Quote:
Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
A number of members have stated that they would only pirate a book if the book is, for whatever reason, unavailable legally. So far I've never heard of book publishers going after end users, but as the practice of imposing stiff fines against those who pirate music and making an example of end users is common in the music business, I would be remiss if I didn't remind folks that book publishers may adopt a similar model any day.
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The music industry has a mass management system for copyrighted materials; the RIAA licenses access to thousands (millions?) of songs, so it's worth their effort to track down users who are distributing hundreds of the titles they control.
No one publisher controls a majority of the books being shared. Filing a mass cease-and-desist notice may hit problems like the
SFWA takedown notice to Scribd. A publisher could look for torrents or bundles that include only its titles, but that's more troublesome.
And, as books are (1) not as regularly copied as music, (2) sometimes not available through legit suppliers (opening a spot for a fair-use claim), (3) harder to verify as infringing (can't just listen to the first few seconds of the song; need to confirm that what's being shared is
a book and not
a book review)... it hasn't been worth the trouble.
While Dan Brown's or Rowling's publishers could certainly track down a number of digital copies of those works--lawsuits are expensive. Publishers don't want to file individual suits; they want to join the Hollywood bandwagon and convince Congress that ISPs should bear the cost of figuring who's actually copying what without permission.