The growing contagion known as digital piracy continues to spread like a pandemic throughout the Internet. Its latest victim: the literary community.
There's been a recent exponential increase in Websites that provide digital renditions of copyrighted material to be either uploaded to an eReader or downloaded through file-sharing libraries.
Part of the trend (or blame) can be attributed to the growing success and popularity of Amazon's Kindle DX and Sony's Reader. Thanks to recent improvements, these wireless reading devices are being compared to the MP3 players that spawned Napster's and Grogster's assaults on the music industry back in 2000.
Websites such as Scribd, which boasts 55 million unique visitors monthly, are paving the way in providing both authorized and unauthorized editions of books, texts, plays, and manuscripts for upload.
Another site, Wattpad, sports a logo stating, "Read what you want, share what you like." The site claims to be the world's most popular eBook community and offers more than 100,000 eBooks for download to mobile handsets.
Then there are file-sharing sites such as MediaFire and Rapidshare, where users actively engage in swapping illegally downloaded editions of best-selling books. Kickass Torrents, for instance, has JK Rowling's Harry Potter collection available in .lit or PDF versions.
Trip Adler, ScribD's CEO, turned down an invitation in April by Litopia, an independent writing community, to answer his critics' accusations of ScribD's blatant wholesale copyright infringement. He told The New York Times that his "gut feeling" is that unauthorized editions make up a very insignificant amount of ScribD's library.
Both ScribD and Rapidshare insist they have installed filters to help detect unauthorized publications when they are uploaded.
From a publisher's perspective, finding an antidote for digital thievery is both time-consuming and costly. Evan Schnittman, of Oxford University Press, told National Public Radio in March: "If the first copy that goes out can be sent around the world instantly, how are the publishers... going to recoup that investment and do the advertising?"
Gary M. Rinck, general counsel for John Wiley & Sons, a large textbook publisher, told the Times he has sent out five times as many warnings to Websites for illegally downloading unauthorized digital copies this year.
Another publisher, Hachette Book Group, CEO David Young also told the same newspaper, "Our legal department is spending an ever-increasing time policing sites where copyrighted material is being presented."
To help inoculate themselves from eBook theft, publishers are using Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology embedded into each eBook file. However, this is costly and can even hinder the reader's experience of accessing the book.
Authors take very different approaches. On one hand, many feel as author and screenwriter Harlan Ellison told the Times: "If you put your hand in my pocket, you'll drag back six inches of bloody stump."
Other authors want their work protected and they wish to be compensated, but feel going after illegal downloaders simply will alienate their readers.
Author Cory Doctorow maintains that giving away his books has paid off by sparking interest resulting in legitimate sales. As for suing people for copyright infringement, he'll pick his spots. In a report on this site, he states: "There are only so many hours in the day, and you're better off spending them ensuring that everyone who wants to pay you can, rather than wasting your time ensuring that everyone who uses your stuff pays."
Ultimately, though, illegal downloading of books is yet another deleterious variation of the social dilemma of digital piracy, which needs to be addressed both legally and morally. The good news is that, as the practice spreads like any contagion, the search for remedies will speed up, too.
— Chris Poley has been a professional trader for more than 20 years.
Well, it sounds like we have some common ground on the issue, finally. I don't think piracy is good (for a variety of reasons that you would agree with).
Where we differ, I think, is that I consider it a necessary evil. When it began, it was because the music industry was delivering music on CDs, which were a somewhat inconvenient media which also cheated consumers into buying bad music (via the "album rule" whereby people were stuck buying an entire album while everyone knew that 90% of that album was worthless). And it was just as the entire broadcast industry (thanks to the Communications Act of 1996) started to abandon its role in promoting music.
Drowlord, Thanks for the article. I never doubted that pirates are the biggest purchasers of content.
My point is the rules of society must apply to the Internet. Otherwise, there will always be a stigmatism attached to the Internet, that allows producers and publishers to use piracy as an excuse to charge prices above and beyond what is fair.
Terrestial radio, is absolutely in free fall. And sadly, so is Satellite radio. But strangely for completely different reasons. I am not an analyst for this industry, but I wouldn't want to be an executive trying to figure out where the future lies.
