The history of publishing is swimming with pirates—far more than Adrian Johns expected when he started hunting through the archives for them. And he thinks their stories may hold keys to understanding the latest battles over digital publishing—and the future of the book.

Johns, a historian at the University of Chicago, has done much of his hunting from his office here, which is packed so high with books that the professor bought a rolling ladder to keep them in easy reach. He can rattle off a long list of noted pirates through the years:

Alexander Pope accused “pyrates” of publishing unauthorized copies of his work in the 18th century. At the beginning of the 19th century, a man known as the “king of the pirates” used the then-new technology of photolithography to spread cheap reprints of popular sheet music. In the 1950s, a pirate music label named Jolly Roger issued recordings by Louis Armstrong and other jazz greats from LP’s that the major labels were no longer publishing. A similar label put out opera recordings smuggled from the Soviet bloc.

» via The Chronicle of Higher Education (Subscription may be required for some content)

wingsandfins:

A Guardian article on the rise of digital books and ereaders, speculating on the possibility of pirated books.  A good overview of the complications of going digital.

The federal judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas-Rasset P2P case gave the recording industry a week to decide if it would accept his decision to slash Thomas-Rasset’s damages from $80,000 to $2,250 per song. But the labels haven’t decided yet, and they have just asked the judge for more time. In the meantime, they’re telling her that she can wipe her hands clean of the whole situation for $25,000.

The “Unopposed Motion for Extension of Time to Notify Court Regarding Plaintiffs’ Position on Remittitur” asks Judge Michael Davis to give the labels another 10 days to ponder the matter. The defense attorneys have already agreed to the request, which will likely be approved.

» via ars technica

1) With digital copies, what is “stolen” is not as clear as with physical copies. With physical copies, you can assign a cost to the physical product, and each unit costs x dollars to create. Therefore, if the product is stolen, it is easy to say that an object was stolen that was worth x dollars. With digital copies, it is more difficult to assign cost. The initial file costs x dollars to create, but you can make a million copies of that file for no cost. Therefore, it is hard to assign a specific value to a digital copy of a work except as it relates to lost sales.

2) Just because someone downloads a file, it does not mean they would have bought the product I think this is the key fact that many people in the music industry ignore – a download does not translate to a lost sale. I own hundreds of paper copies of books I have e-copies of, many of which were bought after downloading the e-copy. In other cases I have downloaded books I would never have purchased, simply because they were recommended or sounded interesting.

3) Just because someone downloads a file, it doesn’t mean they will read it. I realize that buying a book doesn’t mean someone is going to read it either, but clicking a link and paying $10-$30 is very different – many more people will download a book and not read it than buy a book and not read it.

In truth, I think it is clear that morally, the act of pirating a product is, in fact, the moral equivalent of stealing… although that nagging question of what the person who has been stolen from is missing still lingers. Realistically and financially, however, I feel the impact of e-piracy is overrated, at least in terms of ebooks.

» via The Millions

nerdology:

Countries like Spain run the risk of becoming “cultural deserts” because of online file-sharing, the music industry has claimed

An interesting read… though I’m not sure piracy is to blame here. More likely the trading of information through technology is the ‘culprit’ here. Just because Spain downloaded a lot of Lady Gaga illegally doesn’t mean that they then wouldn’t have purchased Lady Gaga over a local artist.

The Jammie Thomas-Rasset fine has been reduced from $80,000 per song to $2,250 per song by the judge bringing the new total judgment to $54,000. From the decision:

After long and careful deliberation, the Court grants in part and denies in part Thomas‐Rasset’s motion and remits the damages award to $2,250 per song – three times the statutory minimum. The need for deterrence cannot justify a $2 million verdict for stealing and illegally distributing 24 songs for the sole purpose of obtaining free music. Moreover, although Plaintiffs were not required to prove their actual damages, statutory damages must still bear some relation to actual damages.

The Court has labored to fashion a reasonable limit on statutory damages awards against noncommercial individuals who illegally download and upload music such that the award of statutory damages does not veer into the realm of gross injustice. Finding a precise dollar amount that delineates the border between the jury’s wide discretion to calculate its own number to address Thomas‐Rasset’s willful violations, Plaintiffs’ far‐reaching, but nebulous damages, and the need to deter online piracy in general and the outrageousness of a $2 million verdict is a considerable task. The Court concludes that setting the limit at three times the minimum statutory damages amount in this case is the most reasoned solution.

