Book piracy…
Book piracy is a major problem that’s frustrating and discouraging for authors and publishers alike. It’s also a crime. Both pirated ebooks and print books are sold on illegal websites and illegally in many foreign countries. Almost every author is affected by this. Smashwords thinks this is no problem. Paulo Coelho thinks this is no problem. I do. So do many others.
Ebooks are just computer files and can be easily hacked—almost any software can be hacked! While DRM (Digital Rights Management) shouldn’t even be needed for ebooks, it exists. But it can be hacked, so scofflaws do that for illegal enterprises that sell stolen ebooks. Print books shouldn’t be copied and sold illegally, but they are, especially outside of the U.S.
You think U.S. readers aren’t involved in piracy? Dream on! While the average reader will pay to have his own copy of a book (if s/he doesn’t borrow it from a library), a significant number gleefully get off on reading something for free. I’m not speaking about book promos that offer books for free (you can have as much glee you want by participating in a free promo, but I wish authors wouldn’t) or take advantage of sales (I recently bought an ebook version of Dune for $1.99 on sale, just to have it on my Kindle). I’m speaking about readers who get their reading material illegally at whatever price, effectively supporting the pirates.
Here are the main types of book piracy: (1) Criminals who hack authors’ ebooks and illegally copy print versions. .mobi files (Kindles) and .epub files are the most common ebook formats. The first, if purchased on Amazon, have DRM; the second uses Adobe’s software. Both can be hacked. PDFs, so prevalent on the web, can be hacked. The worst case scenario is when the hacker provides material to someone else who puts their name on a book and sells it as their own. (2) Readers who download illegal ebook copies from an illegal website or purchase illegal print versions. They provide the market that criminals exploit, but these readers are willing recipients of stolen merchandise, so they’re just as guilty. (3) Readers who pass copies around to friends and family. We all do it, especially with print versions. One can argue that a purchased print version can have ownership reassigned, just like a car or some other physical object, but ebooks are software, so by purchasing one, you, the user, only have a license. DRM even tries to limit the usage to one device—not a single user, but a single device, which is a flaw that makes it less useful than the usual software license with its built-in protections. And while print books have a legitimate used book market, ebooks really don’t. But when you pass copies around to friends and family, you are pirating. Every time your Uncle Ned shares an ebook file or hands you a print book he’s already read, you’re both being book pirates. Bottom line: buy your own legal version. Otherwise, you’re committing piracy.
It’s curious that these are my versions of the three types of piracy discussed in Smashwords’s FAQs. Yet they conclude piracy is not a problem! Owner Coker is a great believer in stats, and this conclusion is based on stats. Pirates are outliers, Smashwords says. The problem with stats is sample size. I claim that the stats only cover the tip of the piracy iceberg. Think someone will admit that they participate in book piracy? Piracy behavior may not seem common to Mr. Coker, but it’s only because the stats have a small sample. Who’s going to admit to doing (1), (2), or (3)?
You can argue that the progression from (1) to (3) is in order of seriousness. That’s a specious argument. The war on book piracy is like the war on drugs. People in the first category are like the manufacturers of the drugs and the dealers. People in the second category are like the users. And those in the third category are like the friends and relatives who share their stash at a BBQ. All illegal. But yeah, the crimes go from serious to not so serious. But they’re all criminal activity. Not only that, it’s completely disrespectful of all the hard work the author and/or publisher did in preparing the book for you to read. So I give that disrespect right back to those who are book pirates.
I’ve been told by several authors the following: If you have an ebook out there, you’ll be pirated. Live with it. (Coelho is probably the most famous author to offer this opinion.) Having lived outside the U.S., I’ve seen plenty of pirated print books too (Coelho’s country is one producer, which might explain his attitude).
I can’t even imagine the amount authors and publishers lose to book piracy. It’s a scourge and, for me, completely demoralizing. It hits both authors and publishers’ bottom line. I feel the same about music and software piracy too, but I don’t create music and I don’t write software anymore. I have no respect for readers who participate in book piracy because they’re creating a market the criminals feed upon…and therefore they have no respect for me or my publisher.
I saw one comment from a user on an illegal site that noted how great the person felt about reading an ebook—mine! The person who used that illegal site said my book was a great book and chortled that reading it for free produced some kind of euphoria. I find such a person despicable. And the site appeared in a Google search I did on Steven M. Moore—I do that occasionally to make sure Google’s nasty little bots that snoop out internet content do their job. So Google is also facilitating piracy. It’s endemic to the book business now. That doesn’t make it right.
Piracy also occurs with my website content. Google does nothing to stop that either. In general, on the internet and elsewhere, copyrights aren’t respected. It’s a free-for-all for thugs. ‘Nough said.
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Rembrandt’s Angel. To what lengths would you go to recover a stolen masterpiece? Scotland Yard’s Arts and Antiques Inspector Esther Brookstone goes the extra mile. She and paramour/sidekick Bastiann van Coevorden, an Interpol agent, set out to outwit the dealers of stolen art and recover “An Angel with Titus’ Features,” a Rembrandt painting stolen by the Nazis in World War Two. Their efforts lead to much more, as they uncover an international conspiracy that threatens Europe. During their dangerous adventures, their relationship solidifies and becomes a full-blown romance. Published by Penmore Press, this novel is available in ebook format at Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, B&N, and Apple, and in print through Amazon or your local bookstore (if they don’t have it, ask them to order it). Great summer reading!
In libris libertas…