A recent study shows that music pirates are far more likely to buy music (even music that they have already downloaded for free) as people who do not use P2P. I've seen similar articles about games and video in the past, but since I came across this one, I thought I'd point it out:
I'm not saying that piracy is good for the industry. I think it's filling a void. The reason that the music industry is suffering difficult times is that radio has been nationalized and the old-fashioned DJ is going extinct (i.e. a music fanatic that watches the music trends and introduces a listening audience to a variety of new/local music).
When you have companies like Clear Channel that literally have a playlist of 20 songs on their national radio franchise, listeners just aren't exposed to much. You probably already know it, but I think it's significant: In 1996 (before they deregulated broadcasters), the largest radio company owned 26 stations. Today, it's just under 3000 radio stations. The total number of broadcasters has radically decreased. The number of local radio stations has radically decreased. The number of radio formats has decreased. It has been bad for the consumer and for the industry in every discernable way.
Hey Chris. I just don't see it that way. If it affects one person -- and it's Madonna -- who gives a crap. She is compensated on a level far beyond her efforts, which is true of most successful entertainers.
Morally, there is no basis for copyright ethics. The idea that "ideas" are property has been around for a very short time -- a couple hundred years. As a moral concept, everyone ignores it 99% of the time. People constantly "rob" each other of thoughts, catch-phrases, gripes, jokes, praises, prayers, opinions. Our culture just doesn't prevent kids from singing songs that they hear on the radio, retelling stories that they've read in books, or replicating dances that they see in a performance. My daughter is singing "Puff the Magic Dragon" for a talent show next week, and that's similar to what most school kids are doing.
Plagiarism is primarily an academic concept. Patents and copyright are business concepts. Neither are based on underlying human ethics. Thoughts and ideas simply aren't property outside of these artificial containers. You can't -- or rather, YOU DON'T -- normally share them and expect them to remain a personal property. There appears to be some arbitrary caveat when it comes to thoughts and ideas with a business value.
Hey Drowlord, Piracy on so many levels is just wrong. If it affects one person, it's too many. There is a lot of colateral fallout, beyond the artists and producers, publishers....
Ethically and morally it hinders what should be an environment that should thrive for the small scale, entrepenuer.
Clean it up, and we will all prosper beyond our realm of thought. The Web has to be a secure and prosperous marketplace, controlled by honest business practices.
Otherwise, it's just a matter of time before, you know who steps in and really ruins it.
In this day and age, entertainment is considered an industry in its own right. It wasn't always that way. With the prevalence of cheap education, tools and technology, it might once-again become predominantly a hobby.
For every writer trying to defend his copyright, I'll bet that there are a dozen begging for ANYONE to read their stories for free. Ditto with groups and music, comic artists, actors, etc...
I think that piracy is an issue that harms a tiny minority of creative people -- at the very top of the food chain. And business people. Business people seem to care FAR MORE than creative people about copyright issues.
Yes, its the courts that actually has the the responsibility of interpreting the laws and Congress have to legislate laws that can work while it's the executive that has the responsibility of implementing them.
The problem lies here, many of us doesn't seem to be very keen on allowing the government to have greater power on "controlling" the Internet but what body could have such power unless the users and service providers of the Internet unite to agree on setting up an Internet Body to regulate the web. But what powers could it posess unless it is backed by laws that only governments could legislate and implement?
Even the United Nations, with all its powers and mandates, cannot really impose on individual countries without the nod of each government (especially the powerful ones), how much more a body of users and providers alone who have conflicting interests in the utilization of the cyberspace?
And yet we cannot just let everything happen in the Internet and do nothing about them especially when security and privacy of users are in danger.
Lance Alberto, I know the Government needs to have some role in the Internet. I think a lot of issues can be resolved with legal enforcement through effective legislation. But that gets to be very sticky and a very adruous endeavor.
Self regulation has failed to police sites effectively. And injured parites just flounder in the legal syatem.
There has to be some common body to answer so many very serious issues. Sometime the court system can interpet the law far more rationally than the Government, especially Congress.
Lawerence, I just read in this mornings NY Times, that ScribD has opened a new eStore, where autors and publishers will be permitted to set their own prices on their work and retain an 80% stake.
They can also decide whether they want DRM to prevent illegal downloading or file-sharing.
Furthermore, if publishers sign on, ScribD has tracking software to prevent any of their other published work from getting illegally copied.
So, although this isn't the ultimate answer, it's certainly a step in the right direction.
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