» via p2pnet

libraryland:

notforpublicconsumption:

Hot on the heels of the story in Publisher’s Weekly that “publishers could be losing out on as much $3 billion to online book piracy” comes a sudden realization of a much larger threat to the viability of the book industry. Apparently, over 2 billion books were “loaned” last year by a cabal of organizations found in nearly every American city and town. Using the same advanced projective mathematics used in the study cited by Publishers Weekly, Go To Hellman has computed that publishers could be losing sales opportunities totaling over $100 Billion per year, losses which extend back to at least the year 2000. These lost sales dwarf the online piracy reported yesterday, and indeed, even the global book publishing business itself.

From what we’ve been able to piece together, the book “lending” takes place in “libraries”. On entering one of these dens, patrons may view a dazzling array of books, periodicals, even CDs and DVDs, all available to anyone willing to disclose valuable personal information in exchange for a “card”. But there is an ominous silence pervading these ersatz sanctuaries, enforced by the stern demeanor of staff and the glares of other patrons. Although there’s no admission charge and it doesn’t cost anything to borrow a book, there’s always the threat of an onerous overdue bill for the hapless borrower who forgets to continue the cycle of not paying for copyrighted material.

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(smirk)

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(bluenemesis: theconceptlibrarian wellrespected oldauntamy robot-heart-politics bmckinney azspot)

The Federal Communications Commission should avoid adopting strict net neutrality rules that would limit broadband providers’ flexibly to “address” illegal online file sharing, the Recording Industry Association of America said in comments filed with the FCC on Thursday.

ISPs should have authority to block subscribers from sharing music and other files without permission of the copyright owner, the RIAA said. “ISPs are in a unique position to limit online theft,” the RIAA said in its comments. “They control the facilities over which infringement takes place and are singularly positioned to address it at the source. Without ISP participation, it is extremely difficult to develop an effective prevention approach.”

The FCC should not only avoid rules prohibiting ISPs from blocking illegal file trading, but it should actively encourage ISPs to do so, the RIAA said.

» via Macworld

e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle continue to rise, so follows the publishing industry’s worst nightmare: e-book piracy. For years e-book piracy was the exclusive province of the determined few willing to ferret out mostly nerdy textbook titles from the Internet’s dark alleys and read them on their PC. But publishers say that the problem is ballooning as e-readers grow in popularity and the appetite for mainstream e-books grows.

“We are now seeing large volumes of e-books being pirated on everything from file-sharing networks to Websites,” says Ed McCoyd of the Association of American Publishers, a trade organization representing major U.S. book publishers. The year-to-year percentage growth of available e-book titles is unknown, McCoyd says. Other publishers, such as Hachette Book Group, say that e-book piracy has grown “exponentially” over the past year.

A review of e-books currently available for illicit download confirms that e-book piracy is no longer dominated by technical how-to e-books but includes best-selling authors Janet Evanovich, John Grisham, and James Patterson. PCWorld found that one-third of Publishers Weekly’s 2009 top 15 best-selling fiction books were available for illicit download through a growing variety of book-swapping sites, file-sharing services, and peer-to-peer networks.

» via Yahoo! News

My publisher, O’Reilly, decided to try an experiment, offering one of my Windows books for sale as an unprotected PDF file.

After a year, we could compare the results with the previous year’s sales.

The results? It was true. The thing was pirated to the skies. It’s all over the Web now, ridiculously easy to download without paying.

The crazy thing was, sales of the book did not fall. In fact, sales rose slightly during that year.

That’s not a perfect, all-variables-equal experiment, of course; any number of factors could explain the results. But for sure, it wasn’t the disaster I’d feared.

» via The New York Times

kateoplis:

While the major record labels were dragging file-sharers and BitTorrent sites to court for copyright infringement, they were themselves being sued by a conglomerate of artists for exactly the same offenses. Warner, Sony BMG, EMI and Universal face up to $6 billion in damages for pirating a massive 300,000 tracks. These numbers may sound outrageous, yet they are based on the same rules that led the recording industry to claim a single file sharer is liable for millions in damages. The class-action lawsuit has been underway for the past year but continues to be dragged up in the news because new plaintiffs keep joining the case, most recently Chet Baker’s estate, which still owns the copyright in more than 50 of his works.

The government of Spain has proposed new measures to curb the digital piracy of music and movies, but the bill has upset people on both sides of the debate over file-sharing, with copyright owners calling it insufficient and Internet companies denouncing it as heavy-handed.

The proposal, detailed this week, calls for the creation of a government-sponsored commission with the power to investigate and shut down Web sites accused of being a conduit for piracy.

The bill stops short of a law recently approved in France, under which individuals who illegally download copyrighted material could lose their Internet connections.

» via The New York Times

Digital pirates, who for years have tormented the music and film industries, have found a new source of plunder in e-book publishing.

With the words “dan brown lost symbol torrent” and a few clicks, anyone can download the American author’s latest bestseller free via any of hundreds of web links.

Seen at Times Online