Having been plagued by audio and video piracy for ages, we now have another threat to deal with – the piracy of eBooks. With the popularity of the Kindle and the iPad, has come the growth in digital technology. More and more books have their digital versions being published, and in this scenario, piracy of these eBooks has become a real life concern.
eBooks by their nature are susceptible to open viewing by the public, and to attempt to restrict unauthorized download is next to impossible. Publishing companies also do not want to discuss the threat as this could lead to more people being aware of illegal downloads being an option and hence could lead to more instances of piracy. This is a concern as the intellectual property of authors is under threat in addition to their money. One such glaring example is the more than 100,000 unauthorized downloads of Dan Brown’s ‘The lost Symbol’, from the digital space as soon as it was released.
People usually have an inclination to avail and read eBooks free of cost. The challenge then becomes trying to make people want to read eBooks and pay for them and motivate them to stop downloading from unauthorized sources.
The difference in opinion of writers and publishing houses towards the threat of piracy in eBooks does not change the fact that eBook piracy has arrived, and here to stay, and needs a serious look at its consequences. Authors like J K Rowling have gone to the extent of outright refusal to come out with a digital version of her books to save herself from digital piracy.
There is another school of thought that argues that the revenue lost to digital piracy is an unavoidable evil associated with the publishing of eBooks and shouldn’t be taken as anything more than it really is. The logic put forward in this case is that most readers have found their favorite author by borrowing a book rather than blindly purchasing a book on a visit to a bookstore. Unauthorized downloads of eBooks is as similar as lending of books and this increases writers’ worries, as these types of downloads increases piracy in the market.
Whatever may be the case, eBook piracy has not taken on glaring proportions yet. However, turning a blind eye to it could potentially swallow a major chunk of the publishing industry’s revenues.
Image credit: Ted & Dani Percival on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Nidhi.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Nidhi Manuja is a creative freelance writer who started her career as human resource professional but later moved on to writing, which has given her a chance to be creative and follow the path of her father’s success as well who is an author.[/author_info] [/author]