Renegade Site Gives Away Magazines for Free

I’ve just spent the last hour reading magazines. For free, on-line, flipping through the pages of Popular Photography and the National Enquirer as easily as I might read them in the check-out line of the supermarket. I found them all at a site that is making magazine publishers reach for their phones to call their attorneys. It’s called mygazines.com and I highly recommend you check it out before the injunctions take effect and the pleasure won’t be available any more.

One attorney put it bluntly: it’s a copyright violation sitting there waiting to be taken to court. But the site, which encourages viewers to scan magazines they buy and upload them for all to share, is based offshore, in the British island of Angilla, so it’s hard to nail them. The site was featured on Romanesko today, so nearly every editor has read about it.

And if they are magazine publishers, they are probably smarting, like record executives and victims of software piracy. The strange part about the Mygazines site is that there are no ads, no obvious attempts to make money by their illicit sharing of the magazine content. Still, they are liable for the lawsuits.