Google has also participated in the effort to stem piracy by prohibiting publishers to use its AdSense program to put ads on pages of websites that contain pirated content. In turn, piracy-protection companies and the law firms hired by publishers have contributed to knowing which websites do this by creating lists of domain names for websites with pirated content.139
Another approach has been to introduce Digital Rights Management (DRM) strategies. One has been to put a lock on ebooks, so they can’t be shared on any devices other than the one the book was originally uploaded on, although tech-savvy pirates have been able to readily disable these locks to share the book. At the same time, some publishers resist this method since it could antagonize customers. For example, if a customer has purchased an ebook copy for one device, such as a Kindle, and then that device breaks or is stolen, so they have to get another, they would be locked out of a book they have previously purchased.140
On the other hand, Tor Books UK, one publisher who tried dropping its copy protection from ebooks, found there was no “discernable increase in piracy” on any of their titles, though possibly that resulted from Tor having a close-knit science-fiction/fantasy reader community with a very large online presence.141 Thus, being a part of this community, readers might not feel comfortable seeking out illegal copies of these books.
Another approach that has contributed to reducing piracy goes beyond just offering a good product at a fair price. It’s also important to make it easy to buy, like Apple and Amazon have done by creating a single click-to-buy button.142 So if the price is reasonable, the ease of making a purchase reduces the chance an individual will look for an illegal copy of the book elsewhere.
A more recent strategy developed by German researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute is to change the wording in a book to combat piracy. The idea behind this version of DRM, called SiDiM, is to provide a digital watermark143 that is unique to each ebook when it’s sold, so it can be tracked and linked back to the person who first purchased it. Theoretically, this watermark will scare consumers away from illegal sharing for the fear of getting caught, which might subject them to criminal or civil penalties. However, the approach has been criticized by some writers who don’t like the technology changing their work, like switching the order of words or changing one word into another with a similar meaning, such as turning the word “unhealthy” into “not healthy.”
Still another approach, launched in July 2014 by the piracy protection company Digimarc, involves putting invisible watermarks known as Guardian watermarking on individual ebooks. While Digimarc is putting these marks on the ebooks with select partners, such as Harper Collins, it is an approach that others can use to identify individuals pirating their books.144 The system enables publishers to track down those who are uploading ebooks to torrenting websites, enabling the publishers to take action against and prevent piracy reoccurrence. But unlike DRM, which restricts consumers from using a book on another system, the watermark has no negative impacts on legitimate consumers, since it only tracks people who are illegally uploading or downloading the books. In addition, Digimarc claims the watermark is very difficult to remove, so it will be expensive for the pirates to fund removal.145
NPR writer James Glynn outlines another approach developed in Russia, a country where digital piracy has run rampant. The strategy involves creating a streaming service, like a Netflix or Spotify for books. The Russian company Dream Industries created Bookmate, a subscription reading service that provides access to its library of over 225,000 books in English and Russian for only about $5 a month. The app is designed to work on multiple devices and operating systems.146
However, unlike the piracy sites that are charging subscription services but not paying writers or publishers, Bookmate has created partnerships with publishers in the US and UK in order to bring English-language books to Russia, Turkey, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, and the Philippines, which have huge numbers of native and other English speakers—about 380 million of them, even more than in the US, UK, and Canada combined. Moreover, these readers tend to be more educated, have smartphones, and want to read.147 But according to Bookmate’s head of global development, James Appell, these readers “aren’t being served through traditional sales channels.” So the goal is for publishers to use Bookmate to reach readers who “previously either read pirated copies of these books or who didn’t read them at all because they were unaffordable.”148 Another advantage of this streaming service for publishers is that it provides insight into customers’ reading habits and behaviors, so publishers can better reach out to them and use this data for publicity and communication purposes.
The Bookmate book-streaming service has been available in Russia since 2009 and has partnered with all of the major Russian book publishers; in addition to its over two hundred thousand Russian language titles, the company has reached out to other devices and markets. For instance, besides reaching out to customers directly to buy subscriptions, it has sought to partner with a number of device manufacturers, telecommunication companies, and retailers to get Bookmate bundled with other services.149 For example, it might be included in the price of a handset, so readers feel comfortable to pay. The advantage of such a subscription service, according to Simon Dunlap, CEO of Dream Industries, is that it “can provide copyright owners with some level of protection, as it makes content much harder to copy.” But this also means that the publishing industry, which has shown very little innovation during the digital revolution, needs to be more innovative in how they sell their books, rather than simply selling a book for $10 on a digital service that might sell for $10 in a store. In this view, the publishing industry needs to “rip up the business model” and “start to sell fractions of the book for smaller prices and with different ways of paying—maybe give 100 different ways that I can access and pay for that experience—that’s innovation.”150
Another approach from writers has been posting warnings about certain companies, which include pirated copy along with legitimate writing calling for better policing of their site to get rid of pirated material. For example, in a blog post on Writer Beware, a writers’ support website sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Michael Capobianco complained about the new subscription ebook service and many illegally uploaded copyright files available on Scribd, which doesn’t pay writers for those uploads. In describing the problems with Scribd, he used screenshots of the site to show how, with the addition of the preview service, Scribd now offers nonsubscribers previews of both legal and illegal content. And then once a person had subscribed, he or she had access to numerous illegally uploaded copyrighted files, which could only be read in their entirety through full-text access if a person became a Scribd subscriber.
