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Emerald Article: E-books and piracy: implications/issues for academic libraries Martin Zimerman

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To cite this document: Martin Zimerman, (2011),"E-books and piracy: implications/issues for academic libraries", New Library World, Vol. 112 Iss: 1 pp. 67 - 75 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03074801111100463 Downloaded on: 23-09-2012 References: This document contains references to 14 other documents To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com This document has been downloaded 2513 times since 2011. *

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E-books and piracy: implications/issues for academic libraries

Martin Zimerman
Brooklyn Campus Library, Long Island University, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe how the acts of piracy in the publication eld are viewed by the industry, and possible student involvement in e-book piracy. Design/methodology/approach The searches encompassed articles on the issue of e-book piracy. Findings There is a denite problem between the needs of the publishing industry and students in colleges and universities. Research limitations/implications The author has only seen small indicators of the overall problem. Much more has to be investigated and learned. Practical implications Libraries in particular will have to be watchful in terms of e-book readers and e-book piracy. Originality/value Owing to the litigious nature of the publishing industry, librarians must be wary of e-book piracy as it regards to the library. Keywords Libraries, Electronic books, Electronic media, Copyright law Paper type Viewpoint

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Received 19 March 2010 Reviewed 27 April 2010

Preface Libraries must be wary. Academic libraries will soon be faced by the problems with e-books. Although a seemingly benign problem, libraries will have to deal with a multitude of copyright issues. Libraries will soon have to decide whether they will jump on the e-books bandwagon. If they lend out e-book readers, will they be responsible for content downloaded by their patrons that may be illegal? Some students may borrow the e-readers but not use them for the purposes that they were intended for; instead using them to read les that were illegally obtained. Should this be the case, you can be sure that the publishing industry will not be pleased with this result. As we live in such a litigious society, the publishers will likely take legal action. As Young (2008) reports:
Book publishers are stepping up efforts to stop college students from downloading illegal copies of textbooks from online sites. One web site, Textbook Torrents, promises more than 5,000 textbooks for download in PDF format, complete with the original books layouts and full-color illustrations. Users must simply set up a free account and download a free software program that uses a popular peer-to-peer system called BitTorrent. Other book-download sites are even easier to use, offering digital books at the click of a mouse.

New Library World Vol. 112 No. 1/2, 2011 pp. 67-75 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0307-4803 DOI 10.1108/03074801111100463

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Claiming the need for anonymity because of possible legal action, per Young, the sites founder cites civil disobedience due to monopolistic business practices on the part of textbook publishers. His sites 64,000 registered users, he claims, are an example of protest against publishers that charge too much money and are continually raising prices. (Young, 2008). Introduction The oodgates of e-books are about to open. Judging by the proliferation of e-book readers, there will be a lot of them. During the last year we have read a lot about the new e-book readers, but not much mention about the les that you will have to acquire order to read them. Some of the e-books will appear in a standard PDF le format, while others will be in a more proprietary le format. Standards for e-book publishing are being formed now, such as the.ePub standard. This new standard allows for certain les to be readable on multiple hardware platforms. Publishers have experimented with delivering content in both traditional and nontraditional manners. There has been interest in content delivery with devices other than desktop computers. Both domestic and international markets have been discussed regarding all types of mobile content. Publishers such as Random House, HarperCollins and Harlequin have all expressed interest in this new medium (Hadro, 2008). Hadro (2008) also says:
But while the.epub standard and its exibility in terms of reowable text are well suited to serving the mobile market, signicant barriers still exist in terms of the digital rights management (DRM) restrictions that are added on top of the.epub encoding, signicantly hampering ebook portability in most cases.

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Publishers fears All businesses, including publishing houses, are in business to make money. The thoughts of a business owner, when they realize that their prots are about to be subverted, could be towards panic. As Masnick (2009) reports:
Well, you just knew this was going to happen eventually. Suddenly publishers are starting to freak out over ebook piracy claiming (totally inaccurately) that theyve lost $600 million to it. Of course, as some are noting the real problem isnt piracy but the industrys response to it: The best way to ght piracy? Get e-book shoppers accustomed to buying from legitimate sources before its too late. That means easy downloading, fair prices and the ability to move content easily from machine to machine within a household. Use of the standard ePub format and the end of traditional DRM could go a long way in that regard.

Masnick (2009) proposes that the publishing industry, in an effort to ght piracy, will raise the barriers for DRM even higher. In effect, Masnick says, that even more piracy could be used because it is an indicator of what people think they really need. A growing piracy issue can result in barriers being placed by the publishers, out of proportion to the actual threat to them. Publishers need to not make the same mistakes that were made by the music industry. Can the e-book industry avoid the many pitfalls that beset the music and lm industries? Both music and lm continue to have harrowing experiences with piracy.

