A college student out there somewhere on the Internet has been facing off against textbook publishers in recent months, with both sides claiming the moral high ground in the latest phase of illegal file sharing on campus.

The student calls himself Geekman (he refuses to give his real name or location for fear of legal action against him), and he runs a directory of online books called Textbook Torrents. Ever since The Chronicle first wrote about the site, publishers have taken steps to enforce their copyrights and keep the site from encouraging the trading of their books.

A representative from a publisher contacted the Internet service hosting the Textbook Torrents site and demanded its removal for violating copyright law, and in response the hosting company shut down the site, said Geekman, in an e-mail interview. That was in late July, and it looked like a clean victory for the publishers, who say the site is encouraging theft, pure and simple. But Textbook Torrents was back online a few days later, on a different Web-hosting company, and Geekman posted a taunting message on the Web site that he couldn’t be stopped that easily.

The site is only one of many similar Web sites promising free books for download—making the owners of the sites some income from Web advertisements sold there. But Textbook Torrents is clearly in publishers’ crosshairs.

Peter Anaman, senior Internet investigations manager for Covington & Burling, which has been hired by the Association of American Publishers to look for book piracy, said the investigators had tracked the origin of the site and were taking action. “I don’t think he will last very long,” said Mr. Anaman about Geekman. “He’s probably not going to last more than 48-hours.”

And soon after, the site was taken down again.

But Geekman put it back up somewhere else. And in recent days, the latest company hosting the Textbook Torrent Web site, which is located in Amsterdam, removed most of the site (the discussion forums on the site remain active).

“The resounding success of the site speaks volumes about the validity of our opinions, something which the publishers would do well to heed,” said Geekman, in an e-mail interview today. “Of course, their reaction will be the predictable brute-force approach which completely fails to get the point. We plan to be around for longer than 48 hours.”

He said the whole site will be back online by the end of the week. “We’re currently making preparations for a more permanent setup,” he said.

Meanwhile, there are more signs that students are looking online for free pirated copies of books. And some publishers report fewer sales of new books this year.—Jeffrey R. Young

Categories: Campus-Piracy, Legal-Troubles