Will Piracy Be an Issue With eBooks?
People are increasingly turning to eBooks as opposed to reading physical books. But will piracy become a big issue with books, just like it is with movies and music?
With eBooks becoming even more widespread, there is some
concern among book publishers that piracy will begin affecting the revenues of
both authors and publishers.As it is right now, pirating a physical book takes
a rather considerable amount of time.If someone wants to distribute an online
copy of lets say some romance novels, they would need to scan or photograph
every page, put it together in a PDF document and then upload it to sharing
sites.Although this form of piracy has been seen occasionally, it is usually
limited to some expensive reference books such as some college textbooks and
study guides, in addition to maybe a few very hard to find fiction books.But
with eBooks, the content is already in digital format, making it much easier to
distribute pirated copies of a book.As such, there have been a few fiction
books such as popular romance novelswhich have been distributed on piracy
sites; however this form of piracy, for now, is largely limited to certain
niches of books.The most pirated eBooks right now are reference materials
(usually business guides and internet marketing courses) and adult content such
as Romance Books.However, with the increased popularity of digital book
distribution, this could all change for online book sellers.So how do websites
that sell other kinds of books like romance books online protect themselves?While
there are technological measures already in place to make copying more
difficult, such as the use of proprietary formats that can only be opened with
an authorized reader application, this can be easily circumvented by skilled
hackers who can convert it to a different format and scrap all security
features of the document.But in reality, not much hacking is needed to pirate
an eBook.In the case of text on a screen, all that would be needed to bypass
any form of security would be to take a screen capture of each page and then
put the pages together in a new PDF document.The best measure to discourage
piracy would be to offer books at low prices, which will encourage readers to
get them from legitimate sources, rather than spend time finding them on
underground sites.Also, online book sellers could give incentives and
promotions to their customers to keep them loyal.Furthermore, with the
availability of different devices to read eBooks, book sellers need to
understand that they should avoid using proprietary formats that will only work
on certain platforms.Rather than reducing piracy, these can actually encourage
it.Say if someone really needs a certain book, but it can only be read on a
Windows PC and they have an iPad.Many would have no qualms about searching for
a pirated version of it that is available in a platform neutral formatBusiness
Management Articles, even though they were originally willing to pay for the
book had it been available in a format that would have worked on the iPad.
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About Article Author

Carmella Borcher is the author of this article and is an avid fan of romance novels - particularly erotic books and erotic ebooks.
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