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International publisher alliance shuts down piracy site
15.02.12 | Katie Allen
An international alliance of publishers, including Cambridge University Press, Elsevier and Pearson Education Ltd, has served successful cease-and-desist orders on a piracy operation with an estimated turnover of £7m.
The two platforms, sharehoster service www.ifile.it and link library www.library.nu, had together created an "internet library" making more than 400,000 e-books available as free illegal downloads. The operators generated an estimated turnover of €8m (£6.7m) through advertising, donations and sales of premium-level accounts, according to a report by German law firm Lausen which helped co-ordinate the alliance.
The other publishers involved also comprised Georg Thieme; HarperCollins; Hogrefe; Macmillan Publishers Ltd; Cengage Learning; John Wiley & Sons;the McGraw-Hill Companies; Pearson Education Inc; Oxford University Press; Springer; Taylor & Francis; C H Beck; and Walter De Gruyter. The alliance was also co-ordinated by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association (Börsenverein) and the International Publishers Association (IPA),
Jens Bammel, secretary general of the IPA, said: "Today, the international book industry has shown that it continues to stand up against organised copyright crime.
"We will not tolerate freeloaders who make unjustified profits by depriving authors and publishers of their due reward. This is an important step towards a more transparent, honest and fair trade of digital content on the Internet," he said.
Alexander Skipis, Börsenverein c.e.o., added: "This case demonstrates, in particular in the context of current debates, that systematic copyright infringement has developed into a highly criminal and lucrative business."
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This only underlines the fact that we don't need any new laws to deal with pirate sites. Now we just need to offer some kind of direct competition.
Speaking of competition, it's interesting that they've chosen to redirect library.nu to Google Books...
I wonder when the industry will begin to focus on the real source of the issue ... which is how easy it is to crack Adobe DRM.
It's irrelevant. All DRM on ebooks is relatively easy to crack; it can't be made more difficult than it already is.
It's interesting that there isn't currently an easy solution for cracking iBooks DRM, but I guess that's just because of iBooks' market share.
Just like music record companies and tv/movie studios, publishers are just going to have to deal with piracy because once one site shuts down, 10 more will pop up (more anonymously and difficult to track) and that's just the way it works. That's what the majority wants, so the majority will always win in the end because putting a price tag on media is unethical. So shut the F up and take it. Besides all you pencil-pushers who want to make a buck over any old crap you produce (because adding 50 cent words and run-on sentences, then calling your crap study scholarly is like putting icing on a pile of dung, it's still dung) should get a real job if that's what you want. Try getting your soft little hands dirty for a change.
This is a brief and gaudy victory that the industry has won, and for now your age-old privileges are intact. You can continue to appropriate value from the masses, by fiat, with the brute force of the state at your disposal. (Who are the real "pirates" here, one wonders?)
But inevitably, the people are going to win this war. There are too many dedicated, talented and hardworking individuals out there, breaking your DRM, hacking your devices, uploading, hosting and distributing, for you to ever prevail. You - that is, your engineers and your security experts - are fighting for a paycheck. We're fighting for our freedom. Have fun in the dustbin of history, publishers...
All DRM mechanisms have been cracked.
It is simply NOT POSSIBLE to create one that will allow the honest buyer to read his/her book without hassles. Period.
The only solution known to deter casual piracy is watermarking.
Many publishers have read the writing on the wall.
Time for others to follow suit.
real pirates are inside the publishers.publishers dont know who are they playing with,in modern world free information is what real netizens breathing,if publishers cant provide that ,stay out of the internet world and keep selling the hardcopies nd paperbacks.we are not against copyrights,but against the f*in greedy,prejudiced,publishers who charge monstous fees from innocent customers even if they are available freely.a big salute to library.nu.
Look, I'm totally with you on the 'enforcement is largely futile' argument. But I don't know how you expect people who write ebooks to get paid in your brave new world.
If I write a book and publish it as an ebook, I'm not 'appropriating value from the masses.' My creative labour isn't nationalised, and it isn't morally yours to do with as you please just because you can.
