Internet Book Piracy Read online

  So if writers individually can’t do much about the problem, what might be done? One solution is the need for an attitude change. Since so many people have come to expect the ability to get things for free, education is needed to change that mind-set. Or maybe technology could help by placing limits on what people can see for free, requiring them to pay to gain access to the rest. As Seb describes it:

  “I think everybody is really into getting things for free, and that is what has happened here. They don’t think of the creator who is losing money; they just want to get something for free.

  “I think one solution might be to restrict free access. For example, maybe there might be a future technology where if you download a digital book, only a certain amount of that book is available, and then when you pay for it, it unlocks the rest. But I’m sure many people will figure out ways to unlock the restriction, so they get the book for free anyways. So I think it’s a tough one to try to control piracy that way.

  “I think another approach is to provide more education about piracy, especially in countries that don’t know that taking copyrighted work is piracy. So we have to educate people that they can’t share copyrighted items. A lot of people steal a lot of things without understanding that what they are doing is stealing. For example, people think that once you own music, you can take that music, so if you’re producing your own film, you can take that music and use it in your film, because you bought the CD. They think it’s yours, that you have the rights to it. But you do not really have the rights to that music. So I think education is necessary to put that information out there to inform people, so they don’t post things that do not belong to them.

  “As for what should be done about book pirates, I think more education is definitely in order. But a big problem is how do you find a book pirate? Is it the person that’s putting up or sharing these books on the sharing sites, or is it the companies that are hosting the material? I think the education should be to not share these materials, and we have to expose the people who are providing the sites to share these materials.

  “At the same time, it is difficult to impose fines. For example, in the last ten to fifteen years, only a relatively small number of people have gotten fines for sharing CDs, and I wonder if the government will try to do something similar for sharing books. But the problem is really tough, because you have to both find the people who are involved in sharing what isn’t theirs to share, and then you have to try to collect money from them. And this can be hard to do, especially if those sharing are from another country, and how do you get all the world governments involved? It’s a complicated process to try to use enforcement to deal with the problem, so I think the main approach should be more education to explain that people don’t have the right to share what they don’t own and show how they are harming others, and just go from there.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Interviews with Three Publishers

  WHEN I SPOKE WITH THREE publishers—Eve A. Ma, the publisher of Palomino Productions in El Cerrito, California; Jennifer Joseph, the publisher of Manic D Press in San Francisco; and Maria Danzilo, the Legal Director for Wiley in Hoboken, New Jersey—their comments echoed those of the writers in describing the losses they experienced. The big difference was that the damages were more extensive, especially as the publishers were larger, and had more books with wider distribution. Thus the potential losses due to piracy were that much greater. But except for Wiley, a much larger and well-financed publisher, the publishers, like the writers, felt they could do little. They were too small, had limited time and funds, and the pirates were too numerous and often were operating from other countries, making any response seem futile.

  For these small publishers, piracy became a kind of cost of doing business, though Wiley did seek to achieve compensation. The company filed a lawsuit on behalf of one of its Dummies series books that was illegally uploaded and pirated, resulting in at least thirty-five thousand downloads. Eventually it did win, although in the larger scheme of things, that success is really limited in scope, since there are multiple offenders who weren’t sued, and Wiley has hundreds of other books over which it didn’t sue. So while it might have won in one suit, it is still a victim. It’s like the Wild West, where a sheriff might shoot down one outlaw who has robbed a bank, but there are still dozens of other outlaws out there, waiting for the right opportunity to rob again, and even rob that same bank again and again.

  An Interview with a Publisher of Scholarly Books

  When I interviewed Eve Ma of Palomino Publishing, she emphasized the futility of doing anything and how others were benefiting financially at the expense of the victim of piracy, though she pointed out the one bright side of piracy—at least she would have more people reading her work. As Ma commented:

  “To my knowledge, I have had only one book pirated and that was one of my scholarly books. It was about the Chinese in the United States during the Chinese revolution of 1911, and it was translated into Chinese by a publisher in China. It was printed and published there without my knowledge, and without, of course, since I didn’t know about it, without paying me any money.

  “The thought of hiring an international lawyer and starting a lawsuit in China or in an international court of law was a little daunting so I said, ‘Well, at least a lot of people in China are reading it.’

  “It’s important if you’re a writer, a filmmaker, a musician to get whatever money is due to the author. The author needs that money. If you take somebody else’s work and make money off of it, you’re really hurting the very thing that you like, and I think it’s a real shame.”

