Buddha Torrents has recently come under pressure from Blogger as well as Publishers to close its doors and cease postings and delete the blog. I have mixed feelings on this and know that the majority of people that use this blog would say no, however if you feel it should continue or should not I would invite you to comment below.
If you use Buddha Torrents and have never left a comment now would be the time!
If you dont use Buddha Torrents now would also be your time!
Below is the original letter received.
Hi there
I see that you are responsible for posting many Buddhist books up on the web via buddhisttorrents.blogspot.com and other avenues. I am sure your intention is really good – its so wonderful to be able to make so many precious teachings available to people.
However, what you are going is actually really harmful in a number of ways and I wanted to bring these to your attention for your consideration. I am not trying to engage in a philosophic debate or anything, I just want to paint the whole picture for you.
Authors, publishers, and booksellers who create, produce, and make these books available are not getting rich off of these, but their enumeration is what makes it possible to continue putting these books out there. We are not producing any Tom Clancy or Danielle Steele novels here. If the economics of producing our types of books breaks down, far fewer will be made – that is just a reality, and frankly it is already happening due to the changing economics with bookstores closing and Amazon becoming the gorilla that it is. So making these available to people for free ultimately does a lot of harm. For example, one of our authors donates all her proceeds to her monastic practice center to ensure that it can continue in the future. This is one of many, many examples. Many of our authors barely make enough to do what they do.
It is a difficult time for publishers of all books these days – many will not survive the next few years, and those that will are struggling to find new ways of revenue to enable their employees to do what they love, which is making these books. Having free downloads undermines this.
As for those people who do not have enough money to afford these books, we do make them available for libraries to have. Additionally Shambhala, and I assume Wisdom, Snow Lion and others, donate many books to worthy causes – each year we send them to prisons, military personnel, and other organizations.
So I respectfully request that you please stop your activity in this area, remove links to these files that enable others to take what is not given. I know your heart is in the right place, and you could be doing so much to help people connect with this meaningful activity. Become a reviewer! Blog about these books! We’ll send you reviewer copies for free.
Thanks for your consideration,
