Founder Closes Textbook Torrents Site
Oct 14th, 2008
Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Lisa Thornberg
TextbookTorrents.com was once a popular site for students looking to download course textbooks online. Now, due in part to pressure from textbook publishers, the founder has removed all content from the site. Only a note remains. It reads, in part:
"I am at heart an activist, a crusader for the underdog. When I see something that I believe is wrong, I do what I can to fix it, if only in some small way. I believe this is what Textbook Torrents has stood for, and what we have done. The amount of attention that we have garnered would not have been possible by simply running around with a sandwich board and shouting slogans. We have opened people's eyes, and gotten them talking. At its true purpose, the site has been successful beyond my wildest dreams."
According to The Wired Campus, the founder was attempting to make a statement about the exorbitantly high cost of college textbooks.
Publishers claimed that the site was engaged in illegal activity. However, torrent sites allow users to share small pieces of a single file with each other, adding up to a whole. In the past, this has made it very difficult to identify potential lawsuit defendants.
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