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JK Rowling leads fight against free books site Scribd

April 16, 2009 - 7:46am — Blake

The publishers of bestselling authors JK Rowling, Aravind Adiga and Ken Follett have been shocked by the news that their authors' latest books are available to read for free on a US website. Internet users can not only read free copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, The White Tiger and World Without End at Scribd.com, but also download the text onto their computers to edit as they see fit.

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April 16, 2009 - 12:28pm — Anonymous

Scribd.com's rebuttal...

http://blog.scribd.com/2009/03/30/what-ever-happened-to-fact-checking/

Scribd.com's rebuttal...

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April 17, 2009 - 6:19am — opaqueentity

What a wonderful piece of 'journalism'.

No mention of how books are available on BitTorrent etc, or as someone else here mentioned you can just Google and find Stephen King's book on a russian server.
Books have been freely available online for years. In fact I wouldn't have got into Harry Potter if it wasn't for a plain text version of the second book I downloaded. I read it and immediately ordered the real books. Before then I wasn't atall interested in the books.

But even in a pdf format it's nothing like a real book. Even ebooks (legit or not) for my iPhone aren't the best way to read a book. Nothing beats a proper paperback when you're on the train or plane.

The worst bit about the article is at the end:
Priest agreed. "The music industry has been practically ruined by this."
What utter bull.

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