The same applies to publishers. Whatever you may think, we add value to books, and we deserve to be able to make a living out of it.
Mmmm....you can tell that a couple of people who replied above stating the 'tough shit principle' have not spent a few dedicated years writing a book. Sure, publishers have had it their all way but it was bookshops who made the profits in the old days, not most publishers.
How do you think I would feel when I release a book I've spent a few years writing, put a really good price on it (for the customer) then see loads of people getting it for nothing?
What work do the people above do? And would they like it if someone came along and took things from them for nothing. I imagine their attitude would change then...
The prospect of having to deal with unauthorised downloads is something that the publishing industry is going to have to face. I would hope, though, that it can do a much better job of it than the music and movie industries.
Here's an article I wrote on that a few weeks ago:P
http://mark.goodge.co.uk/2012/01/competing-with-free-the-challenge-for-p...
This is an issue of reasons. Why do you publish books, publishers? To make money? Or to disseminate knowledge, artistic value, etc?
The closing of library.nu just speaks to your commitment to making a buck. That's what took priority here.
If you'd be commited to the spreading of knowledge and culture,pirates wouldn't bother you. Most people that pirate books like this do it because they can't - or simply won't - pay for them. I can only hope you're smart enough to realize that you were not losing money. The vast majority of the people who pirated books from library.nu won't buy your books now that it's closed. All you've done with this brute force enforcement is deprive people of knowledge. If no site like that ever rises again, you've just condemned a whole lot of people to live in ignorance of the knowledge that you should be commited to spread as much as possible.
This is just shameful, and speaks for the absurd level of marketization of everthing. Putting money before widespread knowledge - even when it's money you know you wouldn't have earned anyway - should be the crime here.
So people who spend years crafting a book, should do so for free?
you can gets books for free...it's called the library, perhaps if more people used them they would still be open.
For the record, library.nu is not completely shut down. People with high-status accounts are still able to log in and are likely still able to access content.
If pirates make so much money, why aren't the publishers copying them?
So, what's bad about online libraries to which people around the whole world will be able to have an acces?
Personally I feel that this law is one more stone for building inequality in global dimension. How should I produce a high standard intellectual work if I don't have an acces to materials?
Anonymous22...have you considered producing high standard intellectual product by exercising some high standard intellectualism? Ever thought, perhaps, of going to a library, buying second hand copies on Amazon or eBay, borrowing books and articles from your high-standard intellectual colleagues, having some original work of your own not based on that of other people? Thought of nipping into the local college/uni library, or saving a few bucks every month to actually go into a bookstore, real or online, and buying some ****ing books? After you've thought this over, why not list for us the grocery stores where you get free food, the gas stations you get free petrol from. Free clothes from GAP? Free shoes? Free fags? No - you just want people better educated and better placed to be published legitimately to provide you with the fruits of their hard labour for free. Because you are worth it. Lond live the l'Oreal Generation of intellectuals eh?
Mr Obvious - who was that strange little paragraph aimed at?
I would happily go to the library (university or any other) or bookstore where I could have an access to up to date literature in English in country that is not english speaking on topic which is poorly studied in my country and on my language. Or I would buy on Amazon if my living allowance from University wasn't less than 100 bucks per month.
The work of the writers and publishers should be paid - no doubts. But may be it's time to work out other solutions apart from prohibiting laws?
Anonymous 22 - I sympathise, but you really can't get stuff for nothing. It just doesn't work in other industries where the people who produce the product earn a living from their labours. You have to have prohibiting laws I think, because what they prohibit is theft. There is a whole industry of co-publishing and royalty based publishing whereby local publishers can publish books locally at an affordable price - or at least more affordable - than the imported UK/AS edition. In english or in their own language. If you can't get the books you want in English in your country there's obviosuly a gap in the market. Join the game - why don't you think of getting involved in getting those books into your country at local prices. Be a publisher yourself - it's a great industry, where we don't need theft to be justified.
Hehe
They won(?) the battle but lost the war. All files are in the net.
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