PC World has an article looking at the problem of e-book piracy. And while this article does get a few things wrong (such as believing e-book piracy started relatively recently), it does echo a few of the things that have been noted here on TeleRead.
It begins by discussing the “growth” of e-book piracy coming along with the growth in popularity of e-book readers. (I would be inclined to say it hasn’t actually grown all that much; it’s just that more people are thinking about e-readers so they’re more likely to notice it now.)
Then it covers authors such as J.K. Rowling who refuse to authorize e-book editions of their work. It points out the same thing I have in the past: you can’t copy-protect ink on paper, and the scanning process is surprisingly simple.
"If electronic books can’t be had legitimately, others will step in and fill the need; and once a pirate industry is established, it probably won’t go away easily," says [consumer technology analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group]. The best way for the publishing industry to combat piracy is to follow the music industry’s lead and make more e-book titles available.
On page 2, the article delves into DRM, pointing out how easily it can be cracked and how it prevents consumers from moving their purchases to other devices. With writers such as Stephen Covey signing exclusivity deals, this could become a concern in the near future. And even Adobe is making its DRM less restrictive.
In the end, I agree with much of what this article says: e-book piracy is going to be a bigger (and more noticeable) problem the more people get into e-book reading, and DRM is not the best solution. It is good to see the problems getting more attention. It remains to be seen, however, what will be done to address them.
Why would anyone trust a pirated book? If one snags a pirated copy of a song, one can tell right away whether one has actually gotten the desired work. Songs are, like, 2 minutes long; and those who download songs are usually going for songs *that they’ve heard before*.
Books are different than music. They’re far longer, for one thing. And many many book downloads are undertaken because the downloading person hasn’t read the books yet, but wants to. So how would one know that one was getting the real thing? How would one know if one was getting *the entire text*? Remember that incident at Amazon when a book was listed as ‘free’, but turned out to be a sample of the text posted as a separate book? *That* was irritating — and happened before one had the capability of permanently deleting titles from one’s Amazon archives.
I also have in mind (probably mentioned it in a comment here @teleread some time back) the pirated (=falsified!) v’s … 6 & 7? Chinese Harry Potter books that came out before J.K. Rowling had *written* the English v’s 6 & 7, which had a completely different outcome than the actual books.