Morality aside, one argument for not indulging in book theft is purely personal: you're liable to get ripped off. A lot. Book thieves want you to sign up for 'subscriptions'. In other words to hand over your personal credit card supposedly in return for access to servers that will, in return, feed you 'free' stolen software, music, movie and books.

It's amazing how many suckers fall for this trick. Think about it. These are people trading in stolen goods. And you're going to give them your credit card? What do you think they're going to do with it?

And here's another truth. They may not even have the contraband they're promising you in the first place. Let me introduce you to a fine example of somewhere that seeks to rip off those out there who wish to rip off those of us who provide the wares they steal and crack.

It's called Zedload.com and stems, as far as I can work out, from the Czech Republic. Judging from this screenshot <a href="http://www.zedload.com/david-hewson-nic-costa-series-4-books-pdf-crack-serial-download.html" target="_blank">which you can see for yourself here</a> they have a pretty full portfolio of my work.

<a href="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Screen-shot-2011-04-15-at-09.58.54.png"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8121" title="Screen shot 2011-04-15 at 09.58.54" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Screen-shot-2011-04-15-at-09.58.54-640x284.png" alt="" width="635" height="281" /></a>

But do they? Try typing anything into Zedload and you'll find they promise they have it. And I mean anything? But if you try to download 'it' they'll either scam your card/email details, sell you some other stuff,  or drop a virus/trojan onto your PC.

They even seem to have a sense of dry humour about their dishonesty. <a href="http://www.zedload.com/search.php?q=yeah+right+like+this+file+really+exists%2C+it+does%3F+Oh+okay+then+I%27ll+download+it...&amp;log=1&amp;x=14&amp;y=17" target="_blank">How about this? </a>

<a href="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Screen-shot-2011-04-15-at-10.02.00.png"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-8123" title="Screen shot 2011-04-15 at 10.02.00" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Screen-shot-2011-04-15-at-10.02.00-640x367.png" alt="" width="635" height="364" /></a>

Ha, ha. Hope your credit card company understands if you hand your plastic over to these people.

It is, by the way, very easy to nail down the fact they're con artists. Just take a look on the excellent Web of Trust web site which keeps an eye on some of the nasties out there. <a href="http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/zedload.com" target="_blank">Here is the entry for the charmless criminals of Zedload</a>. Among the comments...

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-8126" title="Screen shot 2011-04-15 at 10.07.56" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Screen-shot-2011-04-15-at-10.07.56.png" alt="" width="426" height="343" />