Arrgh, me buckos! I say string up da bilge rats from the yardarm!
We’re talking book pirates here—a discussion inspired by something Nancy Bilyeau posted on Facebook. Like a lot of writers, Nancy uses Google alerts to let her know when something about her books is posted on the Internet. Like me, she is getting many links to pirate sites where people can download free e-book versions of her novels. I imagine quite a number of us are in the same boat, and it is flying the Jolly Roger.
It seems we’d better talk about it.
How Bad Is It?
It’s happening all over the world. Massively. But quantifying the problem is almost as thorny as solving it. Last year, the American Association of Publishers estimated that its U.S. members are losing $80-100 million of revenue each year across all categories. Research by the Dutch firm GfK concluded that ten percent of the books on all e-readers across the world were pirated. 10%!?! The Spanish publishing industry alone says it lost €350 million in one year.
And for midlist authors, the problem may be worse than forgoing a bit of income. Publishers look at sales and decide if they are going to continue with an author. If pirated sales bring no income, the publisher will conclude that the author is no longer a good economic bet and the drop her or him. Ouch!
Who Is Stealing Our Books?
Pirate sites pose as legitimate on-line booksellers and sometimes as a kind of Netflix for readers. They charge a monthly fee to members, giving them the right to download multiple books, all of which were pirated in the first place. Yield for the author: Many new readers perhaps, but no money.
And mystery novelists may be more vulnerable than writers in other categories. An independent bookseller recently told me that her customers are more likely to read mysteries on an e-reader because they are not the sort of books—like nonfiction, for instance—that people want to keep and reread. If, as mystery writers, we are more likely to sell e-books, we are more all the more vulnerable to Captain Hook.
YA authors are also in particularly rough waters because their target audience is the age group most likely to read e-books and to download pirated versions, not because the young are less moral, but because they grew up thinking that everything on the Internet is free.
Some thieves claim that they want to read books but can’t get them because they live in places where books are not readily available or where there are no free libraries, so they have no choice but to steal.
Many readers seem to think there is no real harm in downloading pirated books. I have spoken to nice folks who have no idea of the financial rewards, or should I say lack thereof, for midlist writers. Book club members who have asked me are often shocked by the statistics on median income for published authors of fiction. Ordinary law abiding citizens assume that there are “no real costs” associated with the production of an e-book and therefore think its price should be next to nil, or nil. They understand that trash collectors and bank vice-presidents should be able to earn a living, but they never ask themselves where a writer’s payments come from. Creating stories seems magical to them, I guess. Maybe they think, if we can create imaginary people who seem real, we can also make the electric bill disappear.
Who Is Trying To Stop This and How?
Publishers have tried various techniques for making e-books piracy proof—like DRM and watermarking, but the bad guys get around them at nanospeed. The publishing industry is not on the cutting edge of technology, but the pirates’ digital cutlasses are.
Then, there is the notion that while tech protections cannot stop pirates for long, such devices may make using the files difficult for legitimate buyers. Some reporters decry annoying readers in a vain attempt to protect publishers’ and authors’ incomes.
The U.S. Copyright office doesn’t do much to defend authors. And in 2011, the U.S. Congress failed (no surprise) to pass new laws against online piracy.
The EU tries harder. The UK Police have an Intellectual Property Unit. It gets mixed results. BREIN, a European Anti-Piracy group, has caught pirates and brought them court only to lose their cases because the judges found that the protections in place were insufficient and therefore the copyright owner was to blame for allowing the theft.
Many publishers employ companies like Muso or Digimarc to find and take down the pirate sites. One way or another, book pirates’ websites get shut down all the time. But they just open again under a different name. Cat and mouse is a losing game. The mouse always wins. Ask Tom and Jerry.
What Can an Author Do to Fight Back?
One bestselling, award-winning Spanish author, Lucia Etxebarria, stopped publishing her work in protest. Guess what? Her fans got angry at her. So did other writers, who called her withdrawal a betrayal of her vocation as a writer.
Her response was extreme. There are a few other things one can do.
For instance, you might take a more moderate tactic and refuse to sell e-rights. But most publishers won’t take your work if you don’t let them sell digital books.
Some self-published authors set aside a half-day a week—typically a Saturday morning to find and report pirating sites. Many find this makes them feel better, but others try it for a while, but give it up as boring and frustrating.
At the very least, you should set up Google alert on your author name and titles so you can see if your books are on pirate sites. Report them to your publisher if they are.
Is There Any Use Fighting Back?
Pundits say it’s a lost cause. That the book industry should just cave, the way the music industry was forced to. But a book is not a song. If you hear a tune you like on Spotify and want to listen to it over and over again, you will pay to have it whenever you want it. But how many books does anyone want to read over and again.
Some authors try to see piracy as a form of free advertising and convince themselves that the readers who get the books free will then buy others of their works, or spread the word about them and get others to pay for the reading pleasures they provide. I would like to think this is true. But I have my doubts.
Our Last Best Hope?
Pirates are in the business of stealing. Some, perhaps many of the sites that offer free e-books are really out to steal from their customers. Either on the sites themselves or with malware imbedded in the book files, they are gathering information about their customers that can result in identity theft. If enough readers get burned by downloading virus-ridden pirated books, people may become afraid of the risk involved and decide it is cheaper to be honest and law-abiding and pay. Or get a library card. It is a consummation devoutly to be desired.
