Since the knockdown of the proposed SOPA and PIPA acts to combat online piracy, music industry execs are mulling other ways to stop people from pirating music from their artists. Specifically, industry groups like the RIAA and IFPI are targeting search engines in hopes of sweeping links to sites like the Pirate Bay under the rug.

Torrent Freak reports today that a confidential document is making the rounds among music industry execs discussing the option of filing an unprecedented lawsuit against search giant Google.

The RIAA and IFPI contest that Google and other search engines are abusing its market dominance to “distort the market for online music”. While Google has been working with both groups to take down sites hosted on Blogger that lead to pirated content, it appears that the music industry would like to see the company step up its efforts quite a bit, or it may sue them.

According to this leaked document, the recording industry believes that Google can do more:

Google continues to fail to prioritize legal music sites over illegal sites in search results, claiming that its algorithm for search results is based on the relevance of sites to consumers.

While nobody but Google knows the true algorithm for its search results, it appears that the music industry thinks that the company is knowingly promoting the concept of downloading content illegally.

The document continues to state that if Google doesn’t start to de-list file-sharing sites like The Pirate Bay, and rank legal alternatives above them, a lawsuit may be on the way. This seems to me to be a last ditch effort for the music industry to defend its Jurassic Park ways of doing things instead of embracing new technology and shifting the way they operate. While I’m not a lawyer, I think it would be extremely difficult to force Google to do anything like what its suggesting in these documents.

Is Google to blame for music piracy or is the record industry just grasping at straws? Tell us in the comments!

To combat the ill-conceived “Stop Online Piracy Act”, or commonly referred to as “SOPA” on the Internet, Tumblr asked its users to make phone calls to their U.S. Representatives to make their feelings known.

Tumblr users complied, to the tune of 87,834 phone calls in one day.

In a blog post from the Tumblr staff today, the company had this to say about the initiative:

Yesterday we did a historic thing. We generated 87,834 phone calls to U.S. Representatives in a concerted effort to protect the Internet. Extraordinary. There’s no doubt that we’ve been heard.

So just to keep you updated: The well-intentioned, but immensely flawed “Stop Online Piracy Act” is still in the House Judiciary Committee. The hearing was yesterday and now members will debate and bring amendments to the bill. The Committee will reconvene in a few weeks — the date has yet to be scheduled. Nothing has been brought to a final vote. Everything is still very much in play. We’ll keep you posted on what’s going on and what you can do to help. But for now, we want to thank you.

The act, which would give private companies and the government more power to overseeing what you download from the Internet, is currently being discussed in the House of Representatives.

Tumblr put together an amazing app that let you put in your phone number and area code, which would then generate a phone call to you. Once your phone rings, you’re given some talking points about SOPA, and are then connected to your local Representative. The company used Twilio to power the dialing app.

Will you fight the Stop Online Piracy Act with companies like Tumblr? Share your thoughts in the comments.

As TorrentFreak reports, fear.themusicbay.com currently displays a blank page with a “Comming Soon” (sic) title. A Pirate Bay insider told the piracy-focused blog that “The music industry can’t even imagine what we’re planning to roll out in the coming months. For years they’ve complained bitterly about piracy, but if they ever had a reason to be scared it is now.”

Apparently, the new site is planned to launch in time for the IFPI’s 78th birthday in April. The IFPI, or International Federation of the Phonographic Industry to give it its full name, has battled music piracy throughout its existence and The Pirate Bay previously obtained its domain name in 2007 when the Federation neglected to renew its registration. The Pirate Bay planned to use the domain for an “”International Federation of Pirates Interests”, although the IFPI quickly regained the domain after it was ruled that The Pirate Bay obtained it “In bad faith”.

We’re not sure exactly what The Music Bay will be, but we (and we imagine the IFPI) will be watching closely.

The figure places it as the most downloaded movie via BitTorrent ever, with 200,000 downloads in just 4 days at one point earlier this year, and it pushes well ahead of last year’s ‘winner’, Star Trek, which was downloaded 10,960,000 times in 2009. It seems downloaders weren’t put off by the stunning 3D effects in the cinematic release of Avatar and were happy to accept a sub-optimal experience for the convenience of a BitTorrent download.

TorrentFreak says that its data for the chart is collated from several sources, including reports from thousands of BitTorrent trackers. Elsewhere in the chart , big names included Kick Ass, Inception and Iron Man 2. Surprisingly, summer hit Toy Story 3 doesn’t make the cut. Also nowhere to be seen is The Social Network, which we recently reported was on track to be one of the most pirated movies of the year.