In response, Scribd’s VP of Content Acquisition, Michael Weinstein, acknowledged the issue and said that the company was trying to deal with the problems on an individual basis with takedown notices, as well as through the development of a technological solution.151 For instance, in November 2013, he spoke with the Association of American Publishers about the company’s four-point program to deal with pirated content on Scribd. The program included the following plans for action, which might provide a model for other sites with pirated content that are trying to offer legal material:
• posting clear legal terms of use banning the uploading of copyrighted material by others;
• using a technical solution, such as a document fingerprint system, in which publishers provide an unencrypted copy of content to enable Scribd software to reject unauthorized uploads that match the original copy;
• developing a “robust process of reaction” by offering a copyright link with instructions and guidelines for writers or publishers to use to report pirated content and then reacting within one day or less to take steps to remove that content;
• working with content management services, such as Attributor, a service that monitors online content, to help these companies do the bulk DMCS takedown
notices and seek other ways to help them find infringing content.152
While this may be a workable method, the copyright fingerprint system is still an imperfect one and it depends on publisher buy-in for the system to work at all, and this hasn’t happened yet, according to Scribd VP Weinstein. One barrier has been obtaining unencrypted content from publishers to help prevent pirates from uploading illegal content. Also, since Scribd doesn’t have relationships with all publishers, there is a great deal of copyrighted material that the system can’t recognize. Plus, there has been a lack of communicating about Scribd’s approach to authors about what it has been trying to do, so there is a perception that Scribd is one more site pirating their work.153
The Growing Call for Alternatives to Piracy
Since 2014, it seems like some of the debate about what to do about book piracy has changed to reflect its pervasiveness and the difficulty of fighting pirates to the need to find new models of getting consumers to buy legal books inexpensively, which will cause piracy to decline. After all, if the pirates are making less money, the reasoning goes, there will be less piracy and fewer pirates. It’s a matter of economic supply and demand. While some of the same tired pro-piracy arguments—that pirates help new writers get discovered, and that not everyone who steals your book would buy it if piracy weren’t an option—still exist, the hope is for a shift to providing individuals with another way to get the material they want in a less costly way, thereby undermining the economic model that helps piracy flourish.
In a February 2014 article, “The Pointlessness of Fighting E-Book Piracy,” Matt Forney argues exactly that. After pointing out that DRM and other anti-piracy measures don’t work well—since they punish people who legally buy books by restricting how they can use them—he asserts: “The simple reality is that if you want to sell anything today, you have no choice but to put up with piracy.”154 He suggests that piracy can be an indicator that people like your work, and the vast majority of customers will buy your books to support you and see you succeed, even if it is on pirate sites like The Pirate Bay, as long as they can buy your book for a reasonable price and see value in it. For example, Matt puts out a lot of quality work for free and finds that people are then willing to buy his books because they figure they are worth the money, after seeing value in his free material.155
While noting the major threats pirated books pose to consumers, writers, and publishers, in an April 2014 column, Naturi Thomas-Millard makes a similar argument in an April 2014 column. He believes that the industry needs to adjust its pricing to make the purchase price more reasonable given the technology changes of the digital age. As he points out, with the rise of e-readers and digital bookstores, it’s easy to strip the DRM protections or digital locks from files, so pirates can mass distribute books—not like the old days when pirated books had to be manually scanned before being uploaded or sold in a counterfeit edition. But there are strategies writers can use to sell books, such as offering free material as a loss leader or making ebooks more inexpensive, given the much lower costs of publishing digital books.156
Thomas-Millard describes how Neil Gaiman noticed that his work was being pirated around the globe, but sales went up in the countries where his work was illegally distributed. So he tried an experiment with his publisher’s approval. He made his entire novel free for a month as a way of “beating the pirates at their own game,”157 and he found that this tactic resulted in more sales in the future, because the free book helped to spark purchasing interest in the future after the free promotion was over. Thus, as he describes, he is a strong advocate for publishers lowering their pricing to make books more widely available. As he puts it:
“One of the surest ways to curtail digital piracy is to make the materials such as eBooks and movies legally available and accessible the world over. Neil Gaiman’s pirated books, for example, were largely found in Russia, where his books were difficult to obtain.
