Dan Brown Tops Bittorrent Books

Dan Brown may not have the same success with The Lost Symbol as with The DaVinci Code, but his latest book has the dubious honour of being phenomenally successful with web-based pirates.

Word came in during the week that The Lost Symbol was selling faster on Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader than it was on Amazon’s online shop, though that’s far less impressive a statement than it might normally seem. Due to a combination of staggered releases and the relatively high popularity of the book on the Kindle the two figures stack up oddly. Perhaps less impressively though, is the news that The Lost Symbol has been doing very well on illegal filesharing networks.

District 9 Looks Like Pirated Movie of 2009

Since the release to torrent sites of a high quality R5 rip of District 9, it’s starting to look as though the film could well end up being one of the most pirated movies, if not the most pirated movie, of this year.

Of course, as much as everyone has been pointing out the fact that nefarious internet pirates and the general lack of scruples among the bittorrent community at large, TorrentFreak is pointing out that one reason for the mass of people itching to get their hands on a free copy of District 9 is that such a high quality release is available. That said, this is something that’s already come up in casual conversation around the office that I thought might bear a little talking about.