Obviously, I've never downloaded "warez" in my life. And, for the avoidance of doubt, I was never a member of the so-called "Scene". But such shenanigans were almost unavoidable on the early web and - wow! - is it weird seeing snippets of your history presented in an academic study! Why do people "pirate" software and other intellectual property? The answer isn't as simple as you may think. This isn't a book about noble thieves, or cheapskate freeloaders - rather it is an examination of the…
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Alvin Toffler's book "Future Shock" is one of the defining texts of the 20th century. In it, he correctly predicts the insanity of living in the 21st century with its constant bombardment of the shock of the new. I thoroughly recommend you read it. But there's no official eBook copy. Why? If you trawl the Dark Web™ (2nd page of Google) you're sure to find hundreds of samizdat copies. Some laboriously typed up by hand, others scanned and OCR'd by machines. All of them filled with i…
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I don't understand the world of academic publishing. Incredibly niche books, some barely longer than a novella, are sold for ridiculously high prices. Or, worse than that, they're not sold at all. Let me explain. A friend of mine recommended an obscure book, published a couple of years ago. The blurb made it look right up my alley, so I tried to buy it. I only read eBooks, but I couldn't find it anywhere for sale in the UK. Amazon had a listing for a paper copy, but it was permanently out…
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For reasons best known to themselves, certain sections of the entertainment industries seem to believe that bolting the stable door shutting down The Pirate Bay will stop all piracy. It's as though they think that people won't be able to use a proxy, circumvent the Cleanfeed block, or simply use a search engine to find another torrent site. Build Your Own Pirate Bay? Proxying is a very simple concept. Alice is forbidden from speaking to Bob. Alice can speak to Eve. Eve can…
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A long time ago... Ten years ago, I posted on usenet that I'd watched a bootleg of The Phantom Menace. I discovered the post recently and it got me thinking about how little progress has been made in the digital download arena. The actual resolution of the bootleg Picture the scene, it's my first year at university and, like any good geek, I am obsessed with Star Wars - Episode I. So much so that I help run a fan site, ThePhantomMenace.co.uk. The guys on my corridor are similarly hungry f…
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