To get a deeper understanding of why piracy occurs, it can help to look into the behaviour of users and ask why they knowingly adopt pirated goods.
What is particularly interesting about digital piracy is that those who indulge in it would not walk into a store and shoplift a tangible item of the same value. With regards to published online works and ebooks, some evidence suggests that pirates perceive the prices for digital products to be high. And since a digital good, such as your published ebook, lacks material substance, its largely intangible nature makes it challenging for the pirate’s mind to grasp that a digital ebook is indeed a valuable intellectual property. It can be difficult for a pirate to appreciate why an ebook that costs less to manufacture and publish digitally should cost, say over $50, to purchase. Since they view the prices of a digital offering as discriminatory, they use the disparity to defend their unlawful behaviour.
Besides, the ease at which digital piracy can be put to use and its immediate effect, especially seen over a peer to peer network and filesharing sites, can support digital piracy and make it attractive. With peer to peer technology acting as a facilitator and the impersonal interface of computer displays creating psychological distances between the victim and the pirate, the reduced proximity can make digital piracy seemed less like crime and appear more like a mere digital transaction. With peer to peer networks acting as mediums to access pirated material, this trend can also increase the rates of digital piracy.
The critical characteristic of an ebook is its disembodied quality from its printed version. But this incorporeal essence is what permits its digital delivery via online or local area networks. With the dramatic increase in the percentage of households that own personal computers, sometimes more than one, the rapid development of Internet connection implies that more people than ever are accessible online. This technological progress has deepened digital piracy and encouraged the distribution and exchange of pirated digital works.
But this particular assessment ignores the significant risks and costs associated with creating the content, which the unsophisticated user may not see and appreciate.
Simply put, digital piracy means the theft of intellectual property. Despite the amount stolen by any individual of a digital ebook might be quite small, when put together, the overall statistics are substantial that could amount to more than $50 billion a year. Digital piracy not only reduces your sales and profits, but it can also give rise to the likelihood that the supply of new intellectual property will be just as impacted. As a content creator, you will be well aware of the considerable effort and cost it takes to produce intellectual property. And as such, you could ill-afford to lose your revenue, especially if writing ebooks is your main or only source of income.
The digitalization of books and content, particularly any form of media, is a phenomenon that will continue to grow stronger every year. Numerous academic journals have already gone down the digital route. Unfortunately, the vast wave of piracy has been just as active as users are using peer to peer networks to swap journals, scientific research, novels, non-fiction content and more online. If, as a copyright holder you’re looking to compete in the digital space, you need to understand how piracy can impact you negatively, and adopt a suitable strategy response through Ebook DRM(Digital Rights Management) to safeguard your content.
Ebook DRM controls how you distribute your ebook from one viewer to another and from one device to another. It is this very technology that prevents your original creation from being shared with users who have not paid for your work. With ebook DRM, you also have access to additional controls over your content. These include allowing you to specify the number of devices your ebook can be installed on; if your ebook can only be used from a specific location or IP address; or enforce protection systems that can help you to manage the access of your ebook more flexibly.
With the publishing world continuing to grow and increased proliferation of the ebook market, paying close attention to ebook piracy is the need of the hour. Worldwide, ebook piracy costs publishers billions of dollars and creates a substantial negative impact on every professional involved in the content creation, distribution and supply channels. When it comes to protecting your ebook, the only way to fight piracy and unauthorized use of your content or its reproduction is to enforce ebook DRM — a proactive and preventive security solution. By enabling you to protect your ebook against any unauthorized use and distribution, ebook DRM ensures that you do not suffer a revenue loss while at the same time providing access to only authorized users of your content.
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