While the movie industry is doing its best to make films available in convenient, digital forms such as via iTunes rentals and Netflix streaming, Bittorrent piracy continues unabated.

1 Avatar – 16,580,000 downloads
2 Kick-Ass – 11,400,000 downloads
3 Inception - 9,720,000 downloads
4 Shutter Island – 9,490,000 downloads
5 Iron Man 2 – 8,810,000 downloads
6 Clash of the Titans – 8,040,000 downloads
7 Green Zone – 7,730,000 downloads
8 Sherlock Holmes – 7,160,000 downloads
9 The Hurt Locker – 6,850,000 downloads
10 Salt – 6,700,000 downloads

As a fan of reading, and of ebooks in particular, I knew that when the day came that electronic tomes became popular piracy would quickly emerge. A damning report released by Attributor outlining a recent rise in total ebook piracy seems to suggest that the moment has arrived.

Just how much more book piracy is there now? According to the report it has risen a steep 50% in the last year, and some 1.5-3 million people per day are engaging in the act of pirating ebooks. Assuming an average of one book per active person per day and a list price of $7 per book, that implies that 10 to 20 million dollars in potential sales are disappearing every day.

I say potential because you cannot say with any confidence that any of those people would have purchased the stolen books, you can merely say that they wanted to read the books and therefore looked for them. If you want a better look at the distinction here, read this.

Now, those numbers feel a bit high in my gut, but we just have to trust Attributor that they are presenting accurate figures. Instead of quibbling over estimates, let’s take a look at some of the most important points concerning electronic book piracy and what they mean for the future of the format.

People Don’t Think To Pirate, Yet

That doesn’t sound right, you may say, look at how many are doing it already! Sure some are, but it’s like sex in High School: not everyone is doing it, and the people who are are doing it poorly.

The current state of ebook piracy is nebulous, like when mp3 sharing was brand new and only a few people had the tools. There are far fewer torrents for books than you would expect, and they are all across the board in terms of format types. Epub? Pdf? The list goes on. Yes, I actually went out and looked into this.

Also, given that ebooks are (relatively) new in and of themselves, there is hardly a culture around stealing them. That will change, and it will become normal far more quickly than pirating music did. People already know how to torrent, and so once people learn how and why to pirate books, they will. That brings us to our next point:

DRM Will Not Work

If the major publishing houses are hoping to DRM their way out of the problem, they need a history lesson. DRM has never worked, will never work, and as the type and number of files on the internet grow, will become even more futile.

Then again, the big publishers are not technologists, and so I fully expect them to fall for the snake oil of DRM until they learn our last point:

Pricing Is Key

The purchasing of songs took off because the correct price point was reached and delivered to the masses: $1 per song. At that simple level digital sales boomed. Users did not even leave iTunes in droves for 89 and 79 cent downloads elsewhere, something that we need to remember.

That said, what is the magic number for ebooks? Between $3 and $10 per book is where the market is settling, with lower priced books selling at a much higher clip. It’s a pricing question at this point: at what exact sticker point will you maximize your profit? Is a cheaper price and more sold units better, or a higher price and fewer total sales? From what I have heard from my writer buddies (published assholes, all of them), lower prices lead to higher profits for anyone except a top-notch author. If you are in fact Christopher Hitchens, around $10 is the best price. If not, go south.

Why $10? If you go to Amazon, hardcovers now launch for as little as $14. If you think that people don’t expect a discount for not receiving a physical book (they get that ebooks are marginally free to create), you don’t understand consumers. Also, $9.99 is a number that makes sense to consumers. It’s around 10 and is easy to recall, unlike $7.84.

Why $3? Amazon’s publishing platform has a two tier royalty system. If you want the higher rate the lowest price that your book can sport is $2.99. They created a bottom for the market just like that.

The Best Ways To Combat Piracy

The simplest way to combat piracy is to provide quality products at a fair price in a convenient fashion, period. If ebook piracy is to remain a background nuisance to publishers and authors, fair priced ebooks available everywhere is the solution.

There is one last point that we have to make before we wrap up: people who read are generally older and more wealthy than your average teenager downloading Lil Wayne off of ThePirateBay. That is something that books will have as long as they retain their current audience. Then again, as they go digital, perhaps books will find a new audience.

For now we should all focus on improving the buying experience of ebooks, not fretting over potential hazards of the new format. That, after all, has always been the way to make the most money.