From Cory’s talk on why Microsoft should get out of DRM

I’m an edge case, but I’m a leading edge case.

A great line in an excellent essay and one I am so adding that to my repertoire of responses. In the mean time can someone send me an email explaining how I get in on this bookwarez scene with its “hundreds of thousands” of ebooks?

I’m not really all that interested in downloading movies, they’re too big, and I don’t really re-watch movies enough to want have a copy (though I used to when I was a kid, and it totally make sense from a parent’s perspective). I still find it easier to buy and rip an album then to download the MP3s, though it’s on my todo list to correct this. (after all who wants to help fund these kind of people, or Credit Suisse), but I’m not a huge music consumer and I’ve got other priorities. (I know that is the sort of lame excuse people give for still using Windows) But I could get really passionate about downloading books: they consume a huge amount of my storage, a not inconsiderable piece of my income , and I don’t like going anywhere without them.

How does it work? Is it like the old BBS systems where you had to upload a certain amount to download? Is there anything someone without a scanner can do to help? Maybe I could spend a couple hours a week proof reading scans? I already send 2-3 erratas a month to publishers (typoes, overactive spellchecking artifacts, and of course syntax errors), and would be happy to contribute to a meaningful project to enhance OCR’ed copies. (Hard to believe reading LM I’m sure, but I’m actually pretty good at editing other peoples work)