Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

I've Been Bittorrent-ed!
Not quite the same as being Slashdotted, but an interesting event nonetheless.

I visit suprnova.org fairly regularly, of late to download TV shows -- mainly documentaries and history/science programs. And while browsing through their listing of Miscellaneous items and I ran across "CORE CSS". "Hunh? Is that mine?" I thought. So I clicked on the link and start the Bittorrent download. According to the stats, there was about 60 people seeding/downloading the file at the time, and it was a relatively small file, so I had the download in about a minute.

It turned out to be a PDF file containing the contents of my first CSS book. This PDF file was contained on the CD that accompanied the book, and is the full content of the book. The originating source for this file turns out to be some pirate site, which, judging by the umlauts sprinkled in the navigation text is either of German or Nordic origin.

So how do I feel about someone ripping off my stuff and offering it for free to anyone who wants to download it? Great! You want a copy? Here, by my guest!

The book is now 4 years old and despite the glowing description of it on the pirate site, the information is dated. It will still be marginally useful for some, but ultimately I see this is an upsell for my most recent book on the subject.

The money I earned from this book now falls into the low double digit range, and soon will drop of too nothing. So if even a fraction of the people downloading this book end up looking up and possibly buying the most recent version, it'll be well worth it for me. And if the rest end up getting something out of the old book, more power to 'em.