I’m presenting an update on our piracy research at O’Reilly Media’s Tools of Change conference in Frankfurt. In preparing my remarks, I came across two posts useful to anyone interested in understanding the impact of piracy on paid content sales.
At Booksprung, Chris Walters describes the things publishers do that ultimately encourage piracy:
- Not releasing official digital copies of works online
- Crippling content so that it only works on one device, or only works if the reader is given permission by a retailer or publisher to open the file
- Creating substandard digital editions
- Thinking piracy is a solvable problem instead of a manageable one.
In parallel, Medialoper’s Kirk Biglione explains how Amazon leads the way in giving readers solutions that make piracy a more labor-intensive option.
The posts aren’t pro-piracy; they are pro-reader. When it comes to piracy, that’s the right place to start.
