Ebook scene

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ebook scene is the emerging system of pirates who release ebooks.

Books were converted to digital form in the 1980s. At that time most books were usually typed manually. Originally books were distributed through BBSes and early networks. Also, a number of legitimate projects such as Project Gutenberg were started that concentrated on digitizing and distributing public domain books.

The ebook scene started to take shape in late 1990s. Distributions of pirated ebooks are known as releases. One ebook release was ActiveX and VBS Web Workshop by JGT (one of the first and most active groups) in February 2000, although other releases can be traced to 1999.

In 2002 several other groups became active, including ROR that specialised on IT books and EEn, releasing non-IT books and magazines. In 2003 LiB joined the scene, releasing IT literature. In late 2003, DEMENTiA joined the scene, releasing magazine and comic scans, and ebooks later. Another IT group, DDU, started work in 2004. A variety of other groups also emerged, some of them short-lived.

Pirated ebooks are mostly created by scanning and then OCRing paper books. The genres best represented in ebook piracy are sci-fi, small press horror, and fantasy, technical IT literature, classics and popular books of various genres. Many pirate sites now accept ebooks (in addition to software, music and movies), although some of them still accept only IT books. The books are distributed through normal scene channels. Ordinary users can access ebook archives through IRC channels.

With the ebooks gradually gaining popularity and many publishers forcing DRM onto readers, the ebook scene becomes particularly important as an enabler of equal access to knowledge for everyone. The ongoing battle against usage restrictions on ebooks is discussed in Stallman's essay The Right to Read.