The rise of e-books piracy
First the music industry is being undermined by piracy, now the same seems to be happening to e-books. Up to 20% of e-book downloads are derived from illegal websites. The piracy of e-books partly is a result of the fact that consumers are not willing to pay for the high prices of legal e-book downloads.
It seems simple to create pirate e-books, which can be done just by using a computer and a scanner. Also, there is free software available on the internet, which can convert the file format of a legal bought e-book, so it can be read on an e-reader.
Last year the brand protecting company MarkMonitor already warned publishers that the market of illegal e-book copies will increase if they don’t take action. Now, publishers have asked Google to demote pirate websites, which offer illegal e-books, to make sure these websites do not appear at the top of web when consumers are searching for e-books. Furthermore, the publishers also put pressure on Internet Service Providers to shut down websites were illegal e-books can be found.
Read more about e-books on FutureOfCopyright.com:
- Possible illegal price agreements between Apple and e-book publishers
- E-books substitutes paper books in Germany
- European politicians debate about VAT and the price of e-books
References: eReaders.nl, Dailymail.co.uk
By: Deniece Teterissa
Comments(3)
Jacob
It's a shame that the still young market for e-books might be undermined due to piracy. Should e-books be cheaper? Especially on formats such as Kindle, where you don't actually own the digital file, but kinda rent it from Amazon (since Amazon can revoke it from your Kindle whenever they want).
Also I wish I would get a free copy of the e-book when I buy a physical book. I can read the physical book at home and have it in my book case, but use the e-book version while on the road. I can already put the contents of my CD's on my iPod, so why not the contents of my paper bookcase on my iPad?
phulshof
I think that the choices of e.g. J. K. Rowling have already shown that the existence of e-books is of no importance to the problem of infringement. Whether books will be available as e-books does not influence their availability on the file sharing networks. As such, it makes no sense not to publish an e-book from an infringement perspective. Certainly, there are marketing reasons for not selling your book as an e-book, but not selling your book as an e-book over fears of infringement is simply stupid.
Bart Schermer
@Jacob Good suggestions! In the Netherlands an issue might be the fixed book prices, which make it difficult to distinguish between physical and digital copies though...
@phulshof The choice of an author not to publish their books as ebooks will indeed probably not influence the availability of their works on file sharing networks. Let's hope that a legal alternative will be attractive enough for the consumer so that they do not make the choice to stop publishing althogether because they are fed up with freeloaders or can't make a decent living anymore because of piracy...
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