No trust without independent control

one is arabic for arabic websites

Other non-Latin script gTLDs expected to launch over the coming days include 游戏, Mandarin for game; сайт, Russian for site; and онлайн, Russian for online.

Meanwhile, a wholesaler called Donuts has announced that seven new English-language suffixes will become available from Wednesday. They are:

• .camera
• .equipment
• .estate
• .gallery
• .graphics
• .lighting
• .photography

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/26014829

this is in fact speculation on a huge scale because I am not sure that most of those will work except as extorsion against tradenameholders who see themselves obliged to buy up their own domains in all of these domains just to protect them (and because the law doesn't protect them) and because online harm is faster done than you can undo it.

Now there are about a 1000 new domainextensions coming live in the following 2 jears which means that some multinationals and tradenameprotectors we are talking about budgets in the hundreds of thousands of euro's just to protect their domainnames. This is extorsion in fact because they have to do it because there is no law to protect them and as there is no police and no law nothing will stop these domainnamesellers to sell your domainname to anyone else if you didn't buy it.

In Nederland is het niet strafbaar muziek en films uit illegale bron te downloaden, enkel het uploaden van dergelijk auteursrechtelijk beschermd materiaal is strafbaar.

So you have made your website and you have invested a lot of time and money and finally have enough users and content to be a worthy (niche) leader and be able to build out a longterm vision and business strategy

but ooooops, there comes a new website that is called a metasearchengine that goes as if it were a simple user through your database or searchfirm and connects your data with other data from other websites and presents them to their users

that ain't fair so the European Court of Justice has a month ago formulated new protections for online database that would make it easier to block those cannibals from doing so or to make them pay something

"Only if a database qualifies for protection would the operator of a meta search engine functioning in that manner be liable for database rights infringement. The 'sui generis' database right only allows a creator to stop others using a database or the information in it if the investment of time, money and skill in that original database is large enough.

If the meta search engine "provides the end user with a search form which essentially offers the same range of functionality as the search form on the database site; ‘translates’ queries from end users into the search engine for the database site ‘in real time’, so that all the information on that database is searched through; and presents the results to the end user using the format of its website, grouping duplications together into a single block item but in an order that reflects criteria comparable to those used by the search engine of the database site concerned for presenting results," then that would constitute re-utilisation of a database, the CJEU said.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/13/meta_search_engin...

another way is to have a simple stupid search for you users and a more advanced search engine when you are registered (for example with their facebook account and to amend your conditions of use)

after the piratebrowser the people behind piratebay have another much greater project

"in other words, when users load The Pirate Bay or any other site that joins the new platform, the site’s data will be shared among users and stored locally. The website doesn’t require a public facing portal and only needs minimal resources to “seed” the site’s files to the rest of the world.

“It’s basically a browser-like app that uses webkit to render pages, BitTorrent to download the content while storing everything locally,” the Pirate Bay insider says.

All further site updates are incremental, so people don’t end up downloading the entire site day after day. The disk space users need for the locally stored sites ranges from a few dozen megabytes for a small site, to several gigabytes for a larger torrent index.The new software will be released as a standalone application as well as Firefox and Chrome plugins.

Since the site data comes from other peers, there is no central IP-address that can be blocked by Internet providers. Site owners will still offer webseeds to speed up loading, but sites are fully accessible when these are blocked.

Another important change is that the new software will not use standard domain names. Instead, it will use its own fake DNS system that will link the site’s name to a unique and verified public key. For example, within the application bt://mysite.p2p/ will load 929548249111abadfjab29347282374.p2p.

“Site owners will be able to register their own names, which will serve as an alias for the curve25519 pub-key that will identify the site,” the Pirate Bay insider notes.“The “domain” registrations will be Bitcoin authenticated, on a first come first served basis. After a year the name will expire unless it’s re-verified.
http://torrentfreak.com/how-the-pirate-bay-plans-to-beat-...

first these alternative dns systems have been tried today but have never broken through because you have to install and update stuff and because it is totally different and even if there are a great number of people using Tor for example which you can see as an alternative internet with its own naming system, it will never have the same impact as the web. The problem with the idea is not that to circumvent censorship we should build our own networks, internets and dns systems, no we have to bring that content back into the mainstream

but the second problem with the idea - and the same problem exists with TOR and Freenet and many other initiatives like that is that stuff like childporn and outright criminality and stupidity shouldn't be allowed and should be pushed out of these alternative 'havens of liberty'. There is no liberty if there is no dignity or humanity and childporn (to take the most disgusting example) is the contrary of both.

