but think of the Boston Tea Party when I hear of things like this. Itâs where we have our roots at in the States and you can bet those in power donât want to pay any sort of homage to that idea on their own watch. Since we are returning to the day of laws for the corporation and not for the people as it was originally set up for, I think those in the establishment will definitely be against this sort of change. So it is up to us to push it for all it is worth. Its the one way we tell them they screwed up between election times.”
Bravo.
This is EXACTLY the point I was trying to make with our erstwhile troll-pal “Sam”: namely, there are certain applications of “law” which are so self-evidently absurd and counterproductive, that they MUST be smashed. “Sacred right of property” notwithstanding. Did anybody give a shit about the “sacred right of property” of Slaveholders? What about the Boston Tea Party? Looked at from the (fatally skewed, moneygrubbing, and belligerently ignorant) perspective of some people, the event was nothing more than a bunch of weirdly-dressed yahoos destroying the “property” of the British East India Tea company.
This is the problem faced by apologists for the current system. They hammer endlessly on two moot points: “it’s illegal!” or “it’s about property”. Unfortunately, neither of those actually hold water: Patents and copyrights are SUPPOSED to expire, and the only reason they are permitted at all is the advancement of “science and the useful arts”. They — unlike, say, the “freedom of speech” and “freedom of the press” with which they CONFLICT — were never considered “unalienable rights”. In fact — as smarter people than me have pointed out — Jefferson and the other “Founding Fathers” were extremely skeptical of the entire notion of “Intellectual Property”. Unfortunately — as with chattel slavery — they “compromised”, and — in so doing — sowed the vicious seedbed from which grew the RIAA’s poisonous fruit.
(Damn, I like that metaphor!)
Apologists for the “peculiar institution” of chattel slavery often appealed to “the sacred right of property”, too.
Doubtless, there was quite a bit of sermonizing over the “thefts” commited by the Underground Railroad etc.
Bottom line: people would never have begun asking “inconvenient” questions/doubting the neccesity of IP law etc., if the lobbybots hadn’t turned the entire topic of “intellectual property” into a self-evident absurdity through such measures as: life-plus-70, extortion and threats related to the song “Happy Birthday to you”, etc.
They cannot win, because they’re rapidly losing the PRINCIPLE upon which their monopolistic bullshit is based.
October 29th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Textbook torrent is running as gigapedia.org
Register first to get download links
November 17th, 2008 at 1:40 am
I did register at Gigapedia.org and it does have ‘links’ to books on rapidshare and mihd hosters, but it isn’t
exactly textbooktorrents by far. These are not torrents at all…
However, it is also a useful model. Apparently users are uploading scans and then sharing the link via
this site, which is collaborative link-sharing and seems to be working. I found a download link to almost
every math book I looked for. Plus, in this case…..you can download the book even if they are no ’seeders’.
November 17th, 2008 at 1:47 am
A number of Gigapedia links lead to password protected crap, be warned.
Also, rapidshare and mihd coerce you to register.
I retract my earlier comment fully. Don’t waste your time on Gigapedia….
January 1st, 2009 at 1:32 pm
From 2nd January 2009, gigapedia.org will be changed and may be closed because they will open a new site..
Gigapedia.org is bigger then textbooktorrents. After amazon they have most number of boook and are number 1 site for Free ebooks. If you do not believe then please put the keyword “Hospitality” in any other web site.You may find very few boook and mostly very old.
But in gigapedia there is currently you will find 230 Ebooks on that where most of those are BEST SELLERS & CAN BE FOUND ONLY AND ONLY IN GIGAPEDIA
I don’t know whether gigapedia may need to be stopped like text book torrents or not..So hurry up and download as much as you can..
If you have more Hospitality Mangement ebooks then email me or send it to gigapedia..
problogger99@gmail.com