It’s always incredibly aggravating when entities with what is clearly a misdirected hatred of the internet decide that being able to exchange data freely means that we as a society are on our way to an anarchic wasteland.
Copyright watchdog group Attributor is claiming that around $3 billion a year in the publishing industry is being lost to piracy. Their facts? That “nearly 10,000 copies of every book published are downloaded for free,” according to a report the group published.
But here’s why the study is just completely without a leg to stand on: there is no data which could lead anyone to believe that everyone who downloaded a book would have bought it otherwise.
This is the same irrational argument that the recording industry makes against music piracy. Just because someone will take advantage of something when it’s free of monetary cost to him does not at all mean he would purchase it otherwise; anyone with even the most basic understanding of economics can tell you that.
Another reason to be wary of this study: Attributor is trying to use this data to sell a service to publishers to shut down copyright infringement. The company
goes after the ad networks most of them use to make money by showing ads on the download pages for ripped books. Attributor tries to get the ad network – Google, Yahoo, AdBrite — to withhold a percentage of the money they would pay to the site’s operator, and give it to the book’s copyright holder instead.
Essentially, Attributor is trying to scare publishers with bogus numbers to sell them a service they may not need. People, it’s time for the fearmongering to stop.
I agree. I know many that have downloaded books that they BOUGHT- when they normally WOULD NOT have.
Michael – we're pretty transparent in the research that this figure represents the potential loss to the book industry, specifically stating that
“This study does not attempt to address the issue of determining to what degree pirated books represent financial loss to the industry as it does not estimate how many free downloads might have otherwise resulted in a sale. In other words, this study does not attempt to answer the question, “How many of these pirated books would have been purchased legally if piracy was not an option?” Previous studies assume a one-to-one substitution, meaning all pirated material would have been purchased and thus the market value of pirated books is equal to the actual loss, though Attributor feels this is an overly optimistic assumption. This issue will be addressed in a future research phase.
oh, come on. you don't do this study and sell an anti-piracy service because you want the readers to pay attention to the disclaimer saying that the research is essentially meaningless.
Apple recently hit 10 billion legal music downloads in the iTunes store. Going forward, it should be interesting to see how many legal ebook downloads they get for their iPad. It's got to be easy (Apple does this) and affordable (if they allow free ebooks or at least variable pricing).
Let's see what comes when the iTunes store is fully supporting ebooks.
Buddy Scalera – http://wordspicturesweb.com/?p=784
“Why This Article Isn't Telling You Anything About The Publishing Industry”
Because the author is quibbling over the motives of pirates (and the details of a single study) rather than explaining why we should care.
Those facts are done thousands of times. We all know that you can't assume that every downloaded copy is a loss of sale, although companies like to use that facts to hide their own incompetence.
What would really be interesting are numbers about how many downloads actually leads to a sale. Maybe that way industries realize that downloading is not only a threat, but a also a big opportunity.