   this problem is even more evident in this new scheme because it is illegal to have childporn or links to childporn on your own computer and if that kind of content is allowed in these kinds of sites (or uploaded just to provoke and undermine the community) than every member of its network could be prosecuted even if he or she wasn't actively involved in or responsable for this content and there is nobody who will have any sympathy if you are arrested because you have childporn on your computer or because you are part of a network that distributes that disgusting stuff

the third problem is that there will be problems if ICANN decides to attribute the domainextension p2p in the normal internet to an operator or to the police services who want to block this attempt because even if it theoretically shouldn't interfere it would make things more difficult

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to consider legislation aimed at reining in abusive patent litigation. But one of the bill's most important provisions, designed to make it easier to nix low-quality software patents, will be left on the cutting room floor. That provision was the victim of an aggressive lobbying campaign by patent-rich software companies such as IBM and Microsoft.

The legislation is sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He unveiled a new version of his bill last month, touting it as a cure for the problem of patent trolls. One provision would have expanded what's known as the "covered business method" (CBM) program, which provides an expedited process for the Patent Office to get rid of low-quality software patents. That change would aid in the fight against patent trolls because low-quality software patents are trolls' weapon of choice.

But the change could affect the bottom lines of companies with large software patent portfolios. And few firms have larger software patent portfolios than Microsoft and IBM. These companies, which also happen to have two of the software industry's largest lobbying budgets, have been leading voices against the expansion of the CBM program.

The CBM program provides a quick and cost-effective way for a defendant to challenge the validity of a plaintiff's patent. Under the program, litigation over the patent is put on hold while the Patent Office considers a patent's validity. That's important because the high cost of patent litigation is a big source of leverage for patent trolls.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11...

this would mean of course that there portfolio's with thousands of patents and their papermill who are demanding for patents for whatever idea or process that their huge rd departements are working on and their patentlawyers who spend half their time bullying other firms into paying royalties if they don't want to go broke on costly and lengthy patent trials (which would be terminated with this proposal if the patent itself is weak) would be finished and you wouldn't want to stop all that money flowing in without doing or producing something new

this is also why the real value of firms is also based upon their patents and the possibilities that they may bring in royalties from bigger more succesful players (driving up the cost to pay for all that worthless non-creative middle managment in the patent blackmail scheme)

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have been told by France's High Court to prevent netizens from using their portals to search for 16 video-streaming websites.

A number of French ISPs were also told to block access to sites such as allostreaming and Fifostream over their networks.

As ever, such action will not outright stop users from hunting down illegally shared content online, but the court order makes things a tiny bit tougher for naive types in France who aren't aware of simple workarounds.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/02/french_high_court...

feels like 1999

with the Yahoo Directory or now wikipedia

here are some as an example, these are not links, you open them at your own legal responsability and are only shown for educational purposes to show what exists online

http://www.worldtvpc.com/blog/the-best-websites-to-watch-sports-streaming-online/

http://www.ovguide.com movies  they pay their 'copyrights' in Russia :)

http://instantwatcher.com/

and the best one is still Youtube without question

this is the report of a musiclover's visit (not me) to the new enormous store of Roughtrade in the US and why physical formats for music may still survive (even if it is with a minority)

ps I have about 300 vinyl records at home and can tell you why for most of them :)

"While I was there I bought the Savages "Silence Yourself" LP for $17.99, which is $2 less than Amazon gets for the record. The Savages' LP is right up there with the best of 2013. I prefer buying physical music formats, not files, and I say that because I still have LPs I bought as a teenager. Music and books are the only things that can stick around for a lifetime. When I play an LP I bought decades ago, it brings back memories, like where I was when I played it the first time, and associations that go beyond just the music trapped in the grooves. I've met a lot of great people in record stores, and when some stranger I immediately connected with recommended I buy the Penguin Cafe Orchestra record, I did. That was 30 years ago, and I still listen to that record. If the music is good, you might cherish it forever. What else will you buy that would possibly be relevant 30 years from now?

