A few years ago KaZaa was the place where people could go to download their favorite songs, videos, and other digital content. At the time, MPAA, and RIAA joined hands to stop content piracy. Since then, many have been sued, and few of these web service have been completely shut down. But are we going to see a similar attack in the book industry?
There is no question that e-book/audio-book piracy is a big issue for publishers. After all, digital content is easy to copy and distribute over the Internet, and people wouldn’t mind getting their hands on the latest books for free. Amazon has implemented DRM on Kindle to alleviate this issue. However, Kindle cannot prevent people from copying pirated content on the device. I am sure Amazon would be against implementing such feature as it could ruin the Kindle experience for those of us who are not pirating ebooks. But what I do expect is to have an awareness campaign by powers-that-be to inform the public about the damages of book piracy to the publishing industry. Unlike musicians and movie studios, publishers are mostly not that well-paid, and if they lose a huge chunk of what they make to piracy, then they will simply have no motivation to produce high quality content for us. I know… Kids these days are more into music and videos and “HD” stuff, but that doesn’t mean those of us who actually read should be left with less alternatives. My message to book pirates is this. If you need to download a book to read it ASAP, then pay for it later once you are done with it. Without our support, the authors may just as well hang up boots.
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1 comment
#1ArjunaNovember 14, 2010, 1:33 am
Just like record labels, publishers are going through an identity crisis. The fact is that society is slowly losing the need for publishers. The whole point of a publisher is a means for the author to get their work printed and distributed to society. If there is nothing to be printed and nothing to be distributed than what exactly is the point of a publisher? It is not out of the realm of possibilities to consider publishing companies to go extinct in the next 50 years. From a certain view point, it doesn't make sense for the publisher to receive any money from a purchased e-book. An author writes a book on his own, it gets converted to a pdf file, that pdf file is put on .com's server, consumers buy it. How exactly do publishers justify getting paid for this?
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