Gearing up to defend his capstone project (kind of a thesis) at New York University’s M.S. in Publishing program, our piracy data researcher William Johnson studied the data available on trends in book piracy. Drawing on studies published by the International Intellectual Property Alliance, Wil assembled data that Kirk Biglione reported on earlier this week.
The data is .. dated, but it clearly shows a decrease in book piracy over time. As Kirk points out, it is the American Association of Publishers (AAP) that is almost two years behind reporting on losses it claims are due to piracy, a curious gap given the enforcement priority adopted by the AAP and its British equivalent over the last two years.
The AAP has a working group dedicated to discussing and evaluating the impact of online piracy. Updating the data set would be a worthwhile investment for the OPWG and the AAP, especially if the results show the trend evident through 2007 has held up. In that case, the enforcement money might be better dedicated to growing awareness and purchase of paid content.
