Open letter to authors and publishers

keywords: gigapedia, library.nu vs publishers, intellectual property, copyright, books, ebooks, piracy 


Dear author/publisher,

you are most likely aware that the biggest site facilitating the illegal distribution of electronic books known as library.nu (and previously as gigapedia) closed its doors earlier this month. This presents the ideal opportunity for new competitors to take its place. In this letter I would like to argue that it is in everyone's best interest that you are the one who steps in and I would also like to explain how that will make the world a better place as well as make you a profit.

Free illegal knowledge and how (not) to deal with it

keywords: gigapedia, library.nu vs publishers, intellectual property, copyright, E-library, books, ebooks, piracy

1. Introduction
Library.nu (formerly known as Gigapedia) was the biggest site facilitating free (illegal) access to electronic books worldwide. It discontinued its service on February 2012 after a coalition of a dozen publishers served it with a cease-and-desist order. The publishers claim that more than 400,000 books were available on library.nu and that the annual turnover of the site was more than $10 million, the press release of the proceedings can be found here.

Such big numbers definitely indicate a popular website and it is safe to deduce that thousands (if not millions) of people were affected when the site went down. In the following article I try to assess if the consequences for closing the site are overall positive or negative. Since I have no particular affiliation with library.nu and since similar websites continue their operation today I will refer to all of them collectively as E-library.