- Ebook scene
Ebook scene is the emerging system of pirates who release
ebook s.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 " byJGT (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 2003LiB 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 , andfantasy , technical IT literature,classics and popular books of various genres. Many piratesite s 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 Richard Stallman's essay
The Right to Read .File Formats
The files are available in a variety of formats including chm,
djvu ,pdf , txt, rtf, doc, lit, fb2, pdb andHTML .References
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20060530055327/http://www.searchlores.org/h_ebook.htm Piece of ebook scene culture] , collected by Ronin, October 2004
* [http://www.gslis.mcgill.ca/marginal/mar9-2/bookwarez.htm Copyright and Book Piracy: The #bookwarez Phenomenon and Beyond] , Eric AnctilVerify source|date=April 2007
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