VisorCentral.com - Visorcentral" Policy of closing thread that mention illegal ebooks

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-- Visorcentral" Policy of closing thread that mention illegal ebooks (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=19987)

Posted by rnunnink on 12-02-2001 01:39 AM:

Visorcentral" Policy of closing thread that mention illegal ebooks

On numerous occasions Visorcentral monitors have edited post and closed threads that discuss so called illegal web sites. The latest incident in a discussion of how to obtain Harry Potter ebooks

miradu2000 wrote "As much as I also like my Harry Potter eBooks (and I own all 4 books in hard copy) VisorCentral.com does not tolerate discussions or links to any illegal material.
A good resource for legal etexts is www.memoware.com. For any non-copyrighted book, (or old ones) you can probably find it in Project Gutenburg. (www.ibiblio.org links it)" He then closed the thread.

While I understand that this policy is for the protection of VisorCentral I object to the censorship. Ebooks are an important development and new technology. There availability on a palm device is the most significant development for books since Guttenberg popularized the printing press. As the printing press revolutionized the world, I believe ebooks on a palm handheld will have the same effect. I find the roadblock put up by Visorcentral to be counter revolutionary and therefore harmful to the Palm operating system. A system which is not on the firmest ground and still in it's infancy.

The sources quoted by visorcental as good sources of ebooks are not very good. Most noncopyrighted books are at least 100 years old and the sources of copyrighted books are few and far between. Amazon sells ebooks and it is a shame. Jack: straight from the gut is available for $14.95 and is only in microsoft ebook format. This book and many others are not available because of the manipulation of copyright law by large corporations.

On my Palm I have read the complete Dune series, the complete Harry Potter series, Neuromancer, ........... all popular works of fiction that are unavailable to purchase at any price. If I told you were I got them this thread would probably be closed and most of the websites that you can download these ebooks from last less then a week. They are easily available from the usenet group alt.binaries.e-book or an easier new technology Morpheus or Kazaa, the same technology people use to trade MP3 files.

Until ebooks are easily available for purchase I think it is shortsited of Visorcentral to limit their distribution. This technology, the next way to bring the printed word to the masses needs to encouraged. Recommending that someone read Hedda Gabler instead of Harry Potter is not very helpful in encouraging the rest of America(besides us geeks) to adopt this technology.

I think Visorcentral should reexamine it's policy of censorship.

__________________
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
- David Byrne

Posted by dkessler on 12-02-2001 02:06 AM:

Re: Visorcentral" Policy of closing thread that mention illegal ebooks

quote:
Originally posted by rnunnink
While I understand that this policy is for the protection of VisorCentral I object to the censorship. Ebooks are an important development and new technology. There availability on a palm device is the most significant development for books since Guttenberg popularized the printing press. As the printing press revolutionized the world, I believe ebooks on a palm handheld will have the same effect. I find the roadblock put up by Visorcentral to be counter revolutionary and therefore harmful to the Palm operating system. A system which is not on the firmest ground and still in it's infancy.

Regardless of whether your assertion is right or wrong, the fact remains that violation of copyright is illegal in the United States. And if VisorCentral were to condone discussion of how to commit that crime, then they could be held responsible and the result could very easily be the end of VisorCentral.

It's ok to disagree with a law, but that doesn't give you the right to disobey it. If a law is unjust, the legal system in the United States provides a number of legal ways to get the law changed. But until you make that change happen, you have no right to demand that other citizens or corporate entities disregard the law. If you don't like a law, attack the law, not those who are obiligated by the duties of citizenship to obey it.

__________________
<ul><li>Dave Kessler<br>President - Kopsis, Inc.</li></ul>

Posted by MarkEagle on 12-02-2001 02:11 AM:

Re: Visorcentral" Policy of closing thread that mention illegal ebooks

quote:
Originally posted by rnunnink
I think Visorcentral should reexamine it's policy of censorship.

I think you need to reexamine the Terms of Service you agreed to when registering for this site. We cannot and will not condone any illegal website or activity.

__________________

God bless America, my home sweet home...

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