  Like many other writers and publishers, Ma felt it would be fair to compensate the victims of piracy with the money they should have made were the material not pirated. But she felt the draconian punishments meted out through law enforcement or litigation were simply too high at hundreds of thousands in damages. She explained:

  “There’s always the question as to what should be done about book piracy or any other form of piracy of other people’s creations. I do think that if you find somebody that’s pirating something, they should be required to pay back any money they made to the person who created it. I think there should be some possibility of additional damages. But I don’t believe in these huge two-billion-dollar mental stress damages or other excessive penalties. There should be some kind of additional damages, but reasonable ones.”

  An Interview with a Small Publisher of a Variety of Books

  When I interviewed Jennifer Joseph, the publisher of the Manic D Press, she began by describing the broad mix of books she published since 1984, among them works of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, creative nonfiction, art books, children’s books, and travel books. And then when she heard about a company that looked for pirated manuscripts and sent out takedown notices, she did a search and found many of her titles on multiple websites. But like many other writers and publishers, she felt it exhausting and futile to try to combat piracy on her own. Plus, it would take away the time she had to write and publish the books of her authors. As she explained:

  “At our distributor’s sales conference recently, they offered the publishers a chance to sign up for a yearlong contract with a company that would search for titles that are being pirated and would send takedown notices on your behalf. That sparked an interest for me. So I Googled some of our more popular titles and discovered they were pirated on multiple websites.

  “But I didn’t have much time to do anything, because it’s really a game of whack-a-mole. As soon as you take down one site, something else pops up. Plus, it’s really a full-time job chasing the digitization of your books around the Internet and trying to stop that. So it’s a distraction.

  “I think that most people are sending out takedown notices with varying degrees of success. Everybody agrees that it’s a very time-consuming thing.”

  Joseph also expressed the popular sentiment among writers and other creators that people should be paid for their work if they ar
e serious, professional writers. While many writers might offer their work for free, those doing it professionally need to get paid so they can survive. As Joseph noted:

  “I think that everything can be free to a certain extent. However, if people are trying to keep a roof over their head and are doing the writing as work, it’s not just a hobby, since everybody can be an author. They’ve reached a certain level where enough people agreed that their work is good. So they should be paid.

  “Many writers and other people don’t mind that pirates are making pirated copies of books, because they feel that this way, many readers will discover somebody’s works. Say if an author has published three or five books, if these readers discover one book through an illegal download, maybe they’ll seek out other titles by the same author and pay for those.”

  Another problem with piracy for the publisher, as Joseph pointed out, is that not only is it reducing the payment to the author, but behind the publication of the book are many other people who the publisher has to pay, including editors, artists, distributors, and sales people. But when books are pirated, the publisher may have to publish fewer books as a result of having less money to produce, distribute, and promote them. Plus, there is less money to pay for all the support people needed for each book. And, of course, if piracy siphons off enough income from a publisher, the publisher may not be able to afford to publish at all. As Joseph puts it:

  “The situation in publishing is much like in the music industry. In music, many people think that music should be free and that well-known bands like Metallica should be giving away their music. But they think that without thinking that it costs money to have studio time, the instruments cost money, the engineers need to be paid.

  “When it comes to publishing, it’s the same thing. Many support people have to be paid. I always have to explain to my authors, yes, your name is on the book and your writing is in the book, but there are a thousand people in the background helping you find a readership—the guy packing the boxes at the warehouse, the guy unpacking the boxes at the bookstore, the guy delivering the boxes, the distributors who create the catalog, the sales people who pitch your books to the bookstores. There are so many people involved, and you have to remember them. And you have to be grateful that you’ve had this opportunity to have this huge amount of people behind you to get your work out into the world.”

  Some writers and publishers have talked about using digital rights management, or DRM, as an antidote to piracy, since it involves preventing a buyer from using that file on any other device. But this isn’t a viable solution, as Joseph and many other publishers agree, because the DRM can interfere with legitimate uses, such as a buyer getting a new computer or someone passing on without telling anyone else the password. Joseph explains the problem with DRM:

  “One of the situations that a lot of technical people talk about is digital rights management, or so-called DRM, so that something can’t be shared. It’s like one book for one device. But then there are all these complications. If somebody passes on and they have this library of print books, they can’t be inherited by a relative or anyone else handling the estate. That’s because if somebody passes on and you don’t have the password and username for their electronic device, their entire library is gone.”

  Thus, another technical solution to deal with the piracy problem is needed.

  An Interview with a Representative for a Major Publisher

  For large publishers, the problem of piracy is magnified, because they have many more books and therefore many more authors and support people depending on getting paid by them. Piracy undermines that ability. But unlike the individual writers and smaller publishers, they have the resources to take more aggressive action, like Wiley has done in suing one of the websites that pirated many of its books. Moreover, since they are much larger, they are in a better position to work closely with the government and law enforcement in crafting solutions to the problem, such as by creating stronger laws to prevent piracy in the first place.

