# getxbook

getxbook is a collection of tools to download books from websites.

* getgbook - downloads from google books' "book preview"
* getabook - downloads from amazon's "look inside the book"
  (coming soon)
* getbnbook - downloads from barnes and noble's "book viewer"
  (coming soon)

## why

Online book websites are engineered not around reading, but around
surveillance. It is not merely the selection of book that is
recorded, but exactly what is read, when, and for how long.
Forever. And it is linked to all other information the website
holds about you (which in the case of Google and Amazon is likely
a great deal).

Reading books is one of the holiest acts in our society. Limiting
our access, and monitoring it closely is a grave act. It is
censorship, whether done for profit or for any other reason. And
it is dangerous.

The getxbook programs download books anonymously. Your IP address
will still be logged (use [torify or tsocks](https://www.torproject.org)
to stop this), but your reading won't be automatically linked to
other information websites have about you, as no existing cookies
are used. Once the book is downloaded, you can read it as you
please without any further prying.

Of course, being free to do what you like with it, you can also load
the book onto any device you have access to, share it, study it, and
anything else you can do with normal computer files.

"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every
form of tyranny over the mind of man."
 - *Thomas Jefferson*

## technical

Each tool is written in around 200 lines of portable C code, with no
dependencies beyond libc. They should work well on Linux, BSDs, OSX
and Windows. There is also an optional graphical interface, using
Tcl/Tk.