Their problems persist today, with copyrighted material being breached daily. With the advent of computers and its related technologies it was easy for everyone to make perfect, digital copies of music and movies. The technology of the time allowed for music to be duplicated both in its native format and as MP3 les. Copies of movies were a little more difcult to publish, but the availability online of cracking software (software capable of breaking the DRM coding) allowed even digital rights management to be fairly easily circumvented. DiOrio (2007) says:
Trumpeted at a news conference featuring Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other local leaders, a regional economic group has unveiled a study showing that entertainment piracy cost area companies S5.2 billion in lost revenue and 106,000 jobs in 2005. About $2.7 billion was attributed to lm piracy, with the balance to piracy of music and other intellectual property. MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman said the study, released Friday by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., shows that piracy hurts more area businesses than just the movie studios.

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DiOrio (2007) states that both jobs and wages were lost by middle-class American workers throughout the movie industry due to piracy of motion pictures. In 2005, global lm piracy, according to an MPA study, resulted in lost revenue of $18.2 billion. These gures, based on informed estimates point out the seriousness of the problem. When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. The tools necessary for digitizing a physical book into an e-book require a computer and a scanner. It does depend on your skills with these tools, but new skills, with a little effort can be acquired. Wray (2010) states that: It is not a simple task for everyday readers to digitize a book for use on an iPad or Kindle. Makers of the soon to be ubiquitous e-readers have to get the various publishing rms to agree to make the electronic book available for their electronic reader on, or around, the actual date of publication. Readers do not want to have to wait months after publication to get their books. Wray also states that online piracy is still embryonic in e-books. Pirated copies of Dan Browns The Lost Symbol appeared on the world wide web very soon after its ofcial release by the publisher. The publisher did not seem that anxious to launch a digital store for the book, seemingly because they did not feel that the piracy issue was that bad (Wray, 2010). Welcome to the Librarys Information Commons Todays academic libraries revolve around an Information Commons model. One stop shopping for a variety of student and faculty data needs. A well equipped Information Commons will include most of the prerequisites necessary for modern day electronic piracy such as computers, printers, copiers and scanning equipment. Hypothetically, a student in the library could log onto a Torrent-based site and download an illegal copy of a textbook in a PDF format and print it out on a local or network printer. As far as this author can tell, this trafc is not well observed by library or campus information technology personnel. If the student was able to pay (or if the printing is free) they could print out a chapter a day with nobody objecting. This, of course, breaks all kinds of copyright laws, and will cause all kinds of legal mayhem as the legal system will probably take ten or 20 years to catch up with technology that is constantly moving. Recently, at one of the university libraries where this author works, two page scanners were removed from the librarys laboratory because students were scanning their textbooks and sending the pages directly to a network printer (free printing) to

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avoid having to pay the copier fee of ten cents per page. The state of the copyright laws at present, DRM aside, is almost archaic. Furthermore, unless student accounts can identify the computer user, the anonymity provided by the shielding of the library allows for sometimes indiscrete student events to occur. Is e-book piracy a victimless crime? There is no such thing as a victimless crime. Somewhere along the line somebody has to pay. As reported by Shah (2009):
Simon Juden, chief executive of the Publishers Association, says piracy poses the single biggest threat to the ebooks industry. Last year sales of ebooks represented less than 0.1% of the total UK books market. The American market is already worth an estimated $100m, and with sales set to rise in Europe, publishers are keen to avoid the mistakes made by the music industry.

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Based on historic evidence, Shah (2009) feels that if the public were given an easier way to obtain the les, that piracy would be discouraged. Enter the internet In addition to individuals with the know-how to crack these les, there was an even easier way to acquire these les. The internet has provided us with not only a publishing technology, but also provided a home for entities such as USENET and bitTorrent. USENET has actually been around much longer than the world wide web. It consists of many user groups that have banded together for their own singular purposes. That is not to say that all individuals who frequent the USENET sites are evil, but it is known to be a hot bed of le and interest sharing. Torrents, on the other hand, work differently but are reviled as le sharing neighborhoods just the same. To date, most of the digital rights management types of software have not been very effective. Every time a company comes out with a new type of digital rights management, someone in the internet community will nd a crack in the armor of the DRM and publish it online for everyone to see. It is just like the constant battle between the arms maker and the armorer, each one besting the other until a new and more effective scheme can be hatched. E-books, for better or for worse, are comprised of relatively small les. These les are quick and easy to download and will easily t many to a ash drive. Computers allow for exact duplicate digital les that are easily reproduced and passed on. As of now, the piracy of e-books is relatively miniscule. The publishers of e-books however, are up in arms already, having seen the damage done to the music and lm industries, and dont want to repeat their follies. According to Linder (2010):
Dont get me wrong, I know that people have been posting digital copies of copyrighted books online for decades. While recent technological advancements have made digital distribution of music and movie les easier than ever before, eBooks are tiny, tiny les. It didnt take very long to download a book over a 56k connection. But its not internet bandwidth or digital distribution channels thats led people to cast a relatively blind eye toward pirated eBooks. Its the fact that overall the audience for eBooks is still relatively low. But with the growing popularity of dedicated eBook readers such as the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble) Nook, Sony (NYSE:SNE) eBook Readers, and possibly the upcoming Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) Tablet, its getting easier and easier to read digital books. And that could lead to a surge in eBook piracy.

Linder (2010) feels that there is a difference between someone ripping a CD or DVD on a computer and someone uploading les to a site that has involved scanning and proofreading the les. Linder interviewed an anonymous pirate who claims to have spent from ve to 40 hours proofreading the les before they could be uploaded to a site. According to the same pirate, scanning a book also involved several hours of labor per book. The hackers role There are other methods of acquiring an illegal copy of an e-book. A procient hacker can crack the copy protection code found on e-books such as those found on Amazon.com. Once this code is cracked, the hacker can pretty much do what he pleases with the material. It is unlikely that other books offered by the same vendor will be protected by a different algorithm, so once one is cracked, essentially they are all cracked. This is very bad news for the publishers of e-books. As reported by The Buzz (2008):
Hacker Igor Skochinsky made short work of the Kindle, the highly touted new ebook reader by Amazon. Just a few weeks after its release, he devised a workaround of the Kindles DRM (digital rights management), which prevented users from loading non-Amazon ebooks from Mobipocket. Skochinskys work is detailed on his blog Reversing Everything (igorsk.blogspot.com). There, anyone can download the scripts that he used to attach Amazons DRM to other Mobipocket titles, which make them compatible with the Kindle.

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It is possible that publishers of e-books will curb their greed and agree to accept a nominal but fair amount for their e-book purchases, and that consumers will be willing to pay whatever the going rate is, but human nature being what it is this will probably not be the case. Some people are capable of cheating and stealing, while others have a strong sense of ethics and do not wish to have to deal with a guilty conscience. Hackers and crackers usually do what they do, because they can, and may not have a prot motive in copying music, lms and e-books. It is very hard to rationalize a copyright case with people that have that type of mindset. It is a challenge to the hacker to be able to steal from the big businesses. There is a further challenge when the material being digitally duplicated does not originate in the USA where there is strong copyright protection (even if it is ignored). Countries such as Russia and China are nightmares to our local publishers. Even when some sort of copy protection exists in these countries, very few of the law enforcement bodies that exist there are going to protect something with the USA adhering. The will to enforce US laws is just not there. Shasha (2008) relates:
Lawsuits brought by online literature, video and music distributors against copyright violators are now common-place in China, but plaintiffs are navigating largely uncharted waters. This is especially so when pursuing cases that pivot on an online platform operators liability when users upload copyrighted material. Often judges will advise parties to settle cases out of court, and thereby avoid creating legal precedent and standards for dealing with online intellectual property disputes.

Shasha (2008) also indicates that China in particular has in existence the necessary laws to protect copyright, but that enforcement and punishment are lacking. It may actually be a bad thing for copyright issues that so many e-readers are being produced at this time. E-readers are being produced by a variety of manufacturers at

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price points that may be as little as $50 and as expensive as $600 or more. The $50 machines that may support many types of e-book les could be a pirates delight. If an e-reader can be made to read, for instance, Kindle and Nook les, why would anybody buy the more expensive reader? This will be an unfortunate circumstance for the publishers of the e-book les as well as the e-book readers themselves. Rothman (2010) says:
They will buy some $100 reader, then wonder why they cant borrow books from their friend who has a Nook, or cant get the same stuff thats sold on the Kindle. While I assume most of these new ebook readers support the ePub standard, buyers will easily run into dead ends in the labyrinth of DRM (understandably) required by the publishing business. Some of these people will give up on buying books altogether, even if they dont stop reading. Yes, a ood of cheap e-ink readers will grow ebook piracy more than ebook sales.

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To publish or not to publish There are authors who have refused to allow digital versions of their work out of fear for piracy. There are also authors who not only disregard the piracy threat, but put their published works online for anybody to download regardless of whether there is a print version of their work. These authors feel that their works are in fact advertising for them. So far these authors are in the minority, but they are there. As Bethune (2008) writes:
For a decade Doctorow has campaigned, if not quite in Marcuss underground hacker mode, for copyright liberalization and against governments attempts to monitor the Internet, as well as corporate plans to maintain vast databases of cybertrafc. The question to ask about any intellectual property rights regime, he says, is does it encourage or discourage involvement, art-making, information-sharing? In his opinion, the current system only serves corporate dinosaurs, big dying institutions. They use copyright to try to regulate technology, to criminalize (or at least turn a prot on) all the peer-to-peer le sharing that is the Internets greatest achievement: lowering the cost of mass collaboration, the barriers to innovation.

Historically, events seem to travel full circle. In medieval times manuscripts were produced by monks in monasteries. With the invention of the movable type printing press, the monks damned the printing press as a devils engine. When Sony rst produced the Betamax VCR they were castigated by the moviemakers. Today that same Sony Corp. worries about illegal downloads of music and lm. As they are also manufacturers of a popular E-reader they are probably also worried about the possibility of their book les being pirated (Bethune, 2008). Not every author is against the ideas propagated by piracy. Some authors seem to relish the idea of e-book piracy. They feel that it is good to be out there, and recognized. They also feel that their recognition can be protable. As Bethune (2008) also says:
Doctorow puts his own wallet where his mouth is. His ction comes out in conventional book form, but he also posts it for free download on his personal website, Craphound.com. That leads to the one question everyone wants to ask Doctorow: how do you make a living? Most of my income comes from advertising on BoingBoing, but the free releases have helped me nancially by increasing my prole. Little Brother has brought me my largest advances yet.

Bethune (2008) also quotes Doctorow as saying: everyone who has tried posting books online has done it again. Thats a pretty good indicator it works. An artists enemy is

obscurity, not piracy. Ever-changing new technologies are capable of swiftly rendering old technologies obsolete (Bethune, 2008). The exact opposite tack is taken by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling as reported by Masnick (2010):
J.K. Rowling has thus far refused to make any of her Harry Potter books available digitally because of piracy fears. Of course, that assumes that its the ofcial digital version that gets copied. While I havent checked, I would be stunned to nd out that all of Ms Rowlings work is not already widely available via le sharing sites. Her deciding not to offer up an ebook copy didnt stop piracy. In fact, it probably encouraged it, because those who want a digital copy now only have the option of using an unauthorized copy.

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It is not easy, even with the most advanced technology on hand, to digitize an entire book. Depending on what technology is available to the copier, there are many pitfalls to scanning an entire book. Aside from the physical scanning of the book, there is also the need to proofread, or edit, the le that is produced. If you have done a bit of word processing, you realize that proofreading and editing can be a daunting chore in itself. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) The DMCA was forged to protect the various entertainment industries. It proposed a set of very severe penalties on those who would get caught copying digital materials. If you read the FBI warning on a made for home entertainment DVD you will see threats of nes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for unlicensed copying of the lm. This threat has appeared so many times in so many places that the threat is not taken seriously by most people, but to those few who are singled out as examples by the legal machinery of the lm industry, it can be quite intimidating. As Cass (2010) reports:
Piracy of copyrighted work is rampant on the Internet. The plague of scraper sites is just one example: they copy content belonging to other sites in hopes of snagging readers and advertising revenue from automated networks such as Googles AdSense. In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) lets copyright holders protect themselves by sending online service providers a takedown notice if one of the providers users uploads content belonging to the rights holder.

As long as the provider removes the offending material in a timely manner, they cannot be considered as partners to intellectual piracy. Any links to sites providing illegal content can be ordered removed (Cass, 2010). There is nothing automatic about spotting copyright infringement. The holder of the copyright, once they have spotted an infringement, must then serve notice on the infringer. Companies such as Attributor in California, have methods to crawl the internet for their clients, looking for copyright violators. Attributor can act on behalf of its client and ask the poster of the information to attribute the item properly, or in more extreme circumstances ask them to take the offending article off-line (Cass, 2010). Digital rights management (DRM) Digital rights management (DRM) can be difcult to deal with as well. Obtaining a specic e-book and trying to mount it on several devices can be a disturbing experience. DRM technology is specically geared to prevent you from using the original material, whether it is music, lm or e-book on more than one device.

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Publishers are already claiming losses of $600 million dollars due to e-book piracy (Masnick, 2009), but these claims are probably outrageously inaccurate. Consumers buying habits must be changed. The best way to do this is to get a potential e-book customer accustomed to buying from a legitimate source. Customers should be allowed to move a legally purchased object from machine to machine, even if it only allows usage on one machine at a time. There is also the issue of up-to-date content. When an unscrupulous person downloads e-content is usually one time per object. In other words, there is usually no need to update that content from the same source. Technology e-books must constantly be updated as content changes. This can become an ongoing service and can be extremely valuable to the purchaser. Deferral of publication Some e-book publishers are attacking the problem in a different way. They are delaying the availability of certain e-book publications, especially new hardcover titles for between one to six months. According to Page (2009):
Deferring publication of e-books could play into the hands of Amazon, senior trade observers have warned. The warning comes as authors and publishers get ready to face off over e-book royalty rates, after the Society of Authors said digital royalty rates should be much higher than the current 15%-25% level, rising to 75% or 85% of receipts in some circumstances.

Several publishers, including Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and others, have announced plans for a several months delay after the hardcover is released to publish the e-book edition in order to protect the titles original sales. E-reader owners will not be happy with this decision and it will encourage le sharing and piracy (Page, 2009). Conclusion Despite massive threatened nes, and even jail terms, piracy continues. The threat does not appear to come from organized crime but rather from individuals, both hackers and non-hackers. Easy availability of the hacking tools necessary to pirate any book takes all the guesswork out of the process. Although some will be daunted by the exacting process, or with the editing capabilities necessary to accomplish this act, in some cases it is the challenge that will be important to them. In this over regulated world there are those who will not ignore the challenge. Just as the lm and music industries had to face their demons, it is now the turn of the book publishing industry. There will be many lawsuits and attempts to punish those perceived to be in violation of our copyright acts. Some will be prosecuted, and others will successfully defend their positions and in turn introduce new laws into our system. Although our current cyber laws are many years behind the curve, the publishing industry has many lawyers on retainer to try to x the problems. Eventually, at least some partial solution will be reached. It would be helpful if someone would try to assess and analyze the potential legal threat to our libraries if only to protect ourselves from the unscrupulous and from those not caring what the potential for harm to libraries actually is. The addition of assigning student user accounts for computers would go far in preventing illicit copyright breach. Libraries must not become known as a haven for copyright infringement.

References (The) Buzz (2008), School Library Journal, Vol. 54 No. 2, pp. 22-3. Bethune, B. (2008), Scourge of the corporate pirates, Macleans, Vol. 121 No. 17, pp. 57-8. Cass, S. (2010), Patrolling the Web for Pirated Content, Massachusetts Institute of Technology/MIT, Cambridge, MA. DiOrio, C. (2007), Study: piracy cost LA billions in 05, weblog, available at: www.lexisnexis. com (accessed 24 March 2010). Hadro, J. (2008), Ebooks and.epub at IDPF, Library Journal (1976), Vol. 133 No. 11, pp. 25-6. Linder, B. (2010), Is eBook piracy the next big thing?, weblog, available at: www.lexisnexis.com (accessed 24 March 2010). Masnick, M. (2009), Publishers getting the wrong message over ebook piracy, weblog, available at: www.lexisnexis.com (accessed 24 March 2010). Masnick, M. (2010), CNNs take on book piracy, weblog, available at: www.lexisnexis.com (accessed 24 March 2010). Page, B. (2009), Trade warned on deferring e-books, Bookseller, No. 5413, pp. 3-33. Rothman, W. (2010), There are ofcially too damn many e-readers (AMZN), weblog, available at: www.lexisnexis.com (accessed 24 March 2010). Shah, O. (2009), Pirate boarding parties leap on publishers: illegal downloads have hit music and lm; books are the next target, writes Oliver Shah, weblog, available at: www.lexisnexis. com (accessed 24 March 2010). Shasha, C. (2008), Newsletter: China IT & Telecom Report, available at: www.lexisnexis.com (accessed 24 March 2010). Wray, R. (2010), Old media wins battle in the ebook war as Amazon raises prices to match Apple: Macmillan demanded end to low $9.99 cap on Kindle: Houses titles briey pulled from website during row, Guardian, 1 February, available at: www.guardian.co.uk/ books/2010/feb/01/amazon-macmillan-ebooks-apple Young, J.R. (2008), On the web, a textbook proliferation of piracy, Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 54 No. 44, p. A1. About the author Martin Zimerman is an Assistant Professor, working in the library at Long Island University, Brooklyn campus. He is the Electronic Services Librarian at this large, urban campus. He can be contacted at: martin.zimerman@liu.edu

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