Free as in Books?

donkeyDevil writes "Forget free software, contribute to free books! The Chronicle has an interesting story about bookcrossing.com's effort to track feral books through their captors. Read about it, then do it. (Although the focus of the story is on Bay Arean book releasors, it looks like you'd have a better chance of snagging a free book here.)"

Re:"Track Feral books through their captors"

[Jedi Alec]

And there we go again, the typical Slashdot paranoia flares once again...now this is probably a troll, and I shouldn't even reply to it, but I just can't resist. The whole tracking thing was to see what happened to the book you left somewhere in the urban jungle. Whether this is Tom Sawyer or Mein Kampf is up to you...and whether the next owner decides to register on said website is up to him/her/it, so what's the problem?

Astroturfing

[pr0nbot]

How long before this is hijacked by publishers to promote novels in a fake "grass roots" caompaign? Maybe they'd just release a teaser version missing the last 10 pages or something.

Re:"Track Feral books through their captors"

[CProgrammer98]

Ummmm it's volountary dude. If you "find" a book crossings book, you're under no obligation whatsoever to register that fact, or to re-release it. Nobody is MAKING you do anything you don't want to. Sheeeeeesh.

As to books of dubious nature, have yiu actually been to the bookcrossings site and seen the titles that are being released and found? many great works of literature.

This is a FUN thing to do, no sense of Big Brother at all.

People who participate enjoy it, and a lot of them that have found books, read something they would never have read before, and have enjoyed doing so.

Great Idea

[Hellkitten]

The problem is that I want to keep the really good books so that I can read them again. If everybody else does this there'll be only bad books floating around

Hopefully tastes differ enough that someone will love a book that I dont, and it can have a good home. And when I read a great book in paperback I often buy a hardback copy to keep since it'll last longer, I think I'll start releasing those paperbacks. That way I can still reread the books I love, and give someone else the chance to discover them

Books in the Trash?

[DecoDragon]

I had to look and see what's in my area, and I'll admit, there is an impulse to walk the short walk to the "Donkey Xote" statue and see if George Stephanopolous' book is there, even though I have no desire to read it. Then I looked at how many books were left on metro, at park benches, etc., and I started to wonder how many books are going to end up being found versus thrown away. I suppose there are more than a few heathens out there who throw their books away already, and there are probably books that don't deserve the paper their printed on. But, it is vaguely depressing to think of a bunch of books getting thrown out. On the other hand, it is pretty harmless fun, so why get all curmudgeonly about it?

Re:"Track Feral books through their captors"

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Why not try introducing literature to the KIDS AT SCHOOL instead?

Yes, because the absolute best message we can present to kids is "Reading is only meaningful when digested in a suitable, prepackaged form", followed by "Literature has no room for spontaneity" and of course the all-time favorite, "There's no way that reading could be fun, something you do on your own time."

Yessiree, that's sure to spike the interest of kids in reading...

Of course, the sane answer is, Why can't we do both? Teach literature in school and make it available to everyone?

Re:"Track Feral books through their captors"

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Why is this any different?

Because it's voluntary.

Because it's non-intrusive.

Because it's opt-in.

Because it's not done by the government.

Because it's not done by a corporation whose only god is the bottom line.

Because it's non-exhaustive: you can ignore the books, pick one up and read it without tracking it, etc.

The threats to human freedom are real and urgent. But they're not omnipresent... sometimes, data can be a good thing. And I'd much rather see volunteer-driven, indivudal-centric projects like this than a mandated, national, bureaucratic effort like a national ID.

Donate them to Libraries

[Monoman]

People look for books in the library not on park benches and in seat backs.

Talk to the folks at your local Libary and give your books to them. I might be missing something but I think there would be better results working with your local libraries.

Then again, maybe not. :-)

Re:"Track Feral books through their captors"

[Hellkitten]

For the close future at least the book will come on some kind of physical media, you can just release that instead (until drm prevents anyone except you from reading it.

Even when that becomes available i lots of people (most people I think) will prefer books on paper. The actual feeling of the book, turning the pages and possibly font/layout/illustrations is all part of the reading experience. Having a book read to me by a machine won't give me as much as reading it myself, and I expect a lot of people feel the same way

Ok, now you can go ahead and call me old fashioned

C'mon people

[hey!]

Sharing books a threat to privacy?

Ideology is fine and good,but when it starts seeing threats in every innocuous thing it crosses the line to paranoia.

It's not like the books have little GPS receivers and glom onto unsuspecting and unwilling people to transmit their reading habits to big brother. It's just a way for people to say "thank you" to a the chain of kind-hearted souls who released and rereleased the books before them, by making the good results of their actions visible.

We have that too...

[Anonymous Coward]

In my town, we have something like this, too. It's called ... the library [buffalolib.org].

Not only that, but you can also get free cd's, video's, training and other good stuff.

I'm so relieved that those modern folks in california have invented something so wonderfully original that nobody has even come up with anything remotely related to this concept. Just like the way they invented sex.

Re:Donate them to Libraries

[GMFTatsujin]

... and how's your local library doing these days? Aside from getting slapped with censorware, protested for containing dangerous books like Harry Potter, and generally going broke, my local branch is just ducky.

The charm of this kind of project is that you find it where you least expect it. It's spontanious, requires no forethought on your account, and exposes you to literature you might not have considered picking up, or even looking for, in a library. It gets around the problem of indexed systems (libraries included), which is that you have to know what you're looking for in order to find it.

Plus, this is about sharing information with anybody, anytime, anywhere, for no reason whatsoever expect that somebody thought it was worthwhile and that other people might enjoy it.

That sounds almost noble, to me.
GMFTatsujin

Watch The Slashdot Cynicism Flow...

[gdyas]

Jesus, watching the display of jaundiced and paranoiac viewpoints in this thread is enough to make me want to never read this forum again.

This isn't a damn privacy rights thing. Nor is it about how people should be donating these books to libraries, or whether they should or shouldn't be tracking them, or if some publisher is going to game the system for nefarious means. It's just harmless fun -- an all-volunteer effort by a group of people who love to read.

I mean, kick ass. Buona sera. I love it. More power to them. Can't some of you just revel in one of the wonders of the 'net without reaching for your tinfoil hats? Can't you just stop being critical asses long enough to see something that's really, truly good? Are you all that cynical?

Maybe I should drop a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking in a comic book store somewhere and try to help one of you.

Making Friends

[LuYu]

Boy, those greedy Authors Guild [authorsguild.org] bastards are going to love this one. Just imagine a whole world of people reading used books...... And not paying for them!!

I wonder how long it will be before these bookcrossing [bookcrossing.com] people are accused of piracy for their philanthropy...

It is also interesting to note that the greedy people in this case have a .org URL, while the philanthropists have a .com URL.

Re:Donate them to Libraries

[marhar]

If you donate your books to the library, be aware that they will probably be sold in the library booksale rather than placed on the shelves (not that that's a bad thing, I do it myself).

How about put a bookcrossing sticker in it, and *then* donate it to the library? :-)

Re:"Track Feral books through their captors"

[G0SP0DAR]

Book tracking is nothing new. Aside from people in the government using it to label dangerous people, some authors paranoid about intellectual property rights may try to use it, at least over the Internet, to track the sales of pre-owned books and try to extort royalties from the buyers of used books (okay, the legalities of this process are probably still in the works, but don't put it past them). They want to say that the selling of used books is more evil than the distribution of music over P2P networks, since at least there, the distributors don't make 'profits'. Give me a frickin' break.