—Patricia King, aka Annamaria Alfieri
I only recently discovered that is is probably happening with one of my self-published books — at least one site offering a PDF version of it, though there may be others selling an eBook version, too. My question is: you mention that some people spend time uncovering pirate sites, and then “reporting them.” Who does one report a pirate book site to? I’d love to do that.
Bill, This is as much as I learned in my research: Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, the rights holder has the right to request that the material be taken down. This is done with a request letter. None of my research yielded exactly where one sends this letter. I guess I could have dug deeper to find out, but frankly, everything else I read told me what a time-consuming and ultimately frustrating endeavor this is, so I didn’t bother to put in the time to even find out. Perhaps the platform through which you sell has some advice on how it is done. I apologize for this lame response.
the DMCA notice is normally sent to an address listed on the website – not to a third-party site – and the website is “supposed” to take action and remove the infringing content.
Unfortunately, most of these pirate sites don’t really care about DMCA notices, and locate themselves offshore where there really are no legal consequences.
While it’s worth attempting to get infringing content removed, in many cases it’s ineffective – and will remain so until we have governmental support not only within the United States but other places also. In other words – I’m not holding my breath.
Count me among those who gave up. Frankly, those people have never been my customers and never will be. My books ARE pirated. I’ve seen them on pirate sites. But the people who download from pirate sites are like people who download free books from Amazon every day without buying. If you’ve run a promotion there, you’ll find that while your book is free you’ll have thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of downloads. Put the price back to its normal price and the downloads stop. A smaller percentage DISCOVER your book this way and are willing to pay for future books which is why people do the free promos. But the vast majority of people who download a free book will never pay for anything.
So, yeah. I could spend my time pursuing pirates, or I could spend it writing more books for the people who *are* willing to pay. And educating the people who don’t really understand what’s wrong with downloading. That’s worthwhile, too, because as you say, some people just don’t understand why it’s wrong.
Laura, I am with you on this. The only other thing I do is send a link to the pirate site to my publisher with PIRATES in the subject line. They thank me for doing that. They keep trying. The way copyright and trademark infringement works, I believe, is that the rights holder is required to defend the right, otherwise it is lost. So I think it’s important that we make a bit of an effort. But I am a not a lawyer. I’ll ask one to weigh in here and see what she says.
Technically, authors should defend their copyrights and protest infringement – but fortunately copyright isn’t exactly like trademark, where you must protect the right properly or lose it. If an author attempts to notify the publisher of infringement (usually a contract requirement) and sends DMCA notices when reasonably possible, I doubt a court would take away a copyright just because the author failed to ensure that all the infringement was stopped – requiring that would make it impossible to hold onto a copyright at all.
So yes, we should try to defend the rights, and stop the infringement when we can, but it’s not necessary to let the defense of the rights take over our existence – hopefully that helps!
(And yes, I am a copyright lawyer, though this response doesn’t constitute “legal advice.”)
Thank you, Susan Spann. I am grateful for your expertise. It is very helpful.
‘Our last best hope’ – that some of the pirate sites hurt their users. That’s a nice thought. Otherwise, I don’t even bother looking. You can’t stop it, so no good fretting about it.
Actually, a significant percentage of the pirate sites DO embed trojan horses and viruses in the download content.
If you look at the “Free ebooks” on many of these sites, the size of the file is 3-4GB – FAR larger than the real size of an ebook file. This is due to the viral content embedded in the code.
Some of them don’t actually have the books at all – you’re just downloading a virus. Other sites do have the book, either with or without “added viral content.”
Trademarks must be defended or they can be lost (thermos, kleenex, etc). However copyrights do NOT need to be defended for fear of being lost. They may need to be defended for other reasons (making money from them), but copyrights are automatic, they don’t even need to be registered (unless you want treble damages from any possible lawsuits), and they last forever (at least, in the U.S. where Congress keeps extending the duration every time Mickey Mouse risks going out of copyright…)
As for DRM, yes, it is entirely useless. I’ve seen attempts at DRM for the past 35 years, on video tapes, CDs, DVDs, BDs, music files, e-books… and they’ve all been doomed to failure. Fool-proof DRM is impossible, because the content HAS to be decodable to be useful, ergo, it CAN be decoded and it WILL be decoded.
As for the pirates, it’s best not to lose sleep over them. As has been said, they wouldn’t buy in the first place, so you’re losing nothing (or very little). It’s an irritant, and it’s hard to swallow, but I’ve been in that boat with my software for almost 30 years (along with MANY, MANY other software authors), and about the best you can do is make sure you have a great product and are selling it at a reasonable price. When the price is too high, that WILL drive people into the arms of the pirates. If it’s too low, you can’t make a living. Finding the optimum feature/price point is the challenge.
The point about e-books is just what you pointed out: they’re mostly a “use once” thing, more similar to movies than to music or computer software in that regard. And that throws a kink into the works.
No simple answer, unfortunately.
What Everett said, yes. 🙂
Everett, it’s so nice to see you here. And thank you for clarifying things.