Quote:
Originally Posted by llasram
Hardly scientific, but I downloaded the torrents for a handful of fairly large pirated e-book libraries. All the broken DRM e-book formats are HTML-based, so I extracted just the HTML books (had ‘htm|HTM’ in the filename). From that set I took a random sample of 100 which I individually examined to see if there was any evidence they had been derived from pirating the e-book edition of the work. And the number derived from pirated e-books...
None. Every single one was obviously made via scanning and OCRisg.
My theory is that pirating books via DRM-stripping the e-book edition is literally too easy. In gift economies people gain status based upon the value of what they contribute and the effort involved in the contribution. There’s no status gained from contributing a DRM-stripped book because it requires no effort or skill. Scanning, OCRing, and proofreading is how one gains status in the e-book piracy community, so that’s how books get pirated.
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It may also have something to do with the fact that, until recently, most books didn't have ebook editions and so pirates established a workflow that involved OCRing. Also you can get most pbooks for free (from libraries) to pirate them, whereas, you have to pay to get a DRMed version of an ebook to pirate.