“The publishing industry also needs to catch up and play fair. Sites like Spotify and Netflix allow fans to access music and movies while respecting the rights (and copyrights) of those whose work is involved. While it’s to be assumed that there are costs engendered with the manufacture of eBooks, it’s hard to believe that these costs could be anywhere near those of producing paper books. If this is the case, why are eBooks almost as expensive (and in some cases, more so) than physical copies of new releases? If they were priced more reasonably, consumers might be more likely to purchase them legally, and authors would see more of the profits.”158
Another suggested approach is working with the pirates to actually gain publicity and sales of the legitimate version of the book. For example, in an April 2014 article on AuthorMedia.com, Thomas Umstattd argues to authors that “Piracy Is Not Your Enemy.” Rather, the biggest enemy is obscurity. One author even gained success by uploading his book to some bit torrent pirate sites, which resulted in tens of thousands of legal downloads and increased sales. Umstattd writes:
“If a million people ‘steal’ your book, you win. As long as you get credit, you win when people share your book with others. Books that sell well spread from person to person like a virus. The harder you make it to share your work, the more obscure you will be.”159
In fact, Umstattd suggests several ways that authors can win from piracy:
“You win because your platform grows; you can book more speaking engagements at higher prices …
“Your publisher wins free marketing. Your publisher spends a lot of time and money trying to get people to talk about your book. Books sell from word of mouth. Allowing people to share your work turns them into evangelists for free! More talk = more sales.”160
Still another argument in favor of making ebooks cheap and convenient to reduce piracy is from David Gaughran, author of “Let’s Get Digital,” directed to self-publishers on how to sell more books. By contrast, he points out the failure of the approach of many big publishers to use DRM, the proprietary software owned by Amazon, to protect their ebooks, sold only through Kindle. Not only does it prevent publishers from bundling print and digital book offerings to customers, it also restricts authors who want to give free copies to reviewers. But worse, the technology doesn’t work to combat piracy, since any hacker can easily crack DRM in a few seconds, and all it takes is cracking the code of a single book to put it out on the torrent sites where it can be copied repeatedly by anyone. Or a hacker can easily strip off the lock, since publishers have to give readers the key so they can open the lock. So hackers can readily obtain a key, and presto, the file with the book is easy pickings. The result, as Gaughran notes, is that “publishers’ insistence on DRM prevents them from competing with Amazon, selling direct, and bundling.” Even worse is using DRM, “antagonizing legal, playing customers,” since all they have to do is switch devices (such as from a Kindle to a Nook), and they could lose their entire library, because they can no longer access their books that they already paid for. The result: Many readers learn to crack DRM or turn to the torrent sites to download the book.161
Thus, the solution to the piracy problem, he asserts, is to recognize that there is “no way to get rid of piracy” because “once you make a digital product available to the public, it will be pirated by someone, somewhere.” But there are ways to reduce piracy that actually work. How? By “making your books available everywhere, in all formats. And price means making your books cheap enough that piracy is more hassle than it’s worth.” While major publishers took the opposite approach to hold back the digital revolution in various ways, such as taking a go-slow approach to digitizing their backlist, engaging in an illegal conspiracy to fix the price of ebooks, and using an unworkable DRM system, self-publishers don’t have to do that. The solution is to “price cheaply” and not “waste time and money hunting down pirates.”162
In short, don’t worry about the excuses and explanations of the pirates claiming what they are doing is not wrong because they are just sharing or it is only fair that
they can use the books freely, because otherwise they are priced far too high. Instead, for economic reasons, the best way for the publishers and writers to fight back is by pricing their work cheaply, so there is no economic incentive to put the time and effort into finding pirated books. Under this model, it is pointless to take an active approach to combating piracy and there are many ways that piracy might be beneficial to authors. For example, piracy might help them rise from obscurity into becoming well known, or it might help sell more books, assuming they are priced reasonably.
In keeping with this approach of making ebooks more accessible to reduce piracy, some Internet bookstores and e-text portals are liberalizing sharing permissions to create a lending library online.163 What this means is that there is a subscription fee or a per-book lending charge, with some of the earned amount going back to the publishers and writers, based on the number of times their books are borrowed.
Another approach is for an educational campaign. These campaigns can alert pirates about how their acts are harming writers, providing ways in which they might legally obtain books as well as supporting the writers with good reviews and comments on social media. For example, in a June 2014 blog about book piracy, Lucy Powrie had this to say:
“I understand why people may feel the need to pirate books, I really do. After all, books can be incredibly expensive and to some people buying them just isn’t an option. That, however, does not make piracy acceptable.
“Every time somebody pirates a book, part of that book dies. Do you want to be responsible for the book deaths, you murderer? …
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