So I'm hoping Rough Trade's long-shot gamble -- opening a huge record store in my hometown -- pays off. Because if it does, Rough Trade will surely open more stores in other cities, bucking the streaming music/MP3 trend. I'm not dreaming that suddenly everyone is going to get onboard with vinyl or even CDs over the next few years. But even if just 5 percent or 10 percent of music lovers stick with physical formats, those formats will continue to be made.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-57614059-47/why-open-a-...

for example also a lot of cdboxes now cost 1 to 3 euro a cd which is not much if you count that a blank cd costs between half an euro or one euro. if you buy the music online you have to pay half one euro a song and than you are not sure of the same quality (because of downloading, safeguarding etc)

in a study it is clear that while full cd's by one artists are constantly having lower sales (make less of them but better ones) the sales of collection cds is growing each year, countering the trend

why

because if you have so much music at your fingertips it is essential to find, keep and sort the best one and that takes time and time costs money or you want to spend it on other things instead

and this why the biggest copyright fight that is looming today is about the editors of playlists and the streaming media à la spotify because that is the biggest battle of the musicindustry

if playlists (the knowledge how to chose which music on which collections in which order and mixing to create a certain atmosphere for most of us or the fans) aren't protected than the most promising sector to protect its copyrights, authors and formats will be under threat

and at least

if you want to speak really to someone who really knows about music (and that is the kind of people that should work in musicstores) than they should ask someone in a real musicstore because he will know about the group, the album and which other music is more or less the same genre and if he doesn't know he will know where to find the right information fast (using the internet in which you didn't think off)

just as booklovers keeping bookstores

Journalists attending the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in Russia will be forbidden from using everyday technology to take pictures and share information -- the mobile phones and tablets that have woven themselves into the fabric of daily life, the Olympics committee said.

“Journalists using mobile phones to film athletes or spectators will be considered a serious violation and will result in cancellation of accreditation,” Vasily Konov, head of the state-run R-Sport news agency, which controls accreditation at February’s games, told a seminar for sports journalists.

That means no iPhone pictures, no Vine videos, no Instagram accounts sharing the minute-by-minute details of the events, no Twitter accounts with updates and so on.

According to Russian news site Svoboda, the ban will including all mobile devices and tablets, including iPhones and iPads. Fans may be banned from carrying in professional camera gear as well.
http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/23934913/no-tweets-instagram...

the madness of the full mediarights which were probably sold

oday, 13 November 2013, WikiLeaks released the secret negotiated draft text for the entire TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Intellectual Property Rights Chapter. The TPP is the largest-ever economic treaty, encompassing nations representing more than 40 per cent of the world’s GDP. The WikiLeaks release of the text comes ahead of the decisive TPP Chief Negotiators summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 19-24 November 2013. The chapter published by WikiLeaks is perhaps the most controversial chapter of the TPP due to its wide-ranging effects on medicines, publishers, internet services, civil liberties and biological patents. Significantly, the released text includes the negotiation positions and disagreements between all 12 prospective member states.

The TPP is the forerunner to the equally secret US-EU pact TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), for which President Obama initiated US-EU negotiations in January 2013. Together, the TPP and TTIP will cover more than 60 per cent of global GDP. Read full press release here

Download the full secret TPP treaty IP chapter as a PDF here
http://wikileaks.org/tpp/

comments and ideas or analysis by specialists are welcome here - anonimity guaranteed if needed

• Heightened Pleading: The bill requires patent holders to provide basic details (such as which patents and claims are at issue, as well as what products allegedly infringe and how) when it files a lawsuit.

• Fee shifting: The bill allows for a court to require the loser in a patent case to pay the winning side's fees and costs. This makes it harder for trolls to use the extraordinary expense of patent litigation to force a settlement.
• Transparency: The bill includes strong language requiring patent trolls to reveal the parties that would actually benefit from the litigation (called the real party in interest). Also, if the plaintiff is a shell-company patent troll, the defendant could require the real party in interest to join the litigation, forcing them to pay up if the patent troll can’t or won't pay.
• Staying customer suits: The bill requires courts to stay patent litigation against customers (such as a café using an off-the-shelf router to provide Wi-Fi) when there is parallel litigation against the manufacturer.
• Discovery reform: The bill shuts down expensive and often harassing discovery until the court has interpreted the patent, making it easier for defendants to dispose of frivolous cases early before the legal fees and court costs really add up.
• Post-grant review: The bill expands an important avenue to challenge a patent's validity at the Patent Office (known as the transitional program for covered business method patents).

https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action3/common/public...

and US patents are very important for the EU tech industry because there hasn't been enough investment in patents over here so EU firms have far too few patents to be able to negotiate deals or to be worth some billions more only because of the patents you have or may have

Just 2% of UK internet users accounted for almost three-quarters of online piracy over a year, the report Ofcom indicated.

