Piracy

Earlier this month, one of the many blogs I subscribe to for work linked to this report on Media Piracy in Emerging Economies, and wrote a concise summary.  The report and summary are very focused on piracy in other media, but I thought some (most? all?) of the bullet points were relevant to Big New York Publishing, particularly points three (antipiracy education has failed) and six (enforcement hasn’t worked).

The summary doesn’t address one of the driving forces (I think) behind ebook piracy — geographic availability.  What I find most interesting in the guest blog post is that the author points out that DVD piracy is what drove the global piracy and IP enforcement drive by the MPAA in the 2000s — and that it is a medium that is dying.  Is the publishing industry an analog, with books dying more slowly than DVDs?  The conventional wisdom is that ebook sales will eventually stabilize and paper will be remain a viable part of its revenue stream.  

I don’t know.  And I don’t have anything intelligent to share.  But I thought that readers who are interested in the publishing industry and the publishers’ antipiracy efforts would be interested in the report.