Piracy of Digital Content

Peter Kilborn | 11/11/2009

Ever since digital delivery has come to be taken seriously by the publishing industry publishers have been desperate not to repeat the mistakes made by the music industry in allowing illegal file sharing to undermine its core business. The music business is superficially so similar to the book trade that there is a tendency to overlook the very obvious differences.

Nevertheless, piracy of digital content is a paramount concern – as indeed piracy of printed books in the developing world has been for many years – though sometimes it becomes unclear whether the concerns are about publishers’ lost sales or the abused rights of authors and other copyright owners. The Publishers Association here has made the fight against piracy one its core issues, working with local police authorities in India and elsewhere to bring a number of high profile and successful legal actions against pirates of printed material, and tracking down sellers of illegal digital material. It has set up a Copyright Infringement Portal on the web to enable members to report copyright abuse.

Last week Victoria Barnsley, chief executive of HarperCollins UK, addressed the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Publishing, a group of members of parliament interested in the media and copyright industries, supporting a government proposal to oblige ISPs to withdraw services from those found guilty of illegal file sharing. This is included in the Digital Economy Bill, which is intended to bring into law some of the recommendations made by Lord Carter in his Digital Britain report  earlier in the year. Although the All-Party Group has no legal teeth and can in practice only lobby for the shared interests of its members, it is an obvious way for the industry to make its voice heard within parliament. Barnsley stressed the value of the publishing industry to the British economy, contributing an estimated £5bn to the domestic economy, and the need for copyright to be enforced, particularly in the digital space, if its strength was not to be undermined.

That the government is proposing legal redress against illegal file sharers is in some measure evidence that the industry is being heard. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that other media industries – music, film, and so on – are threatened to a greater extent than publishing. It is easy to see how illegal downloading of a music track or a movie deprives legitimate copyright owners and licensees of a reward for their intellectual property and a sale of their product; books and their content don’t make quite the same impact. How society or governments balance the force of the law (in something like the internet where enforceability is next to impossible) with the realities of daily life is a tough call. Publishers are obviously right to worry about piracy and to press for governmental and legal sanctions against it, but they are probably lucky their very livelihoods are not at immediate risk.

On another matter, there seems to be general agreement that the international launch of Kindle was not a mould-breaking event. There will be, as I predicted previously, a more significant moment when Kindle is supplied locally and competes directly on price with locally available readers. However, with growing indications that dedicated reading devices are not the future, it may be that Kindle won’t have the same kind of success here as it enjoyed at launch in the US. As Kindle’s USP – its wireless connectivity – becomes increasingly copied and probably becomes an essential requirement for e-readers, it begins to look as if the competing devices will have to measure up against the more basic criteria of overall functionality, operating efficiency, look and feel, and of course price. That isn’t good news for the e-reader industry. 

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