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Apart from the fact that this is immoral, amounting to theft in my book,is there a risk of computer virus's coming with the download?

corindaman wrote:Apart from the fact that this is immoral, amounting to theft in my book,is there a risk of computer virus's coming with the download?

Yes. Well.... no. Kind of.

It's always wise to check in your torrent software what it is you're actually downloading. If it contains and .exe then run for the hills.

As Stephen Ward said, torrents are brilliant with loads of legal music sharing with bands and artists who have no problem with the trading of their live soundboard and audience recordings.

It's just a shame a lot of people claim to be fans of people yet never hand over a penny as thanks.

The technical difference between a torrent and a straight download is that a torrent is a file that's broken up into fragments. When you download a torrent, you receive it as a flood of fragments from many different people (hence "torrent").

The best analogy I've seen is comparing a torrent to a large book. Suppose a book has been chopped up into individual pages. If you want the book, you start by finding somebody who has a page you need and asking them to give you a photocopy of that page. Some people might have lots of pages and be willing to give you free copies of all of them. Other people might only give you a page if you're willing to trade a page that you have and they need. Assuming at least one person has the whole book (so all the pages are in existence somewhere), then eventually everybody in the "pool" will end up with a copy of it.

Since you're gathering up your book page by page and trading pages with other people, it follows that you're giving back something to the "pool" even if all you want to do is get your own copy. This is the nature of a torrent -- you're downloading what you need and at the same time uploading the bits you already have that other people need.

If you stay in the torrent after you've gathered the whole file, you become a "seed" or "seeder" who makes it possible for other people to collect all the pieces they need. People who haven't yet gathered the whole file are "peers" or "leeches" -- although "leech" is a bit unfair, since they're necessarily contributing while they're in the torrent.

There are plenty of legal torrents. For instance, I'm seeding a promotional Esperanto DVD which was made to be copied and distributed freely. Project Gutenberg makes its compilation disks available in torrent form. It's easier for everybody when it comes to big files like DVDs, because a torrent can be stopped and started, whereas a download has to be done all at once or it's ruined.

But of course, most torrents are illegal copies of movies, video games, books, etc. Because of this, and since you have no idea who created the files, there's always a risk of viruses, especially on public torrent sites.

Paul, I certainly would complain to the site and take whatever action is necessary because most of the people that would download this would upload it to another site and it will become endemic.

You have put so much experience and hard work into these books so you have every right to come down on them like a ton of bricks.

Sadly, if the movie giants and music giants can't get these movers to stop activity, I'm sure that an independent magician won't stand a chance.

I had the same problem a long while back—TheMog's 'Mogtrix', which became available as a torrent after they'd cracked the PDF protection.

I asked *very* nicely for it to be removed, and it was.

The truth of the matter is, and always will be: The 'torrent' users have no intention of ever purchasing the movies, music or even magic that they steal, so there's no real loss of revenue.

So, bottom line, try contacting the captains/admins/owners and ask nicely, and I'm sure that's better than going in all-guns-blazing with threats.

seige wrote:So, bottom line, try contacting the captains/admins/owners and ask nicely, and I'm sure that's better than going in all-guns-blazing with threats.

That sounds like a good idea. Most torrent sites have some sort of disclaimer, including something to the effect that they don't knowingly pirate copyrighted material (!) and will stop distribution of any file if the actual copyright holder complains.

Since you are the copyright holder, you can invoke this. I'd think most site owners would prefer to drop the torrent from the site and avoid trouble.

As mentioned, the bad news is that the pirate version is already out there and is bound to be copied around somewhere else sooner or later.

Paul's work may be more immune to being shared than most. I'd imagine the majority of downloaders wouldn't care much for his way of doing things...

Having said that, a wee note to the website is probably a good idea. Or maybe some kind of curse...