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ePub and the piracy issue: Benefits dwarf risks
September 5, 2008 | 7:23 am
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By David Rothman
Will ePub help pirates by letting them effortlessly turn books into Web sites? The Times Emit blog raises that possibility, while at the same time saying that many people might buy legal editions after seeing the illegal sites. ePub does make it easier than other formats to convert books into Web sites—an advantage for legitimate content-creators eager to enlarge their audiences.
Here’s my read. Piracy will be impossible to wipe out no matter what the approach. Just look how easily paper books can be scanned into e-book files. But ePub could reduce piracy by making it easier to buy and enjoy legal books. Legitimate buyers will face fewer eBabel hassles than otherwise, at least publishers if offer ePub files without proprietary DRM. Even if they do, ePub is still progress toward razing the Tower of eBabel.
The search factor
Beyond that, I’m not sure if book-ripped Web sites will pop up by the millions in this era of DMCA takedowns or equivalents outside the States. Remember, the big justification for many of them: advertising. And the U.S.-based Google, the main player in many countries, has an interest in improving relations with publishers, not worsening them by letting its ads go on rip-off sites. Yes, many might exist. But as Francis Turner has noted, legal sites tend to be easier to locate than the evil kind. Just remember the real goal, from a business perspective: making money, as opposed to crushing every pirate.
Fair e-book prices as an anti-piracy measure
Meanwhile Times Emit sensibly notes one of the best protections against piracy—pricing e-books reasonably. Combine that with the ease of locating and using legal books, and publishers will still make out better than with the current mess in which DRM’s hassles penalize legitimate owners.
Related: Cory Doctorow on Micropayments and related issues. Quote: "I don’t care about making sure that everyone who gets a copy of my books pays me for them — what I care about is ensuring that the everyone who would pay me decent money for a book has the opportunity to do so. I don’t want to hold 13-year-olds by the ankles and shake them until their allowance falls out of their pockets, but I do want to be sure that when their parents are thinking about a gift for them, the first thing that springs to mind is my latest $20-$25 hardcover."
And a reminder: That’s an unofficial ePub logo from Travis Alber. Time for the IDPF to do its job and give us the real thing?
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Comments:
panmcmillan.com started offering DRM-free EPUBs.
Thanks, Igorsk. We’ve reported this before, but I wonder if you’re thinking of anything newer. Meanwhile I appreciate your reminding people of a positive example. David
I somehow missed that post, but it seems to imply that it’s a single-book deal. Apparently, all ebooks currently offered by panmacmillan.com are DRM-free.
Hi, Igorsk. I’m hoping you’re right. But a Pan Macmillan page on e-books doesn’t play up the “No DRM” angle, which I suspect it would if PM had dropped “protection.” Got any URLs? Thanks. David
To note, there’s nothing magical about ePub exploding into HTML files that can be used “to turn e-books into websites.” The DRM-crackers available for .LIT, MobiPocket, and eReader explode into HTML as well (which is, at least for eReader, a bit of a feat in my opinion, given that eReader files are compiled out of a most non-HTML-style markup).
Excellent point, Chris–yes, you can make Web sites out of others. But as I recall, it still should be easier with ePub, at least in future versions. Let me alert Jon Noring for a definitive answer here. Thanks. David
The info was provided by Gary Gibson (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=247249&postcount=25). I’ve bought and downloaded three books in the “Adobe Digital Editions” format and they are indeed plain unencrypted EPUBs. I did not check other formats.
Making non-DRMed books inexpensive and easier to find than booklegged ones are excellent ideas. I’d suggest a third. Software companies and the larger publishers should work together to go after the larger and more visible pirates, intentionally leaving mere individuals with a bent to snitch and pass on to a few friends alone. That would force the rest of the pirate band to lurk underground where they’ll do less harm.
Playing by those three rules, social DRM should work, particularly as the digital-using market grows more diverse and fast-paced. With many people now buying a new computer, iPod or (perhaps soon) ebook reader at least once a year, registration DRM will be such a hassle that, to avoid the hassle, people will turn to the pirates for copies they’d have willingly bought without DRM.
In short, we should not act like the record companies. Be decent, keep it cheap and keep it simple are the best ways to keep it legal.
We also need cross-platform, cross-gadget software that will manage these books, something that’d let me store all my books in a digital bookshelf and check out (as many copies as I like) to my gadgets. With a glance, before going on a trip, I can see if I have than new bio I picked up on both my MacBook and (perhaps soon) iPod touch.
Call it an iTunes for books if you like. It’d help make owning an ebook as simple and straightforward as owning a book.
–Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle.
The real threat: That pirates will raid the public library collections and and steal them.
Well, given that Overdrive does use the Mobipocket format, and Mobipocket cracking tools can be easily obtained through Google…
Mike actually might have meant the PAPER collections
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Thanks,
David
Thanks for the link to Times Emit. Some notes:
* I think Pan Macmillan makes as much of its stuff available in ePub as possible, but in so doing (1) has to bring round a load of authors who know nothing other than fear by the term “unprotected” (2) has to find the time to do this and (3) probably doesn’t shout about it for fear of scaring other – ignorant – authors and agents off. But good for them.
* Glad you linked to Cory’s piece as well – it is very relevant. On which note – all of Cory’s boks are available in ePub, and I guess no-one has made a competing site out of them (possibly for exactly that reason)
* I do think that piracy may be a good thing for reading, if it brings new readers to “books” – at least in the short term.
* The problem I note is exactly pricing – why rip off your early customers by charging almost twice as much for something that costs less to sell to them? That’s gredy and short sighted.
I expect the publishers are afraid that the e-book sales might cannibalize the p-book sales, and at least this way they still get that same hardcover price out of an e-buyer—or else they turn him off of the e-book and he buys the paper one instead.
They need to get it through their heads that the paper and e-book market segments are not going to have that much overlap, and lower their e-book price to reach an optimal equilibrium point to bring in as much additional money as they can from the e-book segment, while still selling to the p-book segment at p-book prices.
Maybe someday that will actually happen.
@Chris Meadows. I think all this reinforces to me is that ebook (and pbook) pricing is broken. But whether the publisher gets the same money out of the consumer on an ebook sales as a pbook one is hard to work out.
The publisher revenue obviously depends on where it is being sold:
1. PBook in a shop: assume discount (i.e. price paid to publisher by retailer) of +/-50%
2. Ebook in an e-tailer: assume same discount
3. eBook or p-book in publisher’s own site: 0% discount to “retailer” (as is same as publisher); yet publisher fails to pass saving onto customer for fear of annoying customers (retailers) in 1 and 2. And possibly out of greed. So (3) is not a viable channel.
What I find amazing is that, presented with the opportunities of an entirely new (and, let’s face it, open) retail channel, (UK) publishers have opted for selling through exactly the same model they are complaining about on the high street: giving someone else the spoils, leaving them with the scraps.
If digital is all about disintermediation, where is that on the horizon?
From what I saw going through hundreds of ebooks at the Bklyn PL, the predominant format is ePub. MobiPocket format is a minority.
Librarians will not be stupid. Nor will publishers. Both will want a file format that can be used on the widest number of devices. That’s ePub (even if it is “Adode-formatted”).
The Brooklyn Public Library Digital Media Catalog lists Adobe PDF and MOBI ebooks. There are now Adobe ePub library ebooks, but they are relatively new and I don’t know which libraries offer them.