Poor college kid? 'Library Pirate' wants to help you

Andre Yoskowitz
24 Sep 2011 0:42

Library Pirate wants to help poor college kids with the outrageous prices of university textbooks.
The site's goal is: "Our mission is simple and specific. To revolutionize the digital e-textbook industry and change it permanently."
Library Pirate, which runs on a "Hire-a-Pirate" initiative, lets users reduce the cost of digital textbook rentals and also keep that textbook forever, via the stripping of DRM.
TF explains:

First, the student lets LibraryPirate know the title of the book they’re looking for. Then, site staff locate the product on eTextbook rental services and advise the student of the current rental price. An example shown to us was a book costing $200, but with a time-limited digital rental copy also available at $118.50.
Participating students are then asked to purchase a gift certificate from the official seller for the full amount ($118.50 in our example) and send the gift code to LibraryPirate. Site staff then rent the book on the student’s behalf.

At that point, LibraryPirate strips the DRM and links the user to a torrent to download. The DRM-less PDF can then be read on any device, and is yours forever, unlike most rentals that expire after four months (one semester).
The torrent is then available for all, so future generations get the books free. LibraryPirate also encourages users to pool together to buy the original book. The example above quickly turns to under $20 per person if 10 people in the same class pool to buy the gift card.