Here we go again.

Some news I’ve not seen reported anywhere in English: a Spanish website called Youkioske.com (“Probably the best website for reading online”) was ordered by a judge in Alicante last week to remove certain publications made by Hearst and Conde Nast from its site, and to remove the metatags “Cosmopolitan” and “Vogue” from their code.

The site reminds me of the early days of Mygazines.

Firstly, they’re also owned by an anonymous company (MilPorMil Limited, or “1000×1000″) seemingly based in an offshore location (their address is listed as “Group Floor Blake Building, Corner of Eyre and Hutson Street, Belize City, BELIZE” – perhaps a misspelling of “Ground Floor, Blake Building”, which is where a few offshore registration companies seem to be based. Here’s one, offering incorporation and a Belize mailing address for 500 euros.)

Also, though not publishers themselves, they, like the early Mygazines before them, seem to provide readable versions of PDFs of publications that have been uploaded by users, who receive “karma points” for their trouble (not redeemable at any newsstand). The publications are then all viewable for free, displayed in this case not within a bespoke reader but via the Issuu platform.

It seems that the site has been running for more than a year, though I hadn’t come across it before. At least some of the PDFs contain watermarks that show that they have come from an equally evasive magazine piracy site called Store Mags (NSFW, contains many porn scans). Here’s the vaguely amusing Store Mags disclaimer:

MilPorMil Ltd, who also own the currently-inactive URLs “Peliculasver.com” (transl: “movie watching”), “reenvio.net” (transl: “re-send” or “forwarding”) and “desfacebook.com” (transl: “un-Facebook”), make it clear in their press release about the case that they haven’t been ordered to close down completely, that their model is not based on piracy, and that the essence of their site is merely to provide links to other websites where the content is viewable.

They also state that it is absolutely in their interest that no copyright infringement occurs on their site, that they actively prevent any links to it, and that they don’t host any content at all. (That might, technically at least, be the case – it’s not clear where the PDFs that people upload are actually hosted.)

They also state, as Mygazines once did, that many of the magazines are included with publishers’ permission, and all a copyright holder needs to do is contact them, and they’ll remove all illegal content within 48 hours.

Currently listed on the site are such publications as Art Review, Juxtapoz and Computer Arts Projects. Computer Arts Projects and Juxtapoz sell their digital issues on Zinio, and Art Review only offers free digital editions to registered members. None of the publications I’ve seen on the site links to Youkioske.com as a place to read their magazines online. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but though I have no idea if they’ve broken any laws in Spain or Belize, not all seems to be copyright kosher – as the Youkioske logo itself kind of suggests.

None of this is a surprise. I said back in 2008 that Mygazines was merely the start of things to come. Magazine torrents are around, and on tablets – a technological missing link that’s arrived since those early days of Mygazines, which I should stress is now a legit software vendor – PDFs are now more comfortable reading than ever.

Whether or not magazines are losing, or will lose revenue due to piracy is a debatable point – just as it is with movies, music and books. It’s just interesting, and unsurprising, to see magazines increasingly being drawn into the discussion. As tablets grow in popularity, so will these kinds of stories.

Esquire puts a hole in Obama’s face
For $250,000, who wouldn’t? There could be some neat creative solutions made using this alongside the cover image in the future, like a Mad magazine-style trapdoor; though knowing Esquire US, there won’t be. A pull tab for BMW is to follow. “I think you can smell a gimmick a mile away,” says the VP of Discovery channel. I’m sniffing one from here

Papercamp highlights the future of tech and paper
Less gimmicky, more geeky. Originated by Dopplr’s Matt Jones; some of the ideas can be seen here. There’s a New York-flavoured edition coming up next month

Ads in PDFs scrapped by Adobe
Between them, Techcrunch and Nxtbook have it about right. However, I’m not convinced by the phrase “A true digital magazine is designed to be an elegant reading experience. While some are better than others, most all are more engaging than the PDF format” – PDF Mags begs to differ

Taschen’s London store gears up for a warehouse sale
Takes place on 23-25th January. Plenty of pulp mag books with slightly scuffed covers on offer on day one, fewer bargains by the weekend I’ll bet

Adbusting protests against Photoshop use
Fabulous in-joke fun

And the obligatory crisis roundup:

Jeans brand scraps magazine advertising
“Magazines will always be relevant. We are just trying something new this season.” And cheaper. Goes instead for marketing on its own website and instore

Arthur goes into hibernation
The community funding only postponed the end. The blog has been busy since, though. If you prefer a fictional version of this story…

…Bad Idea creates miniseries about print and the money pit
Occasionally amusing. “How about Kabuki theatre for the disabled?”

Funniest line of the magazine crisis so far
Though I’m not sure it’s true. But who cares?