  These are some of the issues raised in my interview with Maria Danzilo, the Legal Director of Wiley, who sent a video to address the interview questions. In its over two hundred years of publishing, Wiley has published hundreds of thousands of books, including the works of over four hundred Nobel lawyers. As the Legal Director, Danzilo also manages Wiley’s intellectual property protection program for its three core businesses: global education, global research, and professional development with an extensive and global digital business.

  As Danzilo describes, piracy not only means that the creators of content won’t get paid, but it may mean that these creative contributors stop contributing, resulting in a loss to society due to reduced innovation and creativity. And that’s the reason that copyright law was created—to protect the creations of any creators, rewarding them so they will continue to create. As Danzilo explains:

  “We are committed to continuing to combat online piracy. Our content is valuable to us, and we will continue to enforce and protect Wiley’s intellectual property vigorously because in our business, it is important that creators are compensated.

  “Piracy has an impact on the business, because it makes it impossible for anyone who contributes to the creative content to be paid for their work. If they’re not paid, innovation and creativity will necessarily suffer.

  “Online piracy causes significant damage to everyone in the chain of creativity by depriving creators of the fruits of their work. So the damage is to everyone in the value of chain of creativity, and as a result, our culture may suffer. What would the world be like without great books, music, other creative works, if economic incentives were taken away from creators?

  “It’s important to remember that copyright rights are derived from the US Constitution, and the Constitution provides that individuals and innovators, artists and creators, are rewarded for creating works through economic incentives. When those economic incentives are taken away, creativity and innovation will necessarily suffer.”

  So what is the solution when pirates still seek to benefit from the work of creators without compensating them? Like many writers, publishers, and other content creators today, Danzilo urges technological solutions along with government action to make the copyright laws even stronger to discourage piracy. As Danzilo points out:

  “At Wiley, we believe that technological measures could be used to stop infringement before it occurs. These technological measures are not expensive and can be adopted more widely.

  “We are aware that Congress is looking at potentially revising copyright law. We are working with Congress to participate in this revision process. We would like to see Congress establish stronger laws that include technological measures that will prevent piracy before it happens. The US government could be particularly helpful in vigorously supporting and providing tools to prevent access to the web of piracy sites and in starving piracy sites of ad revenue and other incomes sources, which they may use to sustain piracy.”

  Additionally, besides waiting for these technological fixes or for the government to act, Wiley has already taken some action itself by initiating a lawsuit against one of the pirate companies—an action that they subsequently won. While individual litigation might prove just a drop in the bucket, given the vast number of websites and millions of uploaders involved in the piracy of multiple books, this successful litigation might provide a model for other publishers or creators with sufficient resources to go after the pirates too. Not only might such a response result in the gain of justified compensation when they win, but the suit can show pirates the expensive costs of piracy, and thereby discourage them from doing it. As Danzilo describes:

  “We brought a lawsuit in Germany where the courts were quite receptive to protecting intellectual property and we’ve been successful. A group of publishers brought that suit several years ago against a large site called RapidShare, and the highest court in Germany recently affirmed the decision in the lower courts. So RapidShare is now r
equired to adopt the kind of technical measures to prevent piracy that I was speaking about.”

  And this success might well inspire other publishers and creators to take similar action, while sending a strong message to potential pirates about the consequences of getting caught.

  CHAPTER 5

  Interviews with Some Pirates (a.k.a. Researchers and Students)

  WHEN I SOUGHT TO INTERVIEW pirates to learn how and why they do what they do, I initially found it hard to get anyone to come forward, even though statistics suggest that nearly 50 percent of the population acknowledges pirating something—from music and films to books and software—and those figures are around 70 percent for individuals from eighteen to twenty-nine. And then when I found two people who met the criteria for being a pirate—essentially downloading, streaming, or buying pirated material, neither wanted to claim the title of “pirate.” Instead, both wanted to call what they did something else, such as being a “researcher” or a “student.” Now certainly both individuals were, in fact, accurately describing one of the occupations they were engaged in. But then, under cover of these self-labels, they were actually engaging in piracy. For example, the “researcher” was actually researching various topics about which he was writing, while the “student” was actually enrolled in a college and taking classes. But the researcher commonly used pirated material he found useful for his subject, while the student teamed up with other students in a collective to split the costs of highly priced textbooks they needed for their classes.

  In turn, they both described rationales to justify their decision to be pirates … er, researchers and students, who used pirated materials in the service of socially valued goals (i.e., the researcher writing an important paper or book; the student acquiring the book needed for MBA classes at a reasonable price).