A small number of the most prolific pirates accessed "vast amounts" of infringing content, it said.

It also said pirates spent more on legal downloading and streaming than those who never access illegal content.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24055245

so they download a lot go through a lot throw it away and go to the shop to buy the real stuff

Sound recordings were not given federal copyright protection until 1972 and instead relied on individual US states' laws for protection. SoundExchange claims that Sirius reduced its royalty payments by between 10 and 15 per cent, corresponding with the number of pre-1972 recordings played through Sirius's service.

According to the group, during the same time it was underpaying royalties, SiriusXM grew its subscribers from 17 million to 24 million and revenues from $2.06bn to $3.4bn. ?
https://us-mg6.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.rand=7qignkji88...

So you just have to check out the system and know who is responsable for what (the state of the firm who produced the record, the state of the musician or of the copyrightholder now ) and how much you should pay for that music depending on the system and if you are lucky (as some commercial online radio's with specialist easylistening, of (ONLY) US jazz, blues, and 60's music, rockn' billy, country and classical music are) than you can survive without paying more to play the music than you get adveritising and subscribers and become rich

at the other royalties shouldn't be milked for centuries to come, which isn't the same as making it public domain because as investments in production and marketing have been paid off a thousand times all the royalties that are still coming in are just being used for the too high salaries of executives and too much blablabla staff, to pay new untalented groups or too old stars who only survive because there are today not so many alternatives

it would be better if part of these royalties should be used to digitalize the musical history and cultural heritage because with each change of format some say 30 to 40% of all products made on one material aren't converted into another (you can find for example on Youtube personally digitalized vinyl and cassettess or VHS that the firms would never digitalize because there is no market for it while the material itself is culturally and artistically amazing (and maybe even historically relevant) - and vinyl lovers know that they can still find versions and lp's that have not been digitalized or have been in a very rudimentary way or too professional (so it doesn't sound like the recording at the time because it has been remastered)

reading the documents of the plaintiffs and now it is clear why pre1972 recordings are being re-mastered, not to f.... them up but because so they fall under the present copyright and royalties, so this means that those stations would need to have the real ORIGINAL recordings if they don't want to pay, well vinyl collectors here is your market again (thought it was collapsing under the digitalisation movement online, now all these webstations need to have the orginal vinyl recordings online and a player in their studio, linked to their server)

The Pirate Bay is geblokkeerd voor 80 procent van de Nederlandse internetters, maar het aantal downloaders van illegale bestanden via Bittorent is sindsdien juist licht gestegen. Dat blijkt uit nieuw onderzoek van de Universiteit van Amsterdam en Universiteit Tilburg. Ook het aandeel van downloadende abonnees van isp’s die de omstreden site moeten blokkeren is niet noemenswaardig veranderd.
http://webwereld.nl/e-commerce/78996-downloaden-toegenome...

de reden is dat het zo simpel is om via Google een werkende link te vinden en dat die niet worden geblokkeerd, dit wil zeggen het is een statistische blokkering en geen dynamische die permanent wordt aangevuld waardoor ze dus zeer snel in feite niet meer nuttig is

tenzij

ze is nuttig om de automatische adware popups te blokkeren die soms opduiken en hun downloads vanop bittorrent willen doen of een torrent willen aansmeren

voor de instellers van de blokkering is de trafiek naar bittorrent met 80% gedaald, nu dat kan zijn voor wat het bezoekersaantal bedraagt maar het gebruik van de index - via andere sites - is dus stabiel gebleven

indien het de bedoeling was om piratebay commercieel te treffen op het aantal views van hun publiciteit op hun main site dan is het zo dat ze daar wel in zijn geslaagd maar dit betekent niet dat piratebay haar publiciteit nu niet eerder via haar data die ze levert aan andere sites zal moeten plaatsen

not all films on bittorrent are from simple users, some are part of a scheme and some of these schemes are set-up to send every downloader afterwards a letter telling him to pay several hundred or thousands of bucks (whatever the currency) or face court

"In June it was claimed in court that Prenda Law was setting up porn honeypots, seeding out films via sites such as The Pirate Bay and others. When the claims were made, Pirate Bay admins went through backup tapes and found that the films used by Prenda Law to sue largely came from a user called "Sharkmp4", who used a relatively small range of IP addresses.

