Bombooks

[pctadventure]

Anyone know about this site? Apparently you can download ebooks from it - I entered a book and it appears you can d/load it as a PDF for just 65 cents! (3 days registration)

http://www.bombooks.com

If so, doesn't that breach copyright laws?

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[Fabian_Black]

I'd be very careful indeed with sites like this.

It could very well be a pirate spam site.

Never subscribe to sites like this.

First of all because most of the books on it, if there really are any, are probably there without the permission of the copyright holders. Ebook Piracy is theft and immoral.

Secondly I notice that it asks for a small membership subscription via credit card.

Hello - warning bells.

Don't ever give credit card details to sites like this. They will likely charge your card for far more than the $1.95. (and some might say that folks who subscribe to pirate sites deserve all they get.)

In short treat with suspicion.

[norrimac]

BARGE-POLE!!!!

(as in wouldn't touch it with one.  :-)

[pctadventure]

Thanks for the replies. Came across the site after discovering my book was listed on it. Just doesn't ring right and was tempted to find out what the story was if I ordered a copy. But the fact that they were asking for a (small) credit card payment made me wary of trying that. So was curious to know if anyone knew of them or if their 'business' was in breach of copyright laws etc.

.

[kevinlomas]

I cannot say I disagree with what's been said, but it looks to me as if that's all those 'books' are worth! I recall many 'kits' you could buy that were > 'Mail Order Book Selling' "Business Opportunities" which consisted of 100s of rubbish 'Get Rich Quick' guides that you could photocopy and sell (after you had used some type of hotmelt glue binding-channel machine). Then they came on floppies and then on CDs. The only people who made any money from them were the originators (such as me!") That's what most of those 'books' look like to me.

[gillibran_brown]

If your book is listed on the site without your permission then yes they definitely are in breach of copyright.

[pctadventure]

The books listed as offered 'appear' to be genuine titles available for download at a small cost, but on a further poking around on the site I note that the last of their FAQ's says...

Q. Are the activities of Bombooks.com legal?

A. Our service is 100% legal as it solely provides their customer with information on active torrent downloads, located at numerous servers and local hosts around the globe. Bombooks never keeps any copyrighted data at its servers solely offering its customers informational, data monitoring and consulting services. Bombooks never violates any rights of the right holders enabling its customers with state-of-art utility to screen and search for information stored and shared by third-party local hosts and users. 

So from that it looks like what they do for the money is to only provide information on where any particular title can be downloaded or obtained from.(legally?)

.

[kevinlomas]

That's a new 'get out' clause after a court ruling that such sites should know what their site is used for, so are therefore responsible, but such a clause would not stand a chance in court. That there is such a clause says to me that they know they are in e very dodgy area.
But such a court ruling makes you wonder how legal a search engine really is :-)