E-Book Piracy and the iPad

Is the iPad Driving E-Book Piracy, and Does it Matter? | Gadget Lab | Wired.com:

Wired wrote an interesting article on how the iPad led to an increase in e-book piracy:

BitTorrent downloads grew by an average of 78% in the days after the iPad went on sale. Even so, the numbers were still tiny compared to the traffic in movies and music

E-book downloads on bitTorrent are miniscule. Compared to music and videos its practically non-existent. E-book piracy, however, has been around for about 15 years -- ever since scanners have been available.

"Original files come from those with enough time and patience to scan, OCR and proof-read the resulting files, but the majority of what you find are duplicates of these. Contrast this to music, where you pop a CD into your computer and wait a few minutes while it rips the tracks and downloads the metadata."

The rate at which unique e-books appeared increased proportionately with the decrease in scanner prices and the increase in OCR software effectiveness.

...then copying an entire book, even if protected by DRM, will be as simple as automating screenshots of pages and sending them to an OCR (optical character recognition) program.

DRM stripping software is already out there. OCR "scanning" of PDF files is still common, but as digital books become more common cracking and decryption will become more predominant, and OCR artifacts (mis-scanned 'typos', missing links, and even the '* * *' when a scene change occurs at the top of a page) will be a thing of the past.

If it causes a rise in book piracy, it is only because it is driving demand. The book industry should embrace this and give us what we want: cheap books, published day-and-date with their paper equivalents, along with all back-catalog titles made available. And preferably DRM-free.

Amen. DRM and lawsuits will be same same failure for eBooks as it has been for movies and music. Innovative marketing and a fair pricing will keep piracy in the shadows where it has an insignificant impact on sales. It may in fact increase demand by introducing a greater number of authours  wo a wider audience.


eBook Piracy ‘Surges’ After iPad Launch [TorrentFreak]