The defense team than subpoenaed Comcast to provide information on the owner of one of the IP addresses, 75.72.88.156, and the court filing, released by Torrentfreak, shows it belongs to none other than Steele Hansmeier PLLC, a company once operated by Prenda Law lead attorney John Steele.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/20/ip_address_search...

that is why you should protect your privacy on bittorrent and use different tools to hide your IP adress if you think that you absolutely have to do this

if a network is well protected its internal pc's will have the IP address of the firewall which means that for example 10.000 pc's or 5 will use or have the same IP address

the reason is that none of these internal pc's could be contacted individually or set connections to the internet without any security controls and protections

ICANN is now revising a list of 1000 new extensions that could be accepted to sell domainnames to the same firms (defend your trademark everywhere anytime)

it wanted to know if there were extensions that were already in use and that were already very popular

they are ( the millions of connections during the specified time)

Interisle Consulting analysed the log files of one of the internet root-servers.

"The review of the logs revealed that a surprisingly large amount of requests is for domain names under extensions that actually do not yet exist, but that might be created in the future. Most requests where for .com en .net, but in third place there already is the first non-existing extension: .local. This even received over twice as much requests as .org. Problems with .local were however already foreseen as that extension has been blocked from being requested.

But already in 5′th place of all requests to the root-servers is the next non-existing extension; this time one that has been requested to be actually activated within the coming months/years: .home. Interisle reviewed a total of 96 hours of log files and during that period over 1 billion requests where received for .home. Other such examples are .corp (almost 150 million requests), .global (12 million requests) and .med (10 million requests). For all these TLD’s a request is pending to activate them, while clearly some systems currently expect them not to work.
http://www.tld.sc/en/2013/07/lots-of-traffice-to-domains-...

the most important thing is that the article is totally wrong. They say that these extensions don't exist. They do exist and they have already a very popular use in internal networks and the internet of things (home automation for example)

If Icann has already decided that .local would not be used as a public domainextension because it is so widespread on internal networks it should take the same decision for other typical internal and embedded domainextensions like .internal, .corp and .home (and probably I forget a few).

It may be that these domainextensions have at first sight the capacity of bringing in much money and could have some very convincing arguments at first sight, when you think of it, making them public domainextensions is just asking for disaster on a worldwide scale and of consesquences that no one can calculate (in money, in manhours and in practical disruptions).

there is a real security issue

However, as Versign points out, some of these internal networks received digital certificates for their internal TLDs. (An example of a digital certificate is the little lock, or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), that appears at the bottom of a webpage to indicate that it is safe to complete a financial transaction from that site.) In the example of .home, a disgruntled employee with access to one of the network-specific SSLs on .home could spoof a credential for a website such as Nike.HOME or HSBC.HOME.   In the reverse scenario, an employee of a company with an Intranet that uses a soon to be “real” Internet TLD could be vulnerable to an attack if they attempt to access their Intranet version of “.home” while outside of the network.
http://www.gtldstrategy.com/tag/intranet/

there is a real judicial issue

who will pay for all the changes and all the mistakes made because of them and the disruptions of business and transactions while the networks that have used a few (of the thousand) generic domainextensions for internal use (i think .med will be used by doctors and hospitals) long before anyone talked about liberating the domainextensions nearly totally (withoiut ever researching which extensions were already in broad use and should have been excluded from the process alltogether the beginning)

and who will be responsable if incidents between private and public networks with the same domainextension happen and there will always be incidents, in IT you can count on that

and what about those who have spent all that money on preparing their case for these domainextensions. Sorry but if you really had researched your case as professionally as you say you are to jump into the domainextension registry business, you should have known. If you were that professional and you know how much money is really involved you should have researched the risks and you should have known that the there would be a big risk that it would be rejected, that a huge part of the internetcommunity would be against it and that there were enormous possbilities of mayhem, lawsuites and mess-ups at the same time.

there are already enough other problems and issues to solve and updates to do every few months to not be forced to change all your internal networksnames and links to be sure that there would be no confusion with a new public domainextension even if that is only in 2015

Well there are two ways in which a company can block and hurt Google through the normal tactic of patent claims (and every big firm has somewhere a whole database of patents that could be of use for operations and negotiations like this)

the first one is the most evident one, a full patent claim in an US court which may cost much money and takes a long time after which the competitor is already rich and will only have to pay a small part of the profits that were earned meanwhile

the second is more interesting because it is cheap and very fast. A US firm can ask the official ITC to block any imports of any products of which it can proof that it can suppose that its patents were breached and that they shouldn't be sold in the US awaiting the trial in the first case (effectively trying to push your competitor out of business - your business that is)

"In a 2011 ruling on an S3 Graphics complaint against Apple , the ITC clarified the boundaries of its mandate. The ITC can prohibit the importation of devices that infringe an asserted patent claim if the act of importation itself constitutes a violation — as opposed to post-importation activities by the importer. For the Moto X, multiple components of wil be shipped in a non-assembled form to the U.S., and it’s possible that Google Motorola ensures that the Android software is installed only in the U.S. and not prior to importation. If an infringement dispute ever arises with respect to the Moto X, we’ll all find out more about the manufacturing chain for this device. For now, what’s clear is Google’s position: it believes that final assembly in the U.S. puts the product outside the scope of an ITC exclusion order. If Google is right, patent holders can only assert their rights by suing in U.S. federal court (or in foreign jurisdictions), and Apple v. Samsung shows how difficult and time-consuming that process is.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/08/04/the-re...

at the same time the marketing and pr and lobbypeople give a nice touch to it because you are giving american workers some wage again (instead of producing and installing everything in China)

the biggest ripp off is when a paperback version of a book is in fact cheaper than the ebook version

 the reason for this is that ebook prices are fixed and that the prices for real book as free and can be made cheaper

the second ripp off is by Google books who first said that it was doing humanity, science and development a favor by scanning hundreds of thousands of books without much looking after coprights and making it easy to download the books they were downloading

  once we were becoming used to google books and had formed a favorable opinion of Google books we are now   faced with the hard fact that they have more or less closed down Google books for downloading and that they are treating the books as their own propierty - which it isn't because an enormous part of the scanned books are free from any copyright- there seems to be a tool on the web to download their books but I didn't try it out yet

the third ripp off is by all these firms - private websites are firms who have to earn money to repay those early investors-speculators - in the first stage they make it easy for anybody to upload anything and than after a while they put up a paywall after which you have to pay to read more books - of which most of them are copyrighted. The strange things with firms like scribd is that they delete the user for uploading copyrighted books but not the copyrighted books (except those that were explicitly mentioned in the protest)

there are legal and not so legal alternatives of free downloadcenters of books without copyrights or with very liberal copyrights and that will not close it down behind paywalls for the moment I prefer archive.org

it proofs another time - even for free content - if you don't have it on your computer you don't have it

the numbers from the US are a good indication of what will happen here in a few years

The 2012 BookStats survey (one of the more reliable metrics of book-format sales industry-wide) revealed that 2011’s e-book net sales were double those of 2010. In the all-important “adult fiction” category, e-book revenue—for the first time ever—outpaced that of print. Amazon probably saw that coming: In 2011, they reported higher sales of e-books than paperbacks and hardcovers combined. And the trend seems destined to hold steady. The recently released 2013 BookStats report observes “an even more widespread popularity of e-books than in past years,” noting that e-book sales have grown 45 percent since 2011 and “now constitute 20% of the trade market.” Meanwhile, according to Publishers Weekly, between 2011 and 2012 the number of trade paperbacks sold fell by 8.6 percent, and total mass-market paperback sales fell by a whopping 20.5 percent.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/...

but don't think that those ebooks are necessarily always cheaper than the paperbook versions

a comparaison on the rtbf showed that the ebookversions were more expensive than the paperbacks because the prices of the ebooks are fixed ..... against the hardcover books (several times more expensive than the paperback versions)

Selon nos informations, un tribunal d’instance de Seine-Saint-Denis vient d’infliger une suspension de 15 jours en plus de 600 euros d'amende à un abonné. Le jugement a été rendu fin mai. Fait notable, seules une ou deux œuvres sont en cause, a-t-on appris. L’abonné en question n’avait toutefois pas donné suite aux avertissements de la Hadopi et ne s’est pas davantage déplacé à l’audience. L’information nous a été confirmée par la Commission de protection des droits de la Hadopi. http://www.pcinpact.com/news/80487-hadopi-600-d-amende-et-quinze-jours-suspension-pour-abonne.htm

so this means a 300 euros and a week without internet for each downloaded work without paying copyright

even as the socialist government is contemplating in changing the system

meanwhile the promotion of the official and legal businesses that should sell those works online is having a lot of problems because each platforms has other prices, another economic model and gives the buyer other rights - moreover there is not one complete library

and the funny part is that most of the ISP's don't even have the necessary tools and filter to implement this specific blockade