I had never taken any profit as much as I had with Library.nu. I believe most of the users of it will share my opinion. The previously known as Gigapedia offered millions of freebooks . Yes, they are free! They earn their profit from ads or from premium user.
A couple of days ago, I was browsing and downloading some books when suddenly the site went down. I did not know what happen and thought I might be coming back again the following day to continue browsing. But Library.nu is not available from that day onward. I still did not know what's going on, and went browsing to know the reason. Apparently a consorsium of publishers had sued Library.nu.
It is really interesting to think of the concept of offering free books. On one side it is breaking the copyright law, but on the other side, it helps zillions of people all over the world to have free access to the collection of books. I happened to read somewhere that most of the users are people from developing and underdevelop countries. So both have ethical issues to address.
Some of the people are for the copyright issues. They showed their concern for the writers who spent their time on writing their master piece and get nothing in return once it becomes the collection of Library.nu. However most filed a complain for not having access to books anymore. It is stated that the rate of complain listed as one out of ten most posed questions in Google.
As for me, it is a hard blow. For I really make use the availability of it for my studies. I get a lot of books there. I wonder why there is no cooperation between publishers and sites such as library.nu. They can collect money from users and in return users can get access to anybook without the facility to download them or whatever. Learn the behavior of users from Library.nu and make something out of it. The ethical issues will be addressed from both sides.
I began to see the picture that had been predicted years ago while I was a student studying the new communication technology. It is predicted that ebooks will trigger new ways of making books available to the public. The fact that one of the biggest book shop had to be closed down is just one phenomena. A counter reaction was then directed to Library.nu by the publishers. We have just to wait for the revenge from sites like library.nu. I wonder why both are thinking for their own profit. Why dont they just colaborate to create a betterment for knowledge?
1 comment:
the party is over. Library.nu helped me to finished my undergraduate paper, we will miss them
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