"I'm no pirate," says mygazines.com's mysterious originator

The man behind the website mygazines.com, who is under attack (legal and otherwise) for posting entire articles and issues scanned from around the world, without publisher consent, says he's no pirate. [See earlier post for background]

In an e-mail to and published by the UK Press Gazette that may have originated anywhere, including the server's location on the Caribbean island of Anguilla or the U.S. home of the website, John Smith [which may be his real name] said:

“We have every intention of working with the industry to provide not only revenue streams that are vast, but also an answer for the publishers in general. Our method will increase current revenue, halt and reverse advertising revenue lost to the internet, and overcome the lack of the ability for magazines to stay current.”

The Periodical Publishers Association in Great Britain has encouraged members to send legal letters warning the site is breaching the intellectual property rights of the magazines. UK titles such as GQ, FHM, Elle and Marie Claire are included on the site. The Magazine Publishers Association in the U.S. has undertaken legal action on behalf of many of the largest magazines that are its members. Many Canadian magazines, including Maclean's, Canadian House and Home and Cottage Life are also posted on the site.

Smith said that the comparison to music file-sharing website Napster was not accurate; claiming his site is similar to one magazine being read by a number of people in an office.

“If our goal were to be pirates, we could have made live a number of features, including but not limited to, downloading and printing allowable to visitors and members alike.

“To compare us to other similar sites with the only difference with of us being free, is to disregard the importance of the 'mygazines' custom magazine for users, notifications, and our full ability to share on the go, across the globe instantly.”

He said people complaining about copyright infringement were “completely missing our inactive revenue model”.

“We have ways of drawing revenue from a number of sources, some more obvious than others. Mygazines is hardly a pirate website with the interest of breaking the industry. Rather, we offer a paradigm shift that is far more fiscally comprehensive than meets the eye and yet easily transitionable by even the biggest publishers.”

He suggested that, with publishers' cooperation, everybody could make some money.

“We can certainly continue to make our case and meet in the courts if need be. That seems to be the intention of the publishers as a whole. But ask yourself, to what end. Even if they are triumphant in this battle, they will lose the war.”

[It's interesting the chatter on the blogosphere about this story; many commenters seem to be sympathetic to the site and delighted to get free access to an international cross section of magazines. On several sites, people have suggested in so many words that the magazine industry has missed the boat and been wrong-footed by a canny entrepreneur and that it will be very difficult to